Surveillancesociety-theemergingpolicestateinnewzealandetal.pdf

Surveillance Society - The Emerging Police State in New Zealand (et al) For many years now laws have been passed, in New Zealand as in all other Western countries that little by little, erode away our provacy and rights. These laws usually come in under the guise of protecting us or our security from 'terror threat' and the like. While many dismiss concerns about these laws coming into effect as paranoia, the fact is that the legislation that is being passed has some pretty nasty capabilities if activated and not dormant. Governments have demonstrated a propensity for always moving to utilise the full extent of capabilities that are allowed for under legislation.

“Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security” - Benjamin Franklin

Facebook Knows A Whole Lot About Your Offline Life + The World's Best Security Engineers Are Working On Flappy Bird January 12 2017 | From: Digg / Inverse

Facebook has long let users see all sorts of things the site knows about them, like whether they enjoy soccer, have recently moved, or like Melania Trump.

But the tech giant gives users little indication that it buys far more sensitive data about them, including their income, the types of restaurants they frequent and even how many credit cards are in their wallets. Related: How a 2011 Hack You’ve Never Heard of Changed the Internet’s Infrastructure Since September, ProPublica has been encouraging Facebook users to share the categories of interest that the site has assigned to them. Users showed us everything from "Pretending to Text in Awkward Situations" to "Breastfeeding in Public." In total, we collected more than 52,000 unique attributes that Facebook has used to classify users.

Facebook's site says it gets information about its users "from a few different sources." What the page doesn't say is that those sources include detailed dossiers obtained from commercial data brokers about users' offline lives. Nor does Facebook show users any of the often remarkably detailed information it gets from those brokers.

"They are not being honest," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "Facebook is bundling a dozen different data companies to target an individual customer, and an individual should have access to that bundle as well."

Related: Privacy Advocates Walk Out in Protest Over U.S. Facial Recognition Code of Conduct When asked this week about the lack of disclosure, Facebook responded that it doesn't tell users about the third-party data because its widely available and was not collected by Facebook.

“Our approach to controls for third-party categories is somewhat different than our approach for Facebook-specific categories," said Steve Satterfield, a Facebook manager of privacy and public policy. "This is because the data providers we work with generally make their categories available across many different ad platforms, not just on Facebook."

Satterfield said users who don't want that information to be available to Facebook should contact the data brokers directly. He said users can visit a page in Facebook's help center, which provides links to the opt-outs for six data brokers that sell personal data to Facebook. Limiting commercial data brokers' distribution of your personal information is no simple matter. For instance, opting out of Oracle's Datalogix, which provides about 350 types of data to Facebook according to our analysis, requires "sending a written request, along with a copy of government-issued identification" in postal mail to Oracle's chief privacy officer.

Users can ask data brokers to show them the information stored about them. But that can also be complicated. One Facebook broker, Acxiom, requires people to send the last four digits of their social security number to obtain their data. Facebook changes its providers from time to time so members would have to regularly visit the help center page to protect their privacy.

One of us actually tried to do what Facebook suggests. While writing a book about privacy in 2013, reporter Julia Angwin tried to opt out from as many data brokers as she could. Of the 92 brokers she identified that accepted opt-outs, 65 of them required her to submit a form of identification such as a driver's license. In the end, she could not remove her data from the majority of providers. ProPublica's experiment to gather Facebook's ad categories from readers was part of our Black Box series, which explores the power of algorithms in our lives. Facebook uses algorithms not only to determine the news and advertisements that it displays to users, but also to categorize its users in tens of thousands of micro-targetable groups. Our crowd-sourced data showed us that Facebook's categories range from innocuous groupings of people who like southern food to sensitive categories such as "Ethnic Affinity" which categorizes people based on their affinity for AfricanAmericans, Hispanics and other ethnic groups. Advertisers can target ads toward a group 2014 or exclude ads from being shown to a particular group.

Related: US Government Quietly Starts Asking Travelers for Social Media Accounts Last month, after ProPublica bought a Facebook ad in its housing categories that excluded African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans, the company said it would build an automated system to help it spot ads that illegally discriminate. Facebook has been working with data brokers since 2012 when it signed a deal with Datalogix. This prompted Chester, the privacy advocate at the Center for Digital Democracy, to filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Facebook had violated a consent decree with the agency on privacy issues. The FTC has never publicly responded to that complaint and Facebook subsequently signed deals with five other data brokers. To find out exactly what type of data Facebook buys from brokers, we downloaded a list of 29,000 categories that the site provides to ad buyers. Nearly 600 of the categories were described as being provided by third-party data brokers. (Most categories were described as being generated by clicking pages or ads on Facebook.)

Related: Facebook Kills Pro-Trump Account In Free Speech Crackdown The categories from commercial data brokers were largely financial, such as "total liquid investible assets $1-$24,999," "People in households that have an estimated household income of between $100K and $125K, or even "Individuals that are frequent transactor at lower cost department or dollar stores." We compared the data broker categories with the crowd-sourced list of what Facebook tells users about themselves. We found none of the data broker information on any of the tens of the thousands of "interests" that Facebook showed users. Our tool also allowed users to react to the categories they were placed in as being "wrong," "creepy" or "spot on." The category that received the most votes for "wrong" was "Farmville slots." The category that got the most votes for "creepy" was "Away from family." And the category that was rated most "spot on" was "NPR."

The World's Best Security Engineers Are Working On Flappy Bird Fewer people want to engage in a modern "spy vs. spy."

Eugene Kaspersky explains hacking like it’s a bank robbery:

“Imagine you visit your bank and there are a thousand people crowding the office,” Kaspersky tells Inverse. “There are so many of them, you simply can’t get inside. They’re just messing around asking irrelevant questions, shouting, and acting silly. Most workers at the bank won’t be able to serve you or anyone else that day. That’s a DDoS attack." “Later that night, someone unarms the alarms, breaks into the bank, cracks the vault, and steals all the money. That’s hacking.”

The bank in his metaphor is a server, and hackers in 2016 have had a banner year screwing with them. In October, a chunk of code known as Mirai hijacked thousands of internet-connected devices to launch a record-size DDoS attack. Together, they spewed access requests at a DNS server - a switchboard for the internet, basically - and brought down some of the biggest sites on the internet: Twitter, Reddit, and Spotify among them. Again, merely an annoyance.

The more sophisticated attack on a server is when hackers - either lone wolves, loose collectives, or state-sponsored snoops - retrieve information from a server and release it to the public to influence public opinion and even sway elections. This scenario should be familiar to everybody by now. The problem is, there just aren’t enough people smart enough to guard the vaults. Kaspersky would know. He’s a big deal in the world of cybersecurity. As the founder and CEO of cybersecurity giant Kaspersky Lab, he’s often in the news for spotting security flaws for his clients. He also can’t find enough people to work for him. There are more than 1 million unfilled security jobs worldwide, a number that could grow to 1.5 million by the end of the decade, according to a report from technology conglomerate Cisco Systems. Would a healthier cybersecurity industry have stopped the year’s biggest hacks - Wikileaks and DDoS attacks - from being pulled off?

Eugene Kapersky

“Protecting against these two threats requires different skills and different technologies, including the software and hardware needed,” Kaspersky tells Inverse. “To some extent, there’s an overlap of skills simply because IT security people get to learn about both threats.”

But DDoS attacks are ham-fisted and blunt. They don’t do much damage and often don’t keep a website down for long. What’s more dangerous are targeted attacks carried out to destroy machinery or collect information. And there aren’t enough security experts to stop those, either. Perhaps the most famous example is the so-called “zero day” virus named Stuxnet. Although the United States government still won’t even address it, the destruction of uranium enrichment machinery in Iran in 2009 - the kind that could provide ingredients for a nuclear bomb - is widely seen as an American ploy. The machinery was destroyed after malware infected the program that regulated centrifuges. It was brilliant, but it spread beyond its target of the Iran nuclear facility.

Eric Chien, an engineer at California-based security company Symantec, helped track how the weaponized code used in Iran known as “Stuxnet” worked. (Kaspersky Lab also analyzed the virus over the course of about two years.) At a panel after a screening of Zero Days, a documentary about the attack, Chien lamented that the next wave of computer science graduates might be more interested in making freemium apps rather than uncovering international intrigue.

“We go into the office thinking about how we are going to defeat these adversaries.” “We see a lot of people getting into things like mobile or social, and people are creating Flappy Bird and people are making millions of dollars", Chien said. “But what we both really love about this job and why we’re super-passionate about this, is it’s unique in some sense. While we have competitors in our business - also creating security products - when we go in the office, we’re not thinking about, ‘Oh, how do we make another dollar? How do we beat our competitor?’ We go into the office thinking about how we are going to defeat these adversaries. How are we going to defeat these actors. And those actors are constantly changing.”

Bruce Schneier, a cyber security expert and author, gets it. “Young engineers might not see security as sexy,” he says. “Which is weird to me, because I think it’s the coolest ever. It’s spy versus spy.” At a hacking competition at New York University this year, one could find a lot of students who would agree with that sentiment.

One of the annual competitive formats during NYU’s Cyber Security Awareness Week is known as “Capture the Flag,” or CTF, and it attracts the kinds of students who could help fill the computer security talent gap. This year, students from all over the world competed in a 36-hour marathon, scrolling through endless lines of code to crack security challenges.

“The skills you learn in a CTF are exactly the type of outside-the-box thinking that is required,” says David Kohlbrenner, a Ph.D. student in security and systems at UC San Diego.

He got involved in cybersecurity “purely through CTF,” and is an original member of the Plaid Parliament of Pwning, a dominant CTF team from Carnegie Mellon that won this year’s competition.

“What the companies need are people who can solve a variety of different challenges and can approach them from different angles,” Kohlbrenner tells Inverse.

Kohlbrenner says the Mirai botnet responsible for October’s massive DDoS attack was “honestly trivial to set up,” and a continued dearth of security engineers (and, Schneier argues, a market failure to make the Internet of Things decently secure) could keep it that way in the future.

Click on the image above to open a larger verion in a new window

It’s clear companies need more manpower, whether that’s to ward off DDoS attacks or server hacks. But when it comes to recruiting, Schneier says new technology companies have the upper hand in attracting talented young programmers.

“You don’t want to work for Procter & Gamble,” he says. "You want to work for Google, or you wanna go work for Facebook, or the next high tech startup,” Schneier says. "But Procter & Gamble, turns out, needs maybe a couple dozen cybersecurity people.”

Nick Winter, the co-founder of a gamified coding community called CodeCombat, agrees. “No one is thinking, hmm, I’m gonna get a job at an insurance company". Doesn’t matter if they have all these interesting technological problems to solve and tons of important data to protect. They’re at a huge disadvantage there compared to any start-up in San Francisco or even, like, a tech-focused, big tech company like Cisco.

Both Schneier and Winter’s examples are reminders that it isn’t just tech companies - from router manufacturers to dating apps - that have a lot to lose when security engineers are in short supply.

“All companies become software companies,” Winter says. “And all data becomes more important and mission critical.”

Half of the 4,000 companies in a recent survey by Kaspersky Lab cited cybersecurity as a concern.

“The findings show a general shortage in full-time security staff and expert talent availability, which calls for the need for more specialists in the field,” reads a press release about the survey results.

It’s up to universities like NYU to prepare students for an ever-changing field, Kaspersky says. Server attacks in the future shouldn’t feel like bank robberies that change elections.

“The job market is changing too fast for the education system,” Kaspersky says. “Universities are fairly conservative institutions, plus, of course, it takes considerable time to educate people. We see that there’s a growing number of IT security programs, and more and more people are getting interested in the field, but the job market is expanding faster.”

His advice for young programmers? Learn how to prevent attacks.

“There are many skills that are in deficit that require very focused technical training” Kaspersky says. “Intrusion detection, development of secure software, digital forensics. All these skills are in high demand, but there are not many folks who have them.”

US Deep State In Deep Trouble + A Deeper Understanding Of Technocracy January 11 2017 | From: Sputnik / JonRappoport

US ruling power is in deep trouble because there are growing signs that the mass of citizens are no longer beholden to the supposed authority residing in Washington.

Once the legitimacy of would-be authorities begins to collapse in the eyes of the people, then profound political change is in the offing, as history shows us through countless empires that came and went – often ignominiously. Related: Creeping Technocratic Dictatorship: Google Can Access Medical Records; Microsoft Storing Data On Your DNA

"The so-called American Deep State comprising the military-intelligence apparatus and its operatives in the political and media establishment has put its credibility on the line over allegations of Russian interference in the US elections."

Those allegations are threadbare, indeed baseless, despite concerted, overweening attempts by the Deep State to conjure up something of substance. Related: US Intelligence 'Laid Itself Open to Ridicule' by Accusing Russia of Hacker Attacks The latest high-level intelligence report from the CIA, NSA, FBI and other US spy agencies on alleged Russian cyber hacking may have “wowed” President Barack Obama, various members of Congress and the corporate-controlled news media. Not so for ordinary Americans. Among rank-and-file citizens the reaction has been underwhelming to say the least. And that should be a matter of anxiety for the ruling establishment. If the people can no longer be commanded, then the whole foundation for power begins to erode like a sandcastle. As a New York Times report put it:

"What’s the big deal? asks Trump’s supporters on Russian hacking report”.

Trump is quite a hit in Russia - here he is on sugar packaging in a Russian store

Related: How Trump May Have Just Caused Russia to Fall Back in Love with the USA Among ordinary voters far removed from the Washington Beltway Bubble the consensus is one of derision towards the once-revered US intelligence community.

"Sore losers”, “sour grapes”, “crybabies” and “absurd” were just some of the disbelieving responses from ordinary folks about claims that Russian agents directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin had tipped the US November election in favor of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton." “I don’t believe the [US] intel report,” said one man in Louisiana. “Why is everybody so afraid of Russia? I’m not against Putin.”

Related: WikiLeaks: US Intel Report on Russia Hacking 'Has Poor Sourcing and No Evidence' Another man, a retired US air force officer, added:

"From the parts of the [US intel] report I’ve seen it seems silly.”

President-elect Trump, once again, seems more in tune with the real, pressing concerns of common citizens. He emerged from his so-called “briefing” by US intelligence chiefs last Friday and pointedly refused to join the Washington

blowhards accusing Russia of “an act of war”. Trump in fact followed up with a comment that it was only a “stupid” person would not want to have good relations with Russia.

This was not the response that the spooks wanted from Trump. The CIA and their surrogates in the Obama administration, Congress and the media were building up the US intel report like a witch-hunt against anyone who dares to dissent from the allegations of Russian cyber interference. Unlike warmongering Congress members such as John McCain and Lyndsey Graham, Trump has not jumped on the bandwagon to demonize Russia.

"And the thing is that people beyond the thrall of the Deep State centered in Washington appear to agree with Trump. At a time of immense social challenges from poverty, unemployment, financial indebtedness, deteriorating infrastructure and public services, and so on, a US policy of hostility towards Russia seems like an alien distraction. A contemptible waste of priority and resources, not to say a reckless drumbeat to war between nuclear powers."

Shocker: 'Proof' of Russia's Trump Support Was Compiled During Obama's Election The US intelligence agencies, aided by the Obama White House and mainstream media, tried to muster gravitas to play its “Russian card” against Trump. But Trump and the popular sentiment out there are not responding in the deferential manner expected by the spooks. In fact, despite sensationalist headlines in the mainstream media about “Putin ordering an influence campaign to help Trump win the election”, the US intelligence agencies are now in real danger of being exposed as ridiculous liars.

The collapse of the US establishment has been underway for sometime, but lately the momentum has quickened with the election of Trump and the mainstream media’s penchant for “fake narratives”. Last week the Washington disgraced itself by running a story about Russia hacking into the US electric, a story which was quickly exposed as “fake news”. On the latest US intel report, as well as Trump and ordinary Americans, many observers from around the world were taken aback by the amateurish dearth of evidence and generally low quality of analysis. Independent cyber security experts, including US-based ones, poured scorn on the claims against Russia. Related: US Readiness to ‘Throw Rocks’ at Russia Marks Need for Policy U-Turn – Ex-Adviser to Trump The US spy agencies claim that they have “supporting evidence” that Russia hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails, but they say, unconvincingly, that they can’t disclose the information in order to protect “sensitive sources and methods”. Such a conjuring trick just makes the US spooks and the subservient news media look even more ridiculous.

A major giveaway was the disproportionately huge focus that the US intelligence report devoted to trying to discredit Russian news media outlets, RT and Sputnik. The report claims that the news services are part of the Kremlin’s “influence campaign” and then cites its own ropey rationale as “evidence” that Russia hacked the US election. If that’s the best that America’s “national security guardians” can come up with then we can be sure their case against Russia is null and void. There was a time in the American past when shadowy, unelected elites could control society through monopolistic, servile media and servile politicians kowtowing to their supposed authority. There was also a naive belief among people that the secret services were defending the nation’s best interests. Not any more alas. People have got wise to the massive manipulation and criminality of such shadowy powers who orchestrate wars and regime changes all around the world for the narrow benefit of elite corporate power. Ordinary Americans pay with their lives and livelihoods for the machinations of the ruling cabal.

"The Deep State intel chiefs may have been fawned over by Obama, Congress and the media in their outlandish claims of Russian subversion. But growing numbers of ordinary people in the US and around the world can see through the lies and blatant agenda of hostility towards Russia – an insane hostility that only serves the elite interests of the Deep State."

The once feared, and revered, US Deep State is now facing a deep dilemma and maybe even an existential crisis. For it knows deep down that its erstwhile credibility and authority are shot to pieces.

Down through history, the American rulers got away with their charade of inciting wars and conflicts through false flags and contrived catastrophes: the not-so-secret Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident that escalated the US genocidal war on Vietnam, the dubious 9/11 terror attacks and Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, to mention just a few. This same warmongering American ruling class want another arms race, Pentagon-pumping Cold War with Russia. But this time they have played a card that is all too evidently blank. The US spooks and their elitist establishment know that Trump, the American people, Russia and the rest of world all know that they have nothing to offer. No credibility, no morals and no authority, the US Deep State is in deep trouble.

A Deeper Understanding Of Technocracy Technocracy is the basic agenda and plan for ruling global society from above, so we need to understand it from several angles.

Consider a group of enthusiastic forward-looking engineers in the early 20th century. They work for a company that has a contract to manufacture a locomotive. Related: Technocracy: A Scientific Dictatorship This is a highly complex piece of equipment. On one level, workers are required to make the components to spec. Then they must put them all together. These tasks are formidable. On another level, various departments of the company must coordinate their efforts. This is also viewed as a technological job. Organizing is considered a technology. When the locomotive is finished and delivered, and when it runs on its tracks and pulls a train, a great and inspiring victory is won. And then…the engineers begin to think about the implications. Suppose the locomotive was society itself? Suppose society was the finished product? Couldn’t society be put together in a coordinated fashion? And couldn’t the “technology of organizing things” be utilized for the job?

Related: "Smart City" Is Really Government Spying On An Unimaginable Scale Why bother with endlessly arguing and lying politicians? Why should they be in charge? Isn’t that an obvious losing proposition? Of course it is. But engineers could lay out and build a future society that would benefit all people. Hunger, disease, and poverty could be wiped out. Eliminating them would be part of the uncompromising blueprint. This “insight” hit engineers and technicians like a ton of bricks. Of course! All societies had been failures for the same reason: the wrong people were in charge. Armed with this new understanding, engineers of every stripe began to see what was needed. A revolution in thinking about societal organization. Science was the new king. And science would rule. Of course, for an engineered world to work, certain decisions would have to be made about the role of the individual. Every individual. You couldn’t have an air-tight plan if every human were free to pursue his own objectives. Too many variables. Too much confusion. Too much conflict. Well, that problem could be solved. The individual’s actions would be tailored to fit the coordinated operations of the planned society.

Related: Technocracy: evolution told as a fairy tale The individual would be inserted into a pre-ordained slot. He would be “one of the components of the locomotive.” His life would be connected to other lives to produce an exemplary shape. Yes, this could imply a few problems, but those problems could be worked out. They would have to be worked out, because the overriding goal was the forming of a world organization. What would you do if one bolt (an individual human) in one wheel of a locomotive was the wrong size? You would go back and correct the error. You would re-make the bolt. Among sincere technocrats, the overall vision superseded the glaring problems. But…other people entered the game. High-echelon Globalists saw technocracy as a system they could use to control the population. Control was their goal. Period. What happened to the individual in the process was of no concern to them. The individual had freedom or he didn’t have freedom, and the Globalists overtly intended to wipe out that freedom. Erasing hunger, poverty, illness? Nonsense. For the Globalists, those realities would be exacerbated. Sick, weak, and debilitated people were easier to rule and control and manage. Essentially, a vastly misguided vision of a future technocratic utopia was hijacked. Something bad was made much worse. In a nutshell, this is the history of technocracy. A locomotive is a society? No.

That was the first fatally flawed idea. Everything that followed was increasingly psychotic. Unfortunately, many people in our world believe in Globalism, if you could call a partial vague view a legitimate belief. They dreamily float on all the propaganda cover stories - greatest good for the greatest number of people; no more poverty; equality of sharing; reducing the carbon footprint; a green economy; “sustainable development”; international cooperation; engineering production and consumption of goods and services for the betterment of everyone; and all of this delivered from a central platform of altruistic guides. If you track down the specifics that sit under these pronouncements, you discover you discover a warped system of planning that delivers misery and de facto slavery to the global population.

Related: Fabian Socialist Society The collective utopia turns out to be a sham. Waking up is hard to do? Breaking up is hard to do? They must be done. A workable technological fix is a very nice achievement when the project is a machine. But transferring that glow of victory to the whole of society is an illusion. Anything that calls itself education would tackle the illusion as the first order of business.

Related Articles: Minds Like Machines Robert Steele: The Soft Coup Collapses Military Coups, Regime Change…: The CIA Has Interfered In Over 81 Foreign Elections… As We Move Into 2017: The Cracks in the Empire are Here… How will the U.S. Empire Dissolve? The Op: Unelected Agents Now Infiltrating ‘Critical Infrastructures’ Obama Regime Moves To Federalize Elections Editing Reality: Former Employees Admit Facebook Censors Conservative News

American Pravda: How The CIA Invented "Conspiracy Theories" January 10 2017 | From: UNZ / ActivistPost / Various

With the sudden, bizarre rise of the “Fake News” accusations throughout the entire Corporate Media megaphone and the equally bizarre and totally unsubstantiated CIA allegations that the Russians had stolen the election for Donald Trump, this topic is highly pertinent.

A year or two ago, I saw the much-touted science fiction film Interstellar, and although the plot wasn’t any good, one early scene was quite amusing. For various reasons, the American government of the future claimed that our Moon Landings of the late 1960s had been faked, a trick aimed at winning the Cold War by bankrupting Russia into fruitless space efforts of its own. Related: Trump Plans to Shrink, Reorganize CIA, Other Intel Agencies This inversion of historical reality was accepted as true by nearly everyone, and those few people who claimed that Neil Armstrong had indeed set foot on the Moon were universally ridiculed as “crazy conspiracy theorists.” This seems a realistic portrayal of human nature to me. Obviously, a large fraction of everything described by our government leaders or presented in the pages of our most respectable newspapers - from the 9/11 attacks to the most insignificant local case of petty urban corruption - could objectively be categorized as a “conspiracy theory” but such words are never applied. Instead, use of that highly loaded phrase is reserved for those theories, whether plausible or fanciful, that do not possess the endorsement stamp of establishmentarian approval.

Related: The 70 Greatest Conspiracy Theories in Pop-Culture History Put another way, there are good “conspiracy theories” and bad “conspiracy theories,” with the former being the ones promoted by pundits on mainstream television shows and hence never described as such. I’ve sometimes joked with people that if ownership and control of our television stations and other major media outlets suddenly changed, the new information regime would require only a few weeks of concerted effort to totally invert all of our most famous “conspiracy theories” in the minds of the gullible American public. The notion that nineteen Arabs armed with box-cutters hijacked several jetliners, easily evaded our NORAD air defenses, and reduced several landmark buildings to rubble would soon be universally ridiculed as the most preposterous “conspiracy theory” ever to have gone straight from the comic books into the minds of the mentally ill, easily surpassing the absurd “lone gunman” theory of the JFK assassination. Even without such changes in media control, huge shifts in American public beliefs have frequently occurred in the recent past, merely on the basis of implied association. In the initial weeks and months following the 2001 attacks, every American media organ was enlisted to denounce and vilify Osama Bin Laden, the purported Islamicist master-mind, as our greatest national enemy, with his bearded visage endlessly appearing on television and in print, soon becoming one of the most recognizable faces in the world.

But as the Bush Administration and its key media allies prepared a war against Iraq, the images of the Burning Towers were instead regularly juxtaposed with mustachioed photos of dictator Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden’s arch-enemy. As a consequence, by the time we attacked Iraq in 2003, polls revealed that some 70% of the American public believed that Saddam was personally involved in the destruction of our World Trade Center. By that date I don’t doubt that many millions of patriotic but low-information Americans would have angrily denounced and vilified as a “crazy conspiracy theorist” anyone with the temerity to suggest that Saddam had not been behind 9/11, despite almost no one in authority having ever explicitly made such a fallacious claim. These factors of media manipulation were very much in my mind a couple of years ago when I stumbled across a short but fascinating book published by the University of Texas academic press. The author of Conspiracy Theory in Americawas Prof. Lance deHaven-Smith, a former president of the Florida Political Science Association.

Based on an important FOIA disclosure, the book’s headline revelation was that the CIA was very likely responsible for the widespread introduction of “conspiracy theory” as a term of political abuse, having orchestrated that development as a deliberate means of influencing public opinion. During the mid-1960s there had been increasing public skepticism about the Warren Commission findings that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been solely responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination, and growing suspicions that top-ranking American leaders had also been involved. So as a means of damage control, the CIA distributed a secret memo to all its field offices requesting that they enlist their media assets in efforts to ridicule and attack such critics as irrational supporters of “conspiracy theories.” Soon afterward, there suddenly appeared statements in the media making those exact points, with some of the wording, arguments, and patterns of usage closely matching those CIA guidelines. The result was a huge spike in the pejorative use of the phrase, which spread throughout the American media, with the residual impact continueing right down to the present day. Thus, there is considerable evidence in support of this particular “conspiracy theory” explaining the widespread appearance of attacks on “conspiracy theories” in the public media.

But although the CIA appears to have effectively manipulated public opinion in order to transform the phrase “conspiracy theory” into a powerful weapon of ideological combat, the author also describes how the necessary philosophical ground had actually been prepared a couple of decades earlier. Around the time of the Second World War, an important shift in political theory caused a huge decline in the respectability of any “conspiratorial” explanation of historical events. For decades prior to that conflict, one of our most prominent scholars and public intellectuals had been historian Charles Beard, whose influential writings had heavily focused on the harmful role of various elite conspiracies in shaping American policy for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, with his examples ranging from the earliest history of the United States down to the nation’s entry into WWI. Obviously, researchers never claimed that all major historical events had hidden causes, but it was widely accepted that some of them did, and attempting to investigate those possibilities was deemed a perfectly acceptable academic enterprise.

However, Beard was a strong opponent of American entry into the Second World War, and he was marginalized in the years that followed, even prior to his death in 1948. Many younger public intellectuals of a similar bent also suffered the same fate, or were even purged from respectability and denied any access to the mainstream media. At the same time, the totally contrary perspectives of two European political philosophers, Karl Popper and Leo Strauss, gradually gained ascendancy in American intellectual circles, and their ideas became dominant in public life. Popper, the more widely influential, presented broad, largely theoretical objections to the very possibility of important conspiracies ever existing, suggesting that these would be implausibly difficult to implement given the fallibility of human agents; what might appear a conspiracy actually amounted to individual actors pursuing their narrow aims. Even more importantly, he regarded “conspiratorial beliefs” as an extremely dangerous social malady, a major contributing factor to the rise of Nazism and other deadly totalitarian ideologies. His own background as an individual of Jewish ancestry who had fled Austria in 1937 surely contributed to the depth of his feelings on these philosophical matters.

Meanwhile, Strauss, a founding figure in modern neo-conservative thought, was equally harsh in his attacks upon conspiracy analysis, but for polar-opposite reasons. In his mind, elite conspiracies were absolutely necessary and beneficial, a crucial social defense against anarchy or totalitarianism, but their effectiveness obviously depended upon keeping them hidden from the prying eyes of the ignorant masses. His main problem with “conspiracy theories” was not that they were always false, but they might often be true, and therefore their spread was potentially disruptive to the smooth functioning of society. So as a matter of self-defense, elites needed to actively suppress or otherwise undercut the unauthorized investigation of suspected conspiracies. Even for most educated Americans, theorists such as Beard, Popper, and Strauss are probably no more than vague names mentioned in textbooks, and that was certainly true in my own case. But while the influence of Beard seems to have largely disappeared in elite circles, the same is hardly true of his rivals. Popper probably ranks as one of the founders of modern liberal thought, with an individual as politically influential as leftliberal financier George Soros claiming to be his intellectual disciple.

Related: George Soros’ World is Falling Apart, Blames Everyone but Himself Meanwhile, the neo-conservative thinkers who have totally dominated the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement for the last couple of decades often proudly trace their ideas back to Strauss. So, through a mixture of Popperian and Straussian thinking, the traditional American tendency to regard elite conspiracies as a real but harmful aspect of our society was gradually stigmatized as either paranoid or politically dangerous, laying the conditions for its exclusion from respectable discourse. By 1964, this intellectual revolution had largely been completed, as indicated by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the famous article by political scientist Richard Hofstadter critiquing the so-called “paranoid style” in American politics, which he denounced as the underlying cause of widespread popular belief in implausible conspiracy theories. To a considerable extent, he seemed to be attacking straw men, recounting and ridiculing the most outlandish conspiratorial beliefs, while seeming to ignore the ones that had been proven correct.

For example, he described how some of the more hysterical anti-Communists claimed that tens of thousands of Red Chinese troops were hidden in Mexico, preparing an attack on San Diego, while he failed to even acknowledge that for years Communist spies had indeed served near the very top of the U.S. government. Not even the most conspiratorially minded individual suggests that all alleged conspiracies are true, merely that some of them might be. Most of these shifts in public sentiment occurred before I was born or when I was a very young child, and my own views were shaped by the rather conventional media narratives that I absorbed. Hence, for nearly my entire life, I always automatically dismissed all of the so-called “conspiracy theories” as ridiculous, never once even considering that any of them might possibly be true. To the extent that I ever thought about the matter, my reasoning was simple and based on what seemed like good, solid common sense. Any conspiracy responsible for some important public event must surely have many separate “moving parts” to it, whether actors or actions taken, let us say numbering at least 100 or more. Now given the imperfect nature of all attempts at concealment, it would surely be impossible for all of these to be kept entirely hidden. So even if a conspiracy were initially 95% successful in remaining undetected, five major clues would still be left in plain sight for investigators to find.

And once the buzzing cloud of journalists noticed these, such blatant evidence of conspiracy would certainly attract an additional swarm of energetic investigators, tracing those items back to their origins, with more pieces gradually being uncovered until the entire cover-up likely collapsed. Even if not all the crucial facts were ever determined, at least the simple conclusion that there had indeed been some sort of conspiracy would quickly become established. However, there was a tacit assumption in my reasoning, one that I have since decided was entirely false. Obviously, many potential conspiracies either involve powerful governmental officials or situations in which their disclosure would represent a source of considerable embarrassment to such individuals. But I had always assumed that even if government failed in its investigatory role, the dedicated bloodhounds of the Fourth Estate would invariably come through, tirelessly seeking truth, ratings, and Pulitzers. However, once I gradually began realizing that the media was merely “Our American Pravda” and perhaps had been so for decades, I suddenly recognized the flaw in my logic.

If those five - or ten or twenty or fifty - initial clues were simply ignored by the media, whether through laziness, incompetence, or much less venial sins, then there would be absolutely nothing to prevent successful conspiracies from taking place and remaining undetected, perhaps even the most blatant and careless ones. In fact, I would extend this notion to a general principle. Substantial control of the media is almost always an absolute prerequisite for any successful conspiracy, the greater the degree of control the better. So when weighing the plausibility of any conspiracy, the first matter to investigate is who controls the local media and to what extent. Let us consider a simple thought-experiment. For various reasons these days, the entire American media is extraordinarily hostile to Russia, certainly much more so than it ever was toward the Communist Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s. Hence I would argue that the likelihood of any large-scale Russian conspiracy taking place within the operative zone of those media organs is virtually nil.

Indeed, we are constantly bombarded with stories of alleged Russian conspiracies that appear to be “false positives,” dire allegations seemingly having little factual basis or actually being totally ridiculous. Meanwhile, even the crudest sort of anti-Russian conspiracy might easily occur without receiving any serious mainstream media notice or investigation. This argument may be more than purely hypothetical. A crucial turning point in America’s renewed Cold War against Russia was the passage of the 2012 Magnitsky Act by Congress, punitively targeting various supposedly corrupt Russian officials for their alleged involvement in the illegal persecution and death of an employee of Bill Browder, an American hedge-fund manager with large Russian holdings. However, there’s actually quite a bit of evidence that it was Browder himself who was actually the mastermind and beneficiary of the gigantic corruption scheme, while his employee was planning to testify against him and was therefore fearful of his life for that reason.

Naturally, the American media has provided scarcely a single mention of these remarkable revelations regarding what might amount to a gigantic Magnitsky Hoax of geopolitical significance. To some extent the creation of the Internet and the vast proliferation of alternative media outlets, including my own small webzine, have somewhat altered this depressing picture. So it is hardly surprising that a very substantial fraction of the discussion dominating these Samizdat-like publications concerns exactly those subjects regularly condemned as “crazy conspiracy theories” by our mainstream media organs. Such unfiltered speculation must surely be a source of considerable irritation and worry to government officials who have long relied upon the complicity of their tame media organs to allow their serious misdeeds to pass unnoticed and unpunished. Indeed, several years ago a senior Obama Administration official argued that the free discussion of various “conspiracy theories” on the Internet was so potentially harmful that government agents should be recruited to “cognitively infiltrate” and disrupt them, essentially proposing a high-tech version of the highly controversial Cointelpro operations undertaken by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

Until just a few years ago I’d scarcely even heard of Charles Beard, once ranked among the towering figures of 20th century American intellectual life. But the more I’ve discovered the number of serious crimes and disasters that have completely escaped substantial media scrutiny, the more I wonder what other matters may still remain hidden. So perhaps Beard was correct all along in recognizing the respectability of “conspiracy theories,” and we should return to his traditional American way of thinking, notwithstanding endless conspiratorial propaganda campaigns by the CIA and others to persuade us that we should dismiss such notions without any serious consideration. Related: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ Max Spiers Found Dead Days After Texting His Mother to Investigate if Anything ‘Happened to Him’

False Flag Terrorism: Murdering The Innocent In Order To Support The Lie + 15 Ways To Detect A False Flag Operation January 9 2017 | From: PaulCraigRoberts / ActivistPost / Various

As my readers know, I reported, factually, on the Boston Marathon alleged bombing case. I interviewed carefully the pro bono attorney, John Remington Graham, who intervened in behalf of the Russian aunt, a lawyer in the Russian Federation, in behalf of the falsely convicted younger

Tsarnaev brother, Dzhokhar, the older brother having been murdered by the FBI.

Graham conclusively proved that the FBI’s own evidence proved beyond any doubt that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was innocent, which means so was the older brother. Related: False Flag Terrorism explained: A Star Wars Analogy It is clear beyond reasonable doubt that there was no real bombing at the Boston Marathon and that the alleged terrorist event, using crisis actors, was an orchestration designed to convince dumbshit Americans that they really were under a “Muslim threat.” The entire foreign policy of the United States in the 21st century is based on an orchestrated “Muslim threat.” The orchestrated threat was also used for a practice exercise in closing down one of America’s largest cities in order to manhunt with intent to kill a young man chosen as the villain for the orchestrated event.

Related: Here’s why Nazionists Launched Multiple False Flag Operations this Year American citizens were forced at gunpoint out of their homes while Homeland Security, a Nazi reminiscent name from the Hitler era, disrupted the life of an entire city and its airport service in behalf of this orchestrated event that murdered American civil liberty. The entire exercise was based on a lie, an event that never happened, like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and so forth. Just another lie in behalf of the “exceptional people.” A number of websites have disproved the false case against the Tsarnaev brothers. Attorney John Remington Graham has brought the case to the justice authorities, but the US Department of Justice (sic) has no interest whatsoever in justice. Now comes forward an attorney, Mary Maxwell with a book. It is available online free. I read the first eight chapters, which was sufficient to comfirm me in my independent conclusion that there was no Boston Marathon bombing by terrorists. I recommend to you Mary Maxwell’s account. However, I will say that I believe that she uses irony excessively and that on occasions her irony gets in the way of the factual message. Knowing this, stick with it, and read her account. Irony is the style that she has chosen, and we must respect a person prepared to stand up to the murderous American establishment and to challenge one of the founding myths of the American Police State and Washington’s wars against the world.

Read her book Marathon Bombing - Indicting the Players here. Any US citizen that believes the falsified case of the Boston Marathon bombing is a dangerous and direct threat to American civil liberty and to the lives of millions of people on planet Earth. If Americans do not wake up to the orchesrations to which they are subjected, they will forfeit their freedom. The Russians and the Chinese are individually and together more powerful than Washington, and they are not going to put up with the lies with which insouciant Americans are content. If Americans cannot take back their country from self-serving oligarchs, Americans are doomed. Related: 9/11 False Flag Conspiracy - Finally Solved (Names, Connections, Motives)

15 Ways To Detect A False Flag Operation A false flag formula is becoming readily apparent in the face of so many mass shootings and bombings in the US. The phenomenon has become so commonplace in the last 3 years that it’s becoming more American than apple pie.

According to ShootingTracker.com, there have been 353 mass shootings in the USA for 2015 so far. However, as scary as that number is, the good news is that you don’t have to be afraid of them like you may think. A very large number of them - and all of them with any mass media significance and attention – are false flag staged terror events. Related: False Flag Terror. A Historical Overview Some have real victims, some do not, but either way, the most criminal of all institutions – the Government – is the orchestrating force behind them. They are scripted, pre-planned operations which are definitely not the result of random gun violence. Just as Obama stated (by hiding the truth in plain sight), there is a pattern behind these mass shootings. The Controllers are following a definite false flag formula. Below is a list of the top 15 elements of this formula, which you can now use to detect a false flag operation as it occurs:

False Flag Formula #1: Drill at the Same or Nearby Time and Place The exercise or drill – at the same time, at the same place – has became the sine qua non or indispensable element of the recent false flag operation. Sometimes there are slight variations on this when the Government plans a drill nearby (a few miles away) rather than at the exact place, or plans a drill earlier on in the day, so it can just coincidentally “go live”.

There was a twist in the case of the recent San Bernardino shooting: the Government planned regular drills in the building where the shooting took place every month! (Think about it – what are the chances of a real mass shooting occurring in a building used for mass shooting drills?) As Captain Eric H. May, a former US Army military intelligence officer, stated:

“The easiest way to carry out a false flag attack is by setting up a military exercise that simulates the very attack you want to carry out."

In the case of 9/11, there were no less than 46 drills occurring simultaneously during the event, according to Webster Tarpley, author of Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. In the case of the London 7/7 bombings, Peter Power admitted on radio that he was leading a team who were training for that exact scenario when it unfolded!

There were active shooter drills in all of the false flag attacks of Sandy Hook, Boston Marathon, Charleston, San Bernardino, the Norway attack, the 2nd Paris attack of 2015 and many many more. What’s the point of having a drill at the same time and place? Here are a few of its purposes: 1. Distract and remove key personnel who would otherwise be at the scene to contain and investigate it; 2. Confuse other personnel who will treat the whole event in a different way if they think it is a drill rather than a real event; 3. Slow down, reduce or eliminate an effective response, especially of police and other law enforcement, given the removal and confusion of personnel; 4. Distract and confuse witnesses, the media and the public in general; 5. Provide a great cover and period of lower defenses and security to carry out an attack, which would otherwise be difficult or impossible if defenses were at their usual or optimal operating level.

False Flag Formula #2: Foreknowledge Another way you can tell that a mass shooting is a false flag op is if you find proof of foreknowledge of the event. As it so happens, all of the notorious and publicized mass attacks of late have had evidence of foreknowledge. Going way back in time, there was foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941 that got the US into World War 2.

There were many aspects of foreknowledge on 9/11, including the BBC reporting WTC7 falling before it actually did, and mysterious calls to people like author Salman Rushdie and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown advising them not to fly to NYC on Sept. 11th. Sandy Hook had blatant foreknowledge (with various webpages put up days before the event), as did the Boston Marathon.

False Flag Formula #3: Eyewitnesses Have Conflicting Accounts You can also spot a likely false flag operation when you see or hear of multiple conflicting witness accounts. In the case of the Aurora Colorado “Batman” mass shooting, eyewitnesses claimed they saw an entire team of shooters, rather than the single shooter James Holmes of the official narrative. With Sandy Hook, we saw multiple scenes of law enforcement chasing men into the surrounding forest, yet the official narrative declares the only shooter was Adam Lanza. In San Bernardino, too, witnesses stated they saw 3 white athletic men, not the 2 brown husband-and-wife team we were told did the shooting.

Related: 1 Trillion Dollar Lawsuit Filed Against MSM For Staging 'Sandy Hook' Conflicting eyewitness accounts can destroy the official narrative no matter what the detail is. On 9/11, various fireman told us there were bombs in the building, contradicting the official story that planes alone took down the Twin Towers. With Sandy Hook, Gene Rosen’s testimony itself was full of holes and was contradicted by that of the school bus driver and the official report.

False Flag Formula #4: MSM Quickly Name and Demonize the Patsy Have you ever wondered how quickly the MSM (Mainstream Media) discovers the name of the patsy? They had somehow deduced that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 just hours after the attacks. Have you ever wondered why the Government is so good at telling us who supposedly executed these attacks right after they happen, with almost no time to investigate, yet can’t seem to manage to actually stop these alleged terror attacks?

Related: President Putin Reveals Possession Of 9/11 Satellite Imagery Evidence Indicating US Government Complicity In False Flag Attack Without any evidence, the MSM endlessly repeated “bin Laden” like a crazy mantra after 9/11, despite the fact bin Laden himself denied involvement in the attacks and that in the end he was never formally charged by the FBI. Have you ever wondered why many of the patsies, or sorry, deranged mass shooters, are Muslim? That wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the Zionist Government and MSM are trying to paint all Muslims as crazy and scary, would it? Nothing like a good dose of Islamophobia to take your freedom away …

False Flag Formula #5: Patsy Has No Military Training, Yet Shoots Extremely Fast and Accurately Another element of the false flag formula is the skilled and lethal patsy. According to the official narrative of false flag ops like Sandy Hook and Aurora, we are supposed to believe that skinny and non-muscular youths, without any discernible military training, were able to acquire expensive military gear (including armor, guns, ammunition and more), wear that gear without getting bogged down in speed, and shoot incredibly fast and accurately. In San Bernardino, we are supposed to believe that a young mother was strong and skilled enough to participate in killing 14 and injuring 17 people while she was strapped up with body armor and holding heavy weaponry! In these cases and more, the official story would have you believe that it’s no big deal or just a coincidence that the patsy can acquire all this high-end gear and use it so well.

False Flag Formula #6: Patsy Gets Killed, Drugged or “Suicided” It is also part of the false flag formula to ensure that the patsy, who is earmarked before the event to take the fall, cannot speak out to rationally defend themselves. This is achieved in a number of ways. The simplest is to have the patsy kill himself or herself by committing “suicide”.

Related: Case Closed: JFK Killed After Shutting Down Rothschild’s Federal Reserve Another favorite way is to take the patsy out in a thrilling high speed chase, which has the added benefit of drawing clueless people in through the MSM and gushingly promoting the police state. Sometimes a patsy is killed in plain sight, just because it’s so important to suppress his testimony (e.g. Lee Harvey Oswald in the JFK assassination). A third way is to mind control and drug the patsy to such an extent that they become a zombie vegetable unable to articulate anything, as was the case with James Holmes.

False Flag Formula #7: Shooter Leaves Manifesto In this day and age, writing a manifesto is a strange and anachronistic thing to do. Yet, for some strange reason, shooters’ manifestos seem to crop up an awful lot after mass shootings. Conveniently for the Controllers, these manifestos provide a perfect explanation for the official narrative, and help fill in the missing (non-existent) motive for the attack – which probably pushes those on the fence over into believing the Government’s version of the event. While the manifesto is not an element in every false flag operation, it is present in enough of them to be regarded as part of the false flag formula.

False Flag Formula #8: Evidence Gets Conveniently Destroyed Another element of the false flag formula is the deliberate destruction of evidence, so that the Controllers can cover their tracks.

In 9/11, the scrap metal (in the smoldering ruins of the WTC towers) was immediately shipped off to China right from the start; with Sandy Hook, the entire school was demolished; in San Bernardino, the supposed landlord of the supposed shooters actually allowed MSM reporters into the suspects’ house to poke around and touch all their stuff, in complete disregard for what could be a possible crime scene! Could it get any more blatant?

False Flag Formula #9: No Obvious Motive for the Mass Attack Have you ever wondered why there is no obvious motive in any of these mass shootings? Crimes are supposed to be solved on the merit of motive and opportunity, yet to hide the reality of a false flag op, the MSM just lies about the motive part, and chalks it up to a deranged shooter.

Other times we are offered the flimsiest of motives, such as people going on an all-out rampage because they had a grievance with a co-worker. In San Bernardino, we were told the young mother, with a 1-year-old child, was aggressive and psychotic enough to help kill 14 and injure 17 people – at the risk of never seeing her child again! Meanwhile, the real purveyors of these operations profit immensely from the ensuing fear, yet somehow the majority of people don’t seem to see that motive...

False Flag Formula #10: Immediate Calls for Gun Control Gun control is obviously one of the key agendas behind all of these false flag mass shootings, since a disarmed population is far easier to exploit and manipulate than an armed one. It is an obvious aspect of the false flag formula. Sometimes gun control is even pushed in the immediate aftermath of the event when people are still in a highly emotional and suggestible state. Take a look at the behavior of Andy Parker, who we were told was the father of a victim killed in the Virginia mass shooting of 2015.

Within hours of hearing the news of the death of his child, Parker had already contacted and talked with the Governor of Virginia, and then appeared on TV saying he would be devoting his entire life to gun control. In a similar fashion, Richard Martinez, the alleged father of a Santa Barbara mass hooting victim, appeared on TV right after the death angrily pleading for more gun control. In both cases, the political agenda of gun control angrily dominated their reactions, rather than grief or other emotions.

False Flag Formula #11: Fake “Victims” = Crisis Actors The above 10 points are a useful outline of the false flag formula as it pertains to mass shootings with real victims, i.e. where real people die. However, ever since the surreal Sandy Hook event, which still contains many unanswered questions, we have entered the twilight zone of the false flag hoax. This is a term used to describe the false flag mass attacks where no one dies – where fake bodies, fake blood and fake victims are used instead. In this way, the entire operation is more tightly controlled and less messy. A hallmark of the false flag hoax is that the authorities never produce a credible piece of evidence showing an actual dead body of a victim.

Is this the same girl crying at all three massacres - Aurora, Sandy Hook and Boston? The following 5 points relate to false flag hoaxes, and specifically to the people employed to pull them off – crisis actors. It is truly a testament to just how utterly fake our normal world is (the Matrix) that false flag ops have now descended to the level where we have to question whether the event even happened at all. There are organizations of crisis actors in the US (such as the IIF), and there is clear evidence crisis actors were used at Sandy Hook, Boston Marathon and many others.

Related: Charlie Hebdo: French False Flag Terror Event Government officials have been caught using the word “actor” to describe various players in these dramas; the MSM has even resorted to calling them actors too (it was one of the buzzwords of the recent San Bernardino mass shooting).

False Flag Formula #12: “Victims” Get Killed Twice The surreal quality of the false flag hoax reached point of absurdity when it was discovered that one of the “victims” was reportedly killed twice! We were told that Noah Pozner was one of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, yet his picture was also among those killed in a Pakistan Taliban attack. Apparently the recycling of fake victims is another part of the false flag formula.

False Flag Formula #13: Families of “Victims” Have Elite or Acting Backgrounds Is it just a coincidence that the families of mass shooting “victims” have either elite or acting backgrounds? At the Sandy Hook event, local CEO of the Newtown bank John Trentacosta (whose house was next to the Lanzas and had a lot of unusual activity occurring there the day of Sandy Hook) was connected to the New York Federal Reserve (and thus the international banking elite). Francine Wheeler was formerly the personal assistant of former chief Democratic National Committee fundraiser Maureen White whose husband Steven Rattner is a Wall Street investment banker and member of the Rockefeller CFR (Council on Foreign Relations)!

Related: Censorship Shock: Amazon.com Bans Investigative Book ‘Nobody Died At Sandy Hook’ Because It Disagrees With Government Version Of What Happened It was also noteworthy at Sandy Hook how acting showed up in the resumes of so many of the key players there. Gene Rosen, David and Francine Wheeler (both professional actors) and others all had a background in acting. Father of Virginia mass shooting “victim” Andy Parker is an actor (and a politician too). This fact supports the idea that another element of the false flag formula is to watch for people with elite connections and acting backgrounds.

False Flag Formula #14: Families of “Victims” Show Little to No Emotion, and Even Snigger and Laugh Luckily for truth seekers, the majority of crisis actors used in these false flag events are poor actors who are utterly unconvincing in the roles they play. The majority display little or no emotion after an alleged tragedy like losing a family member child to a random and violent mass shooting. It is true that humans do vary widely with emotional response and expression. However, with many of the crisis actors, judging by their reactions, it simply strains credibility too much to believe that they have just have been through a harrowing and traumatic ordeal.

Related: The Great ‘Terrorism’ Hoaxes – from Boston to Berlin – #CrisisActors Exposed Given the range of possible reactions to a tragedy like losing a loved one in a mass shooting, what are the chances that many of the “victims’” family members are so non-emotional, or so understanding, or so quick to forgive? It’s shameful enough that the crisis actors playing these roles are perpetrating a monumental deception on the public, tugging at the average person’s heartstrings solely to trick them. However, on top of that, these actors have the gall to actually laugh – to smile, snigger and giggle – while pulling off their atrocious stunts. The only conclusion to draw from this is that it must be pretty funny to get a paid gig like this fooling millions of people…

False Flag Formula #15: Families of “Victims” Receive Millions in Federal Payoffs In the US, the land of the lawsuit, people are generally pretty fast to initiate a lawsuit if they feel they have been wronged. It is highly strange, therefore, that none of the alleged parents of the Sandy Hook event decided to sue the Government for negligence or to demand redress for any other grievance.

Additionally, many of the alleged parents received a total of millions in unsolicited federal payouts (check out the free houses they magically got on Christmas day 2009) – that’s right, unsolicited. The Federal Government just gave it over to them without asking! Ask yourself: is is more likely the Government would just do this out of the goodness of its heart, or that the money was more like a bribe/blackmail/payout all rolled into one, awarded to actors playing a part in a role and being sworn to silence? Related: Sandy Hook Truth Bomb Patch Media's Blatant LIES About Jonathan Reich

Conclusion: Use the 15 Elements of the False Flag Formula to Be More Aware These are 15 elements I noticed forming the false flag formula. There may well be more. Meanwhile, use the knowledge you have of the false flag formula to become more aware, wise and hip to the deception, so that the next time it unfolds (as it surely will), you will be among those that spot the fakery, rather than among those who are too scared, shell-shocked and gullible to do anything other than buy the official narrative.

Related: Articles: Turkish Nightclub a False Flag: Mistaken Prime Suspect? Turkish Nightclub’s Security ‘Taken Over’ Prior to Attack

Saudi survivor: There were three killers at Reina nightclub on New Year Convenient? ‘Active Shooter’ Kills 5 in Fort Lauderdale, CNN Claims Voices in His Head ‘Told Him to Join ISIS’ Florida Governor Reaches Out to Trump “Multiple Times” after Shooting – Bypasses Lame Duck Obama Berlin False Flag Faked - Video Hoax Analysis by Ole Dammegard of Norway Breivik Massacre as a False Flag Event

Ian R Crane - The False Flag Agenda

Trump Confirms "No Effect On The Outcome Of The Election" Following Intelligence Briefing + Experts Reveal The Tricks Mainstream Media Uses To Brainwash And Control The Masses January 8 2017 | From: Zerohedge / NaturalNews / Various

President-elect Trump has issued a statement following his briefing with various intelligence agencies over the Russian hacking allegations, seemingly rejecting the Democrats' charges that it was the Russians alone and that it had any effect on the outcome of the election.

Additionally, Trump promised to appoint a team to give him a plan to combat cyber attacks within 90 days of taking office. Related: Fake News, Mass Hysteria, And Induced Insanity

Not quite the "stunning" reaction that Nancy Pelosi had. The mainstream media is very disappointed...

Related: Hacker Guccifer Calls US Allegations Against Russia 'Fake Cyber War'

Experts Reveal The Tricks Mainstream Media Uses To Brainwash And Control The Masses You may not know this, but intelligence agencies around the world have, for decades, infiltrated “target” countries by having their agents and operatives pose as journalists (no, I’m not an intelligence operative).

That served two purposes: 1) it provided the operative with legitimate cover; and 2) it allowed the operative’s government to use the operatives “media” position to shape public opinion in the host country. Related: Ten basic forms of fake news used by major media Brainwash them, in other words, with propaganda. But in truth, that kind of propagandizing and brainwashing is also done by institutional media pushing a specific political agenda. Think back to our recently concluded presidential election cycle and what the “mainstream media” did in a failed effort to get its anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton, elected. They lied, made up narratives out of whole cloth, and tried to smear her opponent, now-President-elect Donald J. Trump, in an effort to defeat him. As reported by The Waking Times, experts denote a number of techniques that are used by the establishment media to brainwash the public and create/control the daily narrative.

The Mainstream Media Are the Real Purveyors of ‘Fake News’ Edward Bernays is known as the father of modern propaganda. He was the first to use social engineering techniques spread via the mass media of the day. In the early 20th century, he laid the groundwork for what became cultural programming at the societal level by assisting in the transformation of a mostly rural, agrarian-based American society into a homogenized culture of devout statists and consumers.

The principles he developed and implemented have greatly influenced the growth of American culture, how it grew and the direction it took. Having picked up Bernays’ torch in the 21st century, several experts on modern brainwashing, mind control and propaganda have recently given insight into their craft. Think about what is ailing our countries today, in terms of societal problems. There is corruption of so-called “grassroots movements” that are actually funded by Left-wing billionaires such as George Soros and Bill Gates, and yet the movements are portrayed by the establishment media very often as spontaneous and locally brewed, but all are attempting to achieve a specific social and political result. The efforts of these allegedly organic groups are amplified many times their size by the media, which gives them both credence and a megaphone with which to shout their views. And what do they shout? America is racist, bigoted, homophobic, unfair, politically broken, etc. Never are the calls for unity or praise for our country given any attention at all.

Related: Former CBS Reporter Exposes Media Lies, Internet Shills & Astroturfing

Much of this is done via a technique known as “astroturfing.” Seasoned veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains;

“Astroturf is a perversion of grassroots. Astroturf is when political, corporate or other special interests disguise themselves and publish blogs, start Facebook and twitter accounts, publish ads, letters to the editor, or simply post comments online, to try to fool you into thinking an independent or grassroots movement is speaking.”

Controlling Our Thoughts by Creating False Narratives Another technique used is subliminal messaging. This is a cornerstone of mind control, and when a person is unwittingly bombarded with cleverly concealed information, an emotion can be trigged leaving a person’s intellect and better judgment subjugated in favor of a mental process like fear or sexual desire. You may never consciously understand or realize why you begin to adopt certain behaviors, products of lifestyles, but the attraction is nonetheless real and that manifests itself through actual personal choices.

In a 2011 documentary called Programming the Nation, filmmaker, graphic artist and digital media producer Jeff Warrick, a former advertising sales rep, provided examples of how subliminal messaging and other subconscious methods are employed by ad executives and other media to create cultural ‘norms’ and social programs like consumerism, materialization of women’s bodies, health choices and the glorification of violence.

“Could such techniques really be contributing to a variety of social, political and economic problems currently present in our culture? Such as obesity, anorexia, and other eating disorders? The ongoing war on terror?

And what about the ever-increasing amounts of debt, that has tightened its grip on a growing percentage of the population?” the documentary says.

Other techniques include fake news - yes, by the mainstream media - omission (not covering an issue as though it wasn’t real or important); slanting coverage through the use of biased “expert” sources; and publishing falsified data and science as though it were legitimate.

Related Articles: The Great "Fake News" Scare Of 1530 Ty Simpson: Taking Down David Brock and His Illicit Fake News Empire – Citizens Audit CNN Runs Fake News Story About Russia Closing Anglo-American School in Moscow Washington Post can’t stop faking the news: U.S. electrical grid “penetration” story a complete fabrication FakeNews: Russia hacks Vermont infrastructure! - Old Ukrainian malware found instead Majority Are Still Falling for Fake News Julian Assange with Sean Hannity – Russians Did Not Hack the US Election EU Creating ‘Fake News’ Watchdogs for Upcoming Elections Fake News Mainstream media Has Half of Hillary's Supporters Believing Russia Stole Election Two of the world’s most evil people – Bill Gates and George Soros – behind Facebook’s news censorship agenda Julian Assange: Media Is Colluding with Democrat Party in America Media blackout on death of NATO auditor – was he assassinated to cover-up NATO’s black budget? Donald Trump Endorses Rand Paul’s ‘Audit The Fed’ Bill DNC Refused to Give FBI Access to Its Servers - Gave Access to a DNC Consultant Tied to Anti-Russia Group CIA Training Handbook: How to Fake Intelligence Plus Case Study on Faking Russians Hacking US Election A Case Study in the Creation of False News The “Fake News” Saga: From Official Policy to Mainstream American Discourse, Propaganda in the Making New Twist on Fake News Russian Hacking Story “The Russian Hacking”: How the “Leaks” From Clinton and the DNC Happened Trump Fires All Obama Politically Appointed Ambassadors Effective Inauguration Day

The European Union Initiates Cashless Society Project January 8 2017 | From: GlobalResearch

A few months back The Guardian ran an article stating that “Swedes are blazing a trail in Europe, with banks, buses, street vendors and even churches expecting plastic or virtual payment” as if the cashless society was something to be celebrated by modern society.

“I don’t use cash any more, for anything,” said Louise Henriksson, 26, a teaching assistant. “You just don’t need it. Shops don’t want it; lots of banks don’t even have it. Even for a candy bar or a paper, you use a card or phone.” Related: Europe Proposes Confiscating Gold, Cash, Bitcoin, & Prepaid Cards to Fight ‘Terrorist Financing’ Cash transactions are already outdated in Sweden. According to central bank the ‘Riksbank’, cash transactions will make up up barely 0.5% of the value of all payments made in Sweden by 2020. Likewise and according to The Independent, Denmark has moved one step closer to becoming the world’s first cashless society, as the government proposes scrapping the obligation for retailers to accept cash as payment – because, as they say, its to do with the “burden of managing change and notes.”

Strange then that all this is happening in an environment where EUR bank note circulation is still rising. The European Payments Council (EPC), a subdivision of the European Central Bank, are taking steps in their quest to fully eliminate all cash. The reason is not to lift the burden off retailers or to make transactions more convenient but in reality to raise desperately needed taxes. Highly respected ‘ArmstrongEconomics‘ reports that the EPC are going full steam ahead to enable immediate payment systems throughout not just the Eurozone but the entire European Union. The Single European Payments Area (SEPA) has been devised with the ultimate goal of eliminating ATM cash machines and force everyone to use their mobile phones or plastic cards, the project starting as early as November 2017.

In the absence of confirmed information on this point, it is likely that tourists and business people will be forced to pre-pay Euro’s onto an App if they come from a country outside the eurozone, currently made up of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. The final goal of the EU Commission is best described in their own words:

“The Single Euro Payments Area (or “SEPA” for short) is where more than 500 million citizens, over 20 million businesses and European public authorities can make and receive payments in euro. SEPA also means better banking services for all: transparent pricing, valuable guarantees ensuring that your payments are received promptly and in full, and banks assuming responsibility if something goes wrong with your payment.”

This year, meetings and conferences called “Towards a cashless society” were started to get the information transfer across to the infrastructure, supported very heavily by the banks.

It looks as though the initial battleground for banning cash will be… Greece.

“Greek banks propose a series of measures to combat tax evasion, strengthen the electronic transactions and limit the use of cash in the economy. One of the measures proposed is a special tax on cash withdrawals. Bankers reportedly stress that cash money can easily and largely be channeled in the black economy. Therefore, a tax on cash withdrawals will drastically reduce cash transactions and by extension the black economy.” - From KeepTalkingGreece (27/11/16)

The proposal includes reforming the tax system by introducing a revenue-expenditure system. Households and/or workers will only be taxed on the amount of income that is has not been spent. In this way, people will have a strong incentive to seek receipts for any expenditure in order to increase their expenditure and reduce the tax amount they will have to pay. There will also be an obligation for all businesses and regardless of their size to pay electronically every salary and wage.

There is another tactic in play to push the cashless society even quicker. As Sratfor Global Intelligence reports:

“The eurozone has found a new scapegoat for international crime: the 500-euro note. The Continent’s leaders are seriously discussing decommissioning the euro’s highest denomination, which is favored by crime groups for transferring massive sums across international borders. Eliminating the bank note could help temper criminal activity, but in reality the implications are much broader. The idea is just the most recent step in an ongoing process moving Europe, and indeed the world, closer to an entirely cashless economy.”

None of this will go down well in both Germany and Austria who experienced periods of extreme hyperinflation after the world wars. This, along with life under dictatorships and in high-surveillance societies, has given both populations a fierce desire to protect their privacy (please note) - something that is afforded by the anonymity of using cash - and to keep wealth in physical form to avoid relying on systemic institutions. There is another more sinister reason for forcing a cashless society. TruePublica reported last September that a deal had been signed by the administrations of the US, UK and EU when it comes to bank depositors. We said that:

“Procedures in the event of the failure of a systemically important bank clearly states that depositors are to be protected – that is, until options have ceased to exist. Next time, the state will be last in line, not first. Depositor bail-in schemes are now a reality.”

In other words, if a big bank fails you will be unable to cause a run on a bank by withdrawing your cash.

Indeed, the rescue of Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, reported by all the press as imminent has one other thing in common, none of them are sure if this will be full or partial nationalisation, state bail-out or a depositor bail-in. What the authorities want to do is avoid this nightmare scenario that happened on Britain’s streets: The Economist (Sept 2007 just before the full blown financial crisis erupted) - The queues that formed outside Northern Rock, the country’s fifthbiggest mortgage lender, represented the first bank run in Britain since 1866.

Related: Washington is Behind India’s Brutal Demonetization Project The panic was prompted by the very announcement designed to prevent it. Only when the Bank of England said that it would stand by the stricken Northern Rock did depositors start to run for the exit. Attempts by Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, to reassure savers served only to lengthen the queues of people outside branches demanding their money.

Bitcoin Surge Explained and The Future Of Cryptocurrencies

The run did not stop until Mr Darling gave a taxpayer-backed guarantee on September 17th that, for the time being, all the existing deposits at Northern Rock were safe. In addition to all of this, the use of negative interest rates, never implemented in 5,000 years since the invention of money, is designed to force money out of the banks and into the economy which can be manipulated simply by changing the rate when required. The holy grail of economic measurement is rising GDP, which has eluded the ECB policymakers since the financial crash reared its ugly head leaving wave after wave of social crisis. Its answer was to print money and push 50% more into the economy and yet achieved an inflation rate barely above zero. Taxing cash at ATM’s or forcing it out of banks via punitive interest will be the norm in a few years. Finally, with all money moving electronically the banks and government have another distinct advantage over you.

Eighteen months ago, there was a run on the banks in Greece so the central bank imposed capital controls, highly restricting the amount of cash that could be withdrawn daily. In the few weeks prior to those controls ¢45billion was withdrawn and stuffed under mattresses. This won’t happen again if there are no ATM’s and cash transfers have all but been eliminated. One way to the other – in the end, you are not going to be in control of your own money in a cashless society, that’s for sure.

Diary Of A Person Of Interest & Oxford PHD Katherine Horton "Intelligence Agencies Are Attacking Me With Direct Energy Weapons!" January 3 2017 | From: Endarken / Stop007.org

Kiwi journalist and activist Suzie Dawson has been extensively targeted by Western intelligence agencies and their contractors. This video and the following one are very important. The second one more so if you want to understand the how and why of exotic microwave 'Non-Lethal Weapons'.

In the wake of several attempts on her life, she had to leave New Zealand to live in exile in Europe. Related: Electronic Torture + 21st-Century Bio-Hacking And Bio-Robotizing In this unique documentary, Suzie discusses what it is really like to be a target of the Five Eyes; why she was targeted, who she was targeted by, how they targeted her, what their end game is and how to try to counter it. UPDATE: Since making this documentary Suzie has applied for asylum in Russia. Suzie's original article titled 'Diary of a Person of Interest' can be found here. Her debrief and speech notes from her 2015 talk of the same name can be read here. The extent of the havoc wreaked by American political interests in New Zealand (particularly since 2008) is best explained by Suzie's colossal article "The Desecration of New Zealand" which can be read here: The Desecration Of New Zealand Suzie says:

"Hey guys, thank you for watching and sharing my first film. The events depicted in it roughly cover the period October 2011 to January 2015. Some may find the topics discussed here terrifying - but it is reality in this day and age and to change it we have to face it. There is a lot more yet to be revealed about my story, what I did and what has happened to me since becoming exiled. So you can expect more content from me and soon. If you want to reach out, or to walk with me on my journey you can follow me on Twitter: @Suzi3D or keep an eye on my website: Suzi3D.com. The more friendly eyes I have on me, the safer I am and the better chance I have to be able to continue my work. Please, pass this video on to anyone who you think may be a target, as the information presented here can be the difference between sanity and a breakdown, to someone going through it. Thank you so much for your support. Love, Suzie"

Viewing Guide:

Intro: 00:00:00 Part 1: Occupy 00:00:43 - Our Purpose 00:02:25 Part 2: Why You? 00:05:27 - Occupy 00:05:58 - Anonymous 00:06:31 - Kim Dotcom 00:07:06 - Internet Party 00:08:19 - GCSB 00:08:55 - FVEY 00:09:28 - Shihad 00:09:51 - Snowden/Greenwald 00:10:42 - Moment of Truth (#MoT) 00:10:56 - The Intercept/Nicky Hager/NSA 00:15:00 - #TPPANoWay 00:15:41 - #NZ4Gaza 00:16:!5 - #SaveGI 00:16:48 - Exile / Berlin 00:17:12 - WikiLeaks 00:17:42

Part 3: Who Does It? 00:18:42 - State Agencies 00:19:04 - Private Agencies 00:21:37 Part 4: The Targets 00:24:04 Part 5: How? 00:26:43 - Physical Surveillance 00:27:57 - Signals Surveillance 00:29:53 - Public Surveillance 00:31:39 - Harassment 00:35:03 - Isolation 00:43:53 - Sabotage 00:47:56 - Entrapment 00:51:11 - Social Engineering 00:51:57 - Institutionalisation 00:55:09 - Assassination Attempts 00:58:25 Part 6: What Do They Want? 01:01:18 - What You Learn To Do 01:02:53 Credits: 01:04:26

Related: TargetedIndividuals.com

Oxford PHD Katherine Horton "Intelligence Agencies Are Attacking Me With Direct Energy Weapons!" Related: Stop007.org

14 Eyebrow-Raising Things Google Knows About You December 24 2016 | From: NetworkWorld

Some are fascinating, others are frightening - but here's how to find out what Google has on you. Google may know more about me than I know about myself.

I'm not just saying that, either: I recently started poking around in Google's personal data repositories and realized that, between my wide-reaching use of the company's services and my own brain's inability to remember anything for more than seven seconds, Google may actually have the upper hand when it comes to knowledge about my life. Related: Google Employee Sues the Company for ‘Internal Spying Program’ From face-tagged photos of my past adventures (what year did I go to Nashville, again - and who went with me to that Eddie Vedder show?) to the minute-by-minute play-by-play of my not-so-adventuresome days (wait, you mean I really only left the house once last Wednesday - and just to get a freakin' sandwich?!), Google's got all sorts of goods on me. Heck, even my hopes and dreams (which may or may not involve sandwiches) are probably catalogued somewhere in its systems. And the data itself is only half the story: Google also compiles oodles of stats - stats that, for better and for worse, shed light onto the tech-connected habits of our modern lives. And don't doubt Apple does the exact same things either. How many emails have you actually sent over the years, for instance, and how many thousands of web pages have you pulled up in your browser? It really is enlightening, among other things, to see your actions broken down so precisely . Before you freak out, though, remember: The only way anyone else could get at any of this info would be if they were to gain access to your Google account - something two-factor authentication and good mobile security hygiene make highly unlikely. And remember, too, that all this data collection is completely optional - and very much a tradeoff: By agreeing to let Google store and use your data, you're getting access to an ever-expanding array of futuristic features at no monetary cost.

Related: Titanpointe: The NSA’s Spy Hub in New York, Hidden in Plain Sight But the decision is ultimately in your hands. To learn more about how Google uses specific types of data and how you can opt out of any or all areas of collection, see the "Opting out and taking control" section at the end of this story. All of that being said, here are some of the more amusing - and maybe slightly surprising - things you might find about yourself by prodding the right parts of Google's noggin. How many of these items actually apply to you depends on which Google services you use and how exactly you use them. To wit: Android users who take advantage of built-in features such as voice commands, location history and photo backups will almost certainly have more data tracked by Google than non-Android users. But anyone who regularly uses Gmail, Google search, Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome and/or other Google services from any mobile device or computer will likely find at least some interesting nuggets from the following list.

1. A full history of your voice commands with any Google product - including actual audio recordings Everything you've ever said to Google, in one convenient place. OK, Google: Remind me how silly I sound when talking to my phone (you know, when it seems like no one else is listening). If you use voice commands on Android or any other Google product (for instance, voice searches in the Google iOS app when you're logged in with your Google account), head to the "Voice & Audio" section of Google's My Activity site to see and hear a comprehensive list of everything you've ever said to that inanimate object in your pocket. And yes, your voice really does sound like that.

2. An objective breakdown of your real BFFs (according to Google) Data doesn't lie. Discover whom among your Google contacts you interact with the most by clicking the "Contacts" header on Google's account dashboard. Just be prepared to make up excuses if your significant other doesn't make the "Frequently contacted" list.

3. How much stuff Chrome has saved about you Your browsing habits, broken down into indisputable numbers.

If you use the Chrome browser and typically stay signed into it, check out your account's Chrome Sync settings page to see all sorts of brag- and/or shame-worthy stats about your personal browsing habits - things like how many bookmarks you've saved, how many tabs you have open across different devices and how many websites you've typed into Chrome's address bar (since last resetting your browser's history). Free cookie* if you guess within five points of any of your values. * A free browser cookie, that is. C'mon - what did you expect?

4. How many Gmail conversations you've had Provided you use Gmail's archiving system instead of permanently deleting messages, you may be in for a shock: Click the aptly named "Gmail" header in Google's account dashboard, and get ready to see why your days always seem so short. Case in point: I have 145,810 message threads in my Gmail account -- with just over 28,000 sent messages. Let me repeat that: Twenty-eight thousand sent messages. No wonder I never get anything accomplished. Related: Podesta Ignored Advice to Encrypt ‘Sensitive’ Emails

5. A full history of everywhere you've ever been File this one under "Cool Yet Creepy": Google Maps' Timeline feature contains a detailed diary of your every move -- down to the minute. No exaggeration: If you carry an Android phone and have opted into location history, the site will show you where you were every moment of every day. And if you really want to weird yourself out, open Timeline from a desktop and click the year tab in the upper-left corner of the screen. Select "All Time," then click the red box in the lower-left corner to see an ordered list of your most visited places.

(My top four are currently my house, Target, the grocery and Barnes & Noble. What can I say? It's a wild and crazy life I lead.)

6. A full list of everything you've done from any Android device Your smartphone is a fantastic tool for productivity-enhancing tasks like word processing, spreadsheet creation, and... oh, who the hell are we kidding? You're using the thing for mindless web browsing and meaningless game-playing, just like everyone else.You can see a detailed log of activity on your Android devices at Google's My Activity site. Find out for sure what you're doing on your Android devices - or what someone else is doing on them, if colleagues or kiddos ever get their hands on your phone - by opening Google's My Activity site. Select the option to "Filter by date & product," then select "Android" and click the blue search icon. Just don't let your boss see that you spent all of Tuesday's meeting "working" on Words With Friends.

7. A comprehensive collection of every site you've visited in Chrome - on any device These days, Chrome isn't just a desktop browser - and if you're using the program from a phone or tablet as well as a regular computer, you're bound to have quite the collective history. See where you've been on the web (while signed in to Chrome) by opening Google's My Activity page and checking "Chrome" in the filter list. You can search for specific keywords and even filter further by date -- a useful tool if you ever need to find a site you pulled up somewhere but can't quite remember.

If you're not seeing your Chrome history on the My Activity page, go to the Activity controls and make sure the Web & App Activity toggle is on and the "Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services" box is checked. (Also make sure that you're signed into Chrome on your various devices.) Your Chrome activity will be tracked from this point forward. As for the sites you'd rather not have recorded - well, amigos, let's just say that Incognito mode is your friend.

8. Exactly how many Google searches you've made this month First and foremost, Google is a search engine -- so how much are you Googling? Get the skinny by scrolling down to the "Search History" header in Google's account dashboard. Click the header to see precisely how many times you've called upon Google's knowledge from any device while signed into your Google account in the past month -- along with a breakdown of your most common search types and some of your most frequently used queries. (Again: Incognito mode. Never forget.)

9. A running count of how many Android devices you've had connected to your account over the years Think you've been through a lot of phones and mobile devices? Calculate your official Android Geek Quotient score by pulling up Google's account dashboard and looking for the "Android" header. The big green number beneath it will tell you how many Android products have ever been associated with your account. (Hopefully yours isn't as high as my almost-silly-seeming

score of 78.)

You can get more detailed info on all the devices, too -- including when each product was last used and a list of all the apps it has backed up to Google's servers -- by clicking the header. And a quick tip: If you want to get old, inactive devices out of your hair, head to the Play Store settings page and uncheck the "Show in menus" option next to any phones or tablets that are no longer relevant.

10. A running count of how many Android apps you've ever installed Your Android app stats can be both enlightening and alarming. Trying out new apps is a great way to keep your mobile tech feeling fresh -- to a certain point, anyway. See if you've crossed the line from adventurous to ridiculous by finding the "Play Store" header on Google's account dashboard. If you manage to top my current total of 1,191 apps, seek immediate help.

11. Some stats on your invite-accepting habits Are you a person who tends to accept event invitations? Or do you say "no" more often than "yes"? If you're a Google Calendar user who frequently interacts with other Google Calendar users, you can find out by clicking the "Calendar" header at Google's account dashboard. That'll give you a breakdown of your accepting-vs.-rejecting activity over the past month, including a handy pie chart to illustrate your temperament in visual form. Hey, at least there's no line graph on the lameness of your excuses. Related: Consumer watchdogs say popular toys are secretly spying on your children

12. How many images you've stored with Google Photos I don't know about you, but I tend to take way too many pictures -- mostly of my 22-month-old daughter (and occasionally of those damn squirrels that always run through my backyard and taunt me with their superior short-term memories). Thankfully, Google Photos makes it simple for me to store all these images and access them anywhere -- and also to see at a glance just how absurdly large my personal photo collection has gotten. To get the lowdown on your own virtual photo box,

mosey down to the "Photos" header in Google's account dashboard. And be sure to take a mental snapshot of the result.

13. A full list of all your activity in the Google Play Store Everything you've ever searched for in the Play Store, in one centralized place.

Have you ever looked at or searched for something in the Play Store -- then tried to find it again later, only to realize your memory was worse than your friendly neighborhood squirrel's? I know I have. So use my trick: The next time you find yourself wishing for a time machine, just scamper over to Google's My Activity page. Filter the results to "Play," and voila: You'll find a full list of every item you've viewed and every Play Store search you've made while signed into your Google account. Now if only this thing had a way to tell me where I buried my acorn the other day...

14. How many YouTube videos you've watched this month We've all been there: You're in the middle of something extremely productive (naturally) when a single YouTube link happens to catch your eye. Watching one video seems harmless enough, right? But then the inevitable happens: One video turns to two. Wait, what's that in the "Related" section - a clip of a bird whistling the melody to Guns N' Roses' "Patience"? Click. Watch. Repeat. Before you know it, you're 19 videos in, and the afternoon is over.

Discover just how much YouTube time-whittlin' you've done in the last month (while logged into your Google account) by visiting Google's account dashboard and clicking the "YouTube" header. And for the love of Goog, if your monthly tally is over 200, think long and hard before clicking that next cat-dancing clip.

Opting out and taking control Want to turn off specific types of data collection or delete existing info from your Google account history? The Google privacy site is the best place to start; there, Google provides detailed information about how each type of data is used along with links to opt out of any specific areas. You can also visit Google's Activity controls page for a simple single-page list of on-off toggles. If you're looking to clean up your history for anything that Google has been tracking, head to the My Activity site. You can delete any individual item right then and there by clicking the three-dot icon in its upper-right corner and choosing Delete, or click the "Delete activity by" link in the left column for an easy way to erase info based on date and/or product. Data collection controls can be also found on an Android device by opening the main system settings and selecting Google (or, if you're on an older device, looking for the standalone Google Settings app) and then tapping "Personal info & privacy." Related: The Terrifying Cost of "Free” Websites

Top 10 Most Delusional “Facts” Of The Lunatic Left-Wing Fact-Checkers December 22 2016 | From: NaturalNews

Since Facebook has announced its intention to erect a Ministry of Truth echo chamber by labeling

all news it doesn’t like “fake news,” I thought it appropriate to unveil the top 10 most delusional “facts” people will be subjected to if they keep viewing Facebook, CNN, or any other news propaganda being put out by what has become the mentally ill political left today.

As anyone with a functioning brain already knows, the unhinged left is utterly clueless about the properties of “facts” or where they come from. To them, “facts” are whatever their friends keep repeating, even if they have no basis whatsoever in evidence or reality. Related: The Western Presstitutes Are Firmly Based In Nazi Propaganda Techniques In essence, “facts” are whatever they believe, while “fake news” is whatever you believe. (It really is that simple in their feeble brains.) So consider these top 10 most delusional “facts” we’ll soon see rolled out as “truth” by the newly-sprung news cartels operating inside Fakebook.

“Fact” #1: Eating Meat is Cruelty to Animals, But Harvesting the Organs of Living, Partially-Born Human Babies Isn’t Cruel at All Somehow, the delusional left has decided that animals are conscious beings but not human babies. Yeah, it’s insane, I know. Liberalism is best defined as a kind of mental illness where a person can hold two utterly contradictory thoughts in their head at the same time while simultaneously believing them both. To demonstrate this particular brand of lunacy, a Beastie Boy recently announced a new line of “cruelty free” sneakers with proceeds to benefit abortion providers. Yep, “no animals were harmed in the process of butchering these babies” might as well be the sicko slogan of the unhinged left.

“Fact” #2: If Not For the Burning of Fossil Fuels, Earth’s Climate Would Never Change at All At first, they called their hoax “global warming,” but when it turned out the Earth wasn’t warming at all - funny how that works when you use actual data instead of fraudulently altered numbers - they had to roll out a more encompassing name: Climate Change. According to Climate Change cultists - named thusly because no amount of evidence can alter their “faith” in Climate Change - Earth’s climate never changed at all until humankind came along and started burning fossil fuels.

But now - OMG! - every hurricane, flood, drought, forest fire and freezing arctic blast is automatically attributed to “climate change.” Yep, especially among young leftists who have been indoctrinated by the lies of government-run schools, they think their ancestors lived in a time when Earth was eternal Spring, with no climate variation or natural disasters whatsoever. It’s only because you and I are using air conditioning and driving SUVs that the planet has become angry, unleashing all sorts of climatic “changes” that otherwise would have never occurred. This explanation, you may have noticed, closely resembles the superstitions of 5th-century humans who largely believed that bad weather and solar eclipses were caused by “angry gods” seeking to punish them. In over 1000 years, we’ve learned nothing, it seems, and “progressives” have thrust us back to an era of incredible ignorance and superstition where scientific evidence is abandoned for the sake of powerful cult-like beliefs.

“Fact” #3: People with XY Chromosomes Can Instantly Transform All Their Genes Into XX Chromosomes by Declaring Themselves to be Women (the Theory of Spontaneous Genetic Transmutation…) Ask any young liberal and they’ll tell you there are at least 30 genders, maybe even more if you count “TransUnicorn.” If you can stop laughing hilariously, ask them whether sex is determined by genetic expression or by a “choice.” They will insist it’s a “choice!”

And just like that, the delusional leftists discard centuries of scientific knowledge in genetics, sexual reproduction, phenotype expressions and physical reality. If you dare point out to them that “transgenderism is a mental illness,” they will label you a purveyor of either hatred or “fake news.” To them, a “feeling” is more REAL than actual science, you see. And if a young man sucks down enough bisphenol-A to start “feeling” like a woman, then his womanhood is accepted as a “fact” by the deranged lunatic left. Some of them even insist that such “gender-fluid” biological males can get pregnant and have babies! I have named this hilarious bit of leftish delusional idiocy the Theory of Spontaneous Genetic Transmutation. This theory is quite literally accepted as “fact” by nearly every liberal under the age of 30.

“Fact” #4: Media News Coverage During the Presidential Campaign Was Completely Fair to Both Clinton and Trump, But the DNC Hacks Were One-Sided, and Thus Totally Unfair Yep, according to the delusional left, the almost universally glowing media coverage of Hillary Clinton - alongside relentless media attacks waged against Trump - were “fair and balanced.” But Trump won the election because the DNC hacks (which were actually leaks from a Bernie Sanders supporter, not hacks at all) were totally unfair because they only leaked the emails of the democrats, not republicans. Kellyanne Conway: CIA Should Go and Testify and Stop Leaking to the Media

Hidden in that protest is an astonishing presumption that all the leaked DNC emails were true! And they reveal a deeply shocking level of collusion inside the DNC to destroy Bernie Sanders and steal the nomination for Hillary Clinton.

“Fact” #5: Hillary Clinton Should be President Because She Won the Popular Vote, But When Bernie Sanders Kept Winning the Popular Vote During the Primary, Clinton Somehow Got All the Delegates… Hmmm… Hilariously, the Clinton campaign (and all delusional leftists in general) only believes in “popular votes” when they win the popular vote. When they don’t win the popular vote, they believe in rigging the delegates to make sure their candidate gets the delegate votes even if they lost the popular vote. This is exactly how Hillary Clinton kept walking away with the vast majority of delegates even in states where Bernie Sanders won the popular votes (sometimes in a landslide). Beyond all that, the presidential election is not determined by popular votes, or else Donald Trump would have campaigned heavily in places like New York City and Los Angeles. The winner is determined by Electoral Votes, which is why Donald Trump campaigned in the areas that deliver electoral victories. (Gosh, is he supposed to be a bad person for following the rules and winning by those rules?)

Judge Jeanine: I'll tell you what hope is, Michelle

If the Clinton campaign didn’t think the Electoral College was fair, why didn’t they protest it before the results revealed Hillary to be the loser? The answer, of course, is because nearly every leftist in America was completely convinced that Hillary Clinton would win the election (because that’s what the media echo chamber told them). Hilariously, this caused many of them to avoid going out to vote, thereby ensuring their ballot box loss. CNN’s false media narrative that Hillary was “unbeatable,” in other words, may have actually handed Donald Trump the election victory. (Such is the price of extreme arrogance.)

“Fact” #6: There’s No Such Thing as a Hate Crime Against White People According to the lunatic left, “hate crimes” can only be committed by white people against people of color. The opposite cannot occur because white people “deserve” to be beaten, raped, or shot by people of color, you see. (For the record, I am a person of color, which means I am therefore incapable of committing any hate crime myself, you see.) Thus, when a group of Black Lives Matter terrorists marches in the streets calling for the open murder of white people - or dragging people out of their vehicles and beating them solely because of their white skin color - they are not engage in hate crimes at all, according to the delusional left. Instead, they are said to be engaged in “social justice.” Because, you see, violence is always called “justice” by the worst criminals in every collapsing society.

This is why the entire left-wing media censors all news about black people attacking white people, but strongly emphasizes all news about white people attacking black people. It’s all part of controlling the narrative to paint the kind of one-sided propaganda that the delusional left depends on for its very survival. For the record, here at Natural News, we believe that there is no such thing as a thought crime. Crimes of violence are crimes in and of themselves due to their actions. Attaching a layer of “hate” to the motivation behind such a crime is a grave injustice. Crimes should be prosecuted based on the actions of those who committed them, not on the words uttered while carrying them out. Otherwise, we are admitting that words are crimes.

“Fact” #7: Guns Are Conscious, Self-Animating Objects That Leap Out Of Their Holsters and Shoot People All On Their Own

According to delusional leftists who essentially believe in magic, guns are self-directed objects that shoot people all on their own. Leftists truly believe that a gun in a room can leap to its feet, target individuals and discharge bullets without needing to be actuated by the will of a person. This is where the delusional left comes up with meaningless phrases like “gun violence,” placing the emphasis on the inanimate object rather than the person deploying it. There is no such thing as “gun violence” any more than there is “hammer violence” when murderers use hammers.

When Somali tribes commit mass murder against each other using machetes, the left never describes such events as “machete violence” and tries to blame machetes. Ever wonder why? Because that would sound incredibly stupid. But when it comes to guns, the left gladly invokes the phrase “gun violence” in order to blame guns rather than people. It’s a deliberately loaded phrase that’s designed to blame guns rather than the mostly left-wing criminals who use them to commit violence against society. Similarly, when radical Islamic terrorists used an ice cream truck to mow down tourists in Paris, the left-wing media reported the mass murder as being carried out by the truck! News reports proclaimed, “TRUCK runs over 85 people…” or “Authorities are searching for TRUCK that murdered 85…” Somehow, it never occurs to idiotic leftists that a terrorist was driving the truck. And if trucks are such murderous instruments of death, then why isn’t the left calling for a nationwide truck ban?

“Fact” #8: Only Progressives Can Identify “Facts”… Everyone Else Doesn’t Know What They’re Talking About This “fact” is the best one of all. According to the delusional, fringe left, only people who support left-wing policies can recognize or identify “facts.” This twisted special sauce of circular logic is what leftists tell themselves when they proclaim their version of “facts” to be absolute and authoritative, while anyone else’s version of “facts” are nothing but lies and falsehoods.

Related: Facebook's plan to tackle fake news raises questions over limitations Thus, the lunatic left believes it gets facts straight from God in a sort of “divining ritual” from which indisputable facts emerge much like a genie might appear after vigorously rubbing a brass lamp. This “monopoly of facts” is the sole domain of liberals, you see, and they know this because so many of them agree with that supposition, thus proving it to be true by “social consensus.” They surveyed each other, you see, and now they cite the survey which states that “100% of all people everywhere participate in surveys.” This, too, is a “fact” of the delusional left-wing media. (It’s kind of convenient for journalists at the Washington Post when they merely need to cite each other as “unnamed sources” for whatever news they happen to be fabricating at the moment, too. Who needs actual intelligence sources when WashPost reporters can circle jerk each other for made-up quotes that get worked into their front page fabrications?)

“Fact” #9: Intentions Count MoreThan Actions Obama is a good President and a good person. How do we know that? Because he has good intentions. Never mind the fact that he doubled the national debt to nearly $20 trillion. Never mind the fact that his DOJ masterminded a gun-running operation to put illegal weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartels (Operation Fast and Furious). Never mind the indisputable observation that he was a race baiter who created division, hatred and distrust across America’s cultural fabric. And pay no attention to the astonishing job loss, unemployment and plummeting wages caused by the Obamacare scheme he championed as some sort of twisted, pathetic “legacy.” Nope, you’re not supposed to consider actual reality when it comes to judging people on the left. They are all given a pass on their behavior as long as they have good intentions, you see.

This is why it doesn’t matter to the left that Bill Clinton is an accused rapist, sexual molester and repeated attacker of multiple women who have openly and publicly accused him of sexual assault. According to the delusional left, Bill Clinton gets a free pass on all that because he’s a good liberal. He has compassion, don’t you know? He supports abortion, carbon taxes and banning the Second Amendment. Thus, according to the left, it doesn’t matter how many women he raped, abused or molested. Facts be damned. When it comes to protecting the champions of the political left, no amount of legitimate evidence of criminal wrongdoing can overcome the left’s blind faith in their so-called leaders, even if they be pedophiles ordering sicko sessions with minors like buying pizza off a menu.

“Fact” #10: Bigger Government is Always the Answer No matter what challenges society may face, the disconnected left believes bigger government is always the answer. Got a problem with people drinking too much soda? We need bigger government to function as “food police” and criminalize large sodas offerings. Are too many dementia patients forgetting where they are and wandering aimlessly across mall parking lots? We need bigger government, the left insists, to microchip and track the location of all those afflicted with “mental disorders.” (It’s true, Congress just passed the law for government to microchip citizens.)

Can’t afford your rent? Mobile phone bills? Groceries? Don’t worry, the government will create a new program to take money from all those who earned it and redistribute the funds to loyal democrat voters who consume it (while, of course, padding the pockets of the politically connected elite along the way). According to the delusional left, there’s no problem too large that even larger government can’t solve! Their utopian economy, in fact, is a system where the free market is abolished and replaced by a centrally planned economy which values “equality” above all else. Our world already has a system like that, by the way. It’s called “Venezuela.” And right now, all the self-righteous Venezuelans who voted for “equality” are eating out of grocery store dumpsters while having their cash criminalized and confiscated by the very same government they stupidly put into power. (Will socialists never learn?)

The Greatest “Fact” of All is the Fact That Leftists Have Increasingly Become Fact-Free Lunatics So let’s cut the crap. Almost everything the lunatic left insists is a “fact” turns out to be a fairy tale or outright lie. Polar bears are going extinct! If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor! Raising taxes on corporations is good for creating jobs! Hillary Clinton believes in honoring the outcome of all democratic elections… except for the ones she loses.

And if you lose an election in a democracy, the correct course of action, according to the left, is to keep threatening electoral voters with murder until you get your way. It turns out that, for the most part, leftists are fact-free lunatics. I could lay out a hundred striking examples of the lunacy and contradictions of the delusional left, but you probably already see many of them yourself. The left has become so deranged and disconnected from reality that their cheap tactics of race baiting and slandering their political opponents simply don’t work anymore. The political left in America, which was once a semi-respected organization that opposed George Bush’s corporate-run wars and fought to reduce air pollution has become a twisted cabal of deranged fringe lunatics who have already crossed the threshold of mental illness.

Now, with the help of Fakebook - which has become the online equivalent of Darth Vader - they’re going to try to steamroll society with a whole new set of fabricated “facts” that will also fail miserably… just like their recent election efforts. Facts are stubborn things. More importantly, no one has a monopoly on them. Those who try to censor whatever “facts” they don’t agree with will only end up making the things they dispute increasingly popular for the simple reason that human beings are curious about the world around them, and they don’t take kindly to having a homogenized, sanitized worldview shoved down their throats by self-proclaimed “fact checkers” who genuinely belong in a psychiatric ward. But don’t take my word for anything. After all, everything I’ve written here is merely my opinion. Open your eyes, explore the world for yourself, and make up your own mind. That simple act, by the way, will make you a lifelong enemy of the left… which demands you remain blindly obedient to their “facts” even when your own direct experiences contradict them. Remember: The ultimate goal of the radical left is to make you abandon trust in your own senses, thoughts and logical conclusions. Only then can they dominate your existence with their fabrications that any clear-headed person would instantly see right through. Related: As the Coup Against Trump Fails, the Threat Against His Life Rises

Facebook To Become Left-Wing Propaganda Echo Chamber With Orwellian Plan To Label Independent Journalism “Fake” + Facebook Jumps On ‘Fake News’ Fact-Checker Train, Will ‘Roll Out’ With PolitiFact December 21 2016 | From: NaturalNews / WashingtonTimes

Facebook has announced a new plan today that will very quickly transform the social media site into an “echo chamber” of left-wing media lies and delusional propaganda (just like we’ve recently seen pushed by the Washington Post).

The new effort will rely on left-wing “fact checker” organizations like Politifact and Snopes to determine the “truthiness” of news stories, reports Business Insider. Those stories deemed by left-wing “fact checkers” to be inaccurate will be buried in Facebook users’ feeds as a form of organized totalitarian censorship. Related: PropOrNot: Evidence of a CIA Psychological Operation This Ministry of Truth “news dictatorship” plan will, of course, transform Facebook into nothing more than a news “bubble” where left-wing propaganda is repeated as “fact” while independent journalism is labeled “fake.” This means all stories that are critical of vaccines, GMOs, Planned Parenthood or Hillary Clinton will be censored out of existence. The political left, you see, doesn’t seek to win any debate at all… their goal is to ban the debate so that you never read any views other than theirs. (They can’t win any legitimate debates or legitimate elections, so they cheat.) In essence, Facebook has now announced it’s going to become the North Korea of social media.

Facebook’s “Fact Checkers” Are Left-Wing Propagandsts Who Despise Factual Journalism

“We believe providing more context can help people decide for themselves what to trust and what to share,” the company said. “We’ve started a program to work with third-party fact checking organizations that are signatories of Poynter’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles. We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations.”

“Facebook has announced it will introduce warning labels on stories they deem to be “fake news,” with the help of partisan “fact checking” organisations such as Snopes and PolitiFact,” reports Breitbart.com. Business Insider reports that these organisations will include the likes of Snopes, ABC, Politifact, and FactCheck.org, all of which have records of left-wing partisanship - particularly throughout the 2016 election. For example, PolitiFact infamously said it was “mostly false” when Donald Trump claimed in a presidential debate that Hillary Clinton wanted “open borders.” PolitiFact made this ruling despite Clinton being on the record at a paid speech saying “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”

Trump also said that Russia has 1,800 nuclear warheads and has expanded its arsenal while the U.S. has not. PolitiFact admitted that Trump’s claim was factual, but it rated the statement as “half true” for supposedly “missing the big picture.” In both of these cases, PolitiFact went beyond mere fact-checking and moved the goal posts in ways that benefited Clinton’s candidacy. This type of ideological “fact checking” went beyond parody during October’s presidential debates, with NBC taking Trump’s statement that Clinton “acid washed” her emails (a reference to the data deletion tool “BleachBit”) 100% literally and declaring the statement “false.”

It’s Time to Leave Facebook and Discover Alternatives Like Diaspora or Gab.ai As Facebook turns into an echo chamber of mentally ill liberal whackos, informed people will look elsewhere for uncensored, independent news. One of the best alternatives for Facebook is Diaspora, a network of independent social media hubs run by independent, open source organizations like Natural News. Our Diaspora hub is found at Share.NaturalNews.com, and it’s rapidly growing. There, you’ll receive every story we post, unlike Facebook where 99% of our posts are deliberately buried by Facebook itself.

Gab.ai is also rapidly growing, promising uncensored free speech in a social media format. You can find my articles posted in real time at these two accounts: https://gab.ai/healthranger / https://gab.ai/NaturalNews Join all these sources so that you can stay informed. Understand that Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and all the other internet gatekeepers are now engaged in an all out war against independent news, hoping to censor it out of existence. (They’ve lost the narrative, and they lost the election. Now they’re desperate to destroy whatever voices they don’t control… but it will only cause them to lose their audience.)

A Mass Exodus Away From Fakebook By censoring independent journalism, Facebook is going to lose tens of millions of users who will simply go somewhere else. The left-wing propaganda swallowers who stay behind at Facebook will simply become increasingly misinformed and

mentally ill as they follow the left-wing media down the rabbit hole of delusional Russian hacker conspiracy theories and hatred against America, the Constitution and the entire male population in general. It won’t be long, probably, before Snopes “officially” confirms that having white skin makes you a racist, or that all men are evil due to their genetics. Politifact might throw down its own delusional “facts” that claim Donald Trump was hypnotized by the Russians as a Manchurian candidate to commit genocide against women (or whatever) whose body parts will be harvested for organ donations to gray aliens from planet Cockamamie.

I can’t wait for Snopes to confirm that people can transform XY chromosomes into XX chromosomes by declaring themselves to be transgender. Before long, everything pushed by the left - from climate change lunacy to transgender psychosis - will be rooted in sheer delusion that stands in complete contradiction to scientific reality. Yet it will all be pushed by Facebook as “verified fact.” To the utterly insane left, “facts” are whatever they believe in, no matter how disconnected from reality they might be. We have now entered the Orwellian nightmare we all knew was coming. The good news is that you can simply change the channel and escape the nightmare by avoiding Facebook altogether. It’s time to #DumpFacebook for good. Related: Over The Top! MSM Calls For Banning Alex Jones From The Airwaves

Facebook Jumps On ‘Fake News’ Fact-Checker Train, Will ‘Roll Out’ With PolitiFact Facebook announced Thursday that it is ready to “roll out” a process by which alleged “fake news” is identified and flagged for users.

Concern for so-called “fake news,” which has permeated the media landscape since Democrat Hillary Clinton’s Election Day loss to Republican Donald Trump, will now be met by Facebook in a major way. Related: Facebook to Restrict Content by Morphing Into Virtual TV Network The social media giant’s newsroom announced that it will partner with third-party organizations to identify hoaxes and unreliable stories.

“We believe providing more context can help people decide for themselves what to trust and what to share,” the company said. “We’ve started a program to work with third-party fact checking organizations that are signatories of Poynter’s International Fact Checking Code of Principles. We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations.”

According to Facebook, “if the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed.” Still, CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s company said its workforce and partners “cannot become arbiters of truth” while essentially designating them as such. One of the organizations Facebook plans on teaming up with is Snopes, which bills itself as an “essential resource” for truth.

Others groups the social media platform will work with include ABC News, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and The Associated Press. Conservative commentators were quick to put forth a “who watches the watchmen” counter-argument.

“Sometimes the experts are also partisans who have an agenda. That was certainly the case with regard to Obamacare,” wrote Hotair’s John Sexton on Thursday. “Health care wonks like Ezra Klein and Jonathan Gruber knew a great deal about the program. They were also prepared to help their Democratic allies in government lie to the public if necessary to see it succeed. It’s not that they didn’t know the truth it’s just that they weren’t going to share all of it (except occasionally to a friendly audience). Now imagine applying these new rules retroactively to this story. Would any story which challenged Obama’s statement be flagged as ‘fake news’ prior to 2013?”

The Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway concurred.

“Two university studies show PolitiFact rates the GOP as liars over Democrats at a rate of 3 to 1 and 2 to 1 respectively. […] I once asked the head of PolitiFact to explain a university study suggesting they were biased,” Mr. Hemingway said in a series of tweets. “He no joke told me that based on what people tell him at parties he thinks he’s fair. I could go on … but the idea of PolitiFact censoring political speech at any major social media network is horrifying.”

Facebook, for all intents and purposes, dismissed such concerns as hyperbole over a work-in-progress with good intentions.

“We’re excited about this progress, but we know there’s more to be done,” the company wrote. “We’re going to keep working on this problem for as long as it takes to get it right.”

Why Now? Tangled Webs: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, The Internet Giveaway, And The Wild, Wild West Of Information December 17 2016 | From: AmericanPolicy

The use of lies and deception, or as the new term coming into vogue; fake news, has been a standard tool of the trade for over a century by the government and their willing and/or unwilling stooges in the mainstream media.

A few examples include Newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, with the unspoken blessings of US President, William McKinley, spreading lies to stir up the masses enough to start a war with Spain. Related: The Oppression of the Internet is Global This allowed McKinley to start an American empire by taking over the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico at the close of the 19th century. In the following decades, the media has obediently followed along coving up such things as the fraudulent Gulf of Tonkin incident, the governmental attack on the Branch Davidians, 9/11, and the Obamacare fiasco. In spite of the lies and distortions presented by the government then spread by an obedient media, there were still some journalists who were doing their job by reporting the truth. In 1983, fifty companies controlled 90% of the American media, today it is just six multinational corporations. They are Viacom, Comcast, Time-Warner, Disney, CBS, and News Corp and these companies are working very hard to make sure that the news you hear is the news they and the government want you to hear. From the anti-Muslim video that “caused” the killing of four Americans at Benghazi, lying about the state of the economy before the 2008 meltdown, to the massive push to promote Obamacare, the main stream media is relentless in pushing the government / corporatist agenda to its audience.

This control is the dream of every tyrannical state in history and the US government has almost achieved it. Only, they have, like the American Army in the WWII Battle of Arnhem, pushed their power too far and too fast causing the American people to no longer trust the main stream media. In the spring of 2016, a major poll was conducted by the Media Insight Project, a partnership of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute; they found that just 6% of those polled have confidence in the main stream media for news. The bias and outright lies have become so bad that even a 30 year insider like Sharyl Attkisson commented on it:

“There is unprecedented, I believe, influence on the media, not just the news, but the images you see everywhere. By well-orchestrated and financed campaign of special interests, political interests and corporations. I think all of that comes into play.”

“ICANN is arguably the single most powerful institution in the world” - Jeff Baron In every format, the main stream media is losing patrons. From failing newspapers to falling television ratings, the old model is dying because of the internet. The Internet has become the primary source for information for a huge percentage of Westerners today. In fact, in the last 25 years the internet has transformed the world. It has completely revamped the way people do business, communicate, purchase household goods, plan vacations, find friends, look up information and just about every human activity imaginable. Since it first became available for average people, the internet has been a way to find information the elites did not want exposed and they have been looking to shut down that freedom of information for years. Subsequently with the support of numerous multinational corporations like Microsoft, Google, Dell, Yahoo, Amazon, and Facebook along with the blessing from globalist mouth pieces like the Council on Foreign Relations, the LA Times, NBC, the International Chamber of Commerce and Human Rights Watch, President Obama failed to renew the contract with ICANN effectively giving the control over the internet to a private company.

That company is ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and it is a CA based nonprofit corporation. In 1998, the Commerce Department began contracting with ICANN, to take over management of IANA (The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) and the internet’s domain name system. The US Commerce Department has, for the most part, let ICANN govern itself, but it maintained the authority to pull the nonprofit’s contract. In essence ICANN records the numbers (easier for computers to use) using words (easier for humans to use) through DNS. Domain name system (DNS) is basically a directory for internet-connected devices that helps translate domain names to numerical IP addresses. Without DNS it is difficult for people to access websites as it requires remembering large numbers of IP address, a series of numbers such as “194.66.82.10”. So President Obama just ceded power over the allocation of domain names from Google.com to your church’s website without the consent of Congress and over the objections of millions of citizens.

Those supporting the transfer are quick to report that there is nothing to fear from this transfer, after all ICANN is a “private” company under a global multi-stakeholder group to oversee its Board of Directors. What can possibly go wrong with the internet in the hands of a “private” company? Plenty. ICANN is first and foremost, a complete monopoly. It has exclusive rights to allow and renew domain names and that is a power it has not always been used benevolently. It also has complete control over how much to charge for a top level domain such as .com, .net, .biz and several times in the past, it has abused those powers. For instance it allowed a top level domain named .sucks to be purchased by the company Vox Populi which charges $2,500 to protect a company’s or individuals name from being purchased and slandered with a .sucks after it, then failed to rein the company in when it was running an extortion operation. ICANN has also been accused numerous times of siding with those who have the most to pay its fees and since it costs over a million dollars to have ICANN officially look into a complaint, not many decisions are overturned. Another troubling aspect of ICANN is that ICANN has made a fortune off of its rapidly expanding list of Generic Top Level Domain Names (gTLDs). Names like .lawyer; .google; .africa are going for at least $200,000 each and then annual fees. The .web domain brought $135,000,000 into their coffers giving them not only a complete monopoly on issuing domains but the means to create a very monopolistic self-supporting group of elites.

Amazon, the giant online retailer, applied to register the gTLD .amazon. ICANN has written limitations that govern the sale of a domain name but since the name .amazon does not fall, into any of the categories that are forbidden there should have no problems with Amazon’s request. Only there was, the South American countries of Brazil and Peru, through the interest group Government Advisory Committee (GAC), declared this application to be illegal, based on the fact that the Amazon River is a geographical area inhabited by some 30million people. ICANN sided with the governments proving that the advantage of being a monopoly is that you get to make up rules as you go along. Amazon is now in the process of suing ICANN over the matter. The exact same thing happened to the sports company called Patagonia when it filed for the .patagonia domain. The governments of Argentina and Chile objected and ICANN decided against selling the name to the company. This trend shows that not only are rules made to be broken but governments are meant to be appeased.

This pattern is more than disturbing considering that since 1998, nations that routinely censor the internet of their citizens including Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia have pushed extremely hard to place the functions of ICANN under the control of the U.N.’s Russian dominated International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and President Obama may very well have just handed them their chance. For, as stated above, ICANN holds a COMPLETE monopoly over the World Wide Web root zone and complete monopolies in private hands are illegal in most of the world. When operating under contract with the Commerce Department, ICANN becomes a legal monopolist as it becomes an “instrumentality” of government. As L. Gordon Crovitz points out in his article “U.S. Surrender: Internet Giveaway to the U.N.?,” once ICANN became independent, they lost that umbrella of US Government protection leaving them open to legal challenges from every despotic government on earth looking to force them under the control of the United Nations. Hence President Obama, in another case of: “if you want your doctor, you can keep your doctor;

“Simply lied again when he pledged that ICANN would not replace U.S. control for a “government-led or an intergovernmental organization solution.”

This fact is verified on 10/14/16 When Obama gave a speech in Pittsburg, PA in which he glorified the days of the three major networks delivering the news that most people trusted. Obama went on to say:

“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to. There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world,” Obama added. “That is hard to do, but I think it’s going to be necessary, it’s going to be possible. The answer is obviously not censorship, but it’s creating places where people can say ‘this is reliable’ and I’m still able to argue safely about facts and what we should do about it.” he added.

There should be no longer any doubt as to why Obama went against Congress and the people to give away the internet; we can no longer have the “wild-wild-west-of-information flow” out there to inform the people of what is really going on in the world.

German Chancellor Merkel, speaking at a press conference with out-going President Obama on 11-17-16, reinforced what ship we will soon see coming to the internet port; censorship. She christened the surge of populist or right wing politics as a “wave that engulfs us that emanates from the United States.”

“Look at the European parliament. There are a lot of people who are looking for simplistic solutions and are preaching simplistic solutions which are very unfriendly policies. We have them here in Europe; too, we have them in Germany too.” “Digitization is a disruptive technological force that brings about deep-seated change and transformation in society. Look at the history of the printing press, when this was invented what kind of consequences it had, or industrialization, what consequences that had.” “Very often, it led to enormous transformational processes within individual societies and it took a while until societies learned to find the right kinds of policies to contain this, to manage and steer this. We live in a period of profound transformation.”

Directing her ire against the Germans who are angered with her flooding Germany with Muslim invaders and massive job loss, she lashed out against PEGIDA, the anti-mass migration and counter-Islamisation movement, repeating their slogan:‘Wir Sind Das Volk’ - ‘We Are The People’ - the chancellor said:

“The most important and noble task of politicians these days is to see that each and every person can find his place. But those who purportedly belong to certain groups say ‘we are the people, and not others’.” In another of those frequent ironies so often dumped on the citizens, Merkel, a former (?) East German communist, now says of PEGIDA:

“At the time when we had [this saying] in the GDR [East Germany] when the people stood in the streets and said ‘we are the people’ it filled me with great joy, but the fact these people have hijacked it does not fill me with joy.”

How long will it be before other world leaders join Ms. Merkel and president Obama in demanding web censorship? Certainly foreign media is now calling for it as Germany’s Zeit newspaper published a piece calling for controls to prevent “a German Donald Trump”, while Britain’s Independent former newspaper website published a list of “fake” news sites which they claimed may have “swayed votes towards Donald Trump”. Even the British news outlet “The Guardian” is in on the fake news bandwagon. That list is the same list being circulated by Google and Facebook. Consequently, now, the very instrument that has become the great equalizing force against corporatism/globalism’s control over the main stream media might now become just another weapon in their arsenal of global censorship. Unfortunately, it is only one of several ways the internet is being manipulated for corporatist/governmental advantage. One only needs to look at the two most popular search engines and the most popular social media site to see complete censorship in action.

What kind of drug does one have to take to believe Microsoft is a friend? - Dr. Roy Schestowitz Google, Bing and Facebook have an unbroken record of suppressing sites, postings and searches that don’t follow their world view. Of the three, Bing is certainly the smallest but being part of Microsoft, perhaps they try harder. Bing claims to be neutral and in fact, the subscriber can set the search engine to their own preference of conservative; liberal; Christian; etc. so how can they be biased? Well the Bing headline on August 16, 2016 for the conservative bias setting in Bing featured three negative Trump articles: – Donald Trump plots strategy on ISIS - and campaign revival (CNN)

– Analysis: Making Sense of Donald Trump’s Disjointed Foreign Policy Pitch (NBC News) – Early Voting Limits Donald Trump’s Time to Turn Campaign Around (New York Times) The first headline implies Trump’s campaign had stalled and needs revival. The second inferred Trump’s foreign policy was chaotic and the third noted that the early vote will give Hillary such a lead that discouraged Trump supporters won’t vote.

Microsoft, donated $650,000 to the Hillary Clinton campaign and both Bill and Melinda Gates were considered as possible Vice Presidential running mates for her Presidential campaign. This is the Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, whose obsession with globalism and censorship is well known and on Sept. 20, 2016 at a conference in Vancouver, B.C. he openly stated that opposition to globalism is “a huge concern,” and says the underlying issues of resistance to it warrant a close examination. This is the same Bill Gates that along with Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in early 2015 on the critical need for immigration and more H-1B visas because of a shortage of high tech workers, and then laid off some 18,000 American high tech workers. In 2010, China demanded that Google and Microsoft censor the results of their search engines in China.

Google resisted but Microsoft was more than willing to go along. Bill Gates even criticized Google’s decision to uncensor their search engine in China by saying:

“You’ve got to decide: do you want to obey the laws of the countries you’re in or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there.” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer then said “If the Chinese government gives us proper legal notice, we’ll take that piece of information out of the Bing search engine.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping also stopped in for dinner at Bill Gates house in September of 2015 before meeting with the heads of Microsoft, Google and Facebook amongst other business leaders. So great is the Bing Censorship of China that the Chinese Web anti-censorship monitoring service has gone to great lengths to show that Bing censors content in China even more than the Chinese State owned search engine” Baidu” does. But don’t worry; Microsoft’s support of the ICANN was completely in the name of a “free” internet.

Privacy is no longer a “social norm.” - Mark Zuckerberg Facebook is just as bad. In addition to being an outspoken advocate of globalism and a liberal, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the controlling force behind the most powerful social media platform ever created. Facebook controls the global dialogue used by over a billion people with an invisible touch that is unprecedented. Almost two-thirds of American adults get news from social media, with 44% of them getting their news from Facebook alone. This means Facebook’s algorithms dominate the information of almost half the American public. As Gizmodo’s Michael Nuñez puts it, “with Facebook, we don’t know what we’re not seeing.” And he controls that platform with an iron grip. Facebook has conducted numerous studies to better understand how information spreads in a social network. For instance, in 2010 Facebook conducted a secret experiment on 61 million unknowing people by tampering with their news feeds to find out how successfully it could manipulate the real-world voting habits of those people. Later, Facebook released the findings and claimed that they increased voter turnout by more than 340,000 people. Facebook regularly skews the news it posts; in 2012 it manipulated the feeds on 700,000 people without their consent to make them feel sad and then published the results in the respected (?) scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

The results showed fairly conclusively that Facebook had found the key to intentionally influencing people’s emotions. That year they did the same type of experiment on 1.9 million people to influence the US election. In 2014 Facebook used the rainbow flag as another experiment to get people to be more accepting of same-sex marriage. Facebook has made an empire of selling information about every person they can. It openly manipulates the feeds and posts they allow on Facebook and the posts people are allowed to place for other members of Facebook. Facebook is now “reluctantly” being “forced” to manipulate their algorithm to crack down on “fake” news being posted on Facebook. Though this sounds like a noble goal, the potential for censorship is unmistakable, especially when one looks at the list of websites they plan on censoring. The sites Facebook and Google are going to censor as “fake” was created by a self-proclaimed feminist assistant professor at Merrimack College who did not like the sites her students citing in their research papers. Sites like Breitbart; Realfarmacy; Lew Rockwell; Zerohedge; and World Net Daily. Though all have posted articles that have proven to be false, Facebook has no problem with posting articles from even less reliable news site like USA Today; MSNBC; CNN; BBC and the New York Times. Google is now planning on using this same list to censor content. It does not take a rocket scientist to see where this censorship is headed. In fact, in one of the most blatant acts of “fake news” to ever hit the news media was perpetrated by the New York Times in early 1957, when a former war correspondent, Herbert L. Matthews, wrote numerous articles filled with the glories and praises of a young Cuban revolutionary named Fidel Castro. Article after article spewing from Matthews’ typewriter glowed with tales that eventually created a Robin Hood persona for a murdering communist thug. It cannot be understated how important the “fake news” was to propel Castro into power. Yet the New York Times stands as a purveyor of honest journalism according to our Ministry of “truth.”

The New York Times; Unrepentant Communist Enabler

“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.” - Eric Schmidt The last of the big three masters of manipulation is Google, and they are arguably the biggest of the bunch. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is about as open with his liberal bias as one could ever be. The Bilderberg attendee bankrolled a startup company called “The Groundwork” to provide technical experts Hillary Clinton needed to run her campaign. Schmidt was instrumental in getting Barack Obama elected both times as he was the main supplier of technical experts for all three campaigns. Technology is right up Schmidt’s alley as Google is the defacto gateway to information. Google averages some 40,000 search queries every second equaling over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. Google conducts over 64% of all internet searches in the US and over 90% in some countries. Google has indexed some 45 billion web pages while Bing, its closest competitor has only 14 billion. Of course the 45 billion web pages are only part of the Schmidt plan to control everything on earth. Schmidt has stated that privacy is an excuse to hide wrongdoing:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

In his plan to deprive you of your privacy, Schmidt has employed some of the world’s top technocrats to find ever more powerful ways to pry into every corner of your life since Google’s business is, literally, mass surveillance, and they have become amazingly good at it.

They are also a contractor to the US Government, including the NSA and several military contractors as well. When Edward Snowden revealed to the world the unimaginable world of government spying on US citizens, he also revealed that the NSA has direct access to the information stored on Google’s computers as they do to Facebook, Twitter, Bing and every other company storing online information on you. In a US News and World Report article published on 6/22/16, contributor Robert Epstein wrote an extremely troubling article on just how powerful Google is. According to Epstein:

“When Google’s employees or algorithms decide to block our access to information about a news item, political candidate or business, it causes opinions and votes to shift, reputations to be ruined and businesses to crash and burn. Because online censorship is entirely unregulated at the moment, victims have little or no recourse when they have been harmed.”

Epstein then exposes blacklists that Google wields like Jack the Ripper did his knives with the first being the autocomplete blacklist. This one is simple enough; it quietly guides the searcher to where the company wants you to go. From directing away from negative articles on Hillary Clinton to pointing to negative articles on Donald Trump, there is little doubt that Google had a large impact on the recent US election. In any search you make, the algorithm is your spiritual guide. Google maps is a stalker’s dream showing just about every house and area in the US and huge sections of the world. They did not ask for permission to film your house, they just did it. Military installations and a few other places are excluded but chances are, your house is there. Google’s You Tube blacklist allows users to tag certain clips as inappropriate and Google’s censors may or may not remove them.

However, You Tube is notorious for removing politically and morally conservative videos on a regular basis while never doing the same to liberal videos. They are also willing to work with foreign governments to determine which videos will be allowed to be shown in the country. The Google account blacklist can cut people’s access to their own email account as well as You Tube and other Google products without any notice or recourse. The Google News blacklist is insidious in every way. They are the biggest news aggregator on the planet, tracking tens of thousands of news sources daily and converting them to numerous languages. They have been accused on numerous occasions of excluding conservative news feeds as well as certain writers and competing companies. This is an incredibly powerful and nearly unnoticeable tool to promote political, moral and/or religious agenda. Google Adwords blacklist is how Google gets the lion’s share of its money (some $56 billion annually) by selling keywords to the highest bidders.

These keywords are how the website is found by searchers so if your site does not have them, you are going to sink. On numerous occasions, Google has simply deleted those keywords on sites effectively making them invisible and financially crushing them. The search engine blacklist is a make or break situation for many web pages. Google, for many unknown reasons will push web page down the list of rankings effectively ruining many businesses in a very short time. The power to “blacklist” a site is Google’s most dreaded weapon however. Google claims this power is to keep the internet free from malicious malware which, they claim is a public service. The problems with this argument are many however. Google’s crawlers often make mistakes, blacklisting websites that do not contain malware. Because of how extensively Google crawls the web, all the other main search engines use their “blacklist” which means that once on the list, the site is effectively cut off from public access. Google has used this power on numerous occasions on people they do not like. Google even profits from this arrangement as they collect information from every user that accesses Google’s results and then sells it. Google has, for all intents and purposes, become the internet police man and they use this power to further their globalist agenda on a regular basis and it is now supporting the same list of “fake” news sites that the British Independent and Facebook are touting. Google, Microsoft and Facebook have all three censored users on the behest of world governments and all three; have consistently censored users for no apparent reason. They, along with Twitter (another social media monster) sided with Obama to give away America’s right the control the internet.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire Tragically, the US now finds every purveyor of media has been compromised and censored by those with globalist views. Once ICANN loses its independence to the UN, the corporatist/governmental takeover will be complete. Controlling access to information is every tyrant’s dream and our government is no different. The main stream media did a masterful job of concealing the 2008 economic meltdown from the masses just like they have the corruption of Hillary Clinton; the imploding Deutsche Bank; the growing threat of nuclear war with Russia; the threat of an EMP from North Korea and now the escalating violence of the Clinton supporters after the election of Donald Trump.

It was only the access of the people to alternative news sites that alerted and continue to alert those willing to listen to truth that news of these events get out at all. Post-election America is now a powder keg awaiting a spark. The Green Party candidate for President, Jill Stein, started a fund to recount the votes in three states in hopes of overturning the election of Donald Trump and now Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has joined her in what is only going to create a greater rift in our already shredded national tapestry.

Related: Michigan Recount Exposes Clinton Electoral Fraud: Half Of Detroit Votes Show Signs Of Tampering This is only a part of the drama as now; the Washington Post has publically called the Drudge Report, Zero Hedge and former Congressman Ron Paul agents of Russian Propaganda. As if on cue, the call has come from numerous governments on the spread of “hate speech” in the US and the call to regulate it. Which Mark Zukerberg is only too happy to oblige as he outlined a seven point plan to help stop the “spread” of “fake news” on Facebook. So convincing is this “fake news” that it fools most students a new “study” finds which of course means that our very Ministry of Truth will need to decipher it for us. In fact, the media is now calling on the FBI to investigate the “fake news” without a shred of evidence to support them. With a growing population of closed minded bigots unwilling to even listen to opposing opinions or facts, the US is slowly returning to the Dark Ages with only a few sources controlling access to information.

Freedom loving people everywhere should all be asking themselves why this particular time was chosen for Obama to open the door for the UN takeover of an already censored internet. It is past time to look into a ham radio and other forms of communication that cannot be controlled by the elites. Here in the Pacific Northwest we have an excellent source for information called the “Radio Free Redoubt.” Time is of the essence as the days of the open internet are coming to a rapid close. “Hell is truth seen too late.” Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan

References: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Why the Media Lies So Much Selling Empire: American Propaganda and War in the Philippines 5 Times When The Mainstream Media “Created Fake News”… And People Died As A Result Waco, Texas: Where A Part Of America’s Heart And Soul Died. The Great 9/11 Cover-up ABC, NBC Ignore All Obamacare Failures in 2016, CBS Barely Covers Six Corporations Control 90% of American Media Hillary’s Worst Crime Was Against the ‘Filmmaker’ The media and the financial crisis: Journalism failed The Great ObamaCare Failure Our Corrupt Media Can’t Talk About Animated Map: The Battle of Arnhem Just 6% of the People Former CBS Reporter: ‘I Was Called a Troublemaker for Pursuing Benghazi’ Obama Admin Wants To Surrender US Control Over Internet To Global Bureaucracy Statements in Support of the IANA Stewardship Transition What Does ICANN Do? Critics fear censorship as Obama hands control of internet to multi-national body Here’s Why We Should Go through the IANA Transition US to Hand Over Internet’s Naming System, But Is ICANN Ready for Transition? S. Surrender: Internet Giveaway to the U.N.? Governing Cyberspace: ICANN, a Controversial Internet Standards Body In Congressional Hearing, Stakeholders Highlight ICANN’s Failures and Need for Reform ICANN reports .sucks to the FTC over “predatory” pricing

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

ICANN Transition is Premature ICANN’s Amazon Problem Amazon files appeal on rejected .amazon domain Governments kill off Patagonia’s dot-brand bid US hands internet control over to ICANN Stop Obama’s Internet Giveaway Lie of the Year: ‘If you like your health care plan, you can keep it’ Obama: We Have to Change ‘Wild West’ Media Landscape Obama Says He Wants To Change The Free Flow Of Information Merkel With Obama: Internet ‘Disruptive’ Force that Has to Be ‘Contained, Managed, and Steered’ by Government Obama Merkel - Internet Censorship Will Control Middle Class Rebellion Obama, Merkel Blame Social Media for Being Politically Disruptive Microsoft is Still an Evil Company, Don’t Believe the Reputation Laundering ‘Campaigners’ Liberal Media Bias How Bing Search Engine Plays Politics in Election 2016 Tim Cook and Bill Gates Might Have Been on Hillary Clinton’s Vice President List Gates Foundation accused of ‘dangerously skewing’ aid priorities by promoting ‘corporate globalization’ Web censorship in China? Not a problem, says Bill Gates Bill Gates: Voter opposition to globalization is ‘a huge concern’ - and a wake-up call Bill Gates says in order to keep talent in America the country must overhaul ‘perverse’ immigration laws Soros & Fellow Billionaires for Open Borders Lobby GOP on Amnesty Microsoft Lays Off Thousands While Demanding More H1-B Visas Xi Jinping in Seattle to meet with CEOs of Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants New research claims that Microsoft’s Bing censors heavily within China, even more so than Baidu Is Facebook Trying to Turn you Into a Globalist? The end of Trump’: How Facebook deepens millennials’ confirmation bias Zuckerberg proves he is Facebook’s editor by allowing Trump’s hate speech. Will Facebook Replace the News? Facebook is a Media Company, Treat it as One 61 million person experiment in social influence Facebook Deliberately Experimented on Your Emotions Facebook wants you to vote. Did YOU change your Facebook picture to a rainbow? Meet leftist prof who wrote ‘hit list’ of ‘fake’ news sites HOW FAKE NEWS CREATED THE MYTH OF FIDEL CASTRO AS LATIN ROBIN HOOD The New York Times; Unrepentant Communist Enabler 1957: Matthews NY Times interview Castro in Sierra Still Fronting for Fidel at the New York Times Facebook Censorship How Facebook Censors your posts Facebook to crack down on spread of misinformation The Top Ten Things We Can’t Believe Eric Schmidt Ever Said Of Course Facebook Is Biased. That’s How Tech Works Today Wikileaks: Google’s Eric Schmidt Planning Hillary’s Campaign Since 2014 The Groundwork Google defends its search engine against bias it favors Clinton Eric Schmidt Dismisses Movie Driven Fear of AI Google Search Statistics Search Engine Ratings Google’s power of censorship: who controls the controllers of the internet? Google controls what we buy, the news we read — and Obama’s policies The new mind control The NSA’s Bulk Collection Is Over, but Google and Facebook Are Still in the Data Business The New Censorship NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others You’re a Criminal in a Mass Surveillance World – How to Not Get Caught Clinton to join recount that Trump calls ‘scam’ Washington Post: Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton “Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools” Liberals are suddenly experts in Russian Espionage Washington Post Peddles Tarring of Ron Paul Institute as Russian Propaganda EUROPEANS CALL ON US LEADERS TO CURB HATE SPEECH How Facebook plans to crack down on fake news The Fake epidemic of fake news Most Students Can’t Tell the Difference Between Fake and Real News, Study Finds Elite Media Plot New Censorship Regime If you question the establishment, you are guilty of Espionage, says Corporate Media

90. Radio Free Redoubt

Additional Reading:

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Cortana: The spy in Windows 10 Google Is Burying Negative Search Suggestions For Hillary Clinton, New Study Shows Google to Bias Search Engine Based on ‘Facts’ Google will soon ban fake news sites from using its ad network Google is Liberal and Biased 7,000 Sources or just a few favorites Analyzing the Google bias Why we should care about Facebook and Google’s political bias How Google Skewed Search Results You Think Google Wight be Biased? Ban on “Fake News:” What is Fake News? ICANN’s War on Whois Privacy ICANN Can Be Fixed ICANN faces first post-transmission test of U.N. power Obama Admin Wants To Surrender US Control Over Internet To Global Bureaucracy FCC Commissioner Hits Back at Internet Handover Proponents Internet giveaway day? US gov’t relinquishes control of web’s ‘address book’ S. to relinquish remaining control over the Internet Please Stop Sharing These Sites: Fake news sites, deceptive memes, and the rise of post truth politics Liberal News, Conservative News and Fake News False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical “News” Sources List of Fake News Websites Two-thirds of the world’s internet users live under government censorship: report Donuts Inc.’s major play for new Web domain names raises eyebrows Not Obama’s to Give Away Clinton’s Russian roulette *BREAKING* Anti-Trump Globalist Zuckerberg Weaponizing Facebook to Influence 2016 Election Facebook admits human role in news operation but denies left wing bias Fake News threaten Democracy, Obama Says Using fake news against opposing views

Surveillance Society / Police State

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Surveillance Society / Police State

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In Connected World, Users Are Getting Reared As Slaughter Animals + Facebook Employees Are Quitting Because Of Users Being Censored December 8 2016 | From: Arnoldit / TheAntiMedia

Yahoo, Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, Instagram and Microsoft all have one thing in common; for any service that they provide for free, they are harnessing your private data to be sold to advertisers.

Related: This $5 Device Can Hack Your Locked Computer In One Minute Mirror UK recently published an Op-Ed titled Who Is Spying on You? What Yahoo Hack Taught Us About Facebook, Google, and WhatsApp in which the author says:

“Think about this for a second. All those emails you’ve written and received with discussions about politics and people that were assumed to be private and meant as inside jokes for you and your friends were being filtered through CIA headquarters. Kind of makes you wonder what you’ve written in the past few years, doesn’t it?”

The services be it free email or free instant messaging have been designed and developed in such a way that the companies that own them end up with a humongous amount of information about its users. This data is sugarcoated and called as Big Data. It is then sold to advertisers and marketers who in the garb of providing immersive and customized user experience follow every click of yours online. This is akin to rearing animals for slaughtering them later.

The data is not just for sale to the corporates; law enforcement agencies can snoop on you without any warrants. As pointed out in the article:

“While hypocritical in many ways, these tech giants are smart enough to know who butters their bread and that the perception of trust outweighs the reality of it. But isn’t it the government who ultimately ends up with the data if a company is intentionally spying on us and building a huge record about each of us?”

None of the tech giants accept this fact, but most are selling your data to the government, including companies like Samsung that are into the hardware business. Is there are a way that can help you evade this online snooping? Probably no if you consider mainstream services and social media platforms. Till then, if you want to stay below the radar, delete your accounts and data on all mainstream email service providers, instant messaging apps, service providing websites and social media platform.

Related Articles: How a Grad Student Found Spyware That Could Control Anybody’s iPhone from Anywhere in the World Google is Quietly Recording Everything You Say - Here’s How to Hear It, Delete It, and Stop It Twitter Threatens To Kill Trump’s Account Google will tell you how crowded your favorite bar is in real time

Facebook Employees Are Quitting Because Of Users Being Censored

The war on “fake news” embarked upon by Facebook, Google, and Twitter may be earning the media goliaths brownie points with establishment politicos, but users - and even employees aren’t feeling as enthusiastic.

In the midst of backlash over the stunning victory of President-elect Donald Trump, which some people attribute to the preponderance of apocryphal headlines disseminated by Internet search engines and social media platforms, the companies are tweaking their algorithms in order to target specifically blacklisted sites, many of which happen to be alternative media sites that question the political and media establishment. Related: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter & Microsoft Removing “extremist content” in 2017 Many of the sites are also financially dependent on ad revenue earned by organic and referral traffic directed by Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Now, it appears Facebook’s new algorithmic censorship practices are causing some of its employees to quit. According to the New York Times, three current and former anonymous employees claim the company has had a new tool developed specifically to restrict certain kinds of posts from appearing in users’ news feeds in certain geographic areas.

This form of censorship has been deployed under the auspices of facilitating Facebook’s entry into the Chinese market. Previously, the company did this in Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey, where the respective governments requested the ability for third parties to review and block posted content. Facebook granted the requests and removed approximately 55,000 total pieces of content. Now Facebook wants access to 1.4 billion people in the world’s second-largest economy, China, and they are willing to adhere to draconian censorship practices in order to do so. It could be a complete coincidence that this new push happens to coincide with Facebook’s crackdown on alternative media, which has caused several employees to tender their resignations. A Facebook spokeswoman responded to the report in a statement:

“We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country. However, we have not made any decision on our approach to China. Our focus right now is on helping Chinese businesses and developers expand to new markets outside China by using our ad platform.”

The question now is whether there is a connection between two different but simultaneous pushes for censorship by the largest social media platform in the world.

If You Question The Establishment You Are Guilty Of Espionage, Says Corporate Media - Because Russia + The “Fake News” Furor And The Threat Of Internet Censorship December 4 2016 | From: ActivistPost / GlobalResearch

Mainstream, corporate media has launched a dangerous and slanderous campaign to label any news outlet not spewing accepted governmental narrative as professional Russian propagandists and those unaware they’d apparently been duped by Russia, “useful idiots.”

Ordinarily, the complete dearth of proof this claim has even a shred of truth would cause a reflexive eye roll — but in this case, the American exceptionalist machine behind the supposed analysis calls for FBI and Department of Justice to investigate possible violations of Espionage Act. Related: Establishment Media Declares War On Their Competition As “Fake News” Conflating legitimate journalism with espionage because it refutes a narrative acceptable to the establishment is categorically ludicrous. This irresponsible, criminal violation of ethics devoid of any journalistic integrity came from the Washington Post, which ‘reported’ two “teams of independent researchers” discovered ‘The Russians’ were behind ‘fake news’ articles to help Donald Trump win the election and ‘undermine faith in American democracy.’ It could be said ‘you can’t make this up’ - but apparently that’s exactly what these so-called ‘expert’ researchers did.

“The flood of ‘fake news’ this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation,” the Post declared in its lede.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery - including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human ‘trolls,’ and networks of websites and social-media accounts - echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers.

Who would have thunk such a thing? The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia. Related: The Myth Of “Aggressive Russia” However, as has been the highly-suspect tendency thus far in the corporate media’s war on ostensible disinformation, literally no evidence accompanied the Post’s report - nor the analyses provided by these two putatively independent research groups - making the article a prime example of libel.

Related: House Quietly Passes Bill Targeting "Russian Propaganda" Websites In fact, the credibility of this reporting is so wet tissue paper-flimsy, even the mainstream outlet Fortune refuted the contents in an article appropriately titled, “No, Russian Agents Are Not Behind Every Piece of Fake News You See,” because “the case starts to come apart at the seams the more you look at it.” Fortune notes one of the two research groups, the Foreign Policy Institute, is:

“A conservative think tank funded and staffed by proponents of the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, which says it has been researching Russian propaganda since 2014.”

PropOrNot, the other group publishing the exhaustive list of even award-winning sites, “tweets and retweets anti-Russian sentiments from a variety of sources, has only existed since August of this year,” according to Fortune. “And an article announcing the launch of the group on its website is dated last month.”

None of the supposedly multiple people responsible for the fledgling PropOrNot website are named, even by the Post. Its executive director, whom the Post quoted “on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers”- a laughable excuse worthy of its own tinfoil hat - claims;

“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy. It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign... It worked.”

Once again, the ‘Russia did it’ narrative belies the underlying establishment frustration and inability to come to terms with the loss of democratic election - a loss alternative, independent media undoubtedly assisted, but not for the tiresome reasons corporate outlets repeat ad infinitum. Hillary Clinton did not lose the 2016 presidential election because some shady, Russian-government crafted cabal of nonmainstream outlets plotted her downfall for the benefit of Donald Trump. Indeed, most of the outlets listed - including The Free Thought Project - castigated both Clinton and Trump when pertinent information became available. No, Hillary Clinton lost because - even faced with as contentious a character as megalomaniacal Trump - the American populace has grown too weary of Washington politics-as-usual, foreign policy-as-usual, and corruption-as-usual.

Related: McCarthyism Is Breaking Out All Over - Paul Craig Roberts Independent media did a phenomenal job reporting on revelations published by WikiLeaks, and equally stellar slaying of U.S. government propaganda reported as legitimate news by irresponsible corporate media presstitutes, who some time ago abandoned journalism for establishment acceptance. Pointing fingers will never make this any less true - and, in actuality, only deepens the shameful dereliction of journalistic duty. To wit, the Post’s regurgitating this thinly veneered anti-Russian agenda as fact, when literally no investigation was undertaken - no one contacted the outlets on this list to offer their side, for example - is precisely the sort of ‘fake news’ the establishment insists it needs to fight. Fortune points out:

“There’s also little data available on the PropOrNot report, which describes a network of 200 sites who it says are

‘routine peddlers of Russian propaganda,’ which have what it calls a ‘combined audience of 15 million Americans.’ How is that audience measured? We don’t know. Stories promoted by this network were shared 213 million times, it says. How do we know this? That’s unclear."

Once again, we have literally unverifiable ‘information’ coughed up by unknown entities, who employed unknown methods to produce a blacklist of media sites - which incidentally includes a disparate mishmash from Ron Paul and Chris Hedges, to the Drudge Report and Lew Rockwell - that the public should deem verboten because they said so. That, and because Russia. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald tweeted: Yes, the WashPost is saying: some people who we won’t identify, using methodologies we won’t describe, created This Important Blacklist!

Again, though it’s difficult not to laugh at this altogether ironic travesty, the peril lies in these unknown entities at PropOrNot suggesting these outlets and the journalists behind them “have violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws, but determining that is up to the FBI and the DOJ.” Just two paragraphs prior, PropOrNot paradoxically claims it “fiercely believe in the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and have no interest in seeing anyone punished for exercising them.”

Although PropOrNot flatly claims its questionably researched and flagrantly unvetted list shouldn’t be considered McCarthyistic, well, it is. “So in other words, any and every one who is anything but a liberal drone is now a Russian plant?” Zero Hedge, which also landed a spot on the Everyone the Establishment Dislikes Is a Russian Agent list, asked rhetorically. “McCarthy would be proud.” Related: The Major Purveyor of ‘Fake News’ is the CIA-Corporate Complex

The “Fake News” Furor And The Threat Of Internet Censorship In the weeks since the November 8 election, US media reports on the spread of so-called “fake news” during the presidential campaign have increasingly repeated unsubstantiated pre-election claims that the Russian government hacked into Democratic Party email servers to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

There is more than a whiff of McCarthyism in this crusade against “fake news” on social media and the Internet, with online publications critical of US wars of aggression and other criminal activities being branded as Russian propaganda outlets. Related: Fake News List Death Knell for MSM-Paul Craig Roberts A case in point is an article published in the November 24 edition of the Washington Post headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.” The article includes assertions that Russian “botnets, teams of paid human ‘trolls,’ and networks of web sites and social media accounts” were used to promote sites across the Internet;

"As they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers.”

Comment: Well they may not have been Russian bot-nets but they sure as hell were real people who have woken up to the reality of that the psychopathic luciferial control-freak establishment wanted... According to the Post, the exposure of Russian involvement in the spread of fake election news is based on the work of a team of “independent researchers” and another anonymous group calling itself PropOrNot, which has expertise in “computer science, national security and public policy.”

Oh for the love of Christ who do they think believes this hore shit anymore?

Pathetic. Although no one from the PropOrNot organization is mentioned by name, the Post quotes the executive director of this group anonymously. The organization has gone so far as to publish a list of 200 web sites - including WikiLeaks, the ultraright Drudge Report and the left-liberal Truthout - that are deemed “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” It should be obvious that the Post report is itself an example of the state-sponsored pseudo-news that is increasingly dispensed by the corporate-controlled media to promote the geopolitical and military aims of American imperialism. The New York Times has published similar articles, including one authored by David E. Sanger and posted on the Times web site on November 25 under the headline “US Officials Defend Integrity of Vote, Despite Hacking Fears.” Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent of the Times, is a regular sounding board for the military/intelligence establishment, to which he is closely “plugged in.” He writes that:

“Intelligence officials are still investigating the impact of a broader Russian ‘information warfare’ campaign, in which fake news about Mrs. Clinton, and about United States-Russia relations, appeared intended to influence voters.” He adds, “Many of those false reports originated from RT News and Sputnik, two state-funded Russian sites.”

The readers of this and virtually all other articles on the topic of Russia’s role in “fake news” will search in vain for a single piece of evidence to substantiate the claims made. Instead, the views and opinions of “experts,” usually unnamed, are cited and treated as indisputable fact - much in the manner of Joe McCarthy and similar witch-hunters. The editors and writers who produce these articles seem not even to notice that their publications have been caught in one colossal lie after another - from the claims of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 to the more recent flood of government propaganda in support of neo-colonial wars in Libya and Syria and drone killings in a growing number of countries - all justified in the name of “human rights” and the “war on terror.” There are no institutions anywhere in the world more adept at producing “fake news” than the American corporatecontrolled media. These same media outlets further discredited themselves by overtly slanting their “news” coverage of the election campaign in favor of their preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, and predicting that she would secure a decisive victory. Blindsided by the support for Trump among disaffected and angry lower-income people and taken unawares by the electoral collapse of the Democrats, the corporate media are responding to the growth of popular distrust by seeking to discredit alternative news sources.

Related: Dear Donald Trump: Blockade the lying mainstream media and recognize the independent media as America's real free press This is not to deny the spread of false information and propaganda masquerading as news on the Internet. Fabricated news stories and hoaxes have been circulating online since the World Wide Web began in the 1990s, but there was a significant increase in “fake” political sites and content during the US elections. Stories that stretched the truth or were entirely made up typically started on mock news web sites and were then amplified by social media sharing.

Related: ‘Putin awaits my application for citizenship,’ says ‘Russian agent’ Paul Craig Roberts Other false reports originated on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and spread rapidly with the “like,” “share” and “comment” features of social media. An analysis published by Buzzfeed on November 16 showed that false political news stories in the final three

months of the election campaign, such as a report that the Pope had endorsed Trump for president, generated more engagement on Facebook than the combined top stories of nineteen major US news organizations.

The Buzzfeed study noted the “hyperpartisan right-wing” nature of the top fabricated news items, as well as the spike in the number of visitors to these sites during the final election months. Another key aspect of online “fake news” has been the growth of its scope internationally. The Guardian reported in August, for example, that a group of teenagers and college students from Veles, Macedonia set up dozens of political web site façades to both influence and cash in on the Trump candidacy. The Guardian report also pointed out that, although the pro-Trump sham news sites were more popular, both offshore and domestic web sites became very popular and generated income for their publishers whether they were peddling phony “conservative” or “liberal” misinformation. That being said, the campaign in the corporate media against “fake news” on the Internet, including calls for social media outlets such as Google and Facebook to vet the material that appears on their sites, is a reactionary attack on freedom of the press. It has already elicited positive responses from major Internet sites.

Both Google and Facebook have published statements acknowledging that they are working on systems that will use third-party “fact-checking” of news content published on their services. In the case of Facebook, this initiative - reminiscent of Orwell’s Thought Police - will be reinforced by barring accounts identified as “fake news” sources from using online advertising tools. Pressure to shut down or muzzle “fake news” sites and social media accounts are emanating from the offices of corporate media organizations concerned about the loss of their influence over the public. Any moves to censor Internet content must be opposed as an attack on democratic rights. The measures being prepared today against “fake news” web sites and social media publishers will be perfected and used tomorrow against the working class and the socialist media - the World Socialist Web Site - that articulates and fights for its independent interests. Related: FAKE NEWS: Newsweek Admits They Didn’t Proof Read ‘Madam President’ Issue; They Didn’t Even Write It

Going With The Flow: The Global Battle For Your Personal Data November 26 2016 | From: ArtsTechnica

Should governments be allowed to impose localisation requirements to protect privacy?

It's a cliché that "data is the new oil"- a metaphor that dates back to at least 2006. Like oil, data is beginning to drive conflict, as different political blocs fight for control of how this valuable resource flows around the world. Related: Former Head Of The NSA And CIA Makes Statements That Imply John Key Is Lying About Mass Surveillance That tussle is at a critical juncture because of the confluence of three major factors: The Snowden revelations about massive online surveillance; key judgments by Europe's top court; and attempts by the US to use major trade deals to lock in unrestricted data flows globally. The growing awareness of the importance of data flows to both technology and the world's economy is reflected in the number of reports on the topic that have been issued recently. For example, in April 2014, McKinsey published "Global flows in a digital age," which noted:

“Global online traffic across borders grew 18-fold between 2005 and 2012, and could increase eightfold more by 2025. Digital technologies, which reduce the cost of production and distribution, are transforming flows in three ways: Through the creation of purely digital goods and services, “digital wrappers” that enhance the value of physical flows, and digital platforms that facilitate cross-border production and exchange."

A month later, the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) issued a report that aimed to:

“Quantify the losses that result from data localisation requirements and related data privacy and security laws that discriminate against foreign suppliers of data, and downstream goods and services providers."

Data localisation in this context means keeping data within the same country - or legal bloc, in some cases - where it originated. According to ECIPE's econometric modelling, if the European Union were to introduce economy-wide data localisation requirements that applied across all sectors of the economy, its GDP would suffer a loss of 1.1 percent as non-EU companies run fleeing to the hills. ECIPE said domestic investments would fall by 3.9 percent, and the economic losses suffered by EU citizens would total £156 billion (€182 billion, $193 billion).

The Snowden Revelations One reason why many countries were and still are considering data localisation requirements that would force companies to keep data within national or legal boundaries, is the Snowden leaks. These showed the NSA and GCHQ carrying out surveillance on a hitherto unsuspected scale. In particular, Edward Snowden revealed that both agencies spied on data as it flowed across US and UK borders to and from other countries. An obvious way to avoid this problem is to keep data in the country where it is generated, to minimise opportunities for foreign interception. That too has issues - for example, it's easier for national governments to spy on and demand information - but it does place obstacles in the way of external intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ.

Related: New Zealand Prime Minister Uses Bogus Islamic State Threat As Excuse To Ramp Up National Security And Surveillance Powers One country that has already adopted this approach is Russia, which passed a data localisation law in 2014. LinkedIn's failure to comply means that the soon-to-be Microsoft subsidiary faces the prospect of Russian ISPs blocking access to its site. As Ars has reported, China too is bringing in data localisation requirements. Perhaps even more important than Snowden's impact on governments' future data localisation policies have been the knock-on consequences of his revelations for the "Safe Harbour" framework that has governed data flows from the EU to the US since 2000. In 1998, the EU's directive on data protection went into effect, which prohibited the transfer of personal data to nonEuropean Union countries that do not meet the 28-member-state bloc's "adequacy" standard for privacy protection - in other words, that offered sufficient safeguards for personal data. The Safe Harbour website explains:

"In order to bridge these differences in approach and provide a streamlined means for US organisations to comply with the Directive, the US Department of Commerce in consultation with the European Commission developed a 'Safe Harbour' framework and this website to provide the information an organisation would need to evaluate - and then join - the US-EU Safe Harbour programme."

Snowden's leaks showed the NSA gaining access to personal data held by major US online companies like Facebook as part of the PRISM programme.

Click on the image above to open a larger version in a new window

Related: Surveillance: The Hidden Ways You’re Tracked As a result, the Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems brought a legal challenge to data transfers made between the EU and the US using the Safe Harbour framework. As his site puts it:

"Safe Harbour does not allow for [data] forwarding as it is performed under PRISM. If it would allow such forwarding the 'Safe Harbour Decision' would itself be illegal under Regulation 95/46/EC [the EU directive on data protection]."

Further Reading: Europe’s highest court strikes down Safe Harbour data sharing between EU and US Since Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland, Schrems took his complaint to the Irish data protection agency. According to Schrems, the Irish data protection commissioner argued that "he does not have any duty to investigate the complaint and later argued that the legal view expressed in the complaint is 'frivolous'." As a result, Schrems' complaint was not investigated.

Related: Not Just Surveillance: 3 Current Phenomena Exposing 1984 As An Instruction Manual For The State Schrems sought a judicial review by the Irish High Court, which then asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to rule on issues raised by the Safe Harbour framework. On October 6 last year, Europe's top court handed down its judgment, which effectively struck down Safe Harbour. The central problem, the court found, was that PRISM allowed:

"Access on a generalised basis to the content of electronic communications," which the CJEU said "must be regarded as compromising the essence of the fundamental right to respect for private life," and therefore unacceptable under EU law.

Unless a suitable replacement for Safe Harbour could be found, data flows across the Atlantic would be illegal, and companies continuing to transfer EU personal data to the US risked large fines. What was needed was an upgraded version of Safe Harbour, otherwise US companies faced the prospect of being forced to keep all the personal data of their EU users within the European Union, something they insisted they were reluctant to do. After fraught negotiations, the new Privacy Shield framework was announced on July 8. The European Commission claimed it was "fundamentally different" from Safe Harbour, and ruled out "indiscriminate mass surveillance":

“The EU-US Privacy Shield will ensure a high level of protection for individuals and legal certainty for business. It is fundamentally different from the old 'Safe Harbour': It imposes clear and strong obligations on companies handling the data and makes sure that these rules are followed and enforced in practice. For the first time, the US has given the EU written assurance that the access of public authorities for law enforcement and national security will be subject to clear limitations, safeguards and oversight mechanisms and has ruled out indiscriminate mass surveillance of European citizens' data.

And last but not least the Privacy Shield protects fundamental rights and provides for several accessible and affordable redress mechanisms."

Reactions to the new Privacy Shield were mixed. Microsoft called it "an important achievement for the privacy rights of citizens across Europe, and for companies across all industries that rely on international data flows to run their businesses and serve their customers." Schrems, by contrast, said:

"Privacy Shield is the product of pressure by the US and the IT industry—not of rational or reasonable considerations. It is little more than an little upgrade to Safe Harbour, but not a new deal. It is very likely to fail again, as soon as it reaches the CJEU." Joe McNamee, executive director of European Digital Rights, agreed with this view: "We now have to wait until the court again rules that the deal is illegal and then, maybe, the EU and US can negotiate a credible arrangement that actually respects the law, engenders trust and protects our fundamental rights."

Further Reading: Welcome to the machine: Yahoo mail scanning exposes another gov’t spy tool News that Yahoo had been secretly scanning customers' e-mails greatly increases the likelihood of the Privacy Shield scheme being thrown out by the EU's top court. Snowden tweeted that during the Privacy Shield negotiations the US insisted that this kind of spying would never occur. As a result, the CJEU judges are unlikely to be impressed by any claims that Privacy Shield complies with EU laws.

A legal challenge to the Privacy Shield framework has already been filed, but not at the Court of Justice, which heard and threw out Safe Harbour. Instead, Digital Rights Ireland is asking the lesser-known General Court of the European Union to annul Privacy Shield, still on the grounds that it affords insufficient privacy protection to EU citizens.

General Data Protection Regulation A successful challenge to Privacy Shield would be a serious problem for US companies wishing to move personal data out of the EU. At the end of 2015, the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission reached an agreement on "new data protection rules, establishing a modern and harmonised data protection framework across the EU," including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which greatly extends the reach and force of EU privacy laws.

Related: You Can Defeat Mass Surveillance: Here’s How (Pictorial Guide) Chapter 5 of the GDPR confirms the need for something like Privacy Shield to regulate the flow of data outside the EU, and spells out huge fines for companies that flout the new GDPR rules - up to €20 million, or four percent of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher. Stricter GDPR rules, coupled with the prospect that personal data might need to remain within the EU's borders, may represent a threat for US companies, but they are also a business opportunity for cloud computing services. For example, the newly-formed Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) recently announced that it had created:

"The first-ever data protection code of conduct requiring cloud infrastructure services providers to offer their customers the ability to exclusively process and store data within the EU/EEA territories."

The CISPE added: “Under the CISPE Code of Conduct, cloud infrastructure providers cannot data mine or profile customers’ personal data for marketing, advertising or similar activities, for their own purposes or for the resale to third parties. The CISPE Code precedes the application of the new European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)."

US companies are also cashing in on the demand for EU-based processing and storage. For example, last November Microsoft opened data centres in Germany, which it claimed would be immune to requests from the US government to hand over data - thus attempting to address the key problem of surveillance that emerged in the Schrems' judgment.

While the above looks like some type of military facility it is actually a Microsoft data center

Related: iSucker: Big Brother Internet Culture More recently, Microsoft announced it had invested a total of £2.3 billion ($3 billion) in setting up its European cloud computing facilities. Further Reading: Microsoft is building data centres in Germany that the US government can’t touch The New York Times quoted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as saying:

“"=We’re building our global cloud infrastructure in Europe so it can be trusted by the multiple constituents. We can meet the data residency needs of our European customers."

The newspaper also noted that other US giants are also investing heavily in EU facilities:

“Amazon Web Services, the largest player, announced last week that it would soon open multiple data centres in France and Britain. Google, which already has sites in countries like Finland and Belgium, is expected to finish a new multimillion-dollar data complex in the Netherlands by the end of the year."

Trade Deals Although those moves might suggest that US Internet companies are resigned to a future where keeping the personal data of EU citizens within the EU will be the norm, that's not the case. The main strategy of the online giants is doing everything they can to stop data localisation happening; the new data centres are more like an insurance policy, in case they aren't successful. These multinational megacorps have a range of weapons at their disposal, but the most powerful is trade agreements. As Ars has reported, today's big trade deals go far beyond simply removing tariffs. Now, the emphasis is on harmonising national regulations in order to remove "non-tariff barriers." Prompted by Stateside Internet companies, the US tries to use trade deals to persuade other countries to agree to unhindered cross-border data flows, and to ban data localisation requirements. One of the main battlefields here is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Recently, senior US politicians sent a letter to the US Trade Representative, Michael Forman, who is responsible for US trade negotiations. The politicians wrote:

“TTIP must include clear and enforceable commitments on digital trade, but the EU has not engaged meaningfully in this sector, particularly regarding cross border data flows and data server localization requirements."

As part of the TTIP deal, the politicians say, the EU must permit easy cross-border data flows by loosening its stringent privacy protections, and forbid member states from requiring data localisation. Further Reading: CETA: The Canadian TTIP nobody noticed until it was (almost) too late TTIP is in limbo after Donald Trump won the US presidential election, and may even be dead, so the argument over how data flows should be treated there will not re-commence for many months, if ever. But there are two other major deals seeking to regulate European data flows, the Trade in Investment Services Agreement (TISA) - an international treaty between 23 parties including the US and EU - and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU.

A recent study, entitled "Trade and privacy: complicated bedfellows?", suggested that new free trade deals should contain a binding provision which fully exempts the existing and future EU legal framework for the protection of personal data from the scope of the agreements. However, in a commentary on the report, the activist Ante Wessels had doubts about the efficacy of this approach. He wrote:

“Trade and privacy are indeed difficult bedfellows. It is an open question whether data protection-proof free trade agreements are possible." If, indeed, that is the case, the report further suggests "the EU should not enter into additional commitments concerning free data flows in new and enhanced disciplines that lack any reference to the party’s privacy and data protection laws."

One of the organisations that commissioned the report, BEUC, explained its position as follows:

“Under the CISPE Code of Conduct, cloud infrastructure providers cannot data mine or profile customers’ personal data for marketing, advertising or similar activities, for their own purposes or for the resale to third parties. The

CISPE Code precedes the application of the new European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)."

Related: How To Start Browsing The Web Anonymously It's still not clear what the European Commission intends to do on this important issue. According to a report on EurActiv;

“European Commission officials have struck a deal that could put a clause guaranteeing international data flows into a trade agreement with 22 countries outside the bloc, including the United States and Australia [TISA]. But the commission is in deadlock over whether to cave to pressure from the US despite criticism that salvaging the pact on services could undermine EU privacy law." According to the EC's summary of the latest round of TISA talks, data flows and localisation of computing facilities will "Continue to require in-depth discussions between Parties."

Once again, the election of Donald Trump is likely to be a complicating factor here . Further Reading: WikiLeaks releases secret TISA docs: The more evil sibling of TTIP and TPP The position of the European Parliament is more straightforward, since it has adopted a text on TISA in which it calls on the European Commission "to immediately and formally oppose the US proposals on movement of information."

Boris Johnson addresses supporters during a rally for the "Vote Leave" campaign

Post-Brexit Problems Finally, it's worth noting there are major implications here for the UK as it heads towards Brexit. The UK's new Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, recently gave a speech called "Transparency, trust and progressive data protection," in which she directly addressed the question of what the EU's new GDPR would mean post-Brexit:

“The fact is, no matter what the future legal relationship between the UK and Europe, personal information will need to flow. It is fundamental to the digital economy. In a global economy we need consistency of law and standards - the GDPR is a strong law, and once we are out of Europe, we will still need to be deemed adequate or essentially equivalent. For those of you who are not lawyers out there, this means there would be a legal basis for data to flow between Europe and the UK."

Whether or not the UK is a member of the EU, and whatever its formal relationship might be, if British companies - for example, in the financial sector - want to process EU personal data, the protection in the UK must be "adequate or essentially equivalent" for data flows from the continent to be permitted. It is therefore likely that the UK government will need to bring in data privacy laws that align closely with the GDPR. However, it's worth remembering that the reason why Safe Harbour was struck down, and why Privacy Shield may suffer the same fate, is that the EU's highest court deemed the surveillance carried out by the NSA as excessive and therefore illegal.

Related: The Entire Internet History of UK Citizens Now Viewable by Government Organizations Such as Police, Military, Taxes, Jobs and Pensions But we know from Snowden's documents that GCHQ's Tempora programme is just as invasive - indeed, Snowden said that historically: "They [GCHQ] are worse than the US." That raises the interesting question of whether the CJEU would find that GCHQ's surveillance of data flows is also excessive and therefore illegal under EU privacy laws if a challenge were brought by someone like, say, Schrems. Further Reading: GCHQ’s data-mining techniques revealed in new Snowden leak The UK government has managed to sidestep this issue so far. But once the UK is outside the European Union, continental companies will not want to risk fines of up to four percent of their global turnover by sending personal data to a country which may be judged a privacy pariah by the courts. As data progresses from being the new oil that helps powers modern economies, to becoming the very life-blood that keeps them alive, data flows will become a key strategic issue for all governments. That's especially true for the UK, which will depend on them for its new, and as-yet undefined, relationships with the world's nations, their citizens, and their companies. Related: The Key To Ending Mass Surveillance? Maths

Julian Assange: ‘Google Is Not What It Seems’ - They ‘Do Things The CIA Cannot’ November 22 2016 | From: TheFreeThoughtProject

Julian Assange cautioned all of us a while back, in the vein of revelations similar to those provided by Edward Snowden, that Google - the insidious search engine with a reputation for powering humanity’s research - plays the dark hand role in furthering U.S. imperialism and foreign policy agendas.

Now, as the Wikileaks founder faces days of questioning by a Swedish special prosecutor over rape allegations inside his Ecuadorian Embassy haven in London today - and particularly in wake of the presidential election Assange’s warning Google “is not what it seems” must be revisited. Related: How Vodafone censors your Internet Under intense scrutiny by the U.S. State Department for several controversial Wikileaks’ publications of leaked documents in 2011, Assange first met Google Executive Chairman, then-CEO, Eric Schmidt, who approached the political refugee under the premise of a new book. Schmidt, whose worth Forbes estimates exceeds $11 billion, partnered with Council on Foreign Relations and State Department veteran, Jared Cohen, for the work, tentatively titled The Empire of the Mind - and asked Assange for an interview. Later acknowledging naïvte in agreeing to meet the pair of tech heavyweights, Assange found afterward how enmeshed in and integral to U.S. global agendas Schmidt and Cohen had become.

In fact, both have exhibited quite the fascination with technology’s role in burgeoning revolutions - including, but not-at-all limited to, the Arab Spring. Schmidt created a position for Cohen in 2009, originally called Google Ideas, now Google Jigsaw, and the two began weaving the company’s importance to the United States into narratives in articles, political donations, and through Cohen’s former roles at the State Department. That same year, Schmidt and Cohen co-authored an article for the CFR journal Foreign Affairs, which, seven years hence, appears a rather prescient discussion of Google’s self-importance in governmental affairs. Under the subheading “COALITIONS OF THE CONNECTED,” they wrote [all emphasis added]:

“In an era when the power of the individual and the group grows daily, those governments that ride the technological wave will clearly be best positioned to assert their influence and bring others into their orbits. And those that do not will find themselves at odds with their citizens. “Democratic states that have built coalitions of their militaries have the capacity to do the same with their connection technologies. […] they offer a new way to exercise the duty to protect citizens around the world who are abused by their governments or barred from voicing their opinions.”

Perhaps appearing laudable on its surface - at least to some degree - as Assange pointed out, there is a selfmischaracterization by the American and other Western governments and inaccurately-monikered ‘non-governmental organizations’ that their interests in other nations’ affairs are innately good.

This cult of government and non-government insiders have a firm belief their goals should be the unassailable, unquestionable motivator for American imperialism - whatever the U.S. thinks best as a “benevolent superpower,” so should the rest of the ‘non-evil’ world.

“They will tell you that open-mindedness is a virtue, but all perspectives that challenge the exceptionalist drive at the heart of American foreign policy will remain invisible to them,” Assange wrote in When Google Met Wikileaks. “This is the impenetrable banality of ‘don’t be evil.’ They believe that they are doing good. And that is a problem.”

Cohen, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the notorious Council on Foreign Relations, lists his expertise in “Terrorism; radicalization; impact of connection technologies on 21st century statecraft; Iran,” and has worked for both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton at the Department of State. Fortune, calling Cohen a “fascinating fellow,” noted that, in his book Children of Jihad, the young diplomat and technology enthusiast “advocates for the use of technology for social upheaval in the Middle East and elsewhere.” Under the auspices of discussing technological aspects at Wikileaks’ disposal for the upcoming book, Schmidt; Cohen; Lisa Shields, a CFR vice president at the time; and Scott Malcomson - who would shortly afterward be appointed Rice’s lead speech advisor for her role as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations - descended on Assange’s safe haven in Norfolk, outside London.

It wasn’t until weeks and months after this gathering Assange fully realized how closely Google operates in tandem with the government of the United States - and how perilous the innocent mask of its public intentions truly is in light of such cooperation. Ironically enough, in Wikileaks’ publishing three years later of the Global Intelligence Files - internal emails from private security firm, Stratfor - Cohen’s and Google’s true depth of influence became strikingly apparent. Assange wrote:

“Cohen’s directorate appeared to cross over from public relations and ‘corporate responsibility’ work into active corporate intervention in foreign affairs at a level that is normally reserved for states. Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s ‘director of regime change.’ According to the emails, he was trying to plant his fingerprints on some of the major historical events in the contemporary Middle East. He could be placed in Egypt during the revolution, meeting with Wael Ghonim, the Google employee whose arrest and imprisonment hours later would make him a PR-friendly symbol of the uprising in the Western press. Meetings had been planned in Palestine and Turkey, both of which - claimed Stratfor emails - were killed by the senior Google leadership as too risky. Only a few months before he met with me, Cohen was planning a trip to the edge of Iran in Azerbaijan to ‘engage the Iranian communities closer to the border,’ as part of Google Ideas’ project on repressive societies.”

However, most significantly, Stratfor vice president for intelligence Fred Burton, also a former official with the State Department, wrote in one of those emails:

“Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. In reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do . . . [Cohen] is going to get himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose Google’s covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Gov’t can then disavow knowledge and Google is left holding the shit-bag.”

Of course, the massive company - its various facets now under the umbrella of Alphabet, Inc. - has never been fully absent government involvement. Research for what would become ultimately become Google had been undertaken by company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - the strictly secretive technological testing and planning arm for the Department of Defense. Indeed Google’s continued coziness with the diplomacy, military, and intelligence wings of the United States government should not be, though perpetually are, ignored.

Related: iPhones Secretly Send Call History to Apple, Security Firm Says Political establishment bulldogs on both sides of the aisle and their cheerleader corporate media presstitutes will continue for months or years to debate the failed presidential bid of Hillary Clinton and the apparently-shocking rise and election of Donald Trump, but technology played a starring role in those events. Several reports last year cautioned Google’s algorithms could swing the election - and not only the American election, but national elections around the globe.

“We estimate, based on win margins in national elections around the world,” said Robert Epstein, a psychologist with the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and author of one of the studies, “that Google could determine the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of all national elections.”

Considering lines between the tech giant and the government have essentially been abandoned, this revelation puts power and influence into acute, if not terrifying, perspective. Google’s ties with the Pentagon and intelligence communities never ceased.

Related: UK spy agencies broke privacy rules by secretly collecting citizens' confidential information for more than 10 years Revealed by a Freedom of Information Act request cited by Assange, Google founder Brin, together with Schmidt, corresponded casually by email with National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander in 2012, discussing a program called the “Enduring Society Framework.” Alexander wrote to Brin:

“Your insights as a key member of the Defense Industrial Base are valuable to ensure ESF’s efforts have measurable impact.”

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Industrial Base is “the worldwide industrial complex that enables research and development, as well as design, production, delivery, and maintenance of military weapons systems, subsystems, and components or parts, to meet U.S. military requirements .” It also provides:

"Products and services that are essential to mobilize, deploy, and sustain military operations.”

Although Schmidt and Cohen ultimately watered down their book title The Empire of the Mind into the more palatable and less blatantly imperialistic, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business, its message amounted to self-congratulatory justification for broader foreign policy goals.

Nefarious warmonger Henry Kissinger, for one, praised the work, which included telling lines by the Google execs, such as:

“What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century, technology and cyber-security companies will be to the twenty-first.”

So ubiquitous has Google become, its presence - like similarly U.S. government-connected Facebook - is nearly indispensable in the daily lives of hundreds of millions worldwide. However well-known is the government intelligence framework in such platforms, it would be ill-advised to ignore the far darker Machiavellian aspects of private corporate technology’s intersection with global political agendas - and the force that coalition wields around the planet.

John Key Tries to Backpedal: Google more of a worry than spy agencies - PM Whether or not the American establishment’s empire suffered a blow in the election of Donald Trump will be a debatable point for some time, but it’s a veritable guarantee its cogs - seeing themselves as the planet’s saviors - have planned in advance for just such an occasion.

"If the future of the internet is to be Google,” Assange noted, “that should be of serious concern to people all over the world - in Latin America, East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the former Soviet Union, and even in Europe - for whom the internet embodies the promise of an alternative to US cultural, economic, and strategic hegemony.”

Empire will remain empire until its dying breath - particularly if it functions under the obstinate belief it, alone, can save the world. Julian Assange should be praised for the transparency and insight he and Wikileaks have readily given the world, instead of excoriated and blamed for faults which lie in the establishment framework - it is this political, intelligence, and military web deserving of a pointed finger. Related: Encrypting Your Laptop Like You Mean It

The Dark Web Isn’t All Dark November 11 2016 | From: TheAtlantic

Despite its reputation for illegal activity, much of what goes on underneath the surface of the internet is legit.

Drugs, child porn, hitmen for hire: The dark web doesn’t have a particularly glowing reputation. When the leader of a illegal-drug marketplace called the Silk Road was arrested in 2013, many were introduced to the hidden side of the internet for the first time as the home of the notorious “eBay for drugs.” Related: Dear Clinton Team: We Noticed You Might Need Some Email Security Tips But because of how the dark web is organized - or rather, how it isn’t - it’s nearly impossible to determ - focuses on the strange and unusual: marketplaces for stolen Netflix credentials, personal data, and even paywalled academic research. But the dark web and Tor, the privacy-preserving browser that’s used to access hidden sites - called onions - have myriad legitimate uses, too. New research from Terbium Labs, a company that analyzes the dark web, took a small snapshot of onion sites - a random collection of 400 sites its web-crawling robots had found in the course of one day in August - and divided up the sites based on their purpose and content. The results suggest that less than half of what goes on beyond the reach of search engines and traditional browsers is illegal.

The rest, it turns out, is legitimate, made up of dark-web mirrors of websites like Facebook and ProPublica, websites for companies and political parties, and forums for chatting about technology, games, privacy, or even erectile disfunction. In addition, as on the “clear” internet, a good chunk of the webpages Terbium studied hosted legal pornography: photos, videos, and written material, available for free or for sale. “Anonymity does not equate criminality, merely a desire for privacy,” wrote Clare Gollnick and Emily Wilson, the authors of the Terbium study. That’s not to say the slice of the dark web that the analysis looked at didn’t have its fair share of unsavory and illegal material. More than 15 percent of the sample was made up of sites selling drugs or pharmaceuticals; pages with content related to hacking, fraud, illegal porn, or terrorism turned up at least once. (A lot of these same categories of websites can be found on the clear web, too, hosted on sketchy domains or protected by passwords.) Terbium obtained the sample for the study with the same scanner that powers Matchlight, a service I’ve written about before that crawls shady forums and marketplaces on the dark web and the clear web in search of stolen sensitive or personal data.

“We’re trying to index what people don’t want indexed,” Danny Rogers, Terbium’s CEO, told me earlier this year. “There’s no desire to make things easy to find. Fundamentally, it’s a more hostile environment to crawl.”

That makes studying the dark web really difficult. Terbium’s researchers acknowledged that their study is limited by its scope and the decisions that human analysts made in categorizing the websites the crawler came across. To complicate matters further, the dark web is notoriously transient, with some sites disappearing after only hours. Just a week passed between the day Terbium took its dark-web snapshot and the day its analysts began categorizing the sites, but some amount of the 18 percent of non-functioning URLs the analysts found may have gone down even in that short a time. The Terbium study only examined the makeup of a small chunk of the dark web - not the traffic patterns that show where users actually tend to visit. A 2014 study determined that more than 80 percent of visits to the dark web were to child-porn sites.

But, as always, it’s hard to know just who those visitors were: That traffic could have come from bots, law-enforcement agencies investigating illegal porn sites, or even a cyber attack directed at the sites. What’s more, the hidden sites on the dark web like the ones Terbium studied probably only make up a tiny part of the internet as a whole. Estimates from Tor itself show that the number of hidden sites has hovered between 5,000 and 6,000 over the last year - and that only about 2 percent of traffic on the Tor network is visiting them. Most people who use Tor use it to browse the clear web while preserving their privacy and anonymity. The network allows users to visit a normal website without revealing the types of information that are often used to track people as they make their way across the internet. Tor’s privacy-preserving features can be particularly vital to journalists, human-rights advocates, or political dissidents operating in countries hostile to their work. Related: WWW Founder Tim Berners-Lee working On A New Decentralised Web

The Real Reason Why The UN Wants Control Over The Internet November 2 2016 | From: DeWeeseReport

By its very nature, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a nonprofit organization exclusively run by Technocrats.

As such, it is an apolitical body that is happy to serve whatever form of governance exists as long as funding is received and salaries are paid. To a Technocrat, a world run by science and technology is better than any other form of governance. Related: The UN Releases Plan to Push for Worldwide Internet Censorship That Technocrats have played a supporting role in world history is unquestioned. Scientists, engineers and technicians played a huge role in the Communist dictatorship in the former Soviet Union (For instance, see Science and the Soviet Social Order).

Related: Vampire Technocrats Fly To Jekyll Island To Stop Trump Technocrats likewise played a central role in support of Adolph Hitler and National Socialism (See Scientists, Engineers and National Socialism). In both cases, the Technocrat goal was not necessarily Communism or Nazism, but rather the methodical exercise of science according to its Scientific Method. In other words, the process was more important than the outcome – and in both cases, the outcome was not questioned or resisted, but simply accepted.

Reality Check: Obama Administration Has Handed Over The Internet to a Private Corporation

The reason that ICANN formerly served the interests of the United States was simply that it answered to our government’s judicial, legislative and executive branches. In other words, the U.S. held the umbrella over ICANN and that was enough to keep it working for our national interests and not for someone else’s interests. Obama changed that when he cut ICANN loose on September 30, 2016 by letting the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract expire without being renewed. After expiration, we forever lost the right to renew the contract again. So, ICANN is now a “free-agent” looking for shelter in the same way that a boll weevil looks for a cotton plant: it needs a host organization in order to practice its craft, and, I dare say, it doesn’t care one whit who that host is. What does ICANN do?

Click on the image above to open a larger version in a new window

It is no secret that the United Nations is making a play to become host to ICANN. In particular, the UN’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU), run by the Peoples Republic of China, is expected to play the central role in this effort. However, whether it is the ITU or some other UN agency is immaterial because it will still be the UN in the end. But, why the UN? Because it is the fountainhead of the plans and operations to establish Technocracy as the sole global economic system while destroying capitalism and free enterprise. Technocracy is the issue here. Others know it as Sustainable Development or Green Economy, but the correct historical term is Technocracy. In February 2015, the head of climate change at the UN, Christiana Figures, stated,

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” [emphasis added]

What is unclear about this? Sustainable Development, or Technocracy, is a resource-driven economic model regulated by energy rather than by supply and demand plus monetary currencies. In 1938, the original Technocrats defined Technocracy as

“The science of social engineering, the scientific operation of the entire social mechanism to produce and distribute goods and services to the entire population.”

To achieve its Utopia goals, the UN must have ICANN’s steering wheel and throttle. But while everyone is stressing over Internet censorship of web sites and the suppression of free speech, the real prize is completely overlooked: The Internet of Things (IoT).

In terms of “follow the money”, IoT is expected to generate upwards of $3 trillion by 2025 and is growing at a rate of at least 30 percent per year. In other words, it is a huge market and money is flying everywhere. If the UN can figure out a way to tax this market, and they will, it will provide a windfall of income and perhaps enough to make it self-perpetuating. Currently, the UN is financed by contributions from member states. But, what is the IoT and who cares? IoT are the connections between inanimate objects and the humans that depend upon them. The digital Smart Meter on your home communicates energy usage via WiFi to the utility company; but it also communicates with the major appliances in your home and can even control them remotely without your consent or knowledge.

The smart phone that you carry communicates with cell towers and localized signal receptors to create a map of your every movement. Smart home technology lets your stereo send sound to remote wireless speakers and to light bulbs equipped with sensors. The security camera that you installed to watch your home while you were on vacation can communicate with other cameras, microphones, the police department, etc. Examples go on and on. ICANN issues the so-called IP addresses that are assigned to all these devices on a global basis. The original addressing scheme, IPV4, was based on four blocks of up to three digits each, punctuated with a period (e.g., 192.168.2.14). This scheme allows for a discrete address for up to 16.8 million devices.

A few years ago, IPV4 ran out of numbers, forcing Internet service providers, corporations and other organizations to improvise internal numbering systems, known as ‘proxy servers’, to issue safe addresses to devices within their own domain. These systems are not only fragile, but they are bloated beyond reason and generally easy to hack. To fix this, ICANN devised a new IP numbering system called IPV6, which adds two more blocks of numbers (e.g., 192.168.2.14.231.58). This scheme provides for 3.4×1038 addresses, or 340 trillion, 282 billion, 366 million, 920 thousand, 938 - followed by 24 zeroes. There is probably a way to say this number, but I cannot imagine what it would be. It’s somewhere beyond a trillion trillion unique numbers for every human being on earth! Thus, IPV6 provides a way to assign a unique and directly addressable number to every electronic device on earth… for centuries to come.

As IPV6 rolls out to the world, the modified mission for ICANN will be to inventory and categorize the device attached to each IP address. For instance, all the air conditioners in the world would be directly addressable from a single list. Likewise for all computers, all automobiles, all cameras, all phones, all refrigerators, all articles of clothing, etc. Whoever has control over and access to this data will literally be able to control the entire world, down to the last minutiae – and that is the United Nations’ exact mission: inventory, monitor and control. But, this concept was set in history long before the technology existed. The original bible of Technocracy, the Technocracy Study Course (1934), laid out the hard requirements necessary for its implementation:

1. “Register on a continuous 24 hour-per-day basis the total net conversion of energy. 2. “By means of the registration of energy converted and consumed, make possible a balanced load. 3. “Provide a continuous inventory of all production and consumption 4. “Provide a specific registration of the type, kind, etc., of all goods and services, where produced and where used 5. “Provide specific registration of the consumption of each individual, plus a record and description of the individual.” - Scott, Howard et al, Technocracy Study Course, p. 232

As I thoroughly documented in my book, Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation, the United Nations is indeed the engine of modern Technocracy and as such, it is acting in a perfectly predictable manner.

Related: Technocracy: A Scientific Dictatorship It seeks to establish a global Scientific Dictatorship where it controls all resources, all production and limits all consumption to its own liking. These Technocrats will dutifully apply their pseudo-scientific methodology to every problem in the world, and simply issue instructions to the net to ‘make it so.’ Yes, free speech will decrease and censorship will increase, but that pales in comparison to the real prize of the IoT that the United Nations desperately wants and needs in order to accomplish its own twisted goals. Congress never understood this when they passively let Obama fail to renew our contract with ICANN. However, Obama and his globalist handlers understood it perfectly well, which makes the deception and treachery of it even worse. Thanks to this scurrilous bunch, the world has just been sold into digital slavery, from which there may be no return. Related: Warning: Don’t Share This Article, Facebook Might Ban You!

GCHQ Hired New Zealand Firm For Mass Hack Capabilities - Snowden Leak October 29 2016 | From: Sott

Documents obtained by the Intercept show UK spies got the NZ-based firm Endace to create data capture technology that scooped up information.

The CEO of Endace, which was founded in 2001 as an outgrowth of an academic project, was recently bought and then cut loose by the US company Emulex. Related: Endace Bid Bad News: Founder At the time of its return to independent status, CEO Stuart Wilson said;

"Operating as an independent company again allows us to continue to deliver innovative solutions to our customers under the Endace brand they've known and trusted for more than 15 years."

The firm boasts it can provide:

"100 percent accurate network recording, any speed, any network and works with the world's top 10 telecommunications giants and a number of leading US defense departments among others."

The revelations include confirmation that Endace is bound by the UK's Official Secrets Act, which prevents any disclosure of its work for the British authorities. A cache of leaked documents seen by the Intercept, which conducted an investigation alongside Television New Zealand, are said to detail "the firm's key role helping governments across the world harvest vast amounts of information on people's private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories."

The Intercept says the leaks highlight "the vital role played by the private sector in enabling the spying." The Auckland-based firm operates under the motto "power to see all" and uses an eye as its emblem. Endace maintains it contributes to New Zealand's export market and helps clients fighting terrorism, crime and statesponsored cyber warfare.

Private Eyes - Obscure Company Enabling Worldwide Mass Surveillance It was a powerful piece of technology created for an important customer. The Medusa system, named after the mythical Greek monster with snakes instead of hair, had one main purpose: to vacuum up vast quantities of internet data at an astonishing speed.

The technology was designed by Endace, a little-known New Zealand company. And the important customer was the British electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. Related: Private Eyes Dozens of internal documents and emails from Endace, obtained by The Intercept and reported in cooperation with Television New Zealand, reveal the firm's key role helping governments across the world harvest vast amounts of information on people's private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories. The leaked files, which were provided by a source through SecureDrop, show that Endace listed a Moroccan security agency implicated in torture as one of its customers. They also indicate that the company sold its surveillance gear to more than half a dozen other government agencies, including in the United States, Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain, and India. Some of Endace's largest sales in recent years, however, were to the United Kingdom's GCHQ, which purchased a variety of "data acquisition" systems and "probes" that it used to covertly monitor internet traffic.

Documents from the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, previously disclosed by The Intercept, have shown how GCHQ dramatically expanded its online surveillance between 2009 and 2012. The newly obtained Endace documents add to those revelations, shining light for the first time on the vital role played by the private sector in enabling the spying. Stuart Wilson, Endace's CEO, declined to answer questions for this story. Wilson said in a statement that Endace's technology:

"Generates significant export revenue for New Zealand and builds important technical capability for our country." He added: "Our commercial technology is used by customers worldwide ... who rely on network recording to protect their critical infrastructure and data from cybercriminals, terrorists, and state-sponsored cybersecurity threats." Endace says it manufactures technology that allows its clients to "monitor, intercept and capture 100% of traffic on networks." The Auckland-based company's motto is "power to see all" and its logo is an eye.

The company's origins can be traced back to Waikato University in Hamilton, New Zealand. There, in 1994, a team of professors and researchers began developing network monitoring technology using university resources. A central aim of the project was to find ways to measure different kinds of data on the internet, which was at that time only just beginning to take off. Within a few years, the academics' efforts proved successful; they had managed to invent pioneering network monitoring tools. By 2001, the group behind the research started commercializing the technology - and Endace was formed. Today, Endace presents itself publicly as focused on providing technology that helps companies and governments keep their networks secure. But in the past decade, it has quietly entered into a burgeoning global spy industry that is worth in excess of an estimated $5 billion annually.

In 2007, Endace representatives promoted their technology at a huge surveillance technology trade show in Dubai that was attended by dozens of government agencies from across the world. Endace's advertising brochures from the show, which described the company's products and promoted the need for greater state surveillance, were published by WikiLeaks in 2013. One Endace brochure explained how the company's technology could help clients:

"Monitor all network traffic inexpensively." It noted that telecommunications networks carry many types of information: Skype calls, videos, emails, and instant message chats. "These networks provide rich intelligence for law enforcement," the brochure stated, "IF they can be accessed securely and with high precision."

The United Kingdom's geographic location - situated between North America, mainland Europe, and the Middle East - made it a good market for Endace. Many major international undersea data cables cross British territory, and according to top-secret documents from Snowden, as much as 25 percent of all the world's internet traffic flows through the U.K.

The country's spies have worked to exploit this, with GCHQ tapping into as many of the cables as it can, sifting through huge volumes of emails, instant messages, social media interactions, and web browsing records as they are being transmitted across the internet. As of 2009, GCHQ's surveillance of undersea cables was well underway. The agency was measuring the amount of traffic it monitored in tens of gigabits per second (10Gs) - the equivalent in data of about 1 million average-sized emails every minute. The electronic eavesdropping agency was tapping into 87 different 10Gs capacity cables and funneling the collected data into its processing systems for analysis.

By March 2011, GCHQ's aim was to tap into 415 of the 10Gs cables, and its longer-term goal was to "grow our internet access to 800 10Gs." The agency wanted to build what it described as the largest covert surveillance apparatus in the world. And in an effort to fulfill that plan, it turned to Endace's technology. Leaked documents and emails from Endace, obtained by The Intercept, lay out a series of deals the company made with GCHQ to help it broaden its mass surveillance capabilities. A confidential February 2010 Endace statement of work for GCHQ, for instance, outlined a £245,000 ($299,500) deal to upgrade "monitoring solutions" for the British agency that were designed to intercept large amounts of internet traffic and send it into "memory holes" - repositories used to store the data. Between November 2010 and March 2011, GCHQ purchased more technology from Endace, including specialized surveillance technology built for "FGA only," a code name the company often uses in its internal documents to refer to GCHQ; it stands for "friendly government agency."

A November 2010 company document said that "FGA" had an order of 20 systems scheduled for delivery in March 2011. Each system was equipped with two "data acquisition" cards capable of intercepting 20Gs of internet traffic. The total capacity of the order would enable GCHQ to monitor a massive amount of data - the equivalent of being able to download 3,750 high-definition movies every minute, or 2.5 billion average-sized emails an hour. Endace added in the document that "a potential for 300-500 systems over the next two to three years is being discussed" and noted that it was soon anticipating another order of "30-40 additional systems." Indeed, the following month a new $167,940 purchase order for 27 more systems arrived, and the items were swiftly dispatched for delivery to GCHQ's headquarters in Cheltenham, England. The records of the Endace sales are confirmed by internal GCHQ documents, provided by Snowden, which describe the company's data capture devices being used as part of mass surveillance programs. GCHQ documents from 2010 and 2011 repeatedly mention the Endace products while discussing the capture of "internetderived" data to extract information about people's usage of services such as Gmail, Hotmail, WhatsApp, and Facebook.

GCHQ declined to comment for this story. Throughout the summer of 2011, at Endace's offices in Auckland, New Zealand, the orders from GCHQ were continuing to flow in. Meanwhile, the company's engineers were busy turning their sights to new technology that could vastly increase surveillance capability. Endace was developing a powerful new product for GCHQ called Medusa: interception equipment that could capture internet traffic at up to 100 gigabits per second. Medusa was first logged in Endace's sales systems in September 2011. Endace staff produced weekly status reports about their progress and updated GCHQ at biweekly review meetings. By November 18, 2011, the first version of Medusa arrived at GCHQ. "FGA are very pleased with the prototypes we delivered last week," Endace noted. Apparently after testing the Medusa prototype, GCHQ requested some refinements. One feature the agency wanted was called "Separate MAC insertion by IP type." This suggests the British agency may have sought the ability to target individuals by searching internet traffic for the built-in hardware address of their computers, routers, or phones.

Notably, the Medusa status reports reveal that Endace was using taxpayers' money to develop the new equipment for GCHQ. They state that the Medusa system was being built for "FGA" with funding from the Foundation of Research Science and Technology, the body that handed out New Zealand government research grants. In 2010, Endace received two grants totaling $11.1 million. A public announcement for the first grant - issued in July 2010 said the funding was for "50% of the cost of a series of substantial product developments over the next two years," but did not say what the products were nor who they were for. A New Zealand government spokesperson told The Intercept that he could not immediately give a "definitive" answer on whether the funding body had known Endace would use the grants to develop surveillance technology for GCHQ, but said it was:

"Highly unlikely Endace would have provided that information, as they were under no obligation to do so."

Endace has never publicly disclosed any of its work with GCHQ, likely because it is subject to strict confidentiality agreements.

In one contract obtained by The Intercept, GCHQ states that Endace staff are bound to the U.K.'s Official Secrets Act, a sweeping law that can be used to prosecute and imprison people who disclose classified information. GCHQ warned Endace that it must not "make any press announcements or publicize the contract or any part thereof in any way." Endace leaked client lists show three main categories of customers: governments, telecommunications companies, and finance companies. The government clients appear to be mostly intelligence agencies. A 2008 Endace customer list included: GCHQ; the Canadian and Australian defense departments (where their electronic spy agencies are located); a U.S. government contractor called Rep-Tron Systems Group, located in Baltimore, Maryland; and Morocco's domestic surveillance agency, the DGST.

Other Endace customer lists contained in the leaked trove include the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, called SPAWAR; the Israeli Ministry of Defense (home of its Unit 8200 electronic spy agency); the government of India, the Spanish Ministry of Defense; and Denmark's Defense Intelligence Service. Endace's apparent dealings with the Moroccan agency, the DGST, are particularly controversial. Moroccan authorities have been persistently accused over more than five decades of committing a range of severe human rights abuses. Amnesty International, in a 2015 report, specifically singled out the DGST agency as a key perpetrator of recent abuses, accusing it of detaining people incommunicado and using brutal torture methods that included beatings, electric shocks, sexual violence, simulated drowning, drugging, mock executions, and food and sleep deprivation. Sirine Rached, Amnesty's North Africa researcher, told The Intercept that sales of surveillance technology to Morocco raised major concerns.

"In Morocco, digital surveillance is intimately linked with repression of peaceful dissent - people who are peacefully protesting or criticizing the authorities face intimidation, arrest, unfair trials, and sometimes imprisonment," said Rached. "We fear that the more that these surveillance tools are sold [to Moroccan agencies], the more we will see human rights abuses, especially in relation to freedom of expression and information."

Endace declined to comment on its dealings with Morocco. Stuart Wilson, Endace's CEO, claimed in a statement that he had to keep details about the company's customers confidential in order to help them "battle cyberthreats and breaches."

Alongside its government clients, Endace has many major corporate customers. Endace's sales lists include finance industry giants such as Morgan Stanley, Reuters, and Bank of America. Endace's website says it provides financial companies with its monitoring technology to help "high-frequency traders to monitor, measure, and analyze critical network environments."

In addition, Endace sells its equipment to some of the world's largest telecommunications companies, among them AT&T, AOL, Verizon, Sprint, Cogent Communications, Telstra, Belgacom, Swisscom, Deutsche Telekom, Telena Italy, Vastech South Africa, and France Telecom. Some of these companies may use the Endace equipment for checking the security of their networks. But a key strand of Endace's business involves providing technology for telecommunications firms that enables law enforcement and intelligence agencies to intercept the messages and data of phone and internet users. A company product strategy document from 2010 said that Endace had "seen early success" providing a Lawful Intercept product to the major U.S. telco and internet company Sprint Corporation. All telcos and internet companies in the U.S., Europe, New Zealand, and a number of other countries are required by law to have "intercept capable" equipment on their networks. When police or spy agencies want private data about a customer (with or without a warrant, depending on the country), it can be extracted easily.

When installed on a network, Endace's surveillance equipment can be used to perform targeted monitoring of individual people, but it can also be used to enable dragnet spying. In one of the leaked Endace documents obtained by The Intercept - under a section titled "customer user stories" - the company describes a situation in which a government agency has obtained "the encryption keys for a well-known program." An Endace surveillance "probe," the document suggests, could help the government agency "unencrypt all packets sent by this program on a large network in the last 24 hours." Once the data has been decrypted, the agency will be able to "look for the text string 'Domino's Pizza,'" Endace joked, "as they have information suggesting this is the favorite pizza of international terrorists."

Hackers Cripple US Internet In Wide-Scale Cyber Attack: Possible Internet "Killswitch" Test For Staged Cyberwar Or US Election False Flag Event October 24 2016 | From: Aljazeera / Various

WikiLeaks implied its supporters may be behind the attack and asked them to "stop taking down the US internet".

Several of the world's best-known websites were inaccessible across parts of the United States on Friday after hackers unleashed a series of attacks on a company that acts as a switchboard for the internet. Related: Massive Cyber Attack a Dress-Rehearsal for the US Election? The attacks affected access to Twitter, Paypal, Spotify and other customers of the infrastructure company in New Hampshire called Dyn, which processes large volumes of internet traffic.

"The attacks came in waves," Al Jazeera's Rob Reynolds, reporting from Los Angeles, said. "First targeting the East Coast of the United States, spreading then to the other parts of the country and even to Western Europe." "The websites that were disrupted were some of the top names in the internet: CNN and the New York Times, AirBnB, Reddit, HBO ... a whole variety of sites were attacked." "Dyn is kind of a middle man that directs users to different websites and routes traffic from server to server in a complex way," said Reynolds.

The attackers used hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices that had previously been infected with a malicious code that allowed them to cause outages.

October 16 2016: U.S. To Use Internet ‘Kill Switch’ By November In Cyberwar With Russia 'The US government is preparing to activate an “internet kill switch” according to cyber security experts, and the groundwork has been laid to blame the unprecedented act on Russia.' October 21 2016:

Someone Attacked America’s Internet Twitter, Reddit and Spotify were collateral damage in a major online assault This article discusses the national Standard Operating Procedure 303 that enables the shut-down of all Internet and cellular devices. It also discusses the new Executive Order on Space Weather events. We have two separate issues here: First, the government is terrified of a public that is able to record and share information in real time. This makes it difficult for the government to continue with its massive campaign of lies. The Facebook censoring of all statements that connect Hillary Clinton to her many crimes is emblematic of what the government wants to do across the board - mind control and the end of freedom of speech are part of the Obama-Clinton-SorosZuckerberg agenda. Second, the government has a legitimate need to be able to shut down all electrical systems when a solar storm is about to hit, by shutting them down these systems avoid being “fried” and weather the storm, they can be turned on again once the storm passes, as if nothing had happened. The two should not be confused. The false accusations against the Russians are a US Government “PSYOP” against the American public, a last desperate attempt to distract the public from the very real multi-billion dollar charity fraud and influence pedding crimes of Bill and Chelsea and Hillary Clinton, with Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey fully complicit in all those crimes.

This type of attack is known as a distributed denial of service attack [DDoS]. They used affected computers to fire requests at the servers of Dyn simultaneously and essentially overwhelm it.

"The complexity of the attacks is what's making it very challenging for us." Dyn's chief strategy officer, Kyle York, told Reuters news agency.

Operation of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack:

Related: This Is Why Half the Internet Shut Down York said that at least some of the malicious traffic was coming from connected devices, including webcams and digital video recorders, that had been infected with control software named Mirai. Security researchers have previously raised concerns that such connected devices, sometimes referred to as the Internet of Things, lack proper security. The Mirai code was dumped on the internet about a month ago, and criminal groups are now charging to employ it in cyber attacks, said Allison Nixon, director of security research at Flashpoint, which was helping Dyn analyse the attack. The Department of Homeland Security last week issued a warning about attacks from the Internet of Things, following the release of the code for Mirai.

'Attacks Continue' On Friday, Dyn said in a statement that it had resolved one morning attack, which disrupted operations for about two hours, but disclosed a second a few hours later that was causing further disruptions. By Friday evening, it was fighting a third.

"The company fought back and was able to get things under control again," our correspondent said. "But there were additional waves of attack. So this seems to be an ongoing situation."

Attacking a large domain name service provider like Dyn can create massive disruptions because such firms are responsible for forwarding large volumes of internet traffic. The disruptions come at a time of unprecedented fears about cyber threats in the US, where hackers have breached political organisations and election agencies. The US government has formally accused Russia of conducting cyber attacks against US political organisations during the campaign for the November 8 presidential election, including hacking of Democratic Party emails. The US Department of Homeland Security and the FBI said they were investigating the attack on Dyn.

"We still don't know who is responsible for this attack," Reynolds said. "But it certainly seems to be an attack that took coordination and possibly a lot of resources. So this is not some teenaged kid in a basement somewhere hacking for fun." "The purpose behind their attack is also very vague since nothing was stolen. It was just disruptive, so some people are theorising that someone is trying to figure out how to shut down the internet."

WikiLeaks, a whistle blowing organisation that has been publishing hacked emails that allegedly belong to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, implied in a tweet that its supporters may be behind the attack and asked them to "stop taking down the US internet".

WikiLeaks has recently said that founder Julian Assange's internet access has been cut by an unidentified state actor. Ecuador's government later admitted that it had partly restricted internet access for Assange, who has lived in the South American country's UK embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden since mid-2012. WikiLeaks' decision to publish documents affecting the US election was entirely its own responsibility, and the country did not want to meddle in election processes or favour any candidate, Ecuador said. Related: Ecuador Admits They Silenced Assange Because Clinton Leaks Were “Interfering” With US Election

Submission On The NZ Intelligence And Security Bill October 22 2016 | From: KeithLocke

The NZ Intelligence and Security Bill unnecessarily allows for greater surveillance of New Zealanders by our intelligence services and intrudes further on our privacy.

The definition of national security is so broad that it could enable even more surveillance of legitimate political dissenters by the intelligence services than has happened to date. Related: New Zealand Intelligence And Security Bill The Bill should not be proceeded with.

Threats Faced by New Zealand Any discussion of whether the intelligence services should be granted extra powers should begin with a discussion of the threats facing New Zealand. The fact is that we are a remarkably peaceful people. In the last 100 years there is not one proven case of politically motivated act by a New Zealander causing death. [My only qualification is that the Wellington Trades Hall bombing in 1984, which resulted in one death, may have been politically motivated.]

Related: New Zealand Prime Minister Uses Bogus Islamic State Threat As Excuse To Ramp Up National Security And Surveillance The only proven terrorist act was committed by non-New Zealanders, namely the French agents who bombed the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985, killing a Portuguese photographer. Non-state terrorism has proven to be a problem in some Western countries, especially those, unlike New Zealand, that are heavily involved in foreign wars, or have a socio-economically marginalised Muslim population, or have a body politic significantly prejudiced against Muslim people. There is no global terrorist threat. The majority of nations are not threatened by non-state terrorism. Of course, there is always the possibility of a politically motivated violent act, causing death, taking place on New Zealand soil, but it would be an exceptional event. It would not, by itself, justify enlarging the present powers of New Zealand’s intelligence services.

The Bill Massively Increases the Collection of Personal Information on New Zealanders There are several reasons why granting the GCSB power to spy on New Zealanders will result in a much greater intrusion on the privacy of New Zealanders. Firstly, the GCSB’s intelligence collection is less targeted than that traditionally carried out by the Security Intelligence Service. We already know that the GCSB collects bulk information on satellite communications accessed by at its Waihopai spy station (which is part of the Five Eyes network).

Related: The [Cabal Controlled] American Empire Is A Threat To Every Nation’s Security

There is nothing in the proposed legislation stopping this from continuing. Nor will anything in the Bill prevent the international communications of New Zealanders being drawn down into the satellite dishes at Waihopai to be stored and later analysed, because such communications don’t identify NZ citizenship. We know from the Snowden documents that the whole direction of the Five Eyes network (including the GCSB) is to collect, store and share with each other as much raw communications and social media data as is technically possible - on the basis that some of it may later be useful. The all-inclusive definition of “information infrastructure” in Clause 4 covers any electronic communication, and Clause 66 allows the GCSB access to any such transmitted or stored communication. There are no clear limits to what can be collected and through what means. Secondly, because the GCSB shares a mass of its raw data with its four Five Eyes partners [loosely provided for under Clause 13], the result of this sharing will be a greater intrusion into the privacy of New Zealanders, as well as its misuse against New Zealanders.

We know from the Snowden papers that the data collected by the Five Eyes is mainly used to spy on other governments or political dissenters, for political ends which are often contestable. For example, the GCSB’s proven spying on, Roberto Azevedo, the (successful) Brazilian candidate for WTO directorgeneral, was aimed at giving New Zealander Tim Groser the edge in the contest. Related: No Public Accountability For The GCSB, Prime Minister Goes Back On His Word + Documents Shine Light On Shadowy New Zealand Surveillance Base This was spying to advance the government’s neo-liberal trade and investment agenda, personified by former Trade Minister Groser, an agenda which is contested by other New Zealand political parties. Thirdly, we also know from the Snowden papers that Five Eyes partners are providing intercept information about New Zealanders. In 2012 Tony Fullman, a New Zealand citizen, had his house raided on the basis of information passed on to the GCSB by the US National Security Agency. His “crime” was to be a peaceful advocate of democracy in Fiji. Related: The Raid: In Bungled Spying Operation, NSA, GCSB & SIS Targeted Pro-Democracy Campaigner

Analysis of the Snowden papers showed he was one several Fiji pro-democracy activists who had their Gmails and Facebook posts monitored by the NSA. Fourthly, the warrant system contained in the Bill will not prevent information on many law-abiding New Zealanders being taken from the mass of intercept data collected by the GCSB and Five Eyes. The warrants can be very broad in their catchment.

Related: "Smart City" Is Really Government Spying On An Unimaginable Scale They can be for a “class of persons” (Clause 61), or they can be what are called “purpose-based warrants” (Clause 64). Either way such warrants can cover a lot of people, such as those New Zealanders attending a mosque or group of mosques, or all those New Zealanders travelling to certain countries. Fifthly, GCSB can pass on to other agencies for analysis anything from its mountain of electronic intelligence data. All it has to do is define that information as “incidentally-obtained intelligence” under Clause 91. Remember such intelligence doesn’t need to have anything to do with real or potential criminal activity. All that is required is that there is believed to be a “potential threat” to New Zealand’s “security” as determined by the agencies. Under Clause 91 information “incidentally obtained” on legitimate political dissenters could be kept or passed on.

Using Intelligence Information Against Legitimate Dissenters There is an inherent contradiction in the legislation. Clause 22 says that collecting intelligence is not justified when it is infringing “the right of persons to engage in lawful advocacy, protest, or dissent in respect of any matter.”

However, this can be overridden when “national security”is deemed at risk. As defined in Clause 5 “national security” can include any activity, even if it is not criminal activity, which affects New Zealand’s “status as a free and democratic society” or threatens “international security” or “the quality of life of the New Zealand population” or represents “acts of foreign interference, that may cause serious damage to New Zealand’s economic security or international relations.”

What this means is that the intelligence services are authorised to act in secret to monitor and help counter perfectly legal activity if those agencies define it as contrary to “national security”, whether that activity is carried out by New Zealanders or non-New Zealanders. All of the types of legal political activity targeted under the “national security” label are politically contestable. For example, dissenters in New Zealand believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement threatens our “national security” in that the agreement threatens our “status as a free and democratic society” and our “quality of life” and could, by increasing global inequality, threaten “international security”.

Related: The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You A Terrorist The present New Zealand government believes the opposite, that the anti-TPPA dissenters threaten “national security”, and under this Bill could use the intelligence services to monitor those dissenters. New Zealand anti-TPPA dissenters believe it is perfectly proper, under our Bill of Rights, to coordinate campaigning against the TPPA with international NGOS (eg. Greenpeace and Oxfam) or other governments without these foreign NGOs or governments being spied on for committing “acts of foreign interference that may cause serious damage to New Zealand’s economic security or international relations.” New Zealand should champion a free global debate among people, organisations and nations over free trade and investment pacts, without any involvement of security services. Unfortunately, that is not the case, as we have seen in the Groser/WTO case and in the NSA’s spying on European governments during trade negotiations, as disclosed in the Snowden documents. Related: NZ Government Accused of Spying on WTO Top Job Candidates

GCSB spying on Pacific Governments Unjustified and Contrary to our Interests The GCSB electronic spying on Pacific Island governments, exposed in Snowden papers and rightly criticised by several Pacific leaders, is an unjustified and illegal breach of their right to privacy. It negatively affecting our relations with these states, none of whom are conducting electronic spying on us.

Spy agencies focus on political critics of the NZ government, not those engaged in illegal activity. The fundamental problem is that the SIS and GCSB are primarily agencies for political spying on legal activity. While part of the Bill’s definition of “national security” [Clause 5] covers “unlawful acts” (ie: those which have a political motive), in practice the agency does little in this area, for two reasons. The first, which I aludded to earlier, is that in recent years there have been not been politically motivated criminal acts of any consequence. Secondly, we already have an institution, the Police, which is dedicated to detecting and prosecuting politically motivated illegal acts – such as the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, or the securing of fraudulent New Zealand passports by Mossad agents in 2004. A perusal of those personal SIS files that have been released proves that the overwhelming bulk of the agencies work has been directed against perfectly legal dissent. This is likely to continue under the terms of this Bill. My own SIS file, which covers 51 years of my life, records only my legal political activities as a dissenter. I have no criminal record.

Oversight Mechanisms Inadequate There has been some improvement in oversight mechanisms, but they are still inadequate. While more people from outside the service will be involved in granting surveillance warrants this won’t act as much of a check if those people accept the Bill’s ethos that political spying to advance a government’s political agenda is ok. The Intelligence and Security Committee in the Parliament will remain relatively toothless.

Related: The Entire “War On Terror” Has Been A Lie – And These Charts Prove It The GCSB and SIS Directors can still block information going to the Committee by defining it as “sensitive” (Clause 163). It is good, however, that the Inspector-General will now have access to all security information (Clause 142). Much will now depend on the quality of the Inspector-General as a check on abuses in the system, and as someone who can listen to whistleblowers. However, in relation to whistleblowers, I strongly oppose new provision 78AA (Clause 207) providing for 5 years in prison for those who disclose anything “classified”.

Related: CFR’s RAND Corporation: Terror From “Everywhere” Requires More Surveillance Whistleblowing is sometimes the only way to expose wrongdoing in public institutions and the SIS and GCSB are not exceptions. Particularly worrying is the potential for journalists to be penalised (under 78AA 2 (b) (ii)) for publishing classified material that exposes wrongdoing.

An Independent Cybersecurity Agency Needed The GCSB currently has one useful responsibility, cybersecurity [see Clause 15], but this function should be devolved to a new independent government cybersecurity agency, which involves and coordinates its work with the Police and other relevant agencies.

Related: The Corporate US Government Are The Terrorists - The Islamic State Is A Big Lie The GCSB, tasked with breaking in to computers and creating back door entry in to communications devices, is not the best agency to protect our IT systems.

Recommendations I ask the Select Committee be bold and challenge the need for the SIS and the GCSB, given that our Police force is perfectly adequate to deal with politically motivated criminal behavior, and we don’t need a state agency to monitor our noncriminal political behavior. The GCSB’s cybersecurity function should be devolved to a new independent agency. I recommend the Select Committee not proceed with this Bill in its present form. Overall it puts New Zealanders in a worse situation than in already existing legislation, in relation to both their personal privacy and their right to untrammeled freedom of expression.

Related: Not Just Surveillance: 3 Current Phenomena Exposing 1984 As An Instruction Manual For The State However, given the Bill is likely to have the numbers to proceed I do support the deletion (or amendment) of any Clauses which extend the scope of GCSB and SIS spying on non-criminal political activity. I have already mentioned the problems with Clauses 4, 5, 13, 15, 61, 64, 66, 91, 163 and 207. Conversely, I support all measures in the Bill which may improve, even if marginally, the accountability of SIS and GCSB operatives. I have

mentioned, for example, Clause 142 which I support because it removes the existing restraint on the Inspector-General accessing all security information. Related: Washington Admits, ‘War On Terror’ Is Designed To Be Permanent State of War

Dear Clinton Team: We Noticed You Might Need Some Email Security Tips October 20 2016 | From: TheIntercept

There is probably no one more acutely aware of the importance of good cybersecurity right now than Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails have been laid bare by WikiLeaks, are being mined for news by journalists (including at The Intercept), and are available for anyone with internet access to read.

So as a public service to Podesta and everyone else on Clinton’s staff, here are some email security tips that could have saved you from getting hacked, and might help you in the future.

Use a Strong Password There’s a method for coming up with passwords that are mathematically unfeasible for anyone to ever guess by brute force, but that are still possible for you to memorize. I’ve written about it before, in detail, including an explanation of the math behind it. But in short: You start with a long list of words and then randomly select one (by rolling dice), then another, and so on, until you end up with something like: “slinging gusty bunny chill gift.”

Using this method, called Diceware, there is a one in 28 quintillion (that is, 28 with 18 zeros at the end) chance of guessing this exact password. For online services that prevent attackers from making very many guesses - including Gmail - a five-word Diceware password is much stronger than you’ll ever need. To make it super easy, use this wordlist from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Do Not Use a Weak Password

So if that’s a strong password, what does a weak password look like? “Runner4567.”

Use a Unique Password for Each Application The same day that WikiLeaks published Podesta’s email, his Twitter account got hacked as well. How do you think that happened? I have a guess: He reused a password that was exposed in his email, and someone tried it on his Twitter account. Even if you use a strong password, it quickly becomes worthless if you use it everywhere. The average person has accounts on dozens of websites. For those who reuse passwords, all it takes is for any one of those sites to get hacked and your password to get compromised, and the hacker can gain access to your accounts on all of them.

You can avoid this by using different strong passwords for every account. The only way this is possible is by using a password manager, a program that remembers all your passwords for you (in an encrypted database) so you don’t have to. You should secure your password manager with an especially strong password. I recommend a seven-word Diceware passphrase. There are many password managers to choose from: KeePassX, LastPass, 1Password, and more. Shop around for whichever one fits your organization the best. It doesn’t so much matter which you use, so long as you use strong, unique passwords for each account. Password managers also help you generate secure random passwords.

Turn on Two-Factor Authentication Last year, when I asked National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden what ordinary people could do to improve their computer security, one of the first pieces of advice he gave was to use two-factor authentication. If Podesta had enabled it on his Gmail account, you probably wouldn’t be reading his email today. Google calls it “2-Step Verification” and has an excellent website explaining why you need it, how it works, and how it protects you.

Comment: Of course in reality you do not want to be using ANYTHING Google makes. It really is the fox guarding the hen house. Related: How The CIA Made Google In short: When you log in to your account, after you type in your password you’ll need one more piece of information before Google will allow you to proceed. Depending on how you set it up you might receive this uniquely generated information in a text message, a voice call, or a mobile app, or you could plug in a special security key into your USB port. Once you start using it, hackers who manage to trick you into giving up your password still won’t be able to log in to your account - at least not without successfully executing a separate attack against your phone or physically stealing your security key.

Do it Right this Second Google handles all of the email for hillaryclinton.com. If you’re a Clinton staffer, you should immediately stop what you’re doing and make sure you’ve enabled 2-Step Verification for your email. You should also enable two-factor authentication for all of the many other services that support it, including Twitter, Facebook, Slack, and Dropbox, to name just a few. (If Podesta had enabled it on his Twitter account, that probably wouldn’t have gotten hacked either.)

Watch Out for Phishers How did these prominent political figures get their emails hacked in the first place? It appears that Russian hackers used “spear-phishing” attacks against many high-profile political targets, and some of them bit.

Spear-phishing works like this: The attacker sends a target a carefully crafted email, something that looks legitimate but is actually a fake. The target clicks a link in the email and ends up at what looks like a login page for their bank, or an online store, or, in this case, the Google login page. But it’s not. If they carefully examined the URL of the website, they would see that it doesn’t begin with https://accounts.google.com/ and therefore isn’t a real Google login page.

But they don’t notice, so they go ahead and enter their username and password. Without realizing it, they just gave their Google password to the attacker. Now the attacker can use this password to log in to the target’s Gmail account and download all of their email (assuming they are not using two-factor authentication, that is). Well-crafted spear-phishing emails can be incredibly hard to spot, but if you ever end up on a website asking you for a password, you should be skeptical. Check the URL and make sure you’re at a legitimate login page before typing in your password, or navigate to the login page directly.

Encrypt Your Email All of the previous tips are aimed at keeping your email account secure. But even if you follow all of the security best practices, it’s still possible that your email could get compromised.

For example: You could fall for an incredibly sophisticated spear-phishing attack that tricks you into giving up your password as well as your two-factor authentication token Your Google Apps administrator could get hacked, giving the hacker the ability to reset the email passwords of everyone in your organization A hacker could find a fundamental security flaw in Gmail itself and use that to gain access to your account A state-level actor could find a way to exploit the infrastructure of the internet to spy on all of your data held by Google

Or maybe you just don’t trust Google, or anyone who can compel the company with legal requests for data, with the contents of your email.

For any or all of those reasons, it’s probably worth using encrypted email. Using encrypted email is more complicated than using a strong password and using two-factor authentication - which are really easy - but it’s simple enough that everyone at The Intercept, including all of the non-nerds, uses it. An important caveat is that everyone needs to be ready to use encrypted email before you can start using; you can’t send an encrypted email to someone who doesn’t have an encryption key yet. (You can find our encryption keys on our staff profiles if you want to send us encrypted emails.) To get started, check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense guide for using email encryption for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If enough people in your organization use encrypted email, consider using our newly released tool GPG Sync to make it somewhat simpler.

Had Podesta, or anyone in the Democratic National Committee - or really anyone who’s had their email leaked in recent years - used encrypted email, a lot more of the emails would look something like this: If a hacker steals all of your encrypted email and then wants to decrypt it, they’ll need to hack into your computer and steal your secret encryption key. That is a whole level of difficulty higher than just getting your password. If you choose to keep your secret encryption key on a physical USB device, such as a Yubikey, the hacker has even more hoops to jump through before they have any hope of decrypting your emails.

Alternately, Use an Encrypted Messaging App Instead of Email

If encrypting your email sounds too hard, it might make sense to just use email less, in favor of easy-to-use encrypted message apps such as Signal. The Clinton campaign is reportedly already using Signal for its mobile communications about Donald Trump. Now the iPhone version of the app has desktop support, too. So if you need to send a quick, but sensitive, message to a colleague, why not type it into the Signal app instead of sending an email?

Don’t Listen to the Wrong People Hillary Clinton’s policy on encryption is dubious, even to the point of calling for the government to commission a “Manhattanlike project” to figure out how to create strong, unbreakable encryption that nevertheless has a back door for law enforcement to access. This idea is firmly in the realm of fantasy, because a back door is definitionally a weakness. And no matter what U.S. policy is in the future, the email encryption I described above will not contain a backdoor and will be available to everyone in the world, because it’s open source software developed largely outside of the United States.

The obvious conclusion is that Clinton simply doesn’t understand cybersecurity, in theory or in practice. On the practical level, she needs better in-house technical expertise. On the theoretical level, she should listen to the unanimous consensus of cryptography experts and take a firm stance in support of strong encryption without back doors. This will improve the cybersecurity of both government and private businesses, protect the constitutionally protected privacy rights of Americans - and maybe even save herself from similar embarrassments in the future. Comment: I can personally recommend the following solutions to anyone seeking secure communications: Encrypted Instant messaing: Wickr Ecrypted Email: Securage Encrypted Audio / Video calls: Mega

Encrypted Phone calls: SilentCircle

"Smart City" Is Really Government Spying On An Unimaginable Scale October 19 2016 | From: BlacklistedNews

"Smart PGH" (Smart City) and their 'smart spine system' is one of the most intrusive, government funded, TOTAL surveillance networks ever dreamed up.

Columbus, Ohio, actually won $50 million in DOT grant money to turn their city into a "Smart City" calling it "SmartColumbus." The city of Columbus will receive an additional $90 million in pledges from public and private sector partners. Related: Money Talks: From ‘smart’ meters to power politics "Smart PGH's" tag line at the end of the above video is chilling, "If It's Not For All, It's Not For Us". As "Smart PGH's" documents reveal, 'smart city' surveillance spies on All of Us. Pittsburgh, actually received close to $11 million to help turn their city into a "smart city".

City of Pittsburgh Smart Cities Challenge Proposal Video

Smart Columbus

(Fast forward to approx., 2:18 to see the numerous corporations involved in 'Smart Cities')

Not much is known about "SmartColumbus," but you can bet it's probably a carbon copy of "Smart PGH." The document below, reveals "smart cities" are really just a euphemism for government spying on an unimaginable scale. City of Pittsburgh's Proposal, Beyond Traffic: The Smart City Challenge (SCC) The City of Pittsburgh sees the confluence of transportation and energy as the key to U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Smart City Challenge. To meet the challenge, we will develop an open platform and corresponding governance structure to improve the safety, equity, and efficiency of our transportation network and its interaction with the energy and communications networks. By building on existing technology deployments and increasing fixed and mobile sensors over a number of major “Smart Spine” corridors that connect with primary commercial centers and amenities, Pittsburgh will collect, analyze, visualize, and act on information to improve mobility for residents. The non-proprietary nature of our platform allows the City of Pittsburgh and its partners to set an open, national standard for a municipal service delivery platform, which enhances industry and supports innovation. According to the SCC, 'smart spines' use advanced technology like real-time adaptive traffic signals and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication at intersections.

"Smart PGH" is working with Uber to spy on customers. (see page 4) It appears that "smart cities" are part of the government's "Vision Zero" program, see page 6 of SCC's 'Enabling Hierarchy' diagram. Also on page 6, under the subject 'Data Collection Network' they mention, "Social Media Assets" otherwise known as social media spying. (more on that below) Uber, Lyft and Bike Share to spy on customers. Page 13: In addition, we [Smart PGH] would like to work with Pittsburgh Bike Share, Uber, Lyft, and others to move towards more robust V2V communications that allow Port Authority buses, City fleet, bike share bicycles, ride-sharing services, etc. to become safer by sensing one another on Pittsburgh’s streets. Bicycle tracking has already begun, Ford Motor Company has given Palo Alto, $1.1 million to equip bicycles with GPS devices.

Joshuah Mello, the city’s chief transportation official, said the main draw of the new smart-bike system, operated by Motivate and sponsored by Ford, is that it will be part of a network growing in Bay Area cities from San Jose to San Francisco, “making it one of the largest systems in the entire world.” What he should say is, this makes it one of the largest bicycle surveillance systems in the entire world! What follows, are some of the most chilling intrusions of government spying to date. Govt spying on social media. Page 14: Voluminous streams of data will be generated by sensors on fixed and mobile assets and citizens themselves using apps and social media.

Smart cities will spy on everyone's behavior and emotions. Page 18: To address Vision Element #9, SmartPGH will deploy our “Citizens as Sensors” effort aimed at extracting relevant data from social media. Scrubbing these sites and app will provide information on what people are doing in different places across Pittsburgh, data that can be used to infer behavior and data that can detect changes in behavior due to physical modifications made by SmartPGH and the City of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh can more easily detect if the modifications it is making are producing the desired changes or if they are leading to unanticipated outcomes or unhappy residents. For example, changes to the number of check-ins citizens make to restaurants and retail establishments following the parking rate change can provide evidence of how much this change has impacted dining and shopping behaviors, providing valuable feedback not just on residents emotional reactions but also the wider economic impact of such decisions. "Citizens as Sensors" really, means government spying on social media posts, FourSquare, Twitter etc.,. Below is an excerpt from Page 12 of "Citizens as Sensors".

"At a different level many users volunteer information to Web 2.0 sites as a convenient way of making it available to friends and relations, irrespective of the fact that it becomes available to all."

Govt to spy on staircases, sidewalks, bicycles, trails, buses and trains. Pages 3 and 22: Moreover, residents utilize the city's unique system of 712 public staircases, 40 miles of on-street bike infrastructure, 31 miles of trails, and numerous sidewalksand on a daily basis. Companies like Sidewalk Labs, make a profit out of spying on pedestrians.

The Port Authority of Allegheny County operates a comprehensive transit network in the city, which includes 18.4 miles of busway, 26.2 miles of light rail, 72 local bus routes and two funiculars. Power companies and the govt collaborate to spy on everyone. Pages 22 & 23: The City of Pittsburgh is in conversation with Duquesne Light and partner-company DQE Communications regarding the use of their extensive network of dark fiber. Most of the network capacity is currently “dark” and available for use by partners including the City of Pittsburgh. To make the most of their network, Duquesne Light recently built a wireless communication infrastructure to support the increased data-flow between their electric meters and the company’s centralized operating center.

This effort has evolved into a high-capacity, resilient, wireless network covering the entirety of the City of Pittsburgh and the surrounding 817-square-mile service territory. The grid of microgirds will spy on everyone's health, electrical and gas usage. Page 23: The grid-of-microgrids is designed to connect critical infrastructure like hospitals, universities, and data and telecommunications centers. Other partners in the effort include the UPMC health system, NRG energy, Duquesne Light and People’s natural gas. Govt spying on Pittsburgh residents is frightening. Page 23: PennDOT’s Western Regional Traffic Management Center includes a fully integrated Centralized Software System, a Media Partner room that broadcasts live on-air reports of traffic conditions, and, a state of the art video wall capable of displaying 160 video images.

The center monitors and/or controls ITS devices on 12 freeway corridors, including many within Pittsburgh's limits. These devices include: 293 CCTV cameras, 37 Highway Advisory Radio transmitter locations, 86 Highway Advisory Radio signs with beacons, 200 Microwave Traffic Detectors, 24 Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) radios, 93 Digital Wave Radar Vehicular Detector units and many more specific ITS-related items.

List of govt agencies spying on residents:

Allegheny County Penn DOT and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission Port Authority of Allegheny County Pittsburgh Parking Authority Port of Pittsburgh Commission Pittsburgh Bike Share Utilities including energy distribution, water, and natural gas University Partners, particularly University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University Major freight operators in Pittsburgh Representatives of the Business and Philanthropic Communities Citizens and Community Stakeholders Industry partners

Page 24: The model for the WPRDC is unique because it is designed to be extensible and inclusive, able to host datasets from any municipality, non-profit, or researcher with data to share. By bringing together various levels of government, civil society, and academia around information resources, we have begun to improve our region’s capacity for innovation and evidencedriven policy-making. The WPRDC’s web resources provide machine-readable data downloads and APIs of key administrative data on topics such as property assessment, building inspection, public health, crime, and asset management.

Click on the image above to open a larger version in a new window

Seven companies work with Surtrac to spy on everyone. 1. Surtrac works with FLIR a thermal sensor company that specializes in identifying individual vehicles by their thermal signature. Surtrac was developed by Carnegie Mellon University, Surtracs' Econolite specializes in spying on motor vehicles. They also invented 'autoscope' surveillance cameras in the early 1990's. Fyi, Surtrac's Autoscope Vision (AV) also spies on bicyclists. AV delivers stop bar vehicle and bicycle detection, advanced vehicle detection, bicycle differentiation, traffic data collection, and HD video surveillance. Surtrac boasts, about they're newly-developed, full-field-of-view object-feature tracking. In other words, the government can track an individual vehicle or bicyclist throughout an entire city! There are plans to integrate Surtrac with the Port Authority of Allegheny County bus fleets’ using 'Clever Devices'. (more on that below) 2. Citilog, is a mirror image of Econolite but specializes in spying road sensors that are imbedded in every road, highway tunnel and bridge.

3. Metrotech, turns current traffic intersection cameras into connected surveillance systems that spy on vehicles and Bluetooth signals. 4. Wavetronix, can track an individual vehicles speed, even if they change lanes. Wavertronix also knows the type of vehicle you're driving, watch the video below to find out more.

5. Traffic Control Products, bill themselves as a supplier of premium sensor equipment to the traffic industry. Currently their vehicle surveillance equipment is being used in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana and Michigan. Traffic Control Products boasts about having a staff of software specialists that manage, their surveillance systems. 6. Path Master, provides 'surveillance equipment' and training for their equipment. 7. Clever Devices, is a company that specializes in spying on trains and buses. "SmartColumbus," "Smart PGH," "Smart City," "Vision Zero," CCTV cameras, license plate readers, Wi-Fi readers and Shotspotter are turning our cities into COMPLETE surveillance centers! What's it going to take, to motivate an apathetic populace to speak out and demand a stop to govt spying?

s Related Articles: Klahoma Man's Tests Negate Smart Meter Safety Claims Ontario Pulls Plug on 36,000 Rural ‘Smart’ Meters: Is Big Energy Imploding?

“Do Not Resist”: The Police Militarization Documentary Everyone Should See October 19 2016 | From: TheIntercept

On a sunny afternoon last summer, Craig Atkinson, a New York City-based filmmaker, stood in a front yard in South Carolina surrounded by several heavily armed police officers.

The officers, members of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department tactical team, were descending on a modest one-story house looking for drugs and guns. The team smashed through the windows of the home with iron pikes, then stormed the front door with rifles raised. Related: Leaked Catalogue Reveals a Vast Array of Military Spy Gear Offered to U.S. Police Inside, they found a terrified family of four, including an infant. As the family members were pulled outside, Atkinson’s camera captured a scene that plays out with startling regularity in cities and towns across the country, one of many included in his new documentary, “Do Not Resist,” an examination of police militarization in the United States. And it's not just hapening there.

The police begin rooting through the trash. “Where the fuck is the weed?” one officer asks, as the team ransacks a car parked in the driveway. “Boy that was sweet,” another says, commenting on the speed of the raid. One officer finds a backpack, which yields a bit of marijuana - it’s not enough to roll a joint, but it’s something. The officer in charge questions the owner of the backpack, a young African-American man. In a conversation captured on Atkinson’s microphone, the young man, a local community college student, tells the officer he runs a small landscaping business. Knowing he’s being taken into custody, with his hands cuffed in front of him, he asks the officer for a favor: Can he remove the $876 in his pocket set aside for new lawn-care equipment and give it to one of his employees to go to the hardware store? Instead of handing the cash to the arrestee’s co-worker, the tactical team seizes the money.

“I never one time said you’re a bad person,” the officer tells the young man before he’s led off. “I just have a job to do, and you happen to be in the middle of it.”

The pernicious practice of civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement to grab cash or property during the course of raids, then requires people to prove the assets were not related to criminal activity in order to get them back — and allows police to keep the assets if they fail to do so - has been well documented. What’s less common is to see one of those interactions play out on camera. Capturing those kinds of moments is what “Do Not Resist” is all about.

Trailer for “Do Not Resist,” a New Documentary Examining Police Militarization in the United States:

Related: There Is No Excuse For The American Police Atkinson’s directorial debut has already taken home this year’s prize for best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival and is currently making the rounds in select cities around the country. Radley Balko, author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces,” has called the film “terrifying,” “powerful,” and “important.” Based on substantial on-the-ground reporting, “Do Not Resist” is both unsettling to watch and necessary to see.

See also: DoNotResist.com The film begins in Ferguson, Missouri, on a rainy night of protest in August 2014 that erupted into a melee of tear gas and screaming. It then quickly moves to a seminar with Dave Grossman, a law enforcement guru who gives trainings on lethal force and the application of a warrior mentality in the name of the law.

“The policeman is the man of the city,” Grossman begins, before explaining that cops he’s spoken to routinely describe their first on-the-job kill as a prelude to the best sex of their lives. “Both partners are very invested in some very intense sex,” Grossman says. “There’s not a whole lot of perks that come with this job. You find one, relax and enjoy it.”

Grossman believes that a violent reckoning between law enforcement and critics of police militarization is fast approaching.

“We are at war,” Grossman tells the crowd, “and you are the front-line troops in this war.”

The language reflects a theme that runs throughout “Do Not Resist.” Atkinson began the project three years ago in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. The images of armored cars and commando cops in the streets resonated for him on a personal level. Atkinson’s father spent 29 years as a police officer outside Detroit - 13 of them on a SWAT team, where he held the rank of commander. Atkinson and his brother would take part in their dad’s training, playing the part of hostages when they were little and mock shooters when they were big enough to handle weapons.

Watching the footage from Boston, it was obvious to Atkinson that something profound had shifted since his dad’s days on the force. He set out to create a film that would capture that shift. The “Do Not Resist” crew attended expos and trade shows, community meetings and federal hearings, training seminars and SWAT contests. All told, the team traveled to 19 states, went on roughly 20 police ride-a-longs, observed half a dozen raids, and interacted with hundreds of police officers. The hope was to be on-hand for an incident in which a SWAT team’s use of heavy weapons would be unquestionably warranted.

“I thought the whole time I would be able to show something that would kind of reflect the entire scope of what a SWAT officer might go through sometimes, where you actually do need the equipment,” Atkinson explained.

Instead, the filmmaker repeatedly found himself watching police with military-grade weaponry executing dubious search warrants. The frequency of the raids was particularly shocking, with one of the officers in the film claiming his team does 200 such operations a year. By comparison, Atkinson notes, his father performed a total of 29 search warrant raids over his entire 13 years in SWAT according to some estimates, SWAT teams now carry out between 50,000 to 80,000 raids across the country annually.

“The search warrants, we’re told, are always used for massive drug dealers and kingpins, and then we run in these homes and we never found anything,” Atkinson said.

Beyond the day-to-day breaking down of doors, “Do Not Resist” explores the growing role of private surveillance companies in local policing, and law enforcement’s thirst for technology that can predict crimes before they happen.

An analyst inspects video feeds of a wide-scale aerial surveillance system being utilized by local police departments

The film highlights Persistence Surveillance Systems, a company offering low-cost aerial surveillance honed in Fallujah to domestic law enforcement. “We’re not out to watch the whole world, just all the world that’s got crime,” Ross McNutt, the president of the company, insists.

“That’s the next wave in the militarization of police,” Atkinson told The Intercept in an interview. “What we found was a whole slew of retired military officers now in the private sector now selling the exact same surveillance technology that they just got back from Iraq and Afghanistan with to local law enforcement for small money on the dollar.”

The intent of “Do Not Resist,” Atkinson said, is to provide a glimpse inside the realities of American policing, challenge the policing-for-profit model that has caused departments in economically depressed communities to treat their citizens as walking ATM machines, call out a warrior culture that divides law enforcement from the public they’re sworn to serve, and flag the dangers of war-zone technologies being applied domestically. For the most part, the reaction from law enforcement has been positive, Atkinson said.

“I’ve had a lot of law enforcement really respond well to the film and say that it reflects these issues that a lot of them have been working on themselves,” he said.

As for his father, Atkinson said, watching the film stirs up uncomfortable feelings.

“His major reaction was just disappointment in seeing how far the mission creep had actually gone,” he said. “It’s obviously disappointing to see something that you were dedicating your life to so completely, evolve into something that you would never want to be a part of.”

Related Articles: New Zealand: Family denounces “cold-blooded execution” by police Globalists are pitting blacks against whites in America to incite a bloody race war... here's how we can all win together by refusing to be manipulated into hatred and rage Leaked Memo Reveals Soros Plan for Federally Controlled Police Police Murder Because They Are Trained To Murder - Paul Craig Roberts How the Dallas Shootings Serve the Elite’s Race Wars and Police State Agenda Dallas police shootings: Social Engineering and the American Police State The Tamir Rice Story: How to Make a Police Shooting Disappear The Police Are Victimized By Their Training 913 people shot dead by US police in 2015

Obama Decries 'Wild West' [Independent] Media Landscape October 16 2016 | From: Yahoo

President Barack Obama on Thursday decried America's "wild, wild west" media environment for allowing conspiracy theorists a broad platform and destroying a common basis for debate.

Comment: Oh my, the establishment are having a wee cry now. They are not in carte-blanche control of the news media anymore. Recalling past days when three television channels delivered fact-based news that most people trusted, Obama said democracy require citizens to be able to sift through lies and distortions.

"We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to," Obama said at an innovation conference in Pittsburgh. "There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don't have any basis in anything that's actually happening in the world," Obama added.

His remarks came amid an election campaign that has seen Republican candidate Donald Trump repeat ideas and take on key staff from right-wing media outlets. They also come at the end of an eight-year presidency in which Obama has been plagued by false scandals over his place of birth that have forced him to play media-critic-in-chief.

For much of that time, Republicans and Democrats -- which their own media sources -- could rarely agree on even the most basic facts to build a debate.

"That is hard to do, but I think it's going to be necessary, it's going to be possible," he added. "The answer is obviously not censorship, but it's creating places where people can say 'this is reliable' and I'm still able to argue safely about facts and what we should do about it."

Anyone can read between the lines here. They are desperate for something they are not going to get...

The New Snowden? NSA Contractor Arrested Over Alleged Theft Of Classified Data October 11 2016 | From: ActivistPost

A contractor working for the National Security Agency (NSA) was arrested by the FBI following his alleged theft of “state secrets.”

More specifically, the contractor, Harold Thomas Martin, is charged with stealing highly classified source codes developed to covertly hack the networks of foreign governments, according to several senior law enforcement and intelligence officials. Related: Snowden 2.0: New NSA Contractor Whistleblower, Arrested for Stealing Spy Malware The Justice Department has said that these stolen materials were “critical to national security.” Martin was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, the company responsible for most of the NSA’s most sensitive cyberoperations. Edward Snowden, the most well-known NSA whistleblower, also worked for Booz Allen Hamilton until he fled to Hong Kong in 2013 where he revealed a trove of documents exposing the massive scope of the NSA dragnet surveillance. That surveillance system was shown to have targeted untold numbers of innocent Americans. According to the New York Times, the theft “raises the embarrassing prospect” that an NSA insider managed to steal highly damaging secret information from the NSA for the second time in three years, not to mention the “Shadow Broker” hack this past August, which made classified NSA hacking tools available to the public.

Related: NSA Contractor Arrested Over Alleged Theft Of Top Secret Material According to a Department of Justice press release, Martin’s residence in Maryland was raided by the FBI on August 27th, 2016. During the raid, investigators found hard-copy documents and digital information stored on various devices and removable digital media. The FBI claims that a large percentage of the materials uncovered at Martin’s home were marked as US government property and contained highly classified information including Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). Investigators also have claimed to have located government property with a combined value of over $1,000, which Martin allegedly stole. If convicted, he faces up to 11 years in prison for the theft of government property and the removal of classified material. Snowden himself took to Twitter to comment on the arrest. In a tweet, he said the news of Martin’s arrest “is huge” and asked, “Did the FBI secretly arrest the person behind the reports [that the] NSA sat on huge flaws in US products?” It is currently unknown if Martin was connected to those reports as well.

It also remains to be seen what Martin’s motivations were in removing classified data from the NSA. Though many suspect that he planned to follow in Snowden’s footsteps, the government will more likely argue that he had planned to commit espionage by selling state secrets to “adversaries.” According to the New York Times article on the arrest, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are named as examples of the “adversaries” who would have been targeted by the NSA codes that Martin is accused of stealing. However, Snowden revealed widespread US spying on foreign governments including several US allies such as France and Germany. This suggests that the stolen “source codes” were likely utilized on a much broader scale.

Surveillance-Related Articles: Inside Menwith Hill: The NSA’s British Base at the Heart of U.S. Targeted Killing Apple Logs Your iMessage Contacts - and May Share Them With Police

A Walking Tour of New York’s Massive Surveillance Network Yahoo Reportedly Spied on Millions of Users' Emails for the Government Yahoo Caves in to NSA, FBI and Secretly Monitors its Email Accounts for US Government Ex-Yahoo Employee: Government Spy Program Could Have Given a Hacker Access to All Email

Electronic Torture + 21st-Century Bio-Hacking And Bio-Robotizing October 10 2016 | From: ElectronicTorture / Various

Electromagnetic torture, Microwave torture, Electronic murder, Electromagnetic murder, Microwave murder, Organized murder, Cooked alive, Electronic mind control, Electronic mind reading, Brain zapping, People zapper.

What is electronic harassment / electronic torture / electronic murder? In short - "soft kill" techniques to interfere with and kill, by the Cabal and their minions - those who get in their way. Related: Scalar Weapons - Read It And Weep Electronic harassment / electronic torture / electronic murder is about harrasment, torture and murder using electronic weapons based on radio waves.These weapons have been very refined and can cause effects comparable to many illnesses and/or injuries.

These weapons are not science-fiction but used today illegally by your national secret services on mostly random innocent victims not knowing what is being done to them.

Mark Rich, known for his website www.TheHiddenEvil.com has put up a new site with much more background information www.NewWorldWar.org. Must read for targets and people who are seeking the truth: SurveillanceIssues If you want to read about symptoms, then check the article below Electronic harassment and electronic torture list. If you do not know much about electronic harassment, electronic torture, electronic murder then you may want to start reading: The people cookers - cooking people like a microwave oven cooks meat Tortured - wwwguantanamocom Electronic weapons already control our lives! Secret service: fear for the truth to be revealed - electronic weapons arrangers and operators burn people Torture and murder without evidence - educate yourself Electronic torture / electronic weapons: people burners and people cookers (speed cookers)

What is Electronic Mind Control / Electronic Mind Reading / Brain Zapping / Synthetic Telepathy / Remote Neural Monitoring? Electronic mind control is about forcing thoughts into your brain using invisible radio waves (this can be done long range). Your attackers can make you think about a certain person at a certain moment, force a song into your brain (so you will start humming / singing it). Your attackers can also make you stand up and walk to your kitchen. If you do not know about this then you will be just following the thoughts that were planted into your brain. In other words: you are robotized.

Electronic mind reading is about reading your thoughts using invisible radio waves (this can be done from long ranges). Already it has become 'easy' to decode received brain signals into words spoken to oneself without talking. At the moment they also make progress with decoding images from what you look at (as seen by you through your eyes). This is not science-fiction but done today illegally by your national secret services on mostly random innocent victims not knowing what is being done to them.

If you want to read more: Warning: you no longer can trust your own thoughts Secret service: mind rape targets to steal, torture, murder, create enemies (and call them terrorists) or here Secret service: Electronic Mind Control, Electronic weapons used on people surrounding the target WITHOUT them knowing this or here Brain zapping by Jason Jeffrey or here Synthetic Telepathy and Psycho-Electronic Weapon Attacks on hundreds of thousands by a combined 100,000 FBI and NSA psychopath spies in the US, or google Remote Neural Monitoring

Recent documents about mind reading: Mind Reading: Technology Turns Thought Into Action - Jon Hamilton (May 12, 2011) Mind-Reading Experiment Reconstructs Movies in Our Mind - Associated Press (Published September 22, 2011) We're closer to mind-reading than you may think - Emi Kolawole (October 31, 2011) Can A Satellite Read Your Thoughts? - Physics Revealed

Stalking, Electronic Torture, Shooting with Directed Energy Weapons From the Sky A video and two victims reporting the horrible details. Like many other victims they can only conclude that the attacks also are coming from military aircraft.

Related: Team investigates Active Denial System for security applications From: Comment accompanying video: Microwave weaponry systems like the Active Denial System are used in tandem to deliver physical attacks designed to stress targets, torture them physically, and turn their homes into places of extreme distress. Hoping to drive the target from their home or workplaces. The pain is unbelievable. It involves tones, harmonics, hissing, stabs, blows, voice to skull transmissions, induced dreams (nightmares), burning sensations in the body and head, internal burning sensations inside of the body and head, crawling sensations on the body (phantom touch), electronic rape, induced and unwanted urination or orgasms, holographic inserts, and many other horrible tortures. My thoughts seem to be scanned every second. From: webpage about next victims of electronic "mind control" torture: (Carolyn Palit) I thought I was dying. I thought that I would spontaneously combust into flames. Either it came from a base in the hills, or Commander Solo*, or it came from the heavens. It attacked me for two years. From: webpage Carolyn Palit talking to Jesus Mendoza Some of his attacks are coming from the direction of the houses of the defendants that he has named in a law suit against these kinds of attacks. But . . . mostly . . . the attacks come from . . . "straight up."

More Information about Electronic Weapons Attacks, Including Mind Control and Mind Reading On the STOPEG.com website www.stopeg.com there is an CBS News video of the Active Denial System (ADS), a microwave laser weapon. Although the DoD wants us to believe this is a safe weapon (that is why they showed it to us), experts agree it is not!

This video shows a big installation, but there are many kinds of laser weapons. Some are very big and mounted in trucks, ships, aircraft, or even in satellites. But there are also much smaller, portable versions, that can be very effective. Of course military and secret services have equipment based on the most advanced technology available. Their equipment is not available to the public. But now advanced commercial devices are being shown on the internet giving an idea of how easy it must be for the attackers to cook, burn (torture) a person. One is a portable (hand-held) laser, the S3 Spyder III Arctic laser. Although it may appear not very sophisticated, imagine someone pointing this at your back when you are in a restaurant or at the movies. To look at people through wall take a look at the XAVER 400 Compact, Tactical Through-Wall Imaging System.

Bio-Hacking and Bio-Robotizing Rohinie Bisesar, the strikingly beautiful and accomplished financial services analyst and York University MBA with no previous criminal record was charged with first-degree murder in the sudden stabbing death of a young woman. While Rohinie Bisesar is considered by mind-control activists in Canada to be a possible victim of neuroexperimentation, the new frontier of absolute human control being covertly explored by military / Intelligence agencies (as per the accounts of victims, scientists, and whistleblowers), for a long while it was not clear to activists whether her defense attorney, David Connally, had indeed conveyed to Ms. Bisesar that there are others in Canada familiar with the symptoms of neuro-experimentation, sympathetic of her situation, and interested in helping her. Read More: 21st-Century Bio-Hacking and Bio-Robotizing in the Case of Rohinie Bisesar: Breakthrough as Defense Attorney Confirms Her Receipt of Letter from Human Rights Activists

Many targets wonder how they can be attacked so easily when they move to a different location, e.g. a family member, friend, or go to a hotel. The attackers stuff their portable laser weapons and through-wall imaging devices into their suitcases, book rooms close to yours, and often will attack you from two different angles to confuse you. In case you prevent them to attack the body area the want to attack, e.g. by putting your back against an outside wall of the hotel, they call in military aircraft that will blast you with very high power microwave (HPM) bursts, cooking your inside. (this happened several times to me, last time on July 6, 2011, while staying in a hotel in Westkapelle, Netherlands, the aircraft arriving around 1 am about 15 minutes after they concluded they could not perform the attacks on my back). Many people have a problem thinking that others can read their mind, their thoughts. Again, the advanced technology used by military and secret services is not available to the public, but today more and more commercial devices are becoming available. One company delivering a mind reading headset is Emotive, for USD 299,-. With this device you can control your games, your tv set, etc. with you mind! They also have an API (programming interface) to create your own mind reading application.

Even rudimentary electro-pulse mind reading technologies are publicly reported in the media

I cannot emphasize enough that not all but many attacks are from the sky. When driving your car they may burn your back (from the sky or from some equipment in your own car) when another car is driving behind you and make it go away when the car goes away. If they do this every time then you probably will think it has to do with the car behind you. When driving your car, walking outside, riding your bike, they may burn your head and make many people you look at scratch their head. Sometimes people are part of the sick network but many others may just have been beamed the same way you are, having no clue about what is going on (your attackers want you to attack other people, they don't care about anything because they are psychopaths, murderers. child abusers). Another warning is for a much more confusing type of attack: electronic mind control.

In this case your attackers will plant thoughts into the brain of people surrounding you. Of course these thoughts relate to your life in one way or the other. They may even plant your (!) thoughts into the heads of people surrounding you. If you do not know about this then you may start to think that these people can read your mind, which can be very depressing. I wrote several article about electronic mind control, if you are a target and do not know about this capabilities you may want to read this. Links, portable laser weapon, portable through-wall vision, mind reading headset, voice-to-skull: The S3 Spyder III Arctic XAVER 400 Compact, Tactical Through-Wall Imaging System Emotive, mind reading headset and API The SwiMP3 waterproof MP3 player, underwater sound without ear buds, using bone conduction

Hearing Voices If you are hearing voices you may be a mental case but it is also possible that you are a target of (highly illegal) mind control activities by some sick bastards.

In your country secret services including military are developing weapons that make you hear voices and covertly testing these weapons on random human beings or groups of people. Some terms used to describe this phenomenon: Voice-to-skull Microwave hearing Silent sound Perhaps the most easy (and cheap) way to attack a person this way is by the Audio Spotlight.

This device makes you hear words etc. spoken by a someone, but the persons around you do ot hear this. Check the links below for more information: Microwave auditory effect (Wikipedia) Hearing Microwaves: The Microwave Auditory Phenomenon by James C. Lin Microwave hearing by Mark Rich Sound from ultrasound (Wikipedia) Audio Spotlight (Holosonics company website)

Youtube video on AudioSpotlight, Subvocal Speech and Microwave hearing:

Electronic Harassment and Electronic Torture List [Published: February 26, 2009. Updated: February 28, 2009, April 11, 2009, June 10, 2009, June 13, 2009, June 25, 2009, September 6, 2009, December 24, 2009]

Almost anybody can become a (temporary) target of these horrible electronic weapons. Please read what can be done so you are prepared. This is not science fiction but happening right now in our 'democratic' society. Below is a list of all possible attacks by electronic weapons that I know of by experience. I know more attacks exists. Female targets write about sexual attacks, others mention continuous ringing in the ears, etc. I may add these later. I decided to keep this list personal, i.e. in this blog I write down only what has/is being done to me, not what is being done to others.

Electronic Weapons These attacks are done by the following kind of electronic weapons: Directed Energy Weapons (laser weapons), like ELF (very low frequency), ultrasonic, lasers, (high power) microwave weapons Through-wall vision (Sub-vocal) Mind-reading Microwave hearing/Silent Sound (letting you hear sounds/things in other ways then hearing by the ear) For another introduction you may want to read: The people cookers - Cooking people like a microwave oven cooks meat. Or, read the summary of my previous blogs: Secret service: fear for the truth to be revealed!(24) - Gang stalkers and people cookers are murderers, the crimes they commit belong to the worst crimes in history - part 2

A List Including all Horrible Details On the internet already a lot of symptoms and attacks by these weapons can be found. Most of these lists do not detail these attacks and that is exactly what I am trying to do here. In my opinion it is not enough to read that such a weapon gives you a burning feeling, instead the horrible details must be exposed! Description of a (continuous) high intensity microwave weapon attack: This weapon makes your skin really burn like a very heavy sunburn and cooks your inside, you really feel being cooked alive, you are heated like meat in a microwave oven, with intensities that exceed those of a microwave oven. Gal is coming out of your throat and fluids inside your body evaporate making you instantly burp. In case of high intensity there is also a burning sensation on the other side of the body, where the beam, of approximately 10-30 cm diameter leaves the body.

If they cook you long enough cooked body cells explode inside you, when aimed at your upper body, lung cells explode / are destroyed and reducing lung capacity immediately noticed when walking stairs or running. The burning sensation and the cooked-inside feeling will go away after 5-30 minutes or 1-2 days depending on the duration and intensity, it may take a day or more to recover from high power microwave bursts with durations of 5-60 seconds (but can you recover from these amounts of irradiation?). A cup of milk is heated and starts evaporating after 5-10 seconds. The electronic weapons aimed at you can make you burp or fart within 1-3 seconds, hence the intensity of electromagnetic irradiation is not only used to torture a person but murder as well.

Covert and Intended-to-Notice (or Noticed) Electronic Harassment / Torture Electronic harassment is called covert if the target does not know about these weapons and methods. If you do not know about these weapons you may think you have all the bad luck in the world, you will wonder what strange things are happening to you, to your body, and accept you do not control your life anymore.

If intended-to-notice (or noticed), electronic harassment is torture in its most horrible form. What would you do if your body is made to react every time to events occurring in your life, e.g. by making you burp or fart, your legs are cooked every night, your ankle is cooked during daytime when working behind your computer, your knee is beamed to cause maximum pain, etc.

Some examples:

To delay you: They make you go the toilet to urinate when you want to leave your house They cook your legs before running They burn and cook your body high power to prevent you doing you work Note that this delaying is often done together with gang stalking methods like cars blocking your road, phone calls when you are to leave your home, etc.

To make things worse: They make you sneeze extra times when you have a cold They cook your throat become sore when you have a cold They attack your eyes until red with blood The cook your legs after running

They cook or burn where you have pain already

To torture you: They cook and burn your body everywhere They cook your family, your children, friends, … Note that this torture is often done together with gang stalking methods like synchronizing saw machines, honking horns of cars, screaming birds (pigeons, crows), etc.

The Maximum Pain Business, Beyond Imagination Horror and Cruelty Without Evidence Special methods have been developed to make you think you have a heart problem, erection problem, toothache, etc. For the ones exposing these horrendous crimes they developed methods to inflict maximum pain, e.g. by cooking such a person alive with a high power microwave weapon, or burning the skin of the target or making the target burp or fart every few minutes to events occurring in the life of the target (including e.g. opening a website on a computer, saving a file, cars passing by the window, etc. ).

Related: Who Really Owns and Controls the Military-Industrial Complex and What Are They Doing? – An Extensive Research Report Some authors refer to the development and use of these weapons as the pain business. I would like to make a correction, please call it the maximum pain business. After accepting that there are really such sick and disgusting creatures actually developing and applying these methods and torture, you also have to accept that it is not about just pressing a button, but also about the way how this torture is applied. Zapping your eyes red to make you look bad, cooking biceps to prevent you from swimming, cooking your throat to prevent you from singing, inducing heart problems and toothaches to prevent you working or sports. More horror, these methods and procedures could not have been highly developed without being tested on humans, on real persons.

And again more horror, these methods are often used with gang stalking (organized stalking) methods.

Like they cook your ankle with insane intensities making your foot very painful, and when you go outside all kinds of people with leg problems are crossing your path, people limping, in a wheelchair, sometimes even someone without a leg. Or, they start sawing wood somewhere and when the saw enters the wood cook your body with high intensity microwave. This torture is applied 24/7, not once every hour but more like once every minute/every 5 minutes. Horrible torture that can be called torturing a person to death.

Special Case: The Heart Attack Damaging your body can be done in several ways. One vital organ is the heart. They can attack the heart very effective with: Microwave weapons, cooking the heart area slowly High Power Microwave (HPM) weapons, cooking the heart area in a second Ultrasonic weapons, pressurizing the heart area Heart frequency manipulation weapons These weapons can damage your heart in a split second, you may not survive such a attack, but can also be used to slowly damage your heart. Slowly cook your heart area so will get a strange feeling and in fact your heart is really damaged.

This makes the Heart Attack Gun that the CIA was forced to admit having look positively archaic: During Senate testimony in 1975 into illegal activities by the CIA, it was revealed that the agency had developed a dart gun capable of causing a heart attack

Then there is also the frequency manipulation attack, your heart may feel pulsing, blobbing like crazy. Cook heart area from the front, often together with a cook beam from left behind. Slow damage, horrible feeling Flash your heart with very high power microwave. Instant damage. Pressurize your chest, even takes your breath away if applied with enough power Pulsate your body/heart area with low frequencies These effects will give you a very realistic heart attack or heart problem feeling feeling. Your heart may start pounding very loud, may feel very painful, the heart area may feel strange, cooked. If applied with enough power, this really damages your heart and heart area. Your heart is cooked like meat in a microwave oven. Can you recover from these attacks? In general they will not murder you or leave evidence, your heart may feel very painful for several days after they stop their attacks. It can take weeks until all pain in the area has disappeared. I am not sure about permanent damage caused by these attacks.

Can you die from such an attack? Yes, if the intensity of the beam is high enough your heart can be damaged or temporarily disturbed in such a way that you will die. How can you recognize a ‘normal’ heart problem from a ‘induced’ heart problem? You yourself are the best judge of what you feel. If you believe something really is wrong with your heart then visit a doctor. If you are certain your heart is attacked then avoid visiting a doctor as this will confirm a heart problem in case you collapse or die, case closed.

Impossible to Protect Yourself The human body appears to be extremely vulnerable to electromagnetic irradiation of all kind of frequencies. The human body also is a electromagnetic transmitter and sensitive (radio) equipment can pick up and decode the signals that are generated e.g. when speaking, thinking. In contrast to a knife or a bullet, electromagnetic signals are not blocked by walls, compare your cell phone.

Related: Patent for nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors and TVs

Limited protection is possible using sheet metal, metal plates, water, vacuum, but if you really are a target the attackers increase intensities (if necessary to insane levels), change frequency, attack from different angles etc. Also remember that these weapons can hit a person without hitting the person sitting next to this person. They can be aimed and the diameter of the beam can be made small enough to hit only the target.

Anybody Can be a Target Electronic weapons make it very easy to eliminate persons, to get persons (temporarily) out of the way, to murder persons, etc. all without evidence, and most of the time even the target does not know he is zapped, cooked, burned with electronic weapons. The ones owning and controlling this technology now can get everything they want in a very easy way. They can get their football player into the national team by temporarily cut out the competitor for the same position in the team. This could be done with other means as well but it is very easy with electronic weapons. Just cook a person’s ankle and foot during the night and the damage is done. To influence a tennis match you could cook a player by heating the body with microwaves (compare microwave oven).

He will just feel overheated and sick and loose the game. These are just two examples to demonstrate what can be done. You can imagine almost anybody can become a target. Some people because they are more visible then others, because they have something the sick network wants, because they know something the sick network does not want to be exposed, because they are too intelligent for the sick network, ust for personal reasons because may be they made a remark about someone, etc.

The Phoenix Program Continues Today The Phoenix Program was a program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces, US Army intelligence collection units from MACV, special forces operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), and the Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam)

security apparatus during the Vietnam War. The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were allegedly tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions. The program was in operation between 1965 and 1972, and similar efforts existed both before and after that period. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had neutralized 81,740 suspected NLF operatives, informants and supporters, of whom between 26,000 and 41,000 were killed.

Electronic Weapons Can Kill a Person Besides using electronic weapons to monitor, drive into suicide, cause temporary injuries, they can also be used to kill a person. Killing is possible by sending wrong signals to the heart making it pulse in abnormal ways, or by increasing intensity and cooking the heart area, damaging the heart slowly. Very high power laser weapons or HPM (= High Power Microwave) weapons can damage your heart in a second.

Although little is known at this time about the effects of long term irradiation, it is not difficult to imagine that this will cause all kinds of diseases as electromagnetic irradiation destroys your DNA (cell with damaged DNA are called cancer). Again all these horrible things can be done, and are done today, without evidence.

How do You Know You are a Target of Electronic Harassment? It is often very difficult to distinghuish between normal body behaviour and induced body behaviour if there no signs of burning or cooking. For example, would you know the difference between normal diareah and induced diareah? Yes, you are able to decide what is not normal by comparing your diareah with previous experiences.

It may start and disappear very sudden, may cause other effects like water bubbles leaving your anus, etc. Also, the diareah may be linked to a certain event, like picking up your child, appearance in court, etc. Always ask yourself what it is you are feeling, did you feel this before? Does it go away when you turn your body 180 degrees? Does it go away when you walk in the streets or drive your car? You are the best judge of what you are feeling.

Your Car May be Tagged When you are a target you will experience harassment everywhere every time. If you have a car they will tag your car (these are words I learned from a ’so-called target’).

This means they will equip your car with electronic weapons not only to monitor you but also to cook and/or burn your body while driving. They may also harass the target covert and use the following beams: Sleep beam, to make the driver very sleepy Eye beam, slowly cooking they eyes, so tears come out and visibility reduces Just to confirm, all this is done to cause the (mental or physical) death of the target.

Harassment from (Neighbour) Houses, Cars, Handbags, Airplanes, Satellites Most of the electronic harassment comes from close neighbor houses. When you walk in the the streets you are probably attacked by electronic weapons (directed energy weapons) from houses (they may be remote controlled or controlled by operator at these locations.

Related: Electromagnetic Radiation And Other Weapons Of Mass Mutation If there are no locations for their equipment, they use these weapons from their cars. You may also be hit from airplanes. This is not difficult to believe if you accept a reach several hundreds of meters. Some targets write about satellites being the source of their electronic harassment. In general I do not believe this is true.

Example of Current State-of-Technology: You can be hit by very accurate equipment. For example, when you are running on the streets or in the woods you may be ’shot’ with a very high power microwave weapon in your calf from an airplane. The intensity can be such that this causes instant injury. Your calf is cooked within a split second and your muscles almost instantly tear apart. Making running / walking almost impossible.

Electronic harassment can also be done from small devices carried in e.g. shopping bags in shops or on the street. You need only a small battery to give the target a single burst that makes him burp or fart. This is enough to depress the target: nowhere safe from this horrible harassment. Satellites probably play a big role in exchanging information about a target, e.g. you can have a subvocal speech decoding PC in the house next to target, but it is more easy (and safe) to transfer the undecoded information to a central computer system, and return the decoded words. But it may be done on site, PC’s have enough power today to do this decoding themselves.

You May be Attacked by Persons (Family, Friends, co-Workers) Who are Covertly Attacked by Electronic Harassment The aim of the attackers is to drive the target insane. To speed up things they aim their electronic weapons covertly at family, friends, co-workers, etc. to make them react in several ways to what the target is doing or saying. Some (easy) methods used to covertly attack other persons: Scratch beam, to make a person scratch his head Sneeze beam, to make a person sneeze Cough beam, to make a person cough Urge to urinate beam, to make a person go to the toilet Examples: They beam persons around the target on the head so everywhere around the target people are scratching their heads They beam the target’s head very hard and then beam the head of a friend so that this friend will start scratching his head immediately very visible for the target to see When the target and partner are in the same, then every time the target opens a website on his PC (not visible for the partner), they beam the throat of the partner causing the partner to cough almost immediately When the target is beamed in the stomach during work, they make a co-worker sneeze at the same time

When the target is beamed in the stomach, they beam her child in the stomach as well, making the child cry and saying it has stomach pain (this is confirmed by multiple victims) Once again illegal and (beyond imagination) horrible crimes by our national secret services.

Elite and Secret Services Control our Politicians It is not amazing that these weapons exist, I studied computer science myself, if you have enough money it is not that special. It is also not amazing that there are actually sick and disgusting creatures walking around free applying this kind of electronic harassment to cause the physical or mental death of a person.

What is amazing is that a lot of high ranked politicians and other influential persons are fully aware of the existence and use of these weapons but do not speak out. What does this say about these persons? I believe you can say that the idea we live in a democracy has disappeared completely.

Elite and Secret Services are Trapped by Their Crimes in Vicious Circles of More Violence Against the People of the World The ones facilitating, outsourcing and performing this cruel electronic harassment and torture is not just a group of people, these attacks are very well designed and applied by people trained to cause maximum pain but leave no evidence. The ones I am referring to are our secret services, including military. They are tightening their grip on society, not because they have to protect us against the terrorists in the world, but because they are getting more and more afraid what will happen when the truth about them is exposed.

They are trapped in some sort of vicious circle. To maintain themselves they must commit more and more horrible crimes. And to avoid their crimes are exposed they have to perform new horrible crimes, etc. etc. So here we have the elite, creating wars to maintain themselves, and their armies, the secret services both trapped in their own lies and deceit. And the horror for us, the people of the world is that we will be taken from (created) threat to (created) war because that is the only way out for the (criminal) elite and (criminal) secret services.

People Cookers and Secret Services I introduced the word people cookers in 2007 for the creatures facilitating, outsourcing, performing electronic harassment and electronic torture. Main reason is of course that people cooking comes closest to what they are doing. Most of the harassment and torture is done by microwave irration which causes heating of the skin and your inside just like a microwave oven cooks meat.

Related: Weaponized Cell Towers Are Directly Related To Why Chemtrails Are Sprayed There are no words to justify these illegal and horrendous crimes. The ones involved are disgusting creatures, an author called them ‘the failed human beings’ and that is just what they are. They were born human, choose the wrong path in life and degenerated into pieces of shit. I believe people cooking and gang stalking (organized stalking) are the perfect example of how sick our national secret services have become. They now commit the perfect murder, in their language meaning murder without evidence. And they now steal, torture and murder just because it has become so easy to steal, torture and murder.

Electronic Harassment and Electronic Torture List - December 24, 2009 Below is the list of all (most) effects I experienced from these horrible electronic weapons. Few times I may not correctly describe the source of the effects. It is sometimes difficult to point to microwave or ultrasound. Both can be very damaging. High Power Microwave cooks your body cells while high power ultrasound simply destroys your body cells. But in the end the result is the same, a damaged body.

MIND-READING Subvocal speech

Special equipment is used to detect muscle contractions like the ones a person uses when speaking out loud. When spoken to itself these muscle movements can be detected by advanced equipment and translated into words and sentences. As most people talk to themselves when ‘thinking’ this resembles mind reading.

How it is applied They read your subvocal speech and react to it Feeling Unbelievable at first, then you get depressed because the last thing you thought was private appears not to be private anymore. Then you accept that you probably are even more popular and watched then the big stars in the world and sometimes use it to deceive the bastards. Horrible torture Why it is applied To drive you insane Seeing through your eyes

Although some targets claim that they can see what you see. I have not (yet) experienced this. But they do everything to suggest that they can do this. E.g. on the highway you are bursted with the burp beam every time a favorite model car passes in the opposite direction. They are looking at you from some camera build inside your car or from another car. They are looking at your eyes to see what you are looking at. I experienced a few times I was bursted BEFORE I saw the favorite car. A lot of research in this area is going on, I will keep you updated.

HEARING VOICES Voice-to-skull

Special advanced equipment is used to beam voices, or in fact any sound, into your head. How it is applied They make you hear voices that you should not hear. For example, they let you hear voices from people far away very clear as if they are standing next to you. This an amazing experience. There are a lot of reports of people who claim they are attacked by voices Why it is applied To drive you insane

HEAD Top of your head beam

The top of your head is very sensitive. They will burn the top with some laser or microwave weapon How it is applied They put the beam on your head and wait for you to move Feeling Can be very painfull if applied with enough intensity. You cannot do much with this beam on your head. Horrible torture After effects If applied with high intensity it may take several days for the painful feeling to disappear Why it is applied Prevent you from working, doing your thing Should you worry Yes, long term irradition may cause brain damage, tumors

Scratch beam

They just beam your head somewhere. The normal reaction is your will start scratching your head. How it is applied Mostly applied when other people can see you. If they do this everytime with the same people they may wonder whats wrong with you. They also apply this and have random people scratch their heads and then burn you

Feeling Not very painfull, mostly a short pulse, although they may keep the beam on your head and remove it after you start scratchin your head Why it is applied Drive you out of your mind, drive you into attacking other people Headache beam

This beam gives you a headache. It is some kind of high intensity low frequency beam. The headache appears suddenly and also disapears suddenly Feeling Can be very painful

Sickness/Alcohol beam

The feeling is that you feel a little bit dizzy, see thing a little foggy. How it is applied They may apply this when you drink your first glass of beer, wine, etc. or when you have a cold, or are sensitive to hay fever

Cooking

They put the microwave beamer on your head and your head is heated. They may do this after you drink a glas of wine, but also after you turn on the central heating of your appartment. You will feel hot, sick, slow.

Ear short burst

Your ear is bursted, the idea is to hit your eardrum. With your eardrum cooked/damaged you have a strange feeling.

Ear continous beam

Your ear is beamed for very long time just to present you pain, they want you to move. Feeling It appears your eardrum and surrounding area is very sensitive. This is very painful.

Eye blur

Your eye is bursted and you have instant blurred vision. Often your eye will start tearing How it is applied Some kind of miocrowave burst, see also Phasr and other similar military weapons used to blind the enemy Feeling Not really painfull but you cannot do much as you are used to two eyes. Why it is applied Prevent you from working Should you worry Yes, this is very damaging for your eyes

Eye sting

Your eye is bursted with some kind of laser beam Feeling Like they drive a needle into your eye. Very painful Why it is applied Stress discomfort

Just below eye, tremble

They beam at they area below your eye and the flesh below it starts trembling. They can do this in shops and through wall

Burn (beard) hair

They burn away hair at certain locations, e.g. your moustache hair just below your nose holes to create the illusion of a leaking nose

How it is applied This is just a laser hair removal procedure, like performed in many beauty parlors Sneeze burst

You are bursted and must sneeze. This is a tinglin sensation that can make you sneeze in an instant How it is applied You can turn your head in the other direction or hold your hand before your nose to make sure the attack is caused by electronic weapons Why it is applied To make your body react to something

Runny nose

You have a runny nose but do not have a cold. You may start thinking you have some kind of strange cold but you have not. Once you are out of the beam, the runny nose disappears. How it is applied I am not sure if this is done only by electronic weapon or by a combination of some drug and electronic weapon

Cough burst

Your throat is bursted with a high intensity burst and you start coughing instantly. This coughing does not look like normal coughing. You will have a sore throat immediately afterwards.

Dry cough

Like something fluid/moisture sticks in your lungs, or sometimes your throat. When you breath you hear/feel a rasping sound. You must cough very hard to throw it out.

Toothache

Using a low frequency beam they induce a toothache, this really is a horrrible feeling. It is like a true toothache but now when you move out of the beam it disappears. Why it is applied Prevent you from doing anything, just plain torture

Sore throat

Your throat is sowly cooked and you will almost immediately notice less volume and after some time pain while speaking How it is applied They can do this in just one or two hours by aiming a high power beam at your throat. Why it is applied Prevent you from speaking loud, prevent you to sing

Blackout beam

This is very high intensity burst on your head. There is no pain but it feels like the result having been hit on the head very hard. You feel a bit dizzy and your ears are ringing

UPPER BODY On top of shoulder

A very painfull beam on the top of your shoulder Why it is applied Just torture

Cook chest/lungs

I call this beam: through-body-beam. You are really cooked by this beam. If applied with enough intensity you will feel a burning sensation on the back (where it enters), then feel the beam cook your insde, then you start burping, then you feel a burning sensation on the other part of your body where the beam leaves your body

How it is applied This beam can be applied everywhere, form the house next to yours, from cars. When they beam you outside the intensity often is higher as they want to make sure are hit properly Feeling You feel like being microwaved. Very painfull, horrible torture Cooking

They put the microwave beamer on your body for a long time and you have the feeling you are cooked alive which in effect is a very accurate description of what is being done Feeling You feel like being cooked alive, horrible torture

Burp beam

This is a low power sophisticated version of the chest/lungs cook beam. It is difficult to locate the source direction. How it is applied It takes approx. 2-3 seconds to make you burp, make your body react to events. They also may apply low intensity, so you get an irresistable urge to burp but cannot Feeling Horrible torture Why it is applied To make you suffer. This applied sometimes once every five minutes, but sometimes also several times a minute to let your body react to events like cars passing your window, etc. Horrible torture.

Heart attack incl. extra beam from left behind

This is a low frequency high power beam aimed at your heart, mostly from a position somewhere in front of you. To maximze the effect they simultaneously beam you from the left behind position with a microwave cook beam. How it is applied As they may apply the from behaind beam for a long period your flesh around the heart area may get cooked and the whole area may feel painfiul and stiff Feeling This really gives you the feeling of having a heart problem, and in fact you have! The difference is that this one is applied by murderers. Horrible torture After effects It may take several days before you recover (if they stop the beam) Should you worry Yes, your heart is vital

Heart attack high power burst

This is a very high power burst of very short duration, 1 second or less, that will give you immediately an extremely painful heart (area). This beam is really amazing: I believe it can kill you in an instant How it is applied They can do this through wall anytime Feeling Horrible torture After effects It may take several days before your body recovers and it all feels normal again Should you worry Yes, your heart is vital

Heart attack blobbing feeling, heart pulsing strangely, randomly

This may be done seperate from other heart attacks. Your heart may start feel pulsing funny, the feeling is very massive, it also feels like bubling, like the heart lost control of normal operation and just pulses somewhat

Pressure beam

They put a pressure beam on your chest this will take your breath away and you may think your are having a heart problem. This can have various intensities

Back burning

They burn the skin of your back. This can be low intensity or high intensity. The feeling is you have a sun burn, in case of high intensities it will also color your back a little red.

How it is applied Not only frightening but also very painful

How it is applied This almost instant skin cooking. Refer to ADS (Active Denial System) for details Why it is applied Present pain. To move you out of the way, to make you leave the swimming pool, etc. Electric shower

This is an overwhelming effect. This is like a shower but not with water but with electronic pulses.

Heating

The temperature of your body is increased giving you the feeling you have a flu or some kind of illness.

Spleen beam

Beaming in your side gives you the idea you have spleen pain How it is applied They often do this during high intensity sport activities. The idea is to make you belive you have real spleen pain and will stop your exercise

ARMS Biceps

They cook your biceps to reduce their power , make them feel painful when you load them during e.g. swimming. This may be done to prevent you from doing your sports.

muscle weakening in hand

They beam your hands. The result is that you can not hold a pen between thumb and finger like you used to, also you can not put you fingers against each other (like making a cup with your hand). They may do this to prevent you from working or doing your sports e.g. swimming.

LOWER BODY Stomach cooking

They put a beam on your stomach and the stomach begins to bubble like something is cooking inside. How it is applied They often do this at night. Should you worry Yes, long term irradition may cause stomach cancer, tumors

Kidney damage

With some kind of ultrasound beam they attack your kidneys. The feeling is like you have been kicked over and over in your sides. This is like the feeling that is described by patients that have their kidney stones crushed by ultrasound.

Intestines cooking, urge to defecate

They cook your intestines and you feel you have to fart but cannot.

Fart beam

They cook your intestines and it will start bubbling. After some time you will have to fart

blind gut attack

they cook the area around your tail bone. After a short period, depending on the intensity this may take 60 seconds or more, you will feel horrible cramps. Feeling This pain makes you crawl on the floor. Horrible torture After effects It takes at least one hour before the horrible cramps get a litle less painful. How to detect With normal cramps you will have other parts of your body react as well, like heavy sweating. In this case there is just intense pain.

Diarreah

They cook your intestines and you have a very strong feeling to go to the toilet. By continously beaming you have very heavy diarreah Why it is applied Keep you out of important events, e.g. A lawsuit where you havve to defend yourself

Erection termination

This beam makes your erection go away, if you are a man of course. This can be done in 20-30 seconds. Depending on the direction of the beam your intestines may start bubbling though not very loud

Urge to urinate

They beam your lower body so you will feel the urge to urinate. It is difficult to ignore and there will come a moment you will have to do this when the beam continues.

UPPER LEGS Block burst

The feeling is that your movement is blocked. You must take care not to fall or make a strange move

KNEE Short beams

This will cause pain to your knee

High intensity beaming

The put the beamer on your knee and make sure it stays there for hours. The location may vary ut just above the knee cap can cause a lot of pain. This will result in very much pain and a very sensitive knee. How it is applied After a few days your knee hurts a lot when walking. They may apply this also when biking to make you think something is wrong with your knee Feeling Very painful, horrible torture

LOWER LEGS Calf cooking

They apply low intensity, low power beam to your legs, e.g. When you are in bed. Your muscles, legs feel stif the next morning. They may start cooking the calfs after you finished running, and after some time before you want to go running to prevent you from running How it is applied What happens when you increase load on cooked muscles? They tear apart Feeling Very painful, horrible torture Why it is applied Prevent you from running, other sports

Calf bursting

This beam is in fact a very high power burst and can cook your calf from hundreds of meters in a split second. If you are running your cooked muscles will tear apart and you have instant injury. See also Heart attack high power burst. You may notice the following feeling: a needle going in and out of your calf within a second Feeling Very painful, horrible torture Why it is applied Prevent you from runningm, other sports

Shin cooking

They cook the skin of your shin with very high intensities. When you are running, the shin injury is a well-known. They may start cooking the skin of of your shin after you finished running, and after some time (days) before you want to go running to prevent you from running Feeling Very painful, horrible torture Why it is applied Prevent you from running, other sports

Heel muscle

The cook your heel muscle. This muscle does not contain much nerves so it is difficult to detect before the damage has been done. Then you will think back and remember there was something wrong the previous day or days. Feeling Walking can be painful. Why it is applied Prevent you from running, other sports

Ankle

They cook your ankles, just to cause you pain. You feel the beam and it is difficult to keep your leg in the same position because of the pain. This is often a applied for a long period of time, several hours. Feeling Very painful After effects May take several days to disappear when applied with high intensities

Foot

They beam very hard in the center of your foot Feeling Very painful, horrible torture

Foot insane

They burst the center of your foot with max power very short burst beam, only once while walking even in a crowded place. This causes insane pain and you may fall immediately, because the foot is not functioning anymore. Feeling Extremely painful, horrible torture

Toes

They pick a single toe and beam it for several days in a row Feeling Painful

Toes insane

They burst your toes with with max power very short burst beam, and do this several times. This causes insane pain.

How it is applied They may do this while riding your bike, horrible torture Foot block

Ultrasonic beam to block the movement of a foot. If you are not prepared for this block you may fall.

BODY Shaking

Your whole body starts shaking like being in a aircraft in bad weather. The frequency is around 5 Hz. The intensity may amaze you.

Scratching

They apply a scratch beam to any part of your body. This beam is very hard to resist. Before you know it you may start scratching yourself like crazy Feeling Horrible torture

LEG Tremble apart

Some high power acoustic beamer is aimed at your leg and after some time your leg feels noncooperative, not part of your body anymore

MOOD Sleepy feeling

They beam you with a frequency that makes you really feel sleepy. You will start yawning and cannot keep your eyes open. This efect starts very suddenly and often ends very abrupt. How it is applied They may also do this by devices built into your car

Nausea

Not a very pleasant feeling but not veru disturbing or damaging

See the world turning

You feel dizzy and see the world turing like when you are very very tired. This effect is not really very real. The moment you are out-of-the-beam you are not turning anymore. Still it is amazing that this can be done.

fatigue attacks Force awake

With this well-known beam they will keep you awake, prevent you from sleeping. This way they wear you out, may be the next day you have an important meeting or must finish important work.

Sweating, nauseous, vomit feeling

You start sweating suddenly, you feel dizzy, you think you may have to vomit. When applied with enough intensity you will start to vomit, you will need at least 30 minutes to recover a little bit from this attack, but it will take hours before your body is acting a bit like before the attack. How it is applied They may do this when you are with a friend. Google: navy vomit beam Feeling Horrible torture

SLEEP Induce dreams

You have strange dreams about things but the dreams are not like dreams you had before. The dreams may refer to very recent events in your life, like a person you met, a movie yu saw, it is another form of reacting to events in your life

How it is applied Some people in your environment might tell you they have wild dreams that night trying to get you talking about your experience

Additional Links Secret service: fear for the truth to be revealed - Gang stalkers and people cookers are murderers Secret service: fear for the truth to be revealed - A new category murderers: people cookers The Hidden Evil Microwave Mind Control Peoplecooker.com Secret service: fear for the truth to be revealed - start independent investigations The normal people at war with the mentally ill (the murderers and psychopaths) Secret service: fear for the truth to be revealed - normal people are murdered to keep the system running Secret service: fear for the truth to be revealed - use of electronic weapons to infer psychiatric problems, schizophrenia Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons Electronic Torture

To all Politicians of the world The only way to save the world is to stop your national secret services. Breaking laws and violating human rights in horrible ways has become a way of life. They are responsible for most problems in your neighborhood, in your city, in your country, in the world. Make them responsible for what they are doing. Let them account for in detail, force them to open up their organizations for thorough investigations. Stop their funding if they do not co-operate. Replace directors and staff immediately by normal people for starters. Please help to spread the message or donate: STOPEG foundation - STOP Electronic weapons and Gang stalking

Whatever You Do, Do Not Use Google "Allo": Snowden September 27 2016 | From: RT

Google Allo, the new “smart” chat app launched on Wednesday, is ‘dangerous’ and should be avoided, according to whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The ex-NSA contractor posted a series of Tweets to warn everyone away from the chat app, which he says will “record every message you ever send and make it available to police upon request”. Related: Delete Google Maps? Go ahead, says Google, we'll still track you

Related: Commentary: Evidence points to another Snowden at the NSA Allo, designed to unseat chat pack leader WhatsApp, promises to deliver quick conversations with features like; “Smart Reply” that can guess your answers and respond to messages with just the tap of a button, and “Google Assistant”, which answers your questions and helps you search for things directly in your chat.

Related: Tech firms distancing themselves from spies thanks to Snowden – MI6 chief

How does Allo plan on predicting your every word and witty emoji, you ask? “The more you use it, the more it improves over time,” which basically means they’ll collect and store as much of your data as possible and then use artificial intelligence to guess your replies.

Related: Inside Menwith Hill: The NSA’s British Base at the Heart of U.S. Targeted Killing However, the efficiency of time-saving typing may end up costing customers their already compromised privacy. When Google first announced the introduction of Allo earlier this year they, too, had planned end-to-end-encryption in “Incognito Mode” and assured they would only store messages transiently, rather than indefinitely. However, it now appears that Google won’t be doing that after all. Wednesday’s announcement revealed Google plans to store all conversations that aren’t specifically started in “incognito mode” by default.

Related: ‘Terrorism investigation’ Court lets NSA collect telephone records data As Snowden pointed out, last year every single one of the NSA and FBI’s 1,457 surveillance requests was granted by the US foreign intelligence surveillance court… and Allo’s stored data (i.e. your data) will be fair game too.

In contrast, all of WhatsApp’s chats are encrypted and unreadable - although they did announce last month that they will now be sharing your contacts and who you talk to with Facebook. Related: ‘Betrayal of trust'? WhatsApp to start sharing user data with Facebook, corporations

Oliver Stone Warns Moviegoers: Beware Of Your Smartphones, 'This Will Be Our Undoing' September 21 2016 | From: Sott

Oliver Stone, director of the upcoming film Snowden, will deliver a dark warning to moviegoers at the start of the movie: turn your phone off, and keep it off.

In an ominous one-minute clip, Stone appears in a decadent den with a smartphone in his hand. He discusses the benefits of the technology, compete with a cut to cute cats, before warning that users are giving all their information to "them." Related: Oliver Stone Reveals Clandestine Meetings With Edward Snowden, NSA Worries

""That's not all it does," Stone says as the tone of the PSA intensifies. "It allows certain parties to track your every move every time you make a call or send a text. We are giving them access. The information you've put out into the world voluntarily is enough to burn your life to the ground. This will be our undoing." Stone then looks into the camera and states, "Do the rest of the people in the audience a big favor: turn off your phone during the movie." A narrator then jumps in with a disclaimer that, "Oliver Stone's views are not necessarily that of this theater, or its owners, you're welcome to turn your phone back on after the movie."

In a statement to Ars Technica, PR firm Submersive Media, acting on behalf of the film's production company Open Road Films, added that Stone would like people to turn their phones off permanently. "Oliver Stone would like you to shut off your cell phone during the movie, and then shut it off forever," the statement reads.

Speaking in San Diego at Comic-Con last month, Stone also spoke out against Google and Pokemon GO, calling the wildly popular game "a new level of invasion."

"I'm hearing about it too, it's a new level of invasion. Once the government had been hounded by Snowden, of course the corporations went into encryption, because they had to for survival, right? But the search for profits is enormous here. Nobody has ever seen, in the history of the world, something like Google, ever," Stone told the crowd. "It's the biggest, new, fastest-growing business ever, and they have invested huge amounts of money into what surveillance is, which is data-mining."

The Oscar-winning director warned that, by using technology, governments can manipulate behavior, creating "robot" societies under totalitarian regimes.

Related: New Film Tells the Story of Edward Snowden; Here Are the Surveillance Programs He Helped Expose

"They're data-mining every person in this room for information as to what you're buying, what you like, and above all, your behaviour. Pokémon GO kicks into that. But this is everywhere. It's what some people call surveillance capitalism. It's the newest stage. It's not for profit in the beginning, but it becomes for profit in the end," the director continued. "It manipulates your behavior. It has happened already quite a bit on the internet, but you'll see it everywhere—you'll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave and they will make the mockup that matches how you behave and feed you. It's what they call totalitarianism."

Snowden will be released in theaters in the US on September 16.

Related Articles:

All the Ways Your Wi-Fi Router Can Spy on You Vindication for Edward Snowden From a New Player in NSA Whistleblowing Saga WhatsApp implements fool proof encryption New Zealand Spy Data Shared With Bangladeshi Human Rights Abusers Do We benefit From Five Eyes? Snowden Eexplains How To Protect Your Smartphone From NSA Hackers Google And The FBI Have Been Collecting Your Info Longer Than You Think Here's How You Can Delete Everything Google Has Ever Known About You

Not So Smart Technology: Safety Inspector Blows The Whistle On Fire Hazards Of 'Smart' Electronics September 20 2016 | From: Sott /

If you think your "smart" appliances are the "cat's whiskers," then please think again! Actually, in my opinion, they are the dumbest things ever invented that have been able to buffalo consumers into spending their hard-earned money to purchase, but have the greatest potential for causing consumers harm and grief.

Recently, I received an email from one of my readers who had to attend a fire safety training session for 'their' job.

That instructional course was given by none other than a Delaware County, Pennsylvania Fire Investigator, who was quite explicit in his presentation about certain fire causes. Related: Smart Meters ‘Not Needed’ After All For European Power Grid + How To Opt Out From ‘Smart’ Meters Here's what the email said for which this sender gave permission to share:

“He [the trainer] mentioned in the beginning of his presentation how fire deaths were down, but house fires were up dramatically across the nation. [CJF emphasis added] Later during the Q&A, I asked him in front of the whole group [what were] the causes of these fires. He mentioned all the electronics - WiFi/Bluetooth gadgets, cheap phone chargers, iPads, wide screen TVs, etc. I interrupted to say "how about smart meters" to which he replied: Anything "smart" is a fire hazard. This [smart] technology is so new, and they haven't tested or developed it adequately enough yet. He went on to poke fun at "smart" wired houses having everything linked and what a hazard that can cause. Then after the presentation, I commented how I heard that as this technology ages, it becomes even more potentially hazardous, which he affirmed, and also mentioned that More car fires occur because of all the electronic gadgetry now. ”

All the above information is yet another confirmation with implications for Consumer Protection Law(s) at local and state levels regarding "smart" consumer appliances and fires, which insurance companies - especially AMI Smart Meter fires are declining coverage for! But there is even more serious damage happening every minute of the day from microwave technology, which smart appliances operate on. It's called electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs/RFs) that emit non-ionizing radiation which cause adverse health effects known as "non-thermal" effects. Comment: Dr. Barrie Trower, a British physicist has acquired a great deal of expertise in the microwave field, extending his research to common electronic systems, including cell phones, iPods, computer games and microwave ovens. His research has shown that microwave radiation is extremely hazardous, especially to pregnant women and young children.

The risks are so great that the use of WiFi can lead to permanent genetic damage to our children and subsequent generations. WiFi to kill millions, with its effects being cumulative over generations Neurosurgeon Shows How Low Levels of Radiation Such As Wi-Fi, Smart Meters And Cell Phones Cause The Blood Brain Barrier To Leak The BioInitiative Report - The Dangerous Health Impacts of Microwave Radiation EMF pollution: The health impacts of wireless RF radiation

Consumers, when they really learn the downside of "smart technology," obviously will have to beef up their activism to get the protection they need for their health and properties, as the industries involved - and more sadly - states public utility commissions - really don't give a hoot about the harms caused, otherwise they would be enacting legislation to deal with them.

And then there's this information that I received from readers whose privacy I respect and honor, but will share their information. In sharing information like the following from a reader in Canada, it is that consumers become aware, physically safer plus empowered:

“People need to be getting documentation about all of these fires. Media articles are often the starting point, but they are anecdotal. Once there is what sounds like a smart meter fire, request and obtain the official fire report from the state or provincial fire commissioner. Find out what the legal reporting and investigating requirements are. If the fire is believed to be electrical, who does the investigation and how is he informed about the fire? Are the laws being followed? Are meters being removed? It takes time and digging but I can't find anyone else who is getting this sort of info for fires in their areas. It is only when this documentation is obtained for many fires and patterns are found that things will be taken seriously. In the US the Consumer Affairs Dept. [1] has agreed to gather reports on smeter fires. I have sent her a few because the ITRON meters we use are the same used in many places in the US. But in Canada our meters are not considered "consumer" goods since the utilities own them. This agency should be informed but it requires full documentation - not just media reports."

Note that here's what I think our kind and thoughtful Canadian neighbor is referring to:

“The US Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) is a federal agency that will take complaints on utility smart meters from all US states. If you have or had smart meter electrical or fire problems CALL: (800) 6382772 Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. ET or submit your complaint by email. "

However, I must caution a consumer that, if or when you experience an AMI Smart Meter ('smeter') fire, immediately after the fire has been extinguished and it is safe to do so, take photographs with your cell phone and a regular camera, so you can have "secured" documentation because things can get 'lost' in cyberspace! Remember to attach copies of those photos with the smeter fire report you file with the US Consumer Products Safety Commission. Additionally, I must share that I've heard stories that the power company immediately removes the fire-damaged meter and does not allow consumers access to it or to keep a fire-damaged meter as 'proof' for insurance purposes. It seems that 'games' are being played, and insurance companies 'buy' into them too!

Fire safety regarding all 'smart' technology should be enforced by consumer products safety commissions, municipalities and code enforcement departments at local and state levels. Obviously they are not doing that when it comes to AMI Smart Meters made with heat-sensitive plastic parts. Analog meters were made of glass and steel parts. Learn how to protect yourself from smart technology EMFs/RFs and fire hazards.

Related Articles: Radiation emitted from smart meters 100 times greater than cell phones - and exposure is constant, doctors warn AMI Smart Meter Testing Video Disputes Safety Claims for Smart Meter EMFs ZigBee Radio Transmitter: How Many Do You Have?

New Zealand Intelligence And Security Bill September 3 2016 | From: TheContrail

This draconian Bill, currently in the process of being passed by our Parliament, effectively merging the GCSB and SIS intelligence agencies, and giving them greatly increased surveillance powers with the police - operating independently of the normal judicial system; has all happened before and is further linked to the Kim Dotcom appeal trial at the High Court in Auckland at present.

Basically it is transferring the entire country into a police surveillance state, such as was previously operated in Nazi Germany. Related: New Zealand Intelligence and Security Bill

New Zealand Intelligence and Security Bill - First Reading

While this process is happening in many other countries at present as well, that is no excuse for us here in NZ to be indifferent about it.

I thought I would briefly summarize what is happening using a brief timeline of short YouTube clips: On September 2012, after Kim Dotcom had been illegally arrested through the SIS and GCSB spying on him on behalf of the American NSA, he attended the New Zealand Parliament hearing on a new intelligence Bill grilling John Key about it.

In July 2013, Kim Dotcom, while his extradition battle was continuing, spoke to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Select Committee & NZ PM John Key arguing against the increased draconian extension of GCSB powers.

Here is a brief clip of the Kim Dotcom Protest and his speech July 27, 2013:

Here is the Campbell Live TV program dissecting the GCSB Bill with Kim Dotcom Scandal. (This is in part why John Campbell is no longer employed on NZ public television!):

Hitler’s police state gained so much evil power by merging the SS and Gestapo (secret intelligence agencies and private police) (as is recommended in this evil NZ Bill). This allowed them to arrest anyone SEPARATE from the normal judicial system which, was allowed to continue to operate and coexist making Germans think they were still living in a democracy when the truth was it was a brutal dictatorship. Following the merger of the intelligence agencies under the SS, they were then linked with the Gestapo (private secret police) who arrested anyone they liked, and brought them before a new, special court called the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) in Berlin.

This court wickedly condemned thousands of good people to death as “Volk Vermin” for even briefly criticizing Hitler. That is what they are trying to do with Kim Dotcom and his colleagues now by having them extradited to the United States where they will be tried by a kangaroo court. Fascism is very cunning isn’t it? We often think Germans en mass were incredibly stupid to follow Hitler and Fascism. But now, we, the WW2 victor nations, are doing it ourselves. What a pack of idiots!

The New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, is the son of a Jewish Holocaust Survivor [supposed son, supposed holocaust]. What a disgrace. He, above all of us, should know more about the full implications of what he is doing! In Nazi Germany, the great paradox was that many of those who were most loyal to the Fuhrer were the first to get a

bullet in the back of the head, not only the Jews. On both counts, the New Zealand Prime Minister should know better. This is what a career in banking does to the mind. Other than filthy lucre – severe amnesia!

So yes. Just carry on watching the football on TV you men, and Soaps on TV you women and one chilling evening [should they have their way] there might be a brisk knock on your door from the new resurrected SS or New World Order Gestapo to take you or your children away forever, for being a threat to “national security” using the new GCSB / SIS draconian warrants. This is the option they want to be able to exercise.

Inquisition 2.0: The Internet Is Being Taken Hostage By The NWO September 2 2016 | From: Infowars

The globalists may have officially obtained total control of the internet?

Let’s go over the mounting evidence that the internet as we know it will be commandeered by globalist censors beginning midnight October 1st, when an entirely new era of the internet will begin. Originally, President Obama promised that the Fed’s handover of the antitrust protected Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN would not involve the United Nations. Was this, yet again, a naive move by an incompetent President of the United States? Or has this been the plan all along?

Kim Dotcom Wins Bid To Livestream On YouTube His Extradition Appeal September 1 2016 | From: TVNZ

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has won a bid to livestream on YouTube his battle against extradition to the United States.

The 42-year-old Megaupload founder has this week returned to court to appeal a decision allowing him to be extradited from New Zealand over criminal copyright charges. Related: Genius move: Live-stream file-sharing chaos will play into Dotcom’s hands

Comment: The final outcome of this court case here in New Zealand right now ultimately will decide the freedom of the entire global Internet as we know it! On top of that, at issue is national sovereignty, and whether multinational corporations can be allowed to manipulate the sovereign laws of one country or through international trade agreements etc. to take precedence over the sovereign laws of another independent country – in this case New Zealand. Incredibly, against strong opposition from the US Government yesterday, the judge is allowing this appeal trial to be live-streamed to the world on YouTube, starting today, but as yet, I haven’t been able to find it. So all this means, if the live-streaming goes ahead, the multinational corporate media cannot CENSOR the truth about the case as they have been.

Today, the presiding judge gave permission for the entire six weeks of the appeal hearing to be broadcast on YouTube by a cameraman hired by Dotcom. Between the direct effect on millions of Megaupload users as well as the precedent the case would set, the public interest merited complete coverage standard media channels could not provide, Dotcom's lawyer, Ron Mansfield, had argued at the High Court in Auckland. Advertisement

“This is a case of the internet age," he said.

Lawyers for the United States oppose the livestream, saying Dotcom was not sufficiently accountable for the coverage - as a media organisation would be - and that the footage could prejudice a criminal case in the US if the extradition went ahead. But Justice Murray Gilbert allowed the stream to go ahead, on the grounds the comments and live-chat features for the video were disabled, the video was taken down after the trial and the broadcast was delayed for 20 minutes to avoid publishing of sensitive material.

"This is breaking new ground. New Zealand at the forefront of transparent justice! Leadership!" Dotcom tweeted moments later.

The livestream will start tomorrow. In December, Judge Nevin Dawson ruled Dotcom and his three associates - Mathias Ortmann, Finn Batato and Bram van der Kolk - had criminal charges to face in the US over their part in running file-sharing website Megaupload. The four men face charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and two kinds of criminal copyright infringement based on an FBI investigation going back to 2010. If extradited and found guilty in the US, the men could be up for decades in jail.

Australia Becomes First Country To Begin Microchipping Its Public August 31 2016 | From: NeonNettle

Australia is to become the first country in the world to microchip its public. NBC news predicted

that all Americans would be microchipped by 2017, but it seems Australia may have beaten them to the post. These idiots must be some of the most stupid people alive.

News.com.au reports: It may sound like sci-fi, but hundreds of Australians are turning themselves into superhumans who can unlock doors, turn on lights and log into computers with a wave of the hand. Shanti Korporaal, from Sydney, is at the centre of the phenomenon after having two implants inserted under her skin. Now she can get into work and her car without carrying a card or keys, and says her ultimate goal is to completely do away with her wallet and cards.

“You could set up your life so you never have to worry about any password or PINs” she told news.com.au. “It’s the same technology as Paypass, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to pay for things with it. With Opal you get a unique identification number that could be programmed into the chip. Any door with a swipe card... it could open your computer, photocopier. Loyalty cards for shops are just another thing for your wallet.”

The microchips, which are the size of a grain of rice, can act like a business card and transfer contact details to smartphones, and hold complex medical data. Shanti has had some messages from ultra-conservative Christians on Facebook telling her she’s going to hell, but the reaction has mainly been one of intrigue.

“My nana wants one,” laughs Shanti. “I’ve had more opposition to my tattoos than I’ve ever had to the chip. My friends are jealous.”

When the 27-year-old realised just how coveted the implants were, she set up an Australian distribution service called Chip My Life with her husband, Skeeve Stevens.

It costs between $80 and $140 depending on the sophistication of the technology, and (while you can do it at home) they work with doctors who charge $150 to insert the implant.

“They do minor surgery, Botox and so on,” says Shanti. “They give you a local, an injection and a quick ultrasound to make sure it’s in place.”

The biohacking couple both have RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips in their left hands and NFC (near-field communication) chips in the right. The implant is almost impossible to spot, leaving a mark as small as a freckle.

The Pioneer Shanti is appearing at today’s Sydney launch of cyborg-themed video game Deus Ex Mankind Divided alongside US implantable technology pioneer Amal Graafstra.

Amal considers himself a guinea-pig for human augmentation, making headlines in the US last week with a prototype of the world’s first implant-activated smart gun. He became one of the world’s first RFID implantees in 2005, and has since founded an online store to sell the “at home” kits to people who want to “upgrade their body”. He’s written a book, spoken at TEDx and appeared in documentaries. “On a psychological level, this is completely different to a smartphone or a Fitbit, because it goes in you,” he told news.com.au.

“Your kidneys are working hard but you’re not thinking about them, it’s not something you have to manage. It’s given me the ability to communicate with machines. It’s literally integrated into who I am.”

He is aware of the ethical and security concerns, but points out that the data is encrypted, and most of your access cards are not secure anyway. This is simply a case of “computing in the body.” Rather than worry about people being forced to be microchipped, he’s now busy advocating for the rights of citizens who use them. He believes the destruction of the chip could in some cases classify as assault (as with a pacemaker) and other dangers might be governments forcibly extracting implants or data from them.

“I want to make sure it’s treated as part of the body, like an organ,” he says.

One firm in Sweden has allowed employees to choose chips over a work pass, with 400 taking up the offer, but Amal says he more often hears from interested individuals who want to try it out.

“At the moment, it’s mainly access - house, computer motorcycle. But in the future there’s the potential to use it for transit, payment. You could get rid of your keys and maybe your wallet.”

Other uses might include children tapping to let parents know they are at school safely, refugees checking in at camps or women at shelters. It can share diet, exercise and sleep inform ation with you and your doctor, and the next generation could even release medicine as and when you need it. For Shanti, adding an extra dimension to life is a childhood fantasy come true.

“Ever since watching movies like the Terminator, Matrix and Minority Report I wondered if we could actually live like that. I always wondered why we all weren’t living as ‘super-humans’.”

The NSA Leak Is Real, Snowden Documents Confirm August 23 2016 | From: TheIntercept

Last Monday a group calling itself the “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide.

The provenance of the code has been a matter of heated debate this week among cybersecurity experts, and while it remains unclear how the software leaked, one thing is now beyond speculation: The malware is covered with the NSA’s virtual fingerprints and clearly originates from the agency. The evidence that ties the ShadowBrokers dump to the NSA comes in an agency manual for implanting malware, classified top secret, provided by Snowden, and not previously available to the public. The draft manual instructs NSA operators to track their use of one malware program using a specific 16-character string, “ace02468bdf13579.” That exact same string appears throughout the ShadowBrokers leak in code associated with the same program, SECONDDATE. SECONDDATE plays a specialized role inside a complex global system built by the U.S. government to infect and monitor what one document estimated to be millions of computers around the world.

Its release by ShadowBrokers, alongside dozens of other malicious tools, marks the first time any full copies of the NSA’s offensive software have been available to the public, providing a glimpse at how an elaborate system outlined in the Snowden documents looks when deployed in the real world, as well as concrete evidence that NSA hackers don’t always have the last word when it comes to computer exploitation. But malicious software of this sophistication doesn’t just pose a threat to foreign governments, Johns Hopkins University cryptographer Matthew Green told The Intercept:

"The danger of these exploits is that they can be used to target anyone who is using a vulnerable router. This is the equivalent of leaving lockpicking tools lying around a high school cafeteria. It’s worse, in fact, because many of these exploits are not available through any other means, so they’re just now coming to the attention of the firewall and router manufacturers that need to fix them, as well as the customers that are vulnerable. So the risk is twofold: first, that the person or persons who stole this information might have used them against us. If this is indeed Russia, then one assumes that they probably have their own exploits, but there’s no need to give them any more. And now that the exploits have been released, we run the risk that ordinary criminals will use them against corporate targets."

The NSA did not respond to questions concerning ShadowBrokers, the Snowden documents, or its malware.

A Memorable SECONDDATE The offensive tools released by ShadowBrokers are organized under a litany of code names such as POLARSNEEZE and ELIGIBLE BOMBSHELL, and their exact purpose is still being assessed. But we do know more about one of the weapons: SECONDDATE. SECONDDATE is a tool designed to intercept web requests and redirect browsers on target computers to an NSA web server. That server, in turn, is designed to infect them with malware. SECONDDATE’s existence was first reported by The Intercept in 2014, as part of a look at a global computer exploitation effort code-named TURBINE. The malware server, known as FOXACID, has also been described in previously released Snowden documents.

Other documents released by The Intercept today not only tie SECONDDATE to the ShadowBrokers leak but also provide new detail on how it fits into the NSA’s broader surveillance and infection network. They also show how SECONDDATE has been used, including to spy on Pakistan and a computer system in Lebanon. The top-secret manual that authenticates the SECONDDATE found in the wild as the same one used within the NSA is a 31-page document titled “FOXACID SOP for Operational Management” and marked as a draft. It dates to no earlier than 2010. A section within the manual describes administrative tools for tracking how victims are funneled into FOXACID, including a set of tags used to catalogue servers. When such a tag is created in relation to a SECONDDATE-related infection, the document says, a certain distinctive identifier must be used:

The same SECONDDATE MSGID string appears in 14 different files throughout the ShadowBrokers leak, including in a file titled SecondDate-3021.exe. Viewed through a code-editing program (screenshot below), the NSA’s secret number can be found hiding in plain sight:

All told, throughout many of the folders contained in the ShadowBrokers’ package (screenshot below), there are 47 files with SECONDDATE-related names, including different versions of the raw code required to execute a SECONDDATE attack, instructions for how to use it, and other related files.

After viewing the code, Green told The Intercept the MSGID string’s occurrence in both an NSA training document and this week’s leak is “unlikely to be a coincidence.” Computer security researcher Matt Suiche, founder of UAE-based cybersecurity startup Comae Technologies, who has been particularly vocal in his analysis of the ShadowBrokers this week, told The Intercept “there is no way” the MSGID string’s appearance in both places is a coincidence.

Where SECONDDATE Fits In This overview jibes with previously unpublished classified files provided by Snowden that illustrate how SECONDDATE is a component of BADDECISION, a broader NSA infiltration tool. SECONDDATE helps the NSA pull off a “man in the middle” attack against users on a wireless network, tricking them into thinking they’re talking to a safe website when in reality they’ve been sent a malicious payload from an NSA server. According to one December 2010 PowerPoint presentation titled “Introduction to BADDECISION,” that tool is also designed to send users of a wireless network, sometimes referred to as an 802.11 network, to FOXACID malware servers. Or, as the presentation puts it, BADDECISION is an “802.11 CNE [computer network exploitation] tool that uses a true manin-the-middle attack and a frame injection technique to redirect a target client to a FOXACID server.” As another top-secret slide puts it, the attack homes in on “the greatest vulnerability to your computer: your web browser.”

One slide points out that the attack works on users with an encrypted wireless connection to the internet. That trick, it seems, often involves BADDECISION and SECONDDATE, with the latter described as a “component” for the former. A series of diagrams in the “Introduction to BADDECISION” presentation show how an NSA operator “uses SECONDDATE to inject a redirection payload at [a] Target Client,” invisibly hijacking a user’s web browser as the user attempts to visit a benign website (in the example given, it’s CNN.com). Executed correctly, the file explains, a “Target Client continues normal webpage browsing, completely unaware,” lands on a malware-filled NSA server, and becomes infected with as much of that malware as possible - or as the presentation puts it, the user will be left “WHACKED!” In the other top-secret presentations, it’s put plainly: “How do we redirect the target to the FOXACID server without being noticed”? Simple: “Use NIGHTSTAND or BADDECISION.” The sheer number of interlocking tools available to crack a computer is dizzying. In the FOXACID manual, government hackers are told an NSA hacker ought to be familiar with using SECONDDATE along with similar man-in-the-middle wi-fi

attacks code-named MAGIC SQUIRREL and MAGICBEAN. A top-secret presentation on FOXACID lists further ways to redirect targets to the malware server system.

To position themselves within range of a vulnerable wireless network, NSA operators can use a mobile antenna system running software code-named BLINDDATE, depicted in the field in what appears to be Kabul. The software can even be attached to a drone. BLINDDATE in turn can run BADDECISION, which allows for a SECONDDATE attack:

Elsewhere in these files, there are at least two documented cases of SECONDDATE being used to successfully infect computers overseas: An April 2013 presentation boasts of successful attacks against computer systems in both Pakistan and Lebanon. In the first, NSA hackers used SECONDDATE to breach “targets in Pakistan’s National Telecommunications Corporation’s (NTC) VIP Division,” which contained documents pertaining to “the backbone of Pakistan’s Green Line communications network” used by “civilian and military leadership.” In the latter, the NSA used SECONDDATE to pull off a man-in-the-middle attack in Lebanon “for the first time ever,” infecting a Lebanese ISP to extract “100+ MB of Hizballah Unit 1800 data,” a special subset of the terrorist group dedicated to aiding Palestinian militants.

SECONDDATE is just one method that the NSA uses to get its target’s browser pointed at a FOXACID server. Other methods include sending spam that attempts to exploit bugs in popular web-based email providers or entices targets to click on malicious links that lead to a FOXACID server. One document, a newsletter for the NSA’s Special Source Operations division, describes how NSA software other than SECONDDATE was used to repeatedly direct targets in Pakistan to FOXACID malware web servers, eventually infecting the targets’ computers.

A Potentially Mundane Hack Snowden, who worked for NSA contractors Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton, has offered some context and a relatively mundane possible explanation for the leak: that the NSA headquarters was not hacked, but rather one of the computers the agency uses to plan and execute attacks was compromised. In a series of tweets, he pointed out that the NSA often lurks on systems that are supposed to be controlled by others, and it’s possible someone at the agency took control of a server and failed to clean up after themselves. A regime, hacker group, or intelligence agency could have seized the files and the opportunity to embarrass the agency.

Documents Documents published with this story: NSA Central Security Service: FOXACID SOP for Operational Management of FOXACID Infrastructure (Draft) Wireless LAN / CNE Tool Training Course and Evaluation Course introduction Introduction to WLAN / 802.11 Active CNE Operations Introduction to BADDECISION NSA: Expeditionary Access Operations: NSA’s Close Access Network Exploitation Program (“CNO Course – EAO”) NSA Remote Operations Center: FOXACID Overall Briefing NSA SIGINT Development (SIGDEV): SIGINT Development Support II Program Management Review, 24 April 2013 (select slides)

The Raid: In Bungled Spying Operation, NSA, GCSB & SIS Targeted Pro-Democracy Campaigner August 22 2016 | From: TheIntercept

Tony Fullman ia a middle-aged former tax man and a pro-democracy activist. But four years ago, a botched operation launched by New Zealand spies meant he suddenly found himself deemed a potential terrorist - his passport was revoked, his home was raided, and he was placed on a topsecret National Security Agency surveillance list.

The extraordinary covert operation, revealed Sunday by Television New Zealand in collaboration with The Intercept, was launched in 2012 after New Zealand authorities believed they had identified a group planning to violently overthrow Fiji’s military regime.

As part of the spy mission, the NSA used its powerful global surveillance apparatus to intercept the emails and Facebook chats of people associated with a Fijian “thumbs up for democracy” campaign. The agency then passed the messages to its New Zealand counterpart, Government Communications Security Bureau, or GCSB. One of the main targets was Fullman, a New Zealand citizen, whose communications were monitored by the NSA after New Zealand authorities, citing secret evidence, accused him of planning an “an act of terrorism” overseas. But it turned out that the claims were baseless - Fullman, then 47, was not involved in any violent plot. He was a long-time public servant and peaceful pro-democracy activist who, like the New Zealand and Australian governments at that time, was opposed to Fiji’s authoritarian military ruler Frank Bainimarama.

Details about the surveillance are contained in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. More than 190 pages of top-secret NSA logs of intercepted communications dated between May and August 2012 show that the agency used the controversial internet surveillance system PRISM to eavesdrop on Fullman and other Fiji prodemocracy advocates’ Gmail and Facebook messages. Fullman is the first person in the world to be publicly identified as a confirmed PRISM target. At the time of the spying, New Zealand’s surveillance agency was not permitted to monitor New Zealand citizens. Despite this, it worked with the NSA to eavesdrop on Fullman’s communications, which suggests he is one of 88 unnamed New Zealanders who were spied on between 2003 and 2012 in operations that may have been illegal, as revealed in an explosive 2013 New Zealand government report. In response to questions for this story, the NSA declined to address the Fullman case directly. A spokesperson for the agency, Michael Halbig, said in a statement to The Intercept that it “works with a number of partners in meeting its foreignintelligence mission goals, and those operations comply with U.S. law and with the applicable laws under which those partners operate.” Antony Byers, a spokesperson for New Zealand’s intelligence agencies, said he would not comment:

"On matters that may or may not be operational.” The country’s spy agencies “operate within the law,” Byers said, adding: “We do not ask partners to do things that would circumvent the law, and New Zealand gets significant value from our international relationships.”

A Fijian military soldier stands guard on Parliament grounds

Unexpected Twist Fullman was born in Fiji in 1965 and emigrated to New Zealand when he was about 21. He became naturalized as a New Zealand citizen and spent most of his working life in the country, including more than 20 years in various roles at the government’s tax department, where he was based out of offices first in Auckland and later in the capital city of Wellington. In his spare time, Fullman worked as an amateur boxing judge and referee and helped out once a month at a Wellington soup kitchen run by a Christian charity. Between 2001 and 2003, he attended graduate school, earning two masters degrees: one in public management, the other in information systems. And in 2009, he decided to return to Fiji after he was offered a job as chief executive of the Fiji Water Authority.

The move back to Fiji, however, led to a dramatic and unexpected twist in the course of his life - partly due to an old childhood friend. Fullman had grown up in Fiji in the port town of Levuka. There, during the 1960s, his mother had worked as secretary to Kamisese Mara, an influental local politician who went on to serve as Fiji’s prime minister between 1970 and 1992. Kamisese had a young son - Ratu Tevita Mara - who was about the same age as Fullman. The two boys became best friends, together attending school, playing rugby, and going on trips.

"Weekends we would go fishing or go up to his mother’s farm, help out on the farm,” Fullman recalled in an interview with The Intercept. “We spent a lot of time together. He was like a brother to me.”

When Fullman left Fiji for New Zealand in his early 20s, he kept in contact with Mara through phone and email. And by the time Fullman returned to Fiji in 2009 to take the water authority job, Mara had become a powerful military officer, serving as the Fijian army’s chief of staff. But the political situation in Fiji was now highly unstable, and Mara was at the center of some of the tensions. The country had experienced three military coups between 1987 and 2006 that were rooted in ethnic and religious divisions. Following the latest coup in 2006, which had brought authoritarian ruler Bainimarama to power, the military government and police were accused of systematically cracking down on freedom of speech and arresting critics and human rights defenders.

Mara was dissatisfied with the leadership and, in May 2011, he became embroiled in a high-profile dispute with the Bainimarama regime. He was accused of plotting to overthrow the government and charged with uttering a seditious comment. He was hauled before a court, where he was threatened with imprisonment for allegedly uttering the words, “This government is fuck all.” Mara was freed on bail while the case against him remained ongoing. But he was concerned about the prospect of ultimately receiving a lengthy jail term.

Fullman (left) and Mara having dinner in Fiji, December 2005

He decided to take a drastic course of action - and fled Fiji, escaping on a boat to nearby Tonga

Following Mara’s dramatic getaway, Fullman was questioned by the Fijian military. It had found records of phone calls between him and Mara dated from shortly before Mara had left. Facing potential punishment over allegations that he helped Mara escape, Fullman decided that he too would have to promptly leave Fiji.

The NSA surveillance file shows a photo of Fullman that he uploaded to Facebook

NSA Spying

By 2012, Fullman had moved to Sydney, Australia, where he was living with his sister and her family. Alongside Mara and other former Fiji residents, he was working with a group called the Fiji Movement for Freedom and Democracy, which was campaigning against the Bainimarama regime. In early July 2012, Fullman and Mara traveled to New Zealand, where they held meetings with some of the group’s supporters in Auckland. The meetings appear to have attracted the attention of New Zealand’s spies- and culminated in an extraordinary sequence of events: Fullman’s home was raided, his passport revoked, and both he and Mara were put under top-secret NSA surveillance. A New Zealand government source familiar with the operation that targeted the democracy group, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified information, told The Intercept that an investigation was launched after New Zealand’s equivalent of the FBI, the Security Intelligence Service, bugged telephone calls in which it believed it heard people discussing a plot to violently overthrow Bainimarama.

According to the source, security officials were “very excited,” thinking they “finally had some baddies, real live terrorists in New Zealand.” At the time, the New Zealand government had been keeping close tabs on the political situation in Fiji, which consists of some 333 small islands located about a three-hour flight north of Auckland. Fiji has historically maintained strong trading and tourism links with New Zealand, but the relationship had soured in the aftermath of the 2006 military coup.

Ratu Tevita Mara pictured in a video made for the pro-democracy campaign

The New Zealand government expressed its opposition to the Bainimarama regime’s takeover, placing sanctions on Fiji and calling for the restoration of democracy. By mid-2012, however, relations between the countries were beginning to thaw.

New Zealand government officials were openly discussing the possibility of ending the sanctions, in part because they may have been concerned that Fiji seemed to be moving closer to forming an allegiance with China and other Asian nations. At 7am on July 17, 2012, about a week after Fullman had returned to Australia from the trip to New Zealand, a team of more than a dozen Australian security agents and two Australian federal police detectives arrived at his sister’s home in Sydney looking for weapons and other evidence of the suspected plot. They seized computers, phones and documents from the premises and confiscated Fullman’s passport on behalf of the New Zealand authorities.

Teams of New Zealand Security Intelligence Service officers and police simultaneously raided Fullman’s former apartment in the Wellington suburb of Karori and the homes of at least three other Fiji Freedom and Democracy movement supporters in Auckland, seizing their computers and other property. The same day that the raids took place, New Zealand Minister of Internal Affairs Chris Tremain signed a notice canceling Fullman’s passport. The notice said the minister had canceled the passport based on secret details provided by the Security Intelligence Service:

"The majority of [the] information is classified but in summary I have good reason to believe that … you are involved in planning violent action intended to force a change of Government in a foreign state; and you intend to engage in, or facilitate, an act of terrorism overseas.”

Fullman was baffled by the allegations, which he denied, and sought legal advice to challenge them. At the same time, unknown to him, he had also entered onto the radar of the world’s most powerful surveillance agency: the NSA. Between early July and early August 2012, New Zealand spies appear to have requested American assistance to obtain the emails and Facebook communications of Fullman and Mara, including from a “democfiji” email address used by Fullman to organize events for the campaign group, whose slogan was “thumbs up for democracy.” The NSA’s documents contain a “priority list” that names the two men as “Fiji targets” alongside their Gmail addresses and an account number identifying Fullman’s Facebook page. The documents indicate that the NSA began intercepting messages associated with Mara’s accounts on about the July 9, 2012 and on August 3 started spying on Fullman’s messages. The agency also obtained historic messages from the two men dating back to the beginning of May 2012.

A slide from a leaked NSA document about PRISM, published by the Washington Post in 2013

To conduct the electronic eavesdropping, the NSA turned to one of its most controversial surveillance programs: PRISM. The agency uses PRISM to secretly obtain communications that are processed by major technology companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo, as the Washington Post and The Guardian first reported in 2013. Almost all of the more than 190 pages of intercepted Gmail and Facebook messages from Fullman and Mara is headed “US984XN,” the code for surveillance that is carried out under PRISM. The pages reveal that the legal justifications NSA cited for the surveillance were selected inconsistently. Most of Fullman’s emails and Facebook messages were obtained as “foreign government” targets, while others such as his bank statements and Facebook photographs were collected under the category of “counter-terrorism.” The classification markings on some of the files - “REL TO USA/NZ” - make clear that the intercepted communications were to be released to New Zealand spies. In one of the files showing Fullman’s intercepted emails and Facebook chats, the NSA explicitly noted that the intercepted material had been forwarded to its New Zealand intelligence counterpart, the GCSB. (New Zealand is a member of the Five Eyes, a surveillance alliance that also includes electronic eavesdropping agencies from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.) Related: Full Disclosure: The Internet Dark Age - Five Eyes Sources And Methods Uncovered Disabling The FVEY ECHELON / GCHQ / NSA / CSEC / DSD / GCHB Systems

The NSA collected Fullman’s bank records (Reproduced here with Fullman’s consent)

The NSA surveillance, however, produced no evidence of a plot. The intercepted messages contained personal information and typical Facebook chit chat. The NSA collected Fullman’s bank statements, which were attached to his emails and showed his visits to a coffee shop, a pharmacy, and purchases at a shoe store. There was correspondence about Fullman working to establish a tourism venture on an island in Tonga, emails about a birthday party, many communications about the Fijian pro-democracy group’s blog posts, and details about alleged abuses committed by Fijian military officials.

Fiji Parliament

There were discussions about an unwell mother and a young relative with a confidential health problem. A top-secret intelligence document even reproduced a photograph of Fullman’s silver Mitsubishi station wagon alongside details of its precise location. But there was not a single hint of any plans for violence or other clandestine activity. It would soon become clear that there was no evidence to support the New Zealand authorities’ suspicions. And gradually, their case would fall apart. On 16 April, 2013, the internal affairs minister, Tremain, wrote again to Fullman. Contrary to the earlier notice he had issued, Tremain now said that “based on advice” provided by the Security Intelligence Service, there were “no longer national security concerns” about Fullman. The cancellation of his passport was lifted “without requiring an application for a replacement, or payment of a fee.” The change of position followed Fullman initiating legal action against the New Zealand government in the Wellington High Court two months earlier.

Another of the pro-democracy members whose home was raided during the operation was former Fiji sports minister and then-grocery store owner Rajesh Singh. After his home was searched by police and security agents, Singh complained to New Zealand’s inspector general of intelligence and security, Andrew McGechan, who questioned the officers involved and reviewed the investigation. His report said the Security Intelligence Service had applied for a domestic intelligence warrant “against a number of individuals” because of “suspicions of a plan to inflict violence.” But McGechan identified neither unlawful behavior by Singh nor evidence of the supposed terrorist plot. His May 2014 report said:

"There is nothing in the issue of the Warrant itself or in the questions and answers that followed… which comes even near to approaching proof of criminal activity or participation in terrorism.” He noted that “no police activity has resulted, or charges been laid.”

The Intercept asked Fullman if he or Mara had ever heard of - or been involved in - discussions about overthrowing or assassinating Bainimarama.

Frank Bainimarama

Far from denying it, he said that sort of talk happened frequently within Fijian pro-democracy circles. However, he said it was just angry ranting, when the alcohol was flowing, something completely different from real plans.

"People would say things like, ‘Please can we just hire the Americans to send one drone to Fiji to get rid of those bastards’, or ‘Let me go back to Fiji and I’ll just get a knife and stab him!’” Fullman said. “It’s venting. It’s our way of maintaining sanity - we just sit and bitch about everything. We don’t want violence. We want something where there’s control, a planned approach. More to the effect where it’s the people who protest and say, ‘Enough is enough. This is wrong. We want to go back to the old constitution and have elections.’”

The New Zealand security agency may not have recognized the difference between eavesdropped venting and an actual plot, prematurely launching its raids and broad secret surveillance operation without any clear evidence. Four days after the raids on Fullman and his fellow campaigners, New Zealand foreign minister Murray McCully traveled to Fiji for trade talks. Fullman believes that the timing was no coincidence - and that the raids targeting the pro-democracy group were used by the New Zealand government as a bargaining chip to curry favor with the Bainimarama regime.

“The minister can go to Fiji and say, ‘look we saved you, let’s be friends again, let’s start talking about how we can help each other again’,” Fullman says. “It was part of the frame up.”

No charges were ever brought against any of the Fiji campaigners, yet the ramifications of the case are still felt. Fullman says he gets pulled out of airline queues for security searches every time he travels, and he has had trouble finding work since news reports following the raids in 2012 linked him to a Fiji assassination plan. He told The Intercept that he was never notified that his private communications had been monitored by New Zealand with the help of American counterparts at the NSA - possibly illegally - nor did he ever receive an apology or compensation for his treatment. As he recalls the saga, there is no anger in Fullman’s voice, only disappointment. Since the affair, he has not felt like returning to live in New Zealand and plans to stay in Australia for the foreseeable future.

"To be betrayed by your own country, it’s really hard,” he says, letting out a sigh. “It puts a sour taste in your mouth.”

Documents published with this story: Tony Fullman NSA files

And Now The Government Are Coming For Whistleblowers: New Law Targets People Who Leak Classified Information August 18 2016 | From: TheDailyBlog / NewZealandHerald

The National Government will imprison whistleblowers - if your enemy is people telling the truth, then you have deep deep deep problems. It just got far, far worse.

The new spy powers don’t just allow the SIS and GCSB vast new access to your Government files, gives them warrantless spying for 24 hours which allows them to break into our homes, plant cameras and spy on us and all they need is the pretence of national security to do it all. Related: John Key: “You Want To Spy? You Make The “Business” Plan, I’ll Change The Law!” The SIS won’t be allowed to break into your computers remotely and the GCSB won’t be able to break into your house, BUT (and here’s the joke) if they are operating under a joint warrant, they can do all those things. These new powers follow up the mass surveillance legislation National rammed through Parliament that allowed agencies to ask the GCSB to spy on NZers. These new powers allows the GCSB to do that all on their own. A department that has been caught being racist in private will have huge unchecked powers – but it gets so much worse. Now any whistleblower detailing illegal spying to the media will be punished with up to 5 years in prison. [This reeks of a tantrum-like response from a government that is on the back foot because people are waking up to institutionalised criminality and they are losing control of information and the ability to control the narrative.]

Nicky Hager would have been prosecuted. [Nicky Hager was the person who exposed the existence of the GCSB. Until he did so it was completely secret] Andrea Vance could have been prosecuted. Jon Stephenson could have been prosecuted. This blog could have been prosecuted. The National Government will imprison whistleblowers - if your enemy is people telling the truth, then you have deep deep deep problems. No Government Left or Right should ever be given this level of power. Using terrorism to justify this erosion of our civil liberty is unacceptable. Once more for the breach of data dear friends, once more for the breach. We simply can not and must not allow this to stand, it’s a direct threat to the media’s role of holding the Government to account. Losing that would damage our democracy far more than a lone wolf fanatic going on a rampage. Protest actions will start being planned now.

New Law Targets People Who Leak Classified Information People who leak Government information will be targeted with a new offence that carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail.

Prime Minister John Key has announced legislation that will also let the Government Communications Security Bureau spy on New Zealanders' private information. Related: Unleashing GCSB To Spy On Kiwis One More Step On Road To Police State The bill comes in the same week that information leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden resulted in media reports about the GCSB's monitoring of a Fiji democracy activist. The Government denied the new power to target whistle blowers was related to the Snowden leaks. Its introduction is a response to a broad-sweeping intelligence review by Sir Michael Cullen and Dame Patsy Reddy, released in March with 107 recommendations. A new offence will be created for people who hold a government security clearance, or those given access to classified information, who wrongfully communicate, retain or copy it. Intelligence agency employees who encounter evidence of wrong-doing can make a protected disclosure to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. But if they give information to others or the media they face a prison sentence of up to five years in jail.

The new legislation will cover both the SIS and GCSB, and accepts one of the most controversial recommendations allowing the GCSB to spy on Kiwis. That breaks a longstanding split between the SIS and GCSB, under which the GCSB could only spy on foreigners and the SIS on New Zealanders. The current law already allows the GCSB to spy on behalf of other agencies, with an approved warrant.

However, in releasing his review in March, Sir Michael said the GCSB had become hesitant to legally assist other agencies in such spying. That happened after it was found to have possibly unlawfully spied on New Zealanders due to confusion over its powers when acting on behalf of other agencies. The review recommended a single warranting regime that would have resulted in the SIS and GCSB having the same powers to collect intelligence. The new legislation does not go quite that far - it will limit the GCSB to conduct remote searches of a computer, for example, while the SIS will be permitted to carry out a physical search of a private property. If the agencies are operating under a joint warrant they will both be able to carry out all activities, including interception of communications, searching including of private premises, seizure and surveillance.

The new law would establish a single warranting framework for both agencies. New Zealanders will be targeted only to protect national security or where they are an agent of a foreign power. A "Type 1" intelligence warrant would be needed to target New Zealanders using otherwise unlawful activities, such as intercepting phone calls. It would need approval from the Attorney-General and a Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants and will be subject to review by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. This has been called a "triple lock" process. There will also be new flexibility in terms of getting warrants, including allowing warrants for classes of people and "purposebased" warrants. The Government gave the example of the intelligence agencies being alerted to a group of unidentified New Zealanders in Syria. A group warrant would allow them to target those people without having exact information on their identities. A purpose-based warrant would specify the type of information sought - for example, a warrant to intercept communications to find out if New Zealanders are fighting with Isis in Syria.

Finally, urgent warrants can be sought in special cases, including where someone's life is at stake or there is a serious threat to New Zealand's national security. In such cases, a warrant must still be applied for within 24 hours and if it is not authorised all information collected would be destroyed. While allowing the GCSB to spy on New Zealanders, the Government says both it and the SIS will only be allowed to do so on the grounds of national security. Labour leader Andrew Little said the definition of national security was too broad and "must be narrowed down to actual threats to security and government". The party will support the legislation at the first hurdle, but wants that and other changes before it would support it further. Little said it was also concerning that the legislation appeared to have ignored recommendations related to protections for personal information.

“These are vital and must be a part of the legislation. In today's world it is too easy to ignore privacy concerns and we have seen what happens in the past when protections aren't clear."

Under the legislation, intelligence agencies would have direct access to other Government database information including birth, death, marriage, name change, citizenship, immigration and Customs information. A warrant is needed to access IRD records, numbers assigned to tertiary students and driver licence photos. The SIS wants to access private student numbers so they can catch spies posing as international students.

Key, who cited the threat from terrorism during a press conference on the changes, said political parties needed to think carefully about opposing the changes.

“It is going to be very difficult for political parties if they don't vote for this legislation and there was ultimately an issue in New Zealand, then clearly fingers would be pointed about whether we could have done more to stop it."

The legislation will be introduced to the House on Thursday. Related: Five Eyes ‘Spy Fee’: New Zealand Annually Forks Out Over $100 Million For Intelligence Funding

Something Very Strange Is Going On And Alternative News Readers Are Being Targeted - Have You Noticed Any Of These Symptoms? August 4 2016 | From: AllNewsPipeline

Three days ago a very interesting and disturbing series of comments were noted here at ANP, unrelated to the actual article itself, but that in and of itself is not abnormal as debates progress and lead into other areas of discussion.

But the originating question that started the side-topic and the responses, as well as how many of the comments automatically went into moderation, pending approval before they could be seen when ANP does not moderate comments before they post, all led me to the conclusion that there is something very strange going on.

Strange Symptoms Note: Each comment shown will be linked to the comment itself because clicking over to the original comment only shows a small fraction of the discussion that stemmed from it unless one goes to the article and scrolls to the end of the comments and continues to reload until they hit that segment of the thread.

The original question was "Have a question for you all. Anybody else having trouble thinking? I have been speaking English for many years, but just the last few days my vocabulary is having 'holes'. I am almost 45, we try eating healthy, no fluoride or meds." Another commentator, Dar, noted "Almost everyone I talk with as in friends, customers, etc have memory problems. Not just elderly but all ages." In response to the first question, Tyler stated "Actually, yes I have. Like a lot lately. I've had a really hard time formulating thoughts over the last about 2 weeks, including things I know a lot about. And came out of nowhere too. Even right now, my mind feels very like clouded." Others mentioned dizzy spells, ringing in the ears during periods when it is more difficult to think, irritability, multiple readers hearing a "low frequency pulsating sound," accompanied by vertigo, and other strange symptoms. In the midst of the discussion, others were weighing in with possible causes, stress, cell phones and towers, chemtrails, with one commentator noting specifically they had "two gwen towers" located close by. Another reader detailed an experience from just days before: Driving home after work down the freeway, it appeared that all vehicles I all lanes in front of me were...drunk. In the same area, they all drifted across the right marker into other lanes. When I got to that area, it felt as if my mind was zapped, strongly I might add, by what felt as microwaves. My brain instantly felt numb, swollen, back of my neck hurt...and I felt very strong vertigo and dizziness. Then I felt like I was going to pass out while driving. I had to physically change my position, straighten up in my seat and

practically slap myself to maintain. The rest of the trip home felt a little better, but I had something like hot flashes just wave through me (I'm not a woman, so can't speak to exactly how those feel). Also strong ringing and "plugged" feeling in my right ear only. When I got home, I explained what happened and was told that she didn't feel right all day as well...... Read the rest here.

Another point of interest - In that same portion of the thread, the original poster noted that when trying to post her comments she was being given the message that they were pending moderation. When we noted that, we checked the moderation dashboard and sure enough, only comments related to that topic we being listed as "pending" and not showing until we manually approved them. Again, we do not moderate comments before they post and have a very limited "filter" set up to try to catch spammers and nothing in those "pending" comments contained anything in our filters, nor any type of spam.

US Government Mind Control Experiements Mockers and scoffers often see the words "mind control" and instantly tune out, thinking it is science fiction, so lets address the documented fact that the U.S. Goverment, has experimented with mind control throughout the decades, dating back to the 1950's with the CIA project MK ULTRA, supposedly halted in 1973, congressionals hearings were had in 1977 after an FOIA request uncovered a cache of 20,000 documents relating to the U.S. Government project. In July 2001, more information was declassified. - Source

Does anyone truly believe any government would spend two decades and untold amounts of money experimenting with mind control and would simply stop, even though many tests were deemed successful? We also know that scientists are now able to plant false experiences into the brain and have "discovered a way to implant associations in people's brains, without the subjects being aware of it happening," and have the ability to erase painful memories and add new ones.

The U.S. governments mind control experiments are a fact and it took over 20 years from the date they started for congress to investigate and for the public to be told... makes one wonder what we learn 20 years from now as to what kind of experiments the government is conducting on us right this very second.

GWEN (Ground Wave Emeregency Network) Since one of the comments above did bring up the GWEN towers, we'll address that here. GWEN stands for Ground Wave Emergency Network, which was a command and control communication system intended for use by the United States government to facilitate military communications before, during and after a nuclear war.

Related: What Is This GWEN Tower Really For? + ELF, GWEN Towers, And HAARP Connection Specifically, GWEN was constructed to survive the effects of a high-altitude nuclear explosion-generated electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) to ensure that the United States President or his survivors could issue a launch order to strategic nuclear bombers. The network was conceived as an array of approximately 300 radio transceivers distributed across the continental USA which operated in the Low frequency (LF) radio band. Later revised for 126 towers, plans again changed to include 56 radio towers linking 38 terminals; it was later expanded to 96 towers linking 49 terminals. Final network towers numbered 58. - Source It is notable that "conspiracy theorists," often claimed the GWEN towers had "different functions, including controlling the weather, mind, behavior and mood control of the populace."

Related: Monarch Mind Control & The MK-Ultra Program I will remind readers that for decades those that believed the government was conducting mind control experiements on citizens of the U.S. were also called "conspiracy theorists" as well, until MK ULTRA was revealed to the public, and some deny still to this day what the project was and what the U.S. government did, despite the Senate hearings into the project and the documentation released. We also note that after so much funding being pumped into GWEN, that when it was "terminated," the US Coast Guard began outfitting some GWEN sites to house their National Differential GPS system because "Existing equipment fit the needs of the NDGPS".... in other words, the towers are still up all across the United States. There are currently 85 NDGPS sites in the US network, administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Navigation Center, according to Wiki.

Electronic Harassment Electronic Harassment, aka psychotronic torture, or electromagnetic torture, is also waved away as "conspiracy," of people that believe the government uses electromagnetic radiation (such as the microwave auditory effect), radar, and surveillance techniques to transmit sounds and thoughts into people's heads, affect people's bodies, and harass people.

It is widely know that the government does indeed use technology called "directed energy weapons," which emits highly focused energy, transferring that energy to a target to damage it. The energy used includes: Electromagnetic radiation, including radio frequency, microwave, lasers and masers; Particles with mass, in particle-beam weapons, and; Sound, in sonic weapons. In researching this article, I ran across an article which led me to a Washington Post article, dated January 2007, buried on page W22, which reported on electronic harassment and voices in the head, and in the article we see that the Pentagon has continued to pursue a weapon that can do just that. But there are hints of ongoing research: An academic paper written for the Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of a weapon that would use sound waves to send words into a person's head:

The signal can be a 'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or encourage the enemy to surrender," the author concluded. In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology: using microwaves to send words into someone's head. That work is frequently cited on mind-control Web sites. Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the research laboratory's directed energy directorate, declined to discuss that patent or current or related research in the field, citing the lab's policy not to comment on its microwave work. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this article, the Air Force released unclassified documents surrounding that 2002 patent – records that note that the patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility. Research appeared to continue at least through 2002. Where this work has gone since is unclear – the research laboratory, citing classification, refused to discuss it or release other materials. The official U.S. Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal effects of microwaves. Yet Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, tagged microwave attacks against the human brain as part of future warfare in a 2001 presentation to the National Defense Industrial Association about "Future Strategic Issues." That work is exceedingly sensitive" and unlikely to be reported in any unclassified documents, he says.

Quoted portions above can be found on page 4 and page 5 of the online version of that WAPO 2007 article. Related: How to Block Microwave Mind-Programming Signals

Bottom Line The United States of America [and the rest of the West] has become a surveillance state, one very reminiscent to what was described in George Orwell's classic dystopian novel "1984," where camera's track our every move, microphones are hidden around cities to listen to conversations as part of a "clandestine government surveillance program," where the NSA can turn on your phones remotely, and the FBI can force your IPHONE cameras on to secretly film.

Related: A look at some of the ways George Orwell’s ‘1984’ has come true today Knowing the type of technology the U.S. government is pursuing, what they have done in the past with mind control experiments, the fact that they are continuing to research and create energy weapons, what stops them from turning those weapons on the American people? Is it a coincidence that the very people that read alternative news sites such as ANP, such as Christians, veterans, constitutionalists, preppers, survivalists, etc... are the very same people that the Obama administration has labeled as "extremists," and as "dangerous," and coincidentally are the very same people experiencing the symptoms described at the top of this article? If readers are experiencing strange symptoms, noting weird behaviors in those around you.... leave a comment describing them, because there is definitely something strange going on.

Gestapo In The USA: FCC Intimidates Press And Kills Free Speech At 5G Rollout August 1 2016 | From: TakeBackYourPower

In a public meeting at FCC headquarters on July 14, the agency which once served the people instead acted like tyrannical thugs, in an escalating series of remarkable events.

First, they prevented wireless science advocates from displaying a simple sign, violating their First Amendment rights in a public venue. Then, a security guard forcefully prevented a t-shirt from being taken out of a bag, by a former Congressional candidate with opposing views [See the full video at the end of this article, or links to the relevant clips from the images below].

Related: First Study On 4G / LTE Cell Phone Radiation Shows It Affects Brain Activity Next, a Bloomberg reporter had his credentials confiscated - almost unbelievably - for merely talking with the former Congressional candidate. Following these incidents, the reporter, Todd Shields, was visibly irate with FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler - who also happens to be the former president of CTIA, the wireless industry’s lobbying organization.

“Moments ago I was attempting to talk to to some people who came to attend the meeting and have concerns about radiation and 5G. And your security force intervened - told the guy he couldn’t show me the t-shirt he wished to display at the meeting, forced him to put it away, and confiscated my FCC-issued ID. Is this consonant with the discussion that ought to be taking place here, and what’s your reaction to this action by your staff?” -Todd Shields, Bloomberg reporter, to FCC Chair Wheeler [on video above]

Bloomberg reporter Todd Shields had his credentials confiscated - for talking with a former Congressional candidate about 5G and health concerns

And in the Q&A that followed, the former Congressional candidate Kevin Mottus successfully added another dose of truth the narrative.

“Hey Tom, with the NTP study showing wireless causes cancer sub-thermally, how can you proceed with more wireless expansion, with FCC standards only recognizing thermal effects - ignoring thousands of studies showing cancerous effects, neurological effects, reproductive harm, immune system disorders… people are being electrosensitive…” -Kevin Mottus, former Congressional candidate, to Wheeler [on video above]

After about 20 seconds of yielding the floor to Mottus, Wheeler interrupted, dodged this very appropriate question, and diverted to an FCC-compliant journalist:

“Lydia, do you have a question?]

(Which, on the video, almost sounds like a Wheeler Freudian slip: “Litigate. Do you have a question?”)

There have been thousands of published peer-reviewed studies that indicate the proliferation of microwave (wireless) technologies is not safe to biological life. (See meta-study links here, here, here and here.)

Why is the FCC resorting to Gestapo-like tactics of suppression and outright intimidation? The issue here, is that the Federal Communications Commission just rubber-stamped their rollout of “5G” cellular technology, which while increasing throughput, would blanket all planetary life with ultra-high microwave frequencies 24Ghz and up. The fact that these frequencies have never been tested as safe is not stopping corporate-government plans for an unleashing of “massive infrastructure”. But there have been thousands of published peer-reviewed studies that indicate the proliferation of microwave (wireless) technologies is not safe to biological life. (See meta-study links here, here, here and here.) So, because there’s a lot of money in a wireless economy and the data-harvesting that comes with it - trillions, in fact - Big Industry has bought the science, bought lawmakers, ruled the proliferation of microwaves as “safe”, and infiltrated the FCC along with most international health agencies. And in the face of this willful, for-profit negligence, instead of employing conscience and responsibility, they’re actively silencing all opposition. You know, those of the human species that pay attention to passé concepts like science and reason. Here’s some snippets from FCC Chair Wheeler, at his June 20 press conference:

“5G will use much higher frequency bands [24 to 100+ GHz]… antennas that can aim and amplify signals… massive deployment of small cells… tens of billions of dollars in economic activity… hundreds of billions of microchips… if something can be connected, it will be connected… unlike other countries… we won’t wait for the standards…” – Tom Wheeler, FCC Chair [on video above]

Paraphrased: “We can’t let life get in the way of profit. We want to make billions from all of you, and control everything. And in doing so, we’re not only going to willfully ignore science, we’re going to remove the idea of standards and initiate a free-for-all.”

FCC Chair and former industry lobbyist Tom Wheeler announces proliferation of 5G microwave technology, privatizes rollout and removes oversight and standards. “Nobody quits the CTIA. Once you’re CTIA, you’re family – for life.”

If unchecked, what could this lead to? The implications of all of this are very far-reaching. How far? Well, to find out, let’s start with what we know. It’s pretty clear at this point that we have a government that has been taken over by corporate interests. In order to increase their power and control even more, they plan to exponentially ramp-up the deployment of technology everywhere, which a vast body of science clearly says is harmful. If unchecked, this will almost certainly lead to an increase in cancer and other ailments associated with exposure to electromagnetic radiation. Haven’t we had enough of for-profit agendas putting profits before health? From a surveillance standpoint, we already know there is a sinister spying agenda operating behind the scenes. The rollout of “5G” technology - especially in the standardless, profit-centered way Wheeler describes — would indeed open up a considerable new threat to basic rights. If everything is connected, you can bet that as many details as possible about our actions will be tracked and stored somewhere - like the $2B NSA facility in Blufdale, Utah. And there is extraordinary market value in this. A director at NARUC stated that the value of data harvested just by “smart” utility meters will likely be worth a lot more than electricity itself, which is a $2.2 trillion market globally.

Related: US Intelligence Chief: We Might Use The Internet Of Things To Spy On You But besides being creepy and making the 1% even richer, there are clear warning signs that a control-oriented governing system could easily take an indexed catalog of all of your actions and use it against you in a multitude of ways. For example, increasingly-instrusive “pre-crime” operations are already planned in Miami. And insurance providers are checking their customers’ facebook data to influence premiums and even coverage availability. So it’s really not unreasonable to see how a governing body concerned primarily with staying in power, could restrict rights or remove “privileges” for behavior that is deemed to be not aligned with national interests. So, tracking is not ok unless we are absolutely convinced that the governing body of that system truly respects individual rights and has the best interests of the people in mind. And right now, we are not even close to having such leadership in our governments. Wheeler’s vision of 5G would significantly enable those who are motivated by power and money to use technology to rule over everyone else. In order to protect our lives and future, we must not allow that to happen. While we would all like to have fast internet, we must now look closely at the downside of this technology, and take constructive action. This can understandably be difficult, due to the considerable attachment that we have to both our devices and the sense of immediate gratification that we obtain from using them.

While solutions to out planet’s problems are being actively prevented, steering human culture into a virtual/augmented reality seems to be the insane game of the technocrats. Perhaps “The Matrix” was not far off, after all

How we will save our world: Individual responsibility, accountability and liability In addition to an interview with Kevin Mottus, last Sunday I skyped with Dafna Tachover, an Israel-based attorney who was present at “G-Day”, last Thursday. Tachover, who is among millions now who have directly experienced microwave radiation harm after becoming sensitized to it, says that the only way forward is individual accountability and liability. In my view, she is obviously right. Dafna Tachover is the CEO of We Are The Evidence, an organization which advocates for the rights of those who has been injured by wireless technology:

“Until there’s personal accountability and liability, this systematic problem that repeats itself will happen again, and again, and again, and it has been. So, we learned that the tobacco industry was lying to the public, bluntly - to the public, to the government, to health organizations - without any hesitation…. Was anyone sued? No. Was anyone found personally accountable? No. So that’s actually what enables this kind of behavior to happen again and again.” “This is the action we should take: we should make it clear to those government people - or you know, if we talk about wi-fi in schools, the school principals, who do have personal responsibility and liability to protect children’s health - to make sure they know they will be found personally liable for the harms they cause. They have a position of trust, and they betrayed that trust. And they should be found liable. It should be civil liability and criminal liability.” - Dafna Tachover, attorney [on this video link]

Former Congressional candidate Kevin Mottus spoke about the urgency of the situation.

Kevin Mottus is meeting with reps on the ground in Washington DC, Sept 6 – Oct 6. To meet up with him there, reach him at [email protected].

“My background is as a medical social worker. And when I was in the hospitals I saw young salesman and lawyers coming in with brain tumors, and healthy otherwise, other than the tumor - and doctors asking them about their cell phone use. So I was clued in very early with these heavy users and the tumors it was causing.” “Schools are now our most dangerous places to be. You have 20-40 wireless transmitters in their iPads and wireless laptops, and then you have 2-3 commercial-grade wireless routers…. So you have, really, the setting of the most significant exposure in our country, and the most vulnerable population being exposed are small children - which we know are 3 to 4 times as sensitive to all environmental hazards.” “We are microwaving our population and wondering why our cancer is going through the roof and chronic disease is going through the roof. It’s really very sad.” “I spoke to Congressman Grayson from Florida, and while I was talking with him, one of his staffers, Joe, came up to me. And he said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘I’m talking about wireless cell phones causing brain tumors.’ He said, ‘That’s interesting, because I had a brain aneurysm and I’m lucky to be alive. It’s also interesting because my buddy just died from a brain tumor.’” “So, people are definitely getting sick. And you need to ask them, ‘Does your face tingle when you use your cell phone?…. Do you have difficulty sleeping? Have you ever gotten nauseous using the phone? Do you feel funny when you’re around wi-fi, or getting close to it?’ And you’ll be surprised - people are getting sick.” “For instance, I spoke to Congressman Rush. Congressman Rush has a salivary gland tumor, which Israel has associated with cell phone use….” “We need to stop this before they [FCC] auction the [ultra-high frequency] spectrum.” -Kevin Mottus, former Congressional candidate, California [on this video link]

If you are reading this from the United States you can find links about actions you can take within your country at the end of the original article at TakeBackYourPower.

Full Video:

IMPORTANT: The new 5G system they plan on introducing following trials in 2017, described in your info and in the video, are planned to operate between 28GHz – 100GHz is interestingly the SAME FREQUENCY in the Extremely High Frequency (EHF) (30GHz – 300GHz or, wavelengths 10mm – 1mm) spectrum that are already being used in the ACTIVE DENIAL SYSTEM (ADS) non-lethal, directed energy weapon developed by the US military produced by Raytheon – designed for perimeter security and crowd control. It was also used in Afghanistan War. The US Police use it already, and in 2010 the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department announced that they were going to use reduced versions of it in detention centers to break up prisoner fights etc. See details on the Wiipedia entry here. From Prof Olle Johansson interview on the Alzheimer's and Dementia Summit "If you go back to [EMF] impact on brain function, you have all the pieces that you would look for, in for instance Alzheimer’s and dementia. There are studies regarding loss of concentration capacity, loss of short term memory, impacts on cellular function, including cell death in various rodent models… leakage of the so-called blood-brain barrier, connected also to damage and cell death of nerve cells…. behavioral impacts… impact on sleep quality… various forms of learning tasks…." "The [blood-brain barrier] effect was seen after a short exposure, namely a 1-minute mobile phone call – and also at an exposure level that was five thousand times below the official guideline...." "This is the largest full-scale experiment with mankind, ever, on this planet."

Related: The Gloves Come Off On EMF / Mobile / WiFi Radiation + Understanding The Dangers Of The “5G” Rollout

Oliver Stone: Pokemon Go Is A New Stage In “Totalitarism” And “Surveillance Capitalism” July 26 2016 | From: VigilantCitizen

Film director Oliver Stone believes that Pokemon Go is a tool capable of collecting massive amounts of data about its users and represents a step towards “robot society”.

The director of Platoon, Wallstreet and JFK was at Comic-Con 2016 in San Diego to discuss his new movie Snowden. Considering the topic of the movie, the panel were discussing the NSA, online privacy and government surveillance. A question from a fan lead Oliver Stone to lash out against today’s newest worldwide phenomenon: Pokemon Go.

“It’s a new level of invasion,” Stone said of the game. “Nobody has ever seen, in the history of the world, something like Google, ever. It’s the fastest-growing business ever, and they have invested huge amounts of money into what surveillance is, which is data-mining. They’re data-mining every person in this room for information as to what you’re buying, what it is you like, and above all, your behavior.” - CBS News, Oliver Stone: Pokemon Go is “totalitarianism”

Oliver Stone claims that Pokemon Go is yet another step towards “surveillance capitalism”.

“Pokemon Go kicks into that. It’s everywhere. It’s what some people call surveillance capitalism. It’s the newest stage,” he said. “You’ll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave and they will make the mockup that matches how you behave and feed you. It’s what they call totalitarianism.” – Ibid.

Shortly after the game launch, observers worried about the massive amount of permissions requested by Pokemon Go upon installation. The game indeed requested full access to user’s Google Accounts on iOS. Although game developer Niantic claims to have fixed this issue, the app still collects massive amounts of data.

“Niantic may collect - among other things - your email address, IP address, the web page you were using before logging into Pokémon Go, your username, and your location. And if you use your Google account for sign-in and use an iOS device, unless you specifically revoke it, Niantic has access to your entire Google account. That means Niantic could have read and write access to your email, Google Drive docs, and more. (It also means that if the Niantic servers are hacked, whoever hacked the servers would potentially have access to your entire Google account. And you can bet the game’s extreme popularity has made it a target for hackers. Given the number of children playing the game, that’s a scary thought.) You can check what kind of access Niantic has to your Google account here. It also may share this information with other parties, including the Pokémon Company that co-developed the game, “third-party service providers,” and “third parties” to conduct “research and analysis, demographic profiling, and other similar purposes.” It also, per the policy, may share any information it collects with law enforcement in response to a legal claim, to protect its own interests, or stop “illegal, unethical, or legally actionable activity.” Now, none of these privacy provisions are of themselves unique. Location-based apps from Foursquare to Tinder can and do similar things. But Pokémon Go’s incredibly granular, block-by-block map data, combined with its surging popularity, may soon make it one of, if not the most, detailed location-based social graphs ever compiled." – Buzzfeed News, “You Should Probably Check Your Pokémon Go Privacy Settings”

Senator Al Franken, the top Democrat on the Senate Privacy and Technology Subcommittee recently sent a letter to Niantic expressing concerns about privacy.

“The letter notes that Pokémon Go collects profile and account information, location data, and data “obtained through Cookies and Web Beacons.” The game also asks permission to do things like control vibration and prevent the phone from sleeping. Franken wants to know what information and functions exist to support and improve services, and what’s being gathered for “other purposes.” While this release is undoubtedly impressive, I am concerned about the extent to which Niantic may be unnecessarily collecting, using, and sharing a wide range of users’ personal information without their appropriate consent”. – arstechnica, Sen. Franken asks Pokémon Go creator: Why all the privacy problems?

Some might claim that a bunch of apps already collect all of that information and that there is nothing new under the sun.

That is correct. Pokemon Go is simply yet another incremental step towards high tech control, where users are lured to specific locations and tracked during the entire time. In short, it is yet another level of heat in the pot.

“If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death."

Pokémon Go Is A Government Surveillance Psyop Conspiracy? July 14 2016 | From: Gawker / Infowars

Less than a week after Pokémon Go’s launch, our streets are already filled with packs of phonewielding, Weedle-catching zombies.

They’re robbing our teens, filling our churches with sinners, and tricking our children into exercising. Related: A Pokemon Go user walks into a bar But worst of all, Pokémon Go is turning us all into an army of narcs in service of the coming New World Order. Allow me to explain.

More Like Privacy Poli-See Everything Lots of apps have sketchy privacy policies, that’s nothing new. But the first set of alarms go off as soon as you realize that Pokémon Go’s policy does seem a bit more liberal than most, because not only are you giving Pokémon Go access to your location and camera, you’re also giving it full access to your Google account (assuming you use that to sign in). There’s one section of the privacy policy in particular that seems to be getting the conspiracy theorists of the world up in arms and which Reddit user Homer Simpson_Doh calls “very Orwellian”:

Most Orwellian of all is this line:

“We may disclose any information about you (or your authorized child) that is in our possession or control to government or law enforcement officials or private parties.”

As TechCrunch explained, Pokémon-loving millennials are far less likely to object to a few extra permissions when its Squirtle staring them in the face as they abandon their every god-given freedom than they do when Google reads their email.

Pokémon Go Comes Directly - Directly - From the Intelligence Ccommunity And it’s not like Pokémon Go itself doesn’t already have a direct(-ish) line to the CIA. After all, Pokémon Go was created by Niantic, which was formed by John Hanke. Now, Hanke also just so happened to help found Keyhole. What does Keyhole do, you ask? I’d tell you to go to Keyhole’s website - but you can’t. It just takes you straight to Google Earth. That’s because Keyhole was acquired by Google back in 2004. Before that, though, Keyhole received funding from a firm called In-Q-Tel, a government-controlled venture capital firm that invests in companies that will help beef up Big Brother’s tool belt. What’s more, the funds In-Q-Tel gave Keyhole mostly came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), whose primary mission is “collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence.” Still unsure if Pokémon Go’s creator is a government spook? Check out this excerpt from the NGA’s in-house publication, Pathfinder Magazine:

Companies obtain customer information through avenues such as social media, mobile apps, and customer relationshipmanagement software. They might as well be talking about Pokémon Go itself.

We’re All Government Pawns So what exactly is the New World Order planning to do with our precious and meticulously collected data? They could take a few different paths, though they all boil down to the fact that we’re all cogs in Professor Willow’s great, big government machine. Considering that one of Big Brother’s favorite pastimes is watching its citizens at all times always and forever, Pokémon Go is an ideal vessel for its many, many eyes. It’s addicting (kids, adults, and conspiracy-loving bloggers for Gawker.com can’t seem to put the thing for more than ten minutes at a time). And it has access to pretty much our entire phone, meaning tons of personal data and monster tracking capabilities:

Granted, Pokémon Go has a perfectly legitimate reason to want access to things like your location and camera. It needs the former to put you on the right map and the latter to make use of its augmented reality feature. But with those allowances, Pokémon Go (or rather, its parent company Niantic) not only knows where millions of people are at any given point, they could also very well figure out who they’re with, what’s going on around them, and where they’re likely headed next. Remember, it doesn’t take that much to hunt someone down. All it took was one absentminded tweet for Vice to accidentally reveal the location of former fugitive and bath salts-enthusiast John McAfee. As Reddit user fight_for_anything explains:

Obviously intelligence agencies have gained a lot of info from google maps and its street view, but this data was collected easily with driving cars. Intel agencies may see google maps and street view as just an outline or a skeleton of the whole picture. Getting more data, particularly that off the street and inside buildings, requires tons of man hours and foot work. a logistical nightmare. Enter Pokemon GO, where if you are an intel agency and you want photos of the inside of a home or business, you just spawn desirable pokemon or related objects there, and let totally unaware and distracted citizens take the photos for you, with devices they paid for, and those citizens pay for the experience. imagine all these photos going back to some database (with the augmented Pokemon removed obviously. all these photos are probably GPS tagged, as well as having the phones internal gyro embed x/y/z orientation of the camera angle in the phone. these photos could be put together, much like google street view. So as you’re “catching ‘em all” with all the other sheep, you very well may be creating a cache of high-res, data-rich images to get siphoned directly into the CIA’s greedy little pockets. Just picture it, a year from now when Trump-appointed CIA Director Liam Neeson is trying to figure out who helped The Washington Post reporters escape from prison, all he has to do is call

over to Deputy Director Sutherland. “ Check the Pokédex,” he’ll say, and up springs a Google Street View-esque simulation of every building, nook, and closet within a five-mile radius - all updated in real time. As user fight_for_anything explains, “What if that local church is a mosque they suspect of terrorist activity? And they want photos of it, or photos of the cars around it and their plates, or photos of the people coming in and out...” Meaning that, should Director Neeson need eyes somewhere, all he as to do is tell the game to stick a Pikachu in the room and some unassuming schlub will send him a photo in no time.

But I Want to Play If, after all this, you’re still jonesing to go Pidgey hunting despite the Truth, Reddit user leocusmus has a few safety tips:

Just like ingress. Either use a spare phone or buy a cheap used one off eBay. Set up your main phone with a VPN, turn I Wi-Fi hotspot, and play from your spare phone with a dummy gmail account.

Which is more likely to keep you hidden from Big Brother’s prying eyes, sure, but it’s important to remember that, even then, you’re still not really safe. You’re never really safe.

Secret Pokémon GO Character Discovered! Watch Alex on his quest to catch 'em all:

Alex Jones stumbles across a brand new undiscovered Pokémon GO character! Related: Senator Al Franken demands Pokémon Go release privacy information

The Hunter: He Was A Hacker For The NSA And He Was Willing To Talk - I Was Willing To Listen July 5 2016 | From: TheIntercept

The message arrived at night and consisted of three words: “Good evening sir!” The sender was a hacker who had written a series of provocative memos at the National Security Agency.

His secret memos had explained - with an earthy use of slang and emojis that was unusual for an operative of the largest eavesdropping organization in the world - how the NSA breaks into the digital accounts of people who manage computer networks, and how it tries to unmask people who use Tor to browse the web anonymously. Outlining some of the NSA’s most sensitive activities, the memos were leaked by Edward Snowden, and I had written about a few of them for The Intercept. There is no Miss Manners for exchanging pleasantries with a man the government has trained to be the digital equivalent of a Navy SEAL. Though I had initiated the contact, I was wary of how he might respond. The hacker had publicly expressed a visceral dislike for Snowden and had accused The Intercept of jeopardizing lives by publishing classified information. One of his memos outlined the ways the NSA reroutes (or “shapes”) the internet traffic of entire countries, and another memo was titled “I Hunt Sysadmins.” I felt sure he could hack anyone’s computer, including mine. The only NSA workers the agency has permitted me to talk with are the ones in its public affairs office who tell me I cannot talk with anyone else. Thanks to the documents leaked by Snowden, however, I have been able to write about a few characters at the NSA. There was, for instance, a novelist-turned-linguist who penned an ethics column for the NSA’s in-house newsletter, and there was a mid-level manager who wrote an often zany advice column called “Ask Zelda!” But their classified writings, while revealing, could not tell me everything I wanted to know about the mindset of the men and women who spy on the world for the U.S. government. I got lucky with the hacker, because he recently left the agency for the cybersecurity industry; it would be his choice to talk, not the NSA’s. Fortunately, speaking out is his second nature. While working for the NSA, he had publicly written about his religious beliefs, and he was active on social media.

So I replied to his greeting and we began an exchange of cordial messages. He agreed to a video chat that turned into a three-hour discussion sprawling from the ethics of surveillance to the downsides of home improvements and the difficulty of securing your laptop.

"I suppose why I talk is partially a personal compulsion to not necessarily reconcile two sides or different viewpoints but to just try to be honest about the way things are,” he told me. “Does that make sense?”

The hacker was at his home, wearing a dark hoodie that bore the name of one of his favorite heavy metal bands, Lamb of God. I agreed not to use his name in my story, so I’ll just refer to him as the Lamb. I could see a dime-store bubble-gum machine behind him, a cat-scratching tree, and attractive wood beams in the ceiling. But his home was not a tranquil place. Workmen were doing renovations, so the noise of a buzz saw and hammering intruded, his wife called him on the phone, and I could hear the sound of barking. “Sorry, my cats are taunting my dog,” he said, and later the animal in question, a black-and-white pit bull, jumped onto his lap and licked his face. The Lamb wore a T-shirt under his hoodie and florid tattoos on his arms and smiled when I said, mostly in jest, that his unruly black beard made him look like a member of the Taliban, though without a turban. He looked very hacker, not very government.

When most of us think of hackers, we probably don’t think of government hackers. It might even seem odd that hackers would want to work for the NSA - and that the NSA would want to employ them. But the NSA employs legions of hackers, as do other agencies, including the FBI, CIA, DEA, DHS, and Department of Defense. Additionally, there are large numbers of hackers in the corporate world, working for military contractors like Booz Allen, SAIC, and Palantir. The reason is elegantly simple: You cannot hack the world without hackers. In popular shows and movies such as “Mr. Robot” and “The Matrix,” hackers tend to be presented as unshaven geeks loosely connected to collectives like Anonymous, or to Romanian crime syndicates that steal credit cards by the millions, or they are teenagers who don’t realize their online mischief will get them into a boatload of trouble when Mom finds out. The stereotypes differ in many ways but share a trait: They are transgressive anti-authoritarians with low regard for social norms and laws. You would not expect these people to work for The Man, but they do, in droves. If you could poll every hacker in the U.S. and ask whether they practice their trade in dark basements or on official payrolls, a large number would likely admit to having pension plans. Who knows, it could be the majority. This may qualify as one of the quietest triumphs for the U.S. government since 9/11: It has co-opted the skills and ideals of a group of outsiders whose anti-establishment tilt was expressed two decades ago by Matt Damon during a famous scene in Good Will Hunting. Damon, playing a math genius being recruited by the NSA, launches into a scathing riff about the agency serving the interests of government and corporate evil rather than ordinary people.

Sure, he could break a code for the NSA and reveal the location of a rebel group in North Africa or the Middle East, but the result would be a U.S. bombing attack in which “1,500 people that I never met, never had a problem with, get killed.” He turns down the offer. In recent years, two developments have helped make hacking for the government a lot more attractive than hacking for yourself. First, the Department of Justice has cracked down on freelance hacking, whether it be altruistic or malignant. If the DOJ doesn’t like the way you hack, you are going to jail. Meanwhile, hackers have been warmly invited to deploy their transgressive impulses in service to the homeland, because the NSA and other federal agencies have turned themselves into licensed hives of breaking into other people’s computers. For many, it’s a techno sandbox of irresistible delights, according to Gabriella Coleman, a professor at McGill University who studies hackers.

"The NSA is a very exciting place for hackers because you have unlimited resources, you have some of the best talent in the world, whether it’s cryptographers or mathematicians or hackers,” she said. “It is just too intellectually exciting not to go there.”

Revealingly, one of the documents leaked by Snowden and published by The Intercept last year was a classified interview with a top NSA hacker (not the Lamb) who exulted that his job was awesome because “we do things that you can’t do anywhere else in the country … at least not legally. We are gainfully employed to hack computers owned by al-Qa’ida!” Asked about the kind of people he works with at the NSA, he replied, “Hackers, geeks, nerds … There’s an annual event for hackers in Las Vegas called DEF CON, and many of us attend. When there, we feel as though we are among our bretheren! [sic] We all have a similar mindset of wanting to tear things apart, to dig in, to see how things work.” In 2012, Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director at the time, even attended DEF CON wearing blue jeans and a black Tshirt that bore the logo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an anti-surveillance organization that is beloved by hackers and other good citizens of the world. To coincide with Alexander’s visit, the NSA had created a special webpage to recruit the hackers at DEF CON. “If you have a few, shall we say, indiscretions in your past, don’t be alarmed,” the webpage stated. “You shouldn’t automatically assume

you won’t be hired.” Alexander’s personal pitch was even more direct: “In this room right here is the talent we need.” If you are willing to become a patriot hacker, Uncle Sam wants you.

As a teenager, the Lamb was a devout Christian who attended church two or three times a week, yet he also participated in online forums for Satanists and atheists. He wanted to learn what others believed and why they believed it, and he wanted to hear their responses to questions he raised. If his beliefs could not withstand challenges from opposing ones, they might not be worth keeping.

"As a Christian, I believe the Bible, and one of the things it says is if you seek the truth, you should find it,” he told me. “If I started to come across facts that contradicted what I believed and contradicted the way that I thought about things, I had to be open to confronting them and determining how I would integrate them into my life and my thought system.”

Before he became a hacker, the Lamb had the restless spirit of one. After high school, he attended a Christian university for a year but dropped out and joined the military as a linguist. He was assigned to the NSA, and although he told me his computer skills were modest at the time, he was intrigued by the mysteries inside the machines.

"I started doing some basic computer training, like ‘Oh, here’s how computers talk to each other and network’ and that sort of stuff,” he said. “I enjoyed that far more than trying to maintain a language that I rarely used.”

He devoured books on computers and experimented on his own time, using an application called Wireshark to see how network data was moving to and from his own computer. He picked up a bit of programming knowledge, and he asked agency veterans for tips. As he wrote in one of his memos, “If you want to learn crazy new things… why not walk around NSA, find people in offices that do things you find interesting, and talk to them about how they do what they do.”

Screenshot from NSA document

Like Snowden, he did not need a formal education to succeed. Snowden, after all, dropped out of high school and mastered computers through self-education. As an NSA contractor, he rose to a position that gave him access to broad swaths of the agency’s networks. While Snowden was a systems administrator, the Lamb became an expert in network analysis and was well-versed in the crucial trick of shaping traffic from one place to another - for instance, sending it from an ISP in a foreign country to an NSA server. The Lamb’s work was important, but his memos are remarkably irreverent, even cocky. I’ve read a fair number of NSA documents, and not one contains as much hacker and internet lingo as his; he used words like “skillz” and “internetz” and “ZOMG!” and phrases like “pwn the network” and “Dude! Map all the networks!!!” Some of what he wrote is just cheerily impudent, like the opening line of one memo: “Happy Friday my esteemed and valued intelligence Community colleagues!” Another memo began, “Welcome back, comrade!”

While poking gentle fun at the government hackers he worked with, the Lamb dismissed the amateur hackers on the outside. He identified himself and his highly trained colleagues at the NSA as a breed apart - a superior breed, much in the way that soldiers look down on weekend paintballers. Perhaps this shouldn’t be altogether surprising, because arrogance is one of the unfortunate hallmarks of the male-dominated hacker culture. At the NSA, this hubris can perhaps serve as an ethical lubricant that eases the task of hacking other people: They are not as special as you are, they do not have the magical powers you possess, they are targets first and humans second. As the Lamb wrote in one of his memos;

"When I first went to Blackhat/Defcon, it was with the wide-eyed anticipation of ‘I’m going to go listen to all of the talks that I can, soak up all of the information possible, and become a supar-1337-haxxor.’ What a let-down of an experience that was. You find the most interesting topics and briefings, wait in lines to get a seat, and find yourself straining your ears to listen to someone that has basically nothing new to say. Most of the talks get hyped up exponentially past any amount of substance they actually provide.”

When I asked the Lamb where he was in the hierarchy of hackers at the NSA, he just smiled and said, “I got to the point where more people would ask me questions than I asked other people questions.” He would not delve into the classified specifics of his job - he despises Snowden for leaking classified information - but I knew a lot through his memos. Although network analysis, the Lamb’s area of expertise, is interesting from a technical perspective, he was one step removed from the most challenging and menacing type of government hacking - executing finely tuned attacks that infiltrate individual computers. Nonetheless, he offered this characterization of his NSA work: “They were just ridiculously cool projects that I’ll never forget.” One of the quandaries of technology is that “cool” does not necessarily mean “ethical.” Surveillance tools that are regarded as breakthroughs can be used to spy on innocent people as well as terrorists. This is a key part of the debate on the NSA, the concern that its formidable powers are being used, or can be used, to undermine privacy, freedom, and democracy. The Lamb’s memos on cool ways to hunt sysadmins triggered a strong reaction when I wrote about them in 2014 with my colleague Ryan Gallagher. The memos explained how the NSA tracks down the email and Facebook accounts of systems administrators who oversee computer networks. After plundering their accounts, the NSA can impersonate the admins to get into their computer networks and pilfer the data flowing through them. As the Lamb wrote;

"Sys admins generally are not my end target. My end target is the extremist/terrorist or government official that happens to be using the network… who better to target than the person that already has the ‘keys to the kingdom’?”

Another of his NSA memos, “Network Shaping 101,” used Yemen as a theoretical case study for secretly redirecting the entirety of a country’s internet traffic to NSA servers. The presentation, consisting of a PowerPoint slideshow, was offbeat at times, with a reference to throwing confetti in the air when a hack worked and jokey lines like, “The following section could also be renamed the ‘I’m pulling my hair out in the fetal position while screaming “Why didn’t it work?!”’ section.” The Lamb also scribbled a hand-drawn diagram about network shaping that included a smiley face in the middle next to the phrase, “YEAH!!! MAKE DATA HAPPEN!” The diagram and slideshow were both classified as top secret.

NSA diagram on network shaping - click on the image to view a larger version in a new window

His memos are boastful, even cackling. At the end of one of the sysadmin memos, the Lamb wrote, “Current mood: scheming,” and at the end of another, “Current mood: devious.” He also listed “juche-licious” as one of his moods, ironically referring to the official ideology of North Korea. Another memo he wrote, “Tracking Targets Through Proxies & Anonymizers,” impishly noted that the use of identityobscuring tools like Tor “generally makes for sad analysts” in the intelligence community; this was followed by a sad face emoji. The tone of his classified writing was consistent with some of his social media posts - the Lamb’s attitude, in public as well as in private, was often outspoken and brash. What if the shoe was on the other foot, however? When I wrote about the sysadmin memos in 2014, I wondered how their author would feel if someone used the same devious rationale to hack his computer and his life. Nearly two years later, I had the chance to find out.

"If I turn the tables on you,” I asked the Lamb, “and say, OK, you’re a target for all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. How do you feel about being a target and that kind of justification being used to justify getting all of your credentials and the keys to your kingdom?” The Lamb smiled. “There is no real safe, sacred ground on the internet,” he replied. “Whatever you do on the internet is an attack surface of some sort and is just something that you live with. Any time that I do something on the internet, yeah, that is on the back of my mind. Anyone from a script kiddie to some random hacker to some other foreign intelligence service, each with their different capabilities - what could they be doing to me?”

He seemed to be putting the blame for NSA attacks on the victims - if they were too dimwitted to protect themselves from hunters like him, it was their fault.

"People don’t want to think about being targets on the internet, in spite of the fact that at this point in the game, everybody is,” he added. “Every country spies.” He was dead serious, no smiles any longer. “As much as we’d like to say we will all beat our swords into plowshares and become a peaceful people, it’s not going to happen,” he continued. “Intelligence agencies around the world are being asked questions by their governments, and government officials don’t want to hear, ‘That’s hard to solve.’ They just say, ‘Can you solve this and can you get me the intel I’m asking for?’ Which is nation agnostic, whether that’s the NSA, the FSB, the PLA or whoever.”

The Lamb’s political ideology evoked the cold-blooded realpolitik of Henry Kissinger. There is the idyllic digital world we would like to live in, there is the dog-eat-dog digital world we actually live in - and the Lamb, as I understood it, was intensely focused on winning in the latter.

"You know, the situation is what it is,” he said. “There are protocols that were designed years ago before anybody had any care about security, because when they were developed, nobody was foreseeing that they would be taken advantage of.…

A lot of people on the internet seem to approach the problem [with the attitude of] ‘I’m just going to walk naked outside of my house and hope that nobody looks at me.’ From a security perspective, is that a good way to go about thinking? No, horrible… There are good ways to be more secure on the internet. But do most people use Tor? No. Do most people use Signal? No. Do most people use insecure things that most people can hack? Yes. Is that a bash against the intelligence community that people use stuff that’s easily exploitable? That’s a hard argument for me to make.”

But it wasn’t a hard argument for me to make, so I tried. Back in the 1990s, in the early days of the web, the uses and hopes for the internet were thought to be joyous and non-commercial. The web would let us talk to one another and would decentralize power and revolutionize the world in good ways. Those were the years when the Lamb spent hours and hours in chatrooms with Satanists and atheists - just the sort of connect-us-to-each-other activity that made everyone so excited about the future. At the time, few people thought the internet would become, as Bruce Schneier describes it, a surveillance platform. So I asked whether the Lamb felt conflicted, as Snowden did, working for an organization that turned the web further and further away from its original potential as a global platform for speaking and thinking freely.

He responded by noting that he is, by nature, a defiant type and attracted to hard problems. That’s how, without a lot of formal instruction, he became an NSA hacker - he was curious about how computers worked and he wanted to figure them

out. “Technically challenging things are just inherently interesting to me,” he said. “If you tell me, ‘This can’t be done,’ I’m going to try and find a way to do it.” I mentioned that lots of people, including Snowden, are now working on the problem of how to make the internet more secure, yet he seemed to do the opposite at the NSA by trying to find ways to track and identify people who use Tor and other anonymizers. Would he consider working on the other side of things? He wouldn’t rule it out, he said, but dismally suggested the game was over as far as having a liberating and safe internet, because our laptops and smartphones will betray us no matter what we do with them.

"There’s the old adage that the only secure computer is one that is turned off, buried in a box ten feet underground, and never turned on,” he said. “From a user perspective, someone trying to find holes by day and then just live on the internet by night, there’s the expectation [that] if somebody wants to have access to your computer bad enough, they’re going to get it. Whether that’s an intelligence agency or a cybercrimes syndicate, whoever that is, it’s probably going to happen.”

The Lamb was comfortable with the side he joined in the surveillance wars, and this sets him apart from the most common stereotypes of the men and women who devote their lives to spying on others. Spies who do nothing but eavesdrop, slipping into computers and conversations without a trace, have a reputation in popular culture of being troubled in ways that conventional spies are not. Think of Gene Hackman in The Conversation, or Ulrich Mühe in The Lives of Others - these surveillers are haunted, as it seems they should be.

Gene Hackman in The Conversation

Conventional spies are seen as journeying into hostile lands and committing heroic or devious acts; they are men and women of action, not thought. But the people who watch, listen, or hack are not as distracted by danger or adrenaline. They mostly labor in tranquility, in temperature-controlled offices without windows, risking bodily harm no worse than carpal tunnel syndrome, and they have an abundance of time to think about the lurking that is their occupation and the people on whom they practice it. I have a bias against the watchers, I suppose. I have been concerned about the bureaucracies of surveillance since the 1980s, when I was a student in the Soviet Union and felt like hunted prey. The telephone in the dreary lobby of my dormitory

on the banks of the Neva River in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was assumed to be bugged, and if the KGB’s devices weren’t working, the dezhurnaya who sat nearby was sure to be listening. This was my anti-surveillance Rosebud, I guess. When I visited Russian friends, I stayed silent as I walked in their ill-lit stairwells, so that the accent of my Russian would not give away the fact a foreigner was visiting them. The walls had ears. This was one of the great contrasts between the Soviet Union and America, where I could speak to my friends without worrying about the government listening.

The Soviet Union is long gone, but in 2016 we live under the specter of far more surveillance than anything the KGB could have dreamed of with its rudimentary bugs and fearful informers. Not just government surveillance - law enforcement can easily obtain our phone and internet records with a warrant from the nearly always compliant courts - but corporate surveillance, too. It’s not just Google and Facebook that might know more details about our lives and friends than the KGB could have imagined in its most feverish dreams of information dominance, but even Zipcar and Amazon. There are precautions one can take, and I did that with the Lamb. When we had our video chat, I used a computer that had been wiped clean of everything except its operating system and essential applications. Afterward, it was wiped clean again. My concern was that the Lamb might use the session to obtain data from or about the computer I was using; there are a lot of things he might have tried, if he was in a scheming mood. At the end of our three hours together, I mentioned to him that I had taken these precautions - and he approved.

"That’s fair,” he said. “I’m glad you have that appreciation… From a perspective of a journalist who has access to classified information, it would be remiss to think you’re not a target of foreign intelligence services.”

He was telling me the U.S. government should be the least of my worries. He was trying to help me.

Former CIA Agent: It's Time To Talk About What’s Really Causing Terrorism & Elites Openly Calling To Rise Up Against 'Ignorant Masses" July 3 2016 | From: TheAntiMedia

In the wake of yet another terrorist attack, a former CIA counterterrorism agent has shared her insight into what causes such tragic, intentional carnage. Amaryllis Fox spoke for the first time publicly with Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+) about terrorism, misguided narratives on why it happens, and the underlying motivators driving it - ultimately urging Americans and those in power to adopt a different approach in combating the ongoing violence.

“If I learned one lesson from my time with the CIA, it is this: everybody believes they are the good guy,” says Fox, who is currently “in the process of getting her CIA cover rolled back,” AJ+ reports. She is now a peace activist and runs Mulu, “an e-commerce company supporting at-risk communities around the world.” Fox worked as a counterterrorism and intelligence official for the clandestine services during the 2000s. In her first public statement on her time there, she discussed the limitations on the American public’s perception of the war on terror:

"The conversation that’s going on in the United States right now about ISIS and about the United States overseas is more oversimplified than ever. Ask most Americans whether ISIS poses an existential threat to this country and they’ll say yes. That’s where the conversation stops.”

Indeed, while a majority of Americans fear terrorism, reaching a consensus on how to tackle ISIS has proved contentious. Fox explained the simplicity of the way the conflicts are viewed on both sides:

"If you’re walking down the street in Iraq or Syria and ask anybody why America dropped bombs, you get: ‘They were waging war on Islam.’”

In America, the question is: “Why were we attacked on 9/11?” Fox says if you pose this question, “You get: they hate us because we’re free.” However, she contests the validity of these assumptions, pointing to the powerful forces that drive conflict in the first place:

"Those are stories manufactured by a really small number of people on both sides who amass a great deal of power and wealth by convincing the rest of us to keep killing each other.”

Indeed, both sides of the conflict expend significant effort campaigning to prove their crusades are justified. In the United States, after decades of prolonged conflict, the populace is largely desensitized to war and often ignorant of its current manifestations. Fox challenges this paradigm:

"I think the question we need to be asking, as Americans examining our foreign policy, is whether or not we’re pouring kerosene on a candle. The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them. If you hear them out, if you’re brave enough to really listen to their story, you can see that more often than not, you might have made some of the same choices if you’d lived their life instead of yours.”

Of course, as Americans mourn the most recent mass shooting, it is doubtful many citizens are well-versed in the U.S. foreign policy that provokes such terrorism.

Rather, they focus, understandably, on the wrong done to their nation. But Fox offered a unique perspective that lends insight to the “enemy.”

"An Al-Qaeda fighter made a point once during debriefing,” she recounted. “He said all these movies that America makes - like Independence Day, and the Hunger Games, and Star Wars they’re all about a small scrappy band of rebels who will do anything in their power with the limited resources available to them to expel an outside, technological advanced invader. ‘

And what you don’t realize,’ he said, ‘is that to us, to the rest of the world, you are the empire, and we are Luke and Han. You are the aliens and we are Will Smith.’”

However, she also challenged the Al-Qaeda fighter’s take, arguing that on both sides of conflict, those fighting on the ground often provide the same reasons for doing so:

"But the truth is that when you talk to people who are really fighting on the ground, on both sides, and ask them why they’re there, they answer with hopes for their children, specific policies that they think are cruel or unfair,” she says. “And while it may be easier to dismiss your enemy as evil, hearing them out on policy concerns is actually an amazing thing, because as long as your enemy is a subhuman psychopath that’s gonna attack you no matter what you do, this never ends. But if your enemy is a policy, however complicated - that we can work with.”

As terror attacks become an increasingly normal occurrence in the West - and as Western intervention trudges ahead unabated - hearing out enemies’ concerns may, at this point, be the most effective counterterrorism gesture the United States can make; that is, if it is truly determined to bring an end to the violence.

Elites Openly Calling To Rise Up Against 'Ignorant Masses" In this video Luke Rudkowski covers the brazen admission from James Traub a CFR member and heir to the Bloomingdale empire. Traub recently wrote an article for ForeignPolicy openly calling for the elites to rise up against the "fist shaking, mindless, angry, ignorant, know nothing masses.

The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You A Terrorist June 26 2016 | From: TheIntercept

The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept.

The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted. Over the years, the Obama and Bush Administrations have fiercely resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names on the databases - though the guidelines are officially labeled as unclassified. In May, Attorney General Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was on the no fly list. In an affidavit, Holder called them a “clear roadmap” to the government’s terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding:

“The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed… could cause significant harm to national security.”

The rulebook, which The Intercept is publishing in full, was developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation’s intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI. Emblazoned with the crests of 19 agencies, it offers the most complete and revealing look into the secret history of the government’s terror list policies to date. It reveals a confounding and convoluted system filled with exceptions to its own rules, and it relies on the elastic concept of “reasonable suspicion” as a standard for determining whether someone is a possible threat. Because the government tracks “suspected terrorists” as well as “known terrorists,” individuals can be watchlisted if they are suspected of being a suspected terrorist, or if they are suspected of associating with people who are suspected of terrorism activity.

“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.” Shamsi, who reviewed the document, added, “These criteria should never have been kept secret.”

The document’s definition of “terrorist” activity includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking, the guidelines also define destruction of government property and damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting placement on a list. They also define as

terrorism any act that is “dangerous” to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation. This combination - a broad definition of what constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a terrorist opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret government dragnets. It can also be counterproductive. When resources are devoted to tracking people who are not genuine risks to national security, the actual threats get fewer resources - and might go unnoticed.

“If reasonable suspicion is the only standard you need to label somebody, then it’s a slippery slope we’re sliding down here, because then you can label anybody anything,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent with experience running high-profile terrorism investigations. “Because you appear on a telephone list of somebody doesn’t make you a terrorist. That’s the kind of information that gets put in there.”

The fallout is personal too. There are severe consequences for people unfairly labeled a terrorist by the U.S. government, which shares its watchlist data with local law enforcement, foreign governments, and “private entities.” Once the U.S. government secretly labels you a terrorist or terrorist suspect, other institutions tend to treat you as one. It can become difficult to get a job (or simply to stay out of jail). It can become burdensome - or impossible - to travel. And routine encounters with law enforcement can turn into ordeals.

A chart from the “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance”

In 2012 Tim Healy, the former director of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, described to CBS News how watchlists are used by police officers.

“So if you are speeding, you get pulled over, they’ll query that name,” he said. “And if they are encountering a known or suspected terrorist, it will pop up and say call the Terrorist Screening Center. So now the officer on the street knows he may be dealing with a known or suspected terrorist.”

Of course, the problem is that the “known or suspected terrorist” might just be an ordinary citizen who should not be treated as a menace to public safety. Until 2001, the government did not prioritize building a watchlist system. On 9/11, the government’s list of people barred from flying included just 16 names. Today, the no fly list has swelled to tens of thousands of “known or suspected terrorists” (the guidelines refer to them as KSTs). The selectee list subjects people to extra scrutiny and questioning at airports and border crossings. The government has created several other databases, too. The largest is the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), which gathers terrorism information from sensitive military and intelligence sources around the world.

Because it contains classified information that cannot be widely distributed, there is yet another list, the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, which has been stripped of TIDE’s classified data so that it can be shared. When government officials refer to “the watchlist,” they are typically referring to the TSDB. (TIDE is the responsibility of the National Counterterrorism Center; the TSDB is managed by the Terrorist Screening Center at the FBI.) In a statement, a spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center told The Intercept that:

“The watchlisting system is an important part of our layered defense to protect the United States against future terrorist attacks” and that “watchlisting continues to mature to meet an evolving, diffuse threat.”

He added that U.S. citizens are afforded extra protections to guard against improper listing, and that no one can be placed on a list solely for activities protected by the First Amendment. A representative of the Terrorist Screening Center did not respond to a request for comment.

The system has been criticized for years. In 2004, Sen. Ted Kennedy complained that he was barred from boarding flights on five separate occasions because his name resembled the alias of a suspected terrorist. Two years later, CBS News obtained a copy of the no fly list and reported that it included Bolivian president Evo Morales and Lebanese parliament head Nabih Berri. One of the watchlists snared Mikey Hicks, a Cub Scout who got his first of many airport pat-downs at age two. In 2007, the Justice Department’s inspector general issued a scathing report identifying “significant weaknesses” in the system. And in 2009, after a Nigerian terrorist was able to board a passenger flight to Detroit and nearly detonated a bomb sewn into his underwear despite his name having been placed on the TIDE list, President Obama admitted that there had been a “systemic failure.”

Obama hoped that his response to the “underwear bomber” would be a turning point. In 2010, he gave increased powers and responsibilities to the agencies that nominate individuals to the lists, placing pressure on them to add names. His administration also issued a set of new guidelines for the watchlists. Problems persisted, however. In 2012, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report that bluntly noted there was no agency responsible for figuring out “whether watchlist-related screening or vetting is achieving intended results.” The guidelines were revised and expanded in 2013 - and a source within the intelligence community subsequently provided a copy to The Intercept.

“Concrete Facts are not Necessary”

The five chapters and 11 appendices of the “Watchlisting Guidance” are filled with acronyms, legal citations, and numbered paragraphs; it reads like an arcane textbook with a vocabulary all its own. Different types of data on suspected terrorists are referred to as “derogatory information,” “substantive derogatory information,” “extreme derogatory information” and “particularized derogatory information.” The names of suspected terrorists are passed along a bureaucratic ecosystem of “originators,” “nominators,” “aggregators,” “screeners,” and “encountering agencies.” And “upgrade,” usually a happy word for travellers, is repurposed to mean that an individual has been placed on a more restrictive list.

The heart of the document revolves around the rules for placing individuals on a watchlist. “All executive departments and agencies,” the document says, are responsible for collecting and sharing information on terrorist suspects with the National Counterterrorism Center. It sets a low standard - ”reasonable suspicion“ - for placing names on the watchlists, and offers a multitude of vague, confusing, or contradictory instructions for gauging it. In the chapter on “Minimum Substantive Derogatory Criteria” - even the title is hard to digest - the key sentence on reasonable suspicion offers little clarity:

“To meet the REASONABLE SUSPICION standard, the NOMINATOR, based on the totality of the circumstances, must rely upon articulable intelligence or information which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrants a determination that an individual is known or suspected to be or has been knowingly engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to TERRORISM and/or TERRORIST ACTIVITIES.”

The rulebook makes no effort to define an essential phrase in the passage - ”articulable intelligence or information.” After stressing that hunches are not reasonable suspicion and that “there must be an objective factual basis” for labeling someone a terrorist, it goes on to state that no actual facts are required:

“In determining whether a REASONABLE SUSPICION exists, due weight should be given to the specific reasonable inferences that a NOMINATOR is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his/her experience and not on unfounded suspicions or hunches. Although irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary, to be reasonable, suspicion should be as clear and as fully developed as circumstances permit.”

While the guidelines nominally prohibit nominations based on unreliable information, they explicitly regard “uncorroborated” Facebook or Twitter posts as sufficient grounds for putting an individual on one of the watchlists.

“Single source information,” the guidelines state, “including but not limited to ‘walk-in,’ ‘write-in,’ or postings on social media sites, however, should not automatically be discounted… the NOMINATING AGENCY should evaluate the credibility of the source, as well as the nature and specificity of the information, and nominate even if that source is uncorroborated.”

There are a number of loopholes for putting people onto the watchlists even if reasonable suspicion cannot be met. One is clearly defined: The immediate family of suspected terrorists - their spouses, children, parents, or siblings - may be watchlisted without any suspicion that they themselves are engaged in terrorist activity. But another loophole is quite broad - ”associates” who have a defined relationship with a suspected terrorist, but whose involvement in terrorist activity is not known. A third loophole is broader still - individuals with “a possible nexus” to terrorism, but for whom there is not enough “derogatory information” to meet the reasonable suspicion standard. Americans and foreigners can be nominated for the watchlists if they are associated with a terrorist group, even if that group has not been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

They can also be treated as “representatives” of a terrorist group even if they have “neither membership in nor association with the organization.” The guidelines do helpfully note that certain associations, such as providing janitorial services or delivering packages, are not grounds for being watchlisted. The nomination system appears to lack meaningful checks and balances. Although government officials have repeatedly said there is a rigorous process for making sure no one is unfairly placed in the databases, the guidelines acknowledge that all nominations of “known terrorists” are considered justified unless the National Counterterrorism Center has evidence to the contrary. In a recent court filing, the government disclosed that there were 468,749 KST nominations in 2013, of which only 4,915 were rejected–a rate of about one percent. The rulebook appears to invert the legal principle of due process, defining nominations as “presumptively valid.”

Profiling Categories of People While the nomination process appears methodical on paper, in practice there is a shortcut around the entire system. Known as a “threat-based expedited upgrade,” it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to elevate entire “categories of people” whose names appear in the larger databases onto the no fly or selectee lists. This can occur, the guidelines state, when there is a “particular threat stream” indicating that a certain type of individual may commit a terrorist act. This extraordinary power for “categorical watchlisting” - otherwise known as profiling - is vested in the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, a position formerly held by CIA Director John Brennan that does not require Senate confirmation. The rulebook does not indicate what “categories of people” have been subjected to threat-based upgrades. It is not clear, for example, whether a category might be as broad as military-age males from Yemen. The guidelines do make clear that American citizens and green card holders are subject to such upgrades, though government officials are required to review their status in an “expedited” procedure. Upgrades can remain in effect for 72 hours before being reviewed by a small committee of senior officials. If approved, they can remain in place for 30 days before a renewal is required, and can continue “until the threat no longer exists.”

“In a set of watchlisting criteria riddled with exceptions that swallow rules, this exception is perhaps the most expansive and certainly one of the most troubling,” Shamsi, the ACLU attorney, says. “It’s reminiscent of the Bush administration’s heavily criticized color-coded threat alerts, except that here, bureaucrats can exercise virtually standard-less authority in secret with specific negative consequences for entire categories of people.”

The National Counterterrorism Center declined to provide any details on the upgrade authority, including how often it has been exercised and for what categories of people.

Pocket Litter and Scuba Gear The guidelines provide the clearest explanation yet of what is happening when Americans and foreigners are pulled aside at airports and border crossings by government agents. The fifth chapter, titled “Encounter Management and Analysis,” details the type of information that is targeted for collection during “encounters” with people on the watchlists, as well as the different organizations that should collect the data. The Department of Homeland Security is described as having the largest number of encounters, but other authorities, ranging from the State Department and Coast Guard to foreign governments and “certain private entities,” are also involved in assembling “encounter packages” when watchlisted individuals cross their paths. The encounters can be face-to-face meetings or electronic interactions - for instance, when a watchlisted individual applies for a visa. In addition to data like fingerprints, travel itineraries, identification documents and gun licenses, the rules encourage screeners to acquire health insurance information, drug prescriptions, “any cards with an electronic strip on it (hotel cards, grocery cards, gift cards, frequent flyer cards),” cellphones, email addresses, binoculars, peroxide, bank account numbers, pay stubs, academic transcripts, parking and speeding tickets, and want ads. The digital information singled out for collection includes social media accounts, cell phone lists, speed dial numbers, laptop images, thumb drives, iPods, Kindles, and cameras. All of the information is then uploaded to the TIDE database. Screeners are also instructed to collect data on any “pocket litter,” scuba gear, EZ Passes, library cards, and the titles of any books, along with information about their condition - ”e.g., new, dog-eared, annotated, unopened.” Business cards and conference materials are also targeted, as well as “anything with an account number” and information about any gold or jewelry worn by the watchlisted individual.

Even “animal information” - details about pets from veterinarians or tracking chips - is requested. The rulebook also encourages the collection of biometric or biographical data about the travel partners of watchlisted individuals. The list of government entities that collect this data includes the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is neither an intelligence nor law-enforcement agency. As the rulebook notes, USAID funds foreign aid programs that promote environmentalism, health care, and education. USAID, which presents itself as committed to fighting global poverty, nonetheless appears to serve as a conduit for sensitive intelligence about foreigners. According to the guidelines, “When USAID receives an application seeking financial assistance, prior to granting, these applications are subject to vetting by USAID intelligence analysts at the TSC.” The guidelines do not disclose the volume of names provided by USAID, the type of information it provides, or the number and duties of the “USAID intelligence analysts.” A USAID spokesman told The Intercept that “in certain high risk countries, such as Afghanistan, USAID has determined that vetting potential partner organizations with the terrorist watchlist is warranted to protect U.S. taxpayer dollars and to minimize the risk of inadvertent funding of terrorism.” He stated that since 2007, the agency has checked “the names and other personal identifying information of key individuals of contractors and grantees, and sub-recipients.”

Death and the Watchlist The government has been widely criticized for making it impossible for people to know why they have been placed on a watchlist, and for making it nearly impossible to get off. The guidelines bluntly state that “the general policy of the U.S. Government is to neither confirm nor deny an individual’s watchlist status.” But the courts have taken exception to the official silence and footdragging: In June, a federal judge described the government’s secretive removal process as unconstitutional and “wholly ineffective.” The difficulty of getting off the list is highlighted by a passage in the guidelines stating that an individual can be kept on the watchlist, or even placed onto the watchlist, despite being acquitted of a terrorism-related crime. The rulebook justifies this by noting that conviction in U.S. courts requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas watchlisting requires only a reasonable suspicion. Once suspicion is raised, even a jury’s verdict cannot erase it. Not even death provides a guarantee of getting off the list. The guidelines say the names of dead people will stay on the list if there is reason to believe the deceased’s identity may be used by a suspected terrorist–which the National Counterterrorism Center calls a “demonstrated terrorist tactic.” In fact, for the same reason, the rules permit the deceased spouses of suspected terrorists to be placed onto the list after they have died. For the living, the process of getting off the watchlist is simple yet opaque. A complaint can be filed through the Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, which launches an internal review that is not subject to oversight by any court or entity outside the counterterrorism community.

The review can result in removal from a watchlist or an adjustment of watchlist status, but the individual will not be told if he or she prevails. The guidelines highlight one of the reasons why it has been difficult to get off the list - if multiple agencies have contributed information on a watchlisted individual, all of them must agree to removing him or her. If a U.S. citizen is placed on the no fly list while abroad and is turned away from a flight bound for the U.S., the guidelines say they should be referred to the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate, which is prohibited from informing them why they were blocked from flying. According to the rules, these individuals can be granted a “One-Time Waiver” to fly, though they will not be told that they are traveling on a waiver. Back in the United States, they will be unable to board another flight. The document states that nominating agencies are “under a continuing obligation” to provide exculpatory information when it emerges. It adds that the agencies are expected to conduct annual reviews of watchlisted American citizens and green card holders. It is unclear whether foreigners - or the dead - are reviewed at the same pace. As the rulebook notes, “watchlisting is not an exact science.”

WWW Founder Tim Berners-Lee working On A New Decentralised Web June 17 2016 | From: IndianExpress / NewYorkTimes

The Decentralized Web Summit was held from June 8-9 in San Francisco, and envisions a web not controlled by governments.

Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web (WWW), is exploring the idea of a new decentralised version of the web, along with other internet scientists, reports the New York Times (See below also). The Decentralized Web Summit was held from June 8-9 in San Francisco, and envisions a web which is not controlled by corporations or governments across the world.

“It’s (Web) been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people’s content, taking you to the wrong websites that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create,” Tim Berners-Lee told NYT.

Other than Tim Berners-Lee, the Decentralised Web Summitt saw the participation of Mozilla Project’s Mitchell Baker, Vint Cerf who is widely seen as one of the “Fathers of the Internet”, and is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. Cerf is co-creator of the TCP/IP protocols.

Also on the panels were Cory Doctorow, an author, journalist, and Special Advisor at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with Brewster Kahle, who is the founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, which is the largest digital library in the world. As the NYT article notes, the idea behind the summit is to ensure digital memory is preserved, and the web isn’t controlled by governments or certain big cloud services. According to the Decentralised Web Summit website, the current state of the web is not private or censorship-free. The website reads;

“It lacks a memory, a way to preserve our culture’s digital record through time. The Decentralized Web aims to make the Web open, secure and free of censorship by distributing data, processing, and hosting across millions of computers around the world, with no centralised control.”

The Project, which is still in the early days envisions a truly open web, compared to the current one, which is subject to government control. As the NYT article points out the world wide web is one of the means for accessing the internet. The latter is the network path and infrastructure connecting the world’s computers.

Because the web is not full decentralised, censorship means that access to some of these pages on the Internet can be blocked. For example’s China’s Great Firewall blocks access to quite a few websites, including Google, Facebook and Twitter.

The Web’s Creator Looks To Reinvent It Twenty-seven years ago, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web as a way for scientists to easily find information.

A group of top computer scientists gathered in San Francisco on Tuesday to discuss a new phase for the web

It has since become the world’s most powerful medium for knowledge, communications and commerce - but that doesn’t mean Mr. Berners-Lee is happy with all of the consequences.

“It controls what people see, creates mechanisms for how people interact,” he said of the modern day web. “It’s been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people’s content, taking you to the wrong websites - that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create.”

So on Tuesday, Mr. Berners-Lee gathered in San Francisco with other top computer scientists - including Brewster Kahle, head of the nonprofit Internet Archive and an internet activist - to discuss a new phase for the web. Today, the World Wide Web has become a system that is often subject to control by governments and corporations. Countries like China can block certain web pages from their citizens, and cloud services like Amazon Web Services hold powerful sway. So what might happen, the computer scientists posited, if they could harness newer technologies - like the software used for digital currencies, or the technology of peer-to-peer music sharing - to create a more decentralized web with more privacy, less government and corporate control, and a level of permanence and reliability?

“National histories, the story of a country, now happen on the web,” said Vinton G. Cerf, another founder of the internet and chief internet evangelist at Google, in a phone interview ahead of a speech to the group scheduled for Wednesday. “People think making things digital means they’ll last forever, but that isn’t true now.”

The project is in its early days, but the discussions - and caliber of the people involved - underscored how the World Wide Web’s direction in recent years has stirred a deep anxiety among some technologists. The revelations by Edward J. Snowden that the web has been used by governments for spying and the realization that companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google have become gatekeepers to our digital lives have added to concerns.

Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, center left, and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, center right, with other attendees at the Decentralized Web Summit

On Tuesday, Mr. Berners-Lee and Mr. Kahle and others brainstormed at the event, called the Decentralized Web Summit, over new ways that web pages could be distributed broadly without the standard control of a web server computer, as well as ways of storing scientific data without having to pay storage fees to companies like Amazon, Dropbox or Google. Efforts at creating greater amounts of privacy and accountability, by adding more encryption to various parts of the web and archiving all versions of a web page, also came up. Such efforts would make it harder to censor content.

“Edward Snowden showed we’ve inadvertently built the world’s largest surveillance network with the web,” said Mr. Kahle, whose group organized the conference. “China can make it impossible for people there to read things, and just a few big service providers are the de facto organizers of your experience. We have the ability to change all that.”

Many people conflate the internet’s online services and the web as one and the same - yet they are technically quite different. The internet is a networking infrastructure, where any two machines can communicate over a variety of paths, and one local network of computers can connect with other networks. The web, on the other hand, is a popular means to access that network of networks. But because of the way web pages are created, managed and named, the web is not fully decentralized. Take down a certain server and a certain web page becomes unavailable. Links to pages can corrode over time.

Censorship systems like China’s Great Firewall eliminate access to much information for most of its people. By looking at internet addresses, it is possible for governments and companies to get a good idea of who is reading which web pages. In some ways, the efforts to change the technology of creating the web are a kind of coming-of-age story. Mr. Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web while working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, as a tool for scientists. Today, the web still runs on technologies of the older world. Consider payments. In many cases, people pay for things online by entering credit card information, not much different from handing a card to a merchant for an imprint.

The Internet Archive hosted the Decentralized Web Summit in an old church building in San Francisco

At the session on Tuesday, computer scientists talked about how new payment technologies could increase individual control over money. For example, if people adapted the so-called ledger system by which digital currencies are used, a musician might potentially be able to sell records without intermediaries like Apple’s iTunes. News sites might be able to have a system of micropayments for reading a single article, instead of counting on web ads for money.

“Ad revenue is the only model for too many people on the web now,” Mr. Berners-Lee said. “People assume today’s consumer has to make a deal with a marketing machine to get stuff for ‘free,’ even if they’re horrified by what happens with their data. Imagine a world where paying for things was easy on both sides.”

Mr. Kahle’s Internet Archive, which exists on a combination of grants and fees from digitizing books for libraries, operates the Wayback Machine, which serves as a record of discontinued websites or early versions of pages. To make that work now, Mr. Kahle has to search and capture a page, then give it a brand new web address. With the right kind of distributed system, he said;

“The archive can have all of the versions, because there would be a permanent record located across many sites.”

The movement to change how the web is built, like a surprising number of technology discussions, has an almost religious dimension. Some of the participants are extreme privacy advocates who have created methods of building sites that can’t be censored, using cryptography. Mr. Cerf said he was wary of extreme anonymity, but thought the ways that digital currencies permanently record transactions could be used to make the web more accountable. Still, not all the major players agree on whether the web needs decentralizing.

“The web is already decentralized,” Mr. Berners-Lee said. “The problem is the dominance of one search engine, one big social network, one Twitter for microblogging. We don’t have a technology problem, we have a social problem.”

One that can, perhaps, be solved by more technology.

Utility Smart Meters - A Probable Terrorist Connection Unveiled? June 11 2016 | From: ActivistPost

All throughout the USA - plus globally - informed and concerned citizens are refusing AMI smart meters for electric, natural gas, and municipal water utility services, which are provided using a Marxist-draconian-like edict and rollout by utility companies that want to cash in on the funding they can receive from the feds to institute what amounts to an apparent ‘first leg’ push for the global smart grid and Internet of Things (IoT)

The IoT is designed to track everyone’s every interaction at all times - in your car (transponders and E-Z Pass); on your computers - specifically Windows 10 backdoors that apparently allow the feds access to your computer; through your ‘smart’ home appliances - especially TVs; plus a human RFID microchip surgically imbedded somewhere inside your body to enforce a cashless society, tracking, and an obvious ultimate control mechanism over every human! Related: The Disturbingly Aggressive Roll Out Of Smart AKA Advanced Meters - While Children Starve And The Elderly Freeze In Rural Aotearoa (NZ) That IoT sure beats what Karl Marx, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Stalin visualized and enforced! Why aren’t consumers waking up to what’s being done to us? Furthermore, does the Draco-like (7th-century Athenian statesman and lawmaker, or his code of laws, which prescribed death for almost every offence) push for vaccines starting as soon as a fetus exits the womb until one reaches advanced old age play a part in any of this, especially vaccine nanoparticles?

Related: Seattle Suehawks: Smart meter hush-up launched because, er ... terrorism However, one specific aspect of the dumb ‘smart’ technology came into daylight recently because of what’s been going on in Seattle, Washington - terrorism associated with hacking smart systems. Hopefully, that aspect finally will register enough concern in the hearts, minds, and souls of humans to enable us to recognize, and seriously ponder, that we are being downsized into zombies or human robots! The issue that’s raised security concerns, plus hackles, at corporate levels is the fact that utility companies’ smart meter technology is being equated with terroristic capabilities! Read that again and let it sink into the very depths of your being. All those dumb ‘smart’ gadgets we can’t live without, and everyone has bought into, pose severe capabilities for terrorists’ hacking, plus a total takeover of the grid! How do you like ‘them’ apples?

Related: Britain’s IoD: “Smart Meters Are A Government IT Disaster Waiting To Happen” The quintessential Pandora’s Box is nothing compared with smart technology and its capabilities of being hacked at every level of communication. How do we know that? Well, it’s been revealed that when Seattle City Light, a public power utility in Washington State, was asked by an activist for their smart meter and grid details, etc., in order to find out what kind of safety and security safeguards were built in by smart meter suppliers Landis+Gyr and Sensus USA, that request wound up in a rather bizarre legal battle! Why? Here’s the story of activist Phil Mocek’s request for smart meter information that ran into legal troubles. However, I’d like to cut to what may be the real deal about not releasing those plans, etc:

“The smart meter suppliers objected to the release of the information on the grounds that the unredacted documents would disclose their trade secrets and open the public to terrorist attacks on their infrastructure."

As a result of smart meter suppliers/manufacturers legal actions, this is where the issue currently stands:

“Mocek was given a mix of unredacted and redacted documents by the city, the meter makers complained, whereas he should only have received and published files they had censored. Seattle officials said they were not skilled enough to know for sure which parts to redact, so left it to the suppliers to edit the files – yet, unredacted information managed to make its way into Mocek’s hands and onto the internet.

Landis+Gyr and Sensus promptly sued the city, Mocek and Muckrock, and filed for an injunction: ultimately, the suppliers wanted the documents taken down, and the unredacted copies banned from public view. On Thursday, a temporary restraining order was granted by the King County Superior Court in Washington – and Muckrock founder Michael Morisy confirmed the unredacted documents have been taken down pending the outcome of the case."

Related: Hundreds Of Smart Meters Simultaneously Explode However, there seems to be some element of naivety involved regarding all this, I offer, and the following leads me to that conclusion:

“In the meantime, however, Mocek also has some additional problems to deal with, thanks to the legal wrangling. Though he has filed similar information requests in the past, he says he has never had to face a lawsuit simply because he wanted to look at public records and keep a local utility honest. “I don’t think [Seattle City Light] are going to put a device on my house to spy on me,” he quipped. “I think they are being bamboozled by vendors who want to make a lot of money by replacing thousands of meters.”

Related: As US court bans smart meter blueprints from public, sysadmin tells of fight for security info To which I offer: I think Mr. Mocek and everyone else needs to reconsider the “spy on me” aspect. How naïve are we, if we don’t put two and two together and come up with the correct answer? Utility companies are providing customers’ smart meter information to others, as a California utility admits:

“This data is very valuable because it can reveal patterns about what you do and when. California utility companies admitted they are providing smart meter data to the government and third parties."

There’s a 4.3 minute video explaining what smart meters really can and do, regarding surveillance of customers’ homes in this website. It’s found under “Privacy invasion.”

However, I need to tell readers that my computer surveillance package won’t allow me to copy and paste that video URL into this article! Interesting? No - my computer is compromised as, apparently, all computers are of those who do the type of work I do.

CIA Director Calls Smart Grid “Stupid” Due to Security Problems

If the Smart Grid is that “stupid”, then there must be some ulterior Faustian reason for it to be mandated and installed, wouldn’t you say? No one can be that damn dumb to mandate a system that can cause more harm, especially in the area of personal privacy and national security. Haven’t we learned anything from nine-eleven? You no doubt have heard about people who live in glass houses and their vulnerabilities.

Well, your house, no matter what it’s made of, will become a crystal clear, see-through structure to all who want to know about your every moment, movement, occupancy times, and use of smart gadgets and, in turn, broadcast that information via hackable cell phone technology in smart meters and, ultimately, sell that personal information without your knowledge and permission to third parties; plus open your privacy, life, and home to burglars, thieves, and government or foreign hackers.

Is that the price we are willing to pay for buying into all the dumb smart technology being forced upon us? I think every homeowner should file a formal complaint with their utility company and public utility commission informing them that they must obtain an official court order in order to be able to access your personal information via a smart meter. Basically, it’s a surveillance device! Enforce your lawful rights! Related: Reports Of Illness Prompt Audit Of Smart Meter Radiation

Snowden Feels Journalism No Longer Questions, But Simply Follows The Elite May 20 2016 | From: AustralianNationalReview

In a recent interview to the Columbia Journalism Review, former NS contractor, Edward Snowden spoke of the extent to which journalism has shifted from its main focus.

He said that the media is the strongest now, more than ever before, since its existence but now is the time it is the farthest from its goal of serving the people. The relationship between the media and the masses has undergone a lot of change and the media’s ‘capitalistic greed’ is to be blamed for it. Related: Snowden on Destroyed Torture Report: ‘When CIA Destroys Something, It’s Never a Mistake’ The aim is to keep the news flow going and staying ahead of competitors by reporting first, rather than reporting the accurate or the important. He says;

"When the reporting of facts takes a back seat, the media isn’t doing its only job.”

Instead of breaking a good story, competitors write against a story that has been started by a media house. He spoke of the recent case of the Drone Papers in this regard and pointed at the New York Times as the biggest offender. He said;

"You don’t take your child into the dentist thinking it will be the last time you see them alive. You should feel comfortable and safe at the doctor or dentist office – never scared for your child’s life." “The Intercept recently published The Drone Papers, which was an extraordinary act of public service on the part of a whistleblower within the government to get the public information that’s absolutely vital about things that we should have known more than a decade ago… But the majors – specifically The New York Times – don’t actually run the story, they ignore it completely.”

Related: The Drone Papers

According to Snowden, the media has now drifted far away from its purpose of pointing out what is contrary to the public good to becoming a tool of strengthening the elite and supporting the government. Speaking about the major news outlets in countries like the US, Snowden said; ‘If the government said, “Look, this is secret for a reason, this is classified for a reason,” journalists would leave it at that’. However, he also believes that with so many technological tools at hand, now is the best time to revolt against such monopoly. He says the media could be the strongest check on the hegemony moves of a government or its biggest weapon. Reports of incidents such as the NSA’s blanket spying program called PRISM could deal severe blows to the government. Snowden explains that these changes in the media’s role became more vivid particularly after the 9/11 attacks when the social media emerged as a more powerful form of reporting. However, he warns saying that these trends just hand over more power to new media ‘malicious actors’ to gain control of the ‘media narrative’ in novel ways.

The trouble with these media outlets is, whoever has the loudest voice always wins – irrespective of the accuracy of their statements. He explains saying;

"The director of the FBI can make a false statement or some kind of misleading claim in congressional testimony. I can fact-check and I can say this is inaccurate. Unless some entity with a larger audience, for example, an established institution of journalism, sees that themselves, the value of these sorts of statements is still fairly minimal.”

So what difference did the NSA leaks bring about really? Snowden says it covered the distance between allegation and fact. He says:

"What happened in 2013 is we transformed the public debate from allegation to fact. The distance between allegation and fact, at times, makes all the difference in the world’. "

It did create an impact on the government by making it believe that more transparency could be demanded from it. Staying in exile in Russia, Snowden feels whistle blowing should be the purpose of the media but more important is that people realise they have the right to know what their government is doing.

Censored, Surveilled, Watch Listed And Jailed: The Absurdity Of Being A Citizen In A Police State April 29 2016 | From: InformationClearingHouse

In the police state, the price to be paid for speaking truth to power (also increasingly viewed as an act of treason) is surveillance, censorship, jail and ultimately death.

However, where many go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal. MIn fact, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all you really need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States. With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

What’s more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate. Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially antigovernment remarks - all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

While this may sound like a riff on a bad joke, it’s a bad joke with “we the people” as the punchline. The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed. Laugh at your own peril.

Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates: The Department of Homeland Security has an expansive list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats such as SWAT, lockdown, police, cloud, food poisoning, pork, flu, Subway, smart, delays, cancelled, la familia, pirates, hurricane, forest fire, storm, flood, help, ice, snow, worm, warning or social media.

Use a cell phone: Simply by using a cell phone, you make yourself an easy target for government agents - working closely with corporations who can listen in on your phone calls, read your text messages and emails, and track your movements based on the data transferred from, received by, and stored in your cell phone. Mention any of the so-called “trigger” words in a conversation or text message, and you’ll get flagged for sure. Drive a car: Unless you’ve got an old junkyard heap without any of the gadgets and gizmos that are so attractive to today’s car buyers (GPS, satellite radio, electrical everything, smart systems, etc.), driving a car today is like wearing a homing device: you’ll be tracked from the moment you open that car door thanks to black box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems that can monitor your speed, direction, location, the number of miles traveled, and even your seatbelt use.

Once you add satellites, GPS devices, license plate readers, and real-time traffic cameras to the mix, there’s nowhere you can go on our nation’s highways and byways that you can’t be followed. Attend a political rally: Enacted in the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state. Express yourself on social media: The FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

Serve in the military: Operation Vigilant Eagle, the brainchild of the Dept. of Homeland Security, calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

Disagree with a law enforcement official: A growing number of government programs are aimed at identifying, monitoring and locking up anyone considered potentially “dangerous” or mentally ill (according to government standards, of course). For instance, a homeless man in New York City who reportedly had a history of violence but no signs of mental illness was forcibly detained in a psych ward for a week after arguing with shelter police.

Call in sick to work: In Virginia, a so-called police “welfare check” instigated by a 58-year-old man’s employer after he called in sick resulted in a two-hour, SWAT team-style raid on the man’s truck and a 72-hour mental health hold.

All of this was done despite the fact that police acknowledged they had no legal basis nor probable cause for detaining the man, given that he had not threatened to harm anyone and was not mentally ill.

Limp or stutter: As a result of a nationwide push to certify a broad spectrum of government officials in mental health first-aid training (a 12hour course comprised of PowerPoint presentations, videos, discussions, role playing and other interactive activities), more Americans are going to run the risk of being reported for having mental health issues by non-medical personnel. For instance, one 37-year-old disabled man was arrested, diagnosed by police and an unlicensed mental health screener as having “mental health issues,” apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait. Appear confused or nervous, fidget, whistle or smell bad: According to the Transportation Security Administration’s 92-point secret behavior watch list for spotting terrorists, these are among some of the telling signs of suspicious behavior: fidgeting, whistling, bad body odor, yawning, clearing your throat, having a pale face from recently shaving your beard, covering your mouth with your hand when speaking and blinking your eyes fast. Allow yourself to be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun, such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane, for instance: No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. John Crawford was shot by police in an Ohio Wal-Mart for holding an air rifle sold in the store that he may have intended to buy. Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was shot 7 times in 10 seconds by a California police officer who mistook the boy’s toy gun for an assault rifle.

Christopher Roupe, 17, was shot and killed after opening the door to a police officer. The officer, mistaking the Wii remote control in Roupe’s hand for a gun, shot him in the chest. Another police officer repeatedly shot 70-year-old Bobby Canipe during a traffic stop. The cop saw the man reaching for his cane and, believing the cane to be a rifle, opened fire.

Appear to be pro-gun, pro-freedom or anti-government: You might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you: express libertarian philosophies; exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views; read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books; show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies); fear an economic collapse; buy gold and barter items; voice fears about Big Brother or big government; or expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties.

Attend a public school: Microcosms of the police state, public schools contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”

Additionally, as part of the government’s so-called ongoing war on terror, the FBI - the nation’s de facto secret police force is now recruiting students and teachers to spy on each other and report anyone who appears to have the potential to be “anti-government” or “extremist” as part of its “Don’t Be a Puppet” campaign. Speak truth to power: Long before Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon who were being singled out for daring to speak truth to power.

These men and others like them had their phone calls monitored and data files collected on their activities and associations. For a little while, at least, they became enemy number one in the eyes of the US government. There’s always a price to pay for standing up to the powers-that-be. Yet as this list shows, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention. All you really need to be is a citizen of the police state.

When Idiots Control Technology, This Is What Happens April 23 2016 | From: Geopolitics / Sputnik

Here on this planet exists one giant multi-layered corporation comprising of thousands subcorporations, with each layer promoting and protecting each own interests which when summed up lead only to one definite conclusion, i.e. self-destruction.

We are part of that multi-layered corporation, whether by sheer ignorance, or through lies and deception. However methods used that brought us together up to this giant control structure, we don’t have any excuse whatsoever why we should not correct the present trajectory before this present path reach its disastrous end. We are aware of one of the most obvious misapplications of science and technology which is the continued establishment of surveillance system far bigger than its predecessors. This is to be used to merge humanity to machines to facilitate AI control later on.

The Colossal Costs of Building UK’s Monster Surveillance Network The proposal, which the Home Office wants to rush through the House of Commons just after Easter, will cost the country billions of pounds. The centers will be required to keep large databases of all the connections made by UK Internet users for one year - and to share them automatically with the UK’s government and intelligence agencies.

The government is bracing itself for the vote as the news arrives that the only other country in the world to have ever tried a similar approach - Denmark - has just decided to abandon the plan, for the second time in ten years. The first Danish “session logging” system was put into place in 2007, but was abandoned in 2013 after the country’s police and security services found it to be practically useless - besides being very expensive for Internet providers to install and operate. Another attempt to build an improved system, carried out by the Danish Ministry of Justice at the start of March 2016 also appears to have foundered. Before the final decision was taken, the Danish government asked accounting firm Ernst & Young to ascertain how much the new surveillance network would cost.

The experts found that total expenses would be around one billion Danish Krone (US$150 million). The Danish government decided that the costs were too high for the country and its tech sector. In the UK, the costs are likely to be much-much higher. If in Denmark - a country of 5.6 million people - the government estimated that each citizen would produce about 62,000 records every year, in Britain, whose population is about ten times the size of Denmark’s, the final annual database would have to include about four trillion a year. Other estimates suggest that the sheer amount of records could even hit tens of trillions every year. That is because each of those records, as per the law, would have to contain: a customer account reference or device identifier; the date and time of the event; the duration; the source and destination IP and port number of each session; the domain name or linked URL; the volume of data; and the name of Internet service you connected to.

The UK will have to find a way to store an enormous amount of information every day — even if each record’s weight was brought down to 100 bytes, on a yearly level, we are talking exabytes (thousands of petabytes). The only surefire way to deal with this information is by building new massive data centers, which will need at least US$140 million in equipment to handle each exabyte. Add the building, as well as cooling and electricity management and you have only started understanding the eventual costs of the UK’s new monster surveillance plans.

That’s Fust the Tip of The Iceberg The AI control mechanism itself requires the merging of different sciences which when all tied in together also explains the physics behind all the myths, legends and conspiracies that ultimately define our present reality as it is today.

If you are not turned off by its title, the video above will surely reinforce what you’ve learned so far, and hopefully convince you that all the madness that is still going on around the world today needs to end. More importantly, don’t allow yourself to get distracted over by any Gladio type operations wherever they may occur. Just stay within the course of your own evolution. Self-evolution is the most powerful revolution.

NSW Bar Association Warns Against New Police Powers April 20 2016 | From: AustralianNationalReview

The New South Wales Bar Association has warned against a move to give more powers to the police at the detriment of citizens’ independence.

The new powers could see bans being placed on citizens in New South Wales. They could also face restrictions on movement and face curfews without even having committed a crime. The association said that the proposals would create a ‘rival criminal justice system’ that could harm people on mere suspicion. The NSW government had made the proposals as part of introducing new powers to the police. Called serious crime prevention orders, it would offer unprecedented rights to the police to interfere in the affairs of the citizen, the bar association claimed. If such powers are given to the police, they would be able to invoke the same powers to seek and impose control over alleged criminals as they do on terrorism suspects . That the police would have so much power in their hands without needing to prove the crime of a suspect makes the law dangerous and amenable to manipulation. Police would be able to restrain any citizen and interfere with his/her basic rights . Even when a person is acquitted of a criminal offence, police could still seek such an order to treat him or her as per the provisions of the controversial rule. The penalty for breaching an order could be up to five years’ imprisonment or AUD33,000 as fine for an individual. In the case of corporate entities, the fine would be AUD165,000.

In a submission, the NSW Bar Association criticised the government’s hurry in pushing through the legislation. It said:

“No evidence has been cited as to the ineffectiveness of the administration of criminal justice by a process of trial for ‘reducing serious and organised crime’ in New South Wales. The bill effectively sets up a rival to the criminal trial system and interferes unacceptably in the fundamental human rights and freedoms of citizens of NSW.”

The association also said that it was at loss to explain why the government wanted the new norms in the place of longsettled principles. Police minister, Troy Grant, said that the measures were aimed at reducing serious and organised crime. The new provisions would allow the NSW police, the NSW Crime Commission and the NSW director of public prosecutions to seek orders from a judge to impose the restrictions on citizens or corporations. The judge must be satisfied there are “reasonable grounds” for the request. However, the bar association said that while the laws could be applied to individuals who had been convicted of a serious criminal offence, they would also be applicable to behaviour that was considered “serious crime-related activity.” It went on to allege that the new rules interfered with rights of the citizens and had doubtful constitutional validity.

Finger In Every Pie: How CIA Produces Our ‘News’ And Entertainment April 14 2016 | From: 21stCenturyWire / Sputnik

In so many respects, ‘our’ media is not our own. In the past, 21WIRE has detailed various aspects of Operation Mockingbird and other CIA-related media pursuits, as well as many other bogus news stories which appear on a regular basis.

Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison in Homeland

Previously, we showed how the Hollywood hit ZeroDarkThirty was a completely fabricated piece of fiction which was passed on to the public as a “true story”. Also, the popular TV series, Homeland, is one of the most obvious propaganda productions in recent years, designed to reinforce many flawed assumptions and false believes about the world outside of the United States. Related: The CIA And The Media: 50 Facts The World Needs To Know

Related: How The CIA Made Google Did you know that the CIA has actually produced a number of high-profile ‘history’ TV programs that appear on US and world media channels? Yes, it’s true…

Finger in Every Pie: How CIA Became Involved in Entertainment Business The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a finger in every pie including… the entertainment business: it turns out that the CIA has played a role in producing at least 22 entertainment projects; investigative journalist Adam Johnson argues that by doing this the US intelligence agency puts American media workers at risk. Related: Maybe She’s Born With It? CIA Funds DNA-Collecting Skincare Line It seems that the US Central Intelligence Agency follows the theory that says that there are no little or insignificant things. The intelligence agency has long been keeping an eye on the Western entertainment industry and has even had a role in producing popular fiction movies and documentaries.

In his article for Fair.org media watchdog investigative journalist Adam Johnson argues that this type of collaboration may cast a shadow over the image of US media workers and even put them at risk.

"For years, artists from across the entertainment industry - actors, authors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and others - have been in touch with the CIA to gain a better understanding of our intelligence mission," the CIA public website reads.

According to the website, the CIA's goal in engaging with the industry is to ensure "an accurate portrayal of the men and women of the CIA, and the skill, innovation, daring, and commitment to public service that defines them."

Related: German Journalist Reveals That The CIA Has Compromised The Western Media Johnson cites the recent article by Jason Leopold of VICE News who shed some light on how deep the CIA's Office of Public Affairs (OPA) has been involved in US popular entertainment projects.

"Vice's Jason Leopold has uncovered documents showing the CIA had a role in producing up to 22 entertainment 'projects,' including History Channel documentary Air America: The CIA's Secret Airline, Bravo's Top Chef: Covert Cuisine, the USA Network series Covert Affairs and the BBC documentary The Secret War on Terror-along with two fictional feature films about the CIA that both came out in 2012," Johnson narrates.

He points out that the CIA has a long history of "helping" to produce films and documentaries.

"The Agency, for example, secretly bought the rights to Animal Farm after Orwell's death in 1950 and produced an animated adaptation centered on demonizing the Soviet Union rather than capturing Orwell's broader critiques of power," the investigative journalist underscores.

And, yes, the CIA and other intelligence agencies are also recruiting prominent media figures. In September 2015 the conservative group Judicial Watch released a 2012 CIA inspector general's audit covering the CIA's OPA cooperation with the entertainment industry. The report specifically criticizes the CIA's OPA for excessive engaging with the media figures, in particular for inviting entertainment industry workers to secret briefings and other events.

"There was an instance in which the CIA allowed an entertainment industry representative to attend a CIA event in which information classified at the SECRET level was discussed," the document reads.

Johnson emphasizes that it is no secret that Hollywood players took part in various covert operations. He refers to the fact that legendary film producer Arnon Milchan worked for years for Israeli intelligence dealing arms and obtaining sensitive technical information for defense programs.

Sydeny Pollack in 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Remarkably, in his interview with BBC in 2013 Milchan admitted that Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack had also been involved in covert intelligence operations.

"In such revelations, an important point is often overlooked: The CIA assisting or posing as filmmakers, journalists and other creative roles-a practice the Agency reserves the right to partake in to this day-puts actual filmmakers, journalists and other creators at risk overseas," Johnson emphasizes.

According to the investigative journalist, it is dangerous to "blur" the lines between covert intelligence and legitimate media activities, because it puts the media workers at risk of being considered CIA associates.

"The spectacle of Hollywood teaming up with US intelligence agencies to make propaganda - especially given the dodgy historical context - no doubt stokes the fears of countries already hostile to Americans within their borders," he explains. "Every time this type of behavior is normalized, or shrugged off, or made sexy, real journalists and real filmmakers overseas are put further at risk," Johnson concludes.

Related: The American Media Is A CIA Front - Paul Craig Roberts

I reported honestly the facts of the US coup that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government in 2014 (see my columns in February and March 2014). However, the US print and TV media, led by the New York Times, lied through their teeth.

Indeed, the “mainstream” US media functioned as agent and propagandist for the Washington neoconservatives who destroyed Ukrainian democracy and imposed massive suffering and death on Ukrainians. There is no crime that the American presstitutes will not commit and no lie that they will not tell. Yesterday (April 11, 2016) Robert Parry held the sordid presstitutes accountable: Several weeks before Ukraine’s 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now “Yats” is no longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.

Related: George Soros’ Anti-Kremlin Info Laundering Backfires on Clinton, Cameron

Tyranny And Free Speech March 30 2016 | From: BreakingViews

Do you support free speech? How about free speech for climate change skeptics? For homophobes? For racists? For sexists? For white males? For even Donald Trump?

Those who defend free speech, as did the American Founding Fathers, understand it is not about defending speech you agree with, but defending speech you disagree with. Without free speech, there is no liberty. The State Department diversity officer, John Robinson, has just warned the staff that they may be penalized for engaging in “microaggressions,” which include jokes or other comments that someone who hears them may find offensive. In a recent letter, he referred to a definition of microaggressions as:

"Everyday verbal, nonverbal and environmental slights, snubs or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages to target persons.”

In other words, whatever you hear may be considered a microaggression if you choose to be offended. Such vague and infinitely elastic laws and regulations are the bread and butter of all totalitarian regimes. Lavrentiy Beria (Joseph Stalin’s head of the NKVD, a predecessor of the KGB) was quoted as saying to Stalin:

"You name the person and I will find the crime.”

The “crime” of microaggression has already been used to stifle and prosecute speech by those who have contrary views in several left-leaning universities, and now it is coming to the federal government. The climate change lobbyists have been increasingly aggressive in their attacks on free speech. They seek to silence their critics, who have committed the “sin” of noting their many failed predictions. George Mason University meteorologist Jagadish Shukla was the lead signatory of the letter sent to the president and attorney general asking them to use RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) laws to prosecute;

"Corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”

Mr. Shukla “paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for part-time work.” Other prominent global warming fear-mongers, who are on the government teat, have also called for “war crimes trials” and even the “execution” of some critics. Even Attorney General Loretta Lynch said last week she has looked at the possibility of pursuing civil actions against socalled “climate change deniers.”

The message: Don’t look to the Obama administration to protect free speech. Which do you find more offensive, a person advocating socialism or a person telling jokes about one-eyed people? Socialism is an ideology that has resulted in governments killing more than 200 million of their own citizens in the last century. It is based on coercion rather than liberty. It demands involuntary servitude. Socialist Bernie Sanders promises “free” stuff to his supporters to be paid for by the involuntary servitude of others - to which there will be no end. Having spent considerable time in socialist countries and seen the human wreckage that results, I am offended by the ignorance or venality of those who engage in the microaggression of advocating socialism. Several decades ago, I lost an eye, and in the years since I have been told hundreds of “one-eyed” jokes, even by people who do not know me. Rather than being offended, I have chosen to enjoy them. Offensive speech is totally subjective, and making it a crime is incompatible with a free society. The Guardian, a left-wing British newspaper, published an article last year by a woman author titled;

"Why do women lie more than men?”

It reported on a new poll that “suggests that women are twice as likely to lie as men.” The article goes on to say: “It may be irritating to be told, yet again, that women are more morally slippery than men (just as in Genesis).” The article goes on to cite several reasons why this may be true - including differences “between masculine and feminine brains.”

All of this may or may not be nonsense, but in cases of women complaining about men engaging in “offensive” speech, it is most often assumed, without evidence, that the woman is telling the truth and the man is lying. In fact, men are frequently not allowed to know who their accuser is or what she claimed was said. One of the most basic protections of liberty is the right of the accuser to know the specific charges against him or her and by whom. As a result, many innocent men are not given a fair hearing by the human resource departments in organizations and even sometimes by the courts.

The late well-regarded feminist, Joan Kennedy Taylor, argued in her book “What to Do When You Don’t Want to Call the Cops: Or a Non-Adversarial Approach to Sexual Harassment” (Cato Institute) that it is important to understand that men and women perceive things quite differently, and that non-legal strategies which she describes can be far more effective and less damaging than legal remedies. Law professor Catherine Ross has just written an important book, “Lessons in Censorship” (to be discussed at a Cato book forum on March 16), in which she argues that “the failure of schools to respect civil liberties betrays their educational function and threatens democracy.”

The popularity of the verbally crude Donald Trump might, in part, be a reaction to the political correctness of the political class and timid leaders of organizations who have failed to defend freedom of speech.

Clinton Email Reveals: Google Sought Overthrow Of Syria's Assad + Robert Kennedy Jr. Just Dropped A Truth Bomb: 'Pipeline War' Is At The Roots Of Syrian Crisis March 23 2016 | From: WashingtonExaminer / Infowars

Google in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week.

Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's team and one of the company's executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region. Related: Google Is Not What It Seems A story largely ignored by the corporate media reveals the tech company Google offered to help Secretary of State Clinton overthrow Bashar al-Assad by developing an app to track defections from the Syrian government. Jared Cohen, the head of what was then the company's "Google Ideas" division, wrote in a July 2012 email to several top Clinton officials.

“Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool... that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from." "Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition," Cohen said, adding that the plan was for Google to surreptitiously give the tool to Middle Eastern media. "Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria," he said.

You can read the email for yourself here. Related: WikiLeaks publishes searchable archive of Clinton emails The message was addressed to deputy secretary of state Bill Burns; Alec Ross, a senior Clinton advisor; and Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan. Sullivan subsequently forwarded Cohen's proposal to Clinton, describing it as "a pretty cool idea." Cohen worked as a member of the secretary of state's policy planning staff from 2006 to 2010, when he was hired to lead Google Ideas, but was tied to using social media to incite uprisings even before he left the department. He once reportedly asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to hold off of conducting system maintenance that officials believed could have impeded a brief 2009 uprising in Iran, and Julian Assange, who founded the secret-leaking website WikiLeaks, has for years referred to Cohen as Google's "director of regime change." In her book No Higher Honor Condoleezza Rice spoke fondly of Cohen, describing him as a “young gun” and said his work in social media;

“Would pay off handsomely… when Twitter and Facebook became accelerants of democratic change in the Middle East.”

Social media played a predominant role in the so-called “Arab Spring,” the concerted effort by the State Department, the Endowment for Democracy, USAID, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House to violently overthrow governments in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to Google, Facebook and Twitter were also involved in the effort to undermine governments in the region. In total, according to a report in Indonesia’s Jakarta Post, 180,000 people died as a result of the US-orchestrated Arab Spring, primarily in Libya, Syria and Yemen. The exchange on Syria was highlighted by Wikileaks on Saturday. Earlier in the week, the site posted more than 30,000 emails that Clinton sent or received during her tenure leading the State Department.

Robert Kennedy Jr. Just Dropped A Truth Bomb: 'Pipeline War' Is At The Roots Of Syrian Crisis Related: Miserable failure: Western media are lying about Syria The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.

Radio Sputnik discusses the origins of the Syrian crisis with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., attorney and nephew of US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Kennedy writes that the US decided to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power after he refused to back a Qatari gas pipeline project. Sputnik also touched upon US foreign policy, the refugee crisis and why Donald Trump would be a better president than Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Read more at: Sputnik

Seized Hager Material Destroyed, Attention Turns To Westpac March 22 2016 | From: NationalBusinessReview

Nicky Hager’s attention is turning towards Westpac Bank’s handing over of his bank records after watching police smash 213 times a hard drive containing his material.

About 17 months after police raided the Dirty Politics author’s home, Mr Hager and one of his lawyers, Steven Price, watched a hard drive and memory card containing copies of seized data get destroyed in the High Court at Auckland. Related: Nicky Hager's cloned data destroyed by police The pair also collected a computer and other equipment taken by police during what Mr Hager called a “Rambo” raid, after it was last year ruled unlawful. Mr Hager fought for two months to get permission for the media to watch the copies being destroyed, without success. But afterwards, he said it was an “amazing day” and he felt like he was “watching history.”

“We went down to the basement of the High Court building here, into this little narrow room, without lights on, and

the police held torches around while one of the detectives, in fact the detective who was in charge of removing stuff from my house was there, while he destroyed the materials they had copied from the house.”

Mr Hager says the detective took to the hard drive 213 times with a hammer, before cutting holes in it with a bolt-colter. But while he is “absolutely confident” the material was not tampered with while sitting at court, his attention now turns to other areas where he says the police were “tricky.” Mr Price says there will likely be a further hearing later this year regarding further aspects of the case.

“The main thing that’s going on is the question whether it’s lawful for the police to go to banks and get them to turn over someone’s bank records, as they did with Nicky, without a court order. That’s something that might affect thousands of people.”

Keith Locke: Hard To Spy Gains From Five Eyes March 22 2016 | From: KeithLocke

This article of mine [Keith Locke - former Green MP] was published in the New Zealand Herald on 15 March 2016. It was in response to the report of Intelligence and Security Agencies Review, released on 9 March.

The intelligence services report by Sir Michael Cullen and Dame Patsy Reddy sheds more light on the GCSB’s work with the Five Eyes network, but it also leaves several questions unanswered. Since the Snowden revelations there has been a concern that our Government Communications Security Bureau is involved in “mass surveillance”. The Government has denied that it is. Cullen and Reddy describe how the GCSB collects communications from the geo-stationary satellites visible from its station at Waihopai, near Blenheim. First; the bureau:

"Intercepts a set of communications, most of which will be of no relevance and will be discarded without ever being examined by the [GCSB] analyst. This is the haystack in which the needle must be found.”

Second;

“The GCSB filters intercepted material for relevance using search terms.”

These search terms could be subjects or groups and could take in lot of people, some of whom would be New Zealanders. Although the GCSB is supposed to be targeting “foreign intelligence” it is not illegal for it to retain Waihopai’s intercept intelligence on New Zealanders if it was “incidentally obtained intelligence”, that is, if the New Zealanders weren’t a specific target, and the intelligence was relevant to the GCSB’s security objectives. In addition, many New Zealanders can legally be targeted by the GCSB as “foreign persons” if they are active in “foreign organisations”, the definition of which is broad enough to include Greenpeace or the New Zealand subsidiary of a multinational corporation. Former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley qualifies as a “foreign person” because she is on the board of the China Construction Bank.

The Cullen/Reddy report removes the problem of “mass surveillance” by saying it “suggests a kind of active monitoring of the general population that does not occur”.. [not true]. However, I don’t think any critic of government surveillance has ever envisaged the surveillance going that far [not true]. An over-the-top definition of mass surveillance avoids the reality of a mass collection of communications data at Waihopai and the possibility that the international phone calls or emails of any New Zealander could be caught in the net, accidentally or not. In theory, their communications could be subsequently analysed by a GCSB operative. The next question is what happens to the “haystack” of communications collected at the Waihopai spy station. The report says that most of these communications “will be of no relevance and will be discarded without ever being examined by an analyst”.

They may be discarded by the analyst, but to what extent are they stored, either here or overseas, for later mining by the GCSB or its Five Eyes partners? We know that the US National Security Agency has access to raw communications from its Five Eyes partners, and that it stores billions of communications for later analysis. This is relevant to the concern, correctly raised by Cullen and Reddy, that close co-operation with Five Eyes partners “creates a risk of some loss of independence, both operationally and potentially also in relation to our intelligence, defence and foreign policy settings”. Our national interests “do not and cannot exactly coincide with those of any other country”. The reality is that when New Zealand is sharing raw communications data with other Fives Eyes partners some of the intelligence they glean from it will be used for foreign policy objectives which are not the same as New Zealand’s.

But this seems to be a secondary consideration to the net benefit Cullen and Reddy say New Zealand receives from Five Eyes intelligence sharing. It is hard to judge this as any benefits are largely invisible to the public. Have any terrorist plots been found? Not as far as we know. Have our trade interests been advanced? No one has pointed out how. Has our diplomacy been assisted? I can’t see any evidence. Yet the downside of New Zealand’s participation in Five Eyes surveillance is substantial. There was a cool reception in Beijing when the Snowden papers revealed the GCSB’s spying on China. Joining intelligence forces with America against China is hardly the way to optimise our trade with that important country. New Zealand’s ambassador was called in to the Brazilian foreign ministry when it was revealed the GCSB had been gathering Five Eyes intercept data on Brazilian Roberto Azevedo in an unsuccessful attempt to stop him heading off our Trade Minister Tim Groser to become Director-General of the WTO.

Yes, we need to be concerned about possible terrorist activity. But do we need to be in the Five Eyes to detect any plots? The reality is that the police and intelligence forces of friendly nations share information on terrorism (and other international crime) regardless of who is in or out of the Five Eyes. I don’t think Cullen and Reddy make much of a case for us to stay in this five-nation spy network.

The New Mind Control: “Subliminal Stimulation”; Controlling People Without Their Knowledge March 16 2016 | From: GlobalResearch

The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do.

Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel (1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a handful of wealthy corporate titans – the ‘oligarchs’ – kept the masses at bay with a brutal combination of rewards and punishments. Much of humanity lived in virtual slavery, while the fortunate ones were bought off with decent wages that allowed them to live comfortably – but without any real control over their lives. Related: Stop Censorship: Time For Us All To Finally Break Google, Facebook and Twitter? In We (1924), the brilliant Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, anticipating the excesses of the emerging Soviet Union, envisioned a world in which people were kept in check through pervasive monitoring. The walls of their homes were made of clear glass, so everything they did could be observed. They were allowed to lower their shades an hour a day to have sex, but both the rendezvous time and the lover had to be registered first with the state. In Brave New World (1932), the British author Aldous Huxley pictured a near-perfect society in which unhappiness and aggression had been engineered out of humanity through a combination of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning.

Related: Google Gives New Meaning To “Orwellian” And in the much darker novel 1984 (1949), Huxley’s compatriot George Orwell described a society in which thought itself was controlled; in Orwell’s world, children were taught to use a simplified form of English called Newspeak in order to assure that they could never express ideas that were dangerous to society. These are all fictional tales, to be sure, and in each the leaders who held the power used conspicuous forms of control that at least a few people actively resisted and occasionally overcame. But in the non-fiction bestseller The Hidden Persuaders (1957) – recently released in a 50th-anniversary edition – the American journalist Vance Packard described a ‘strange and rather exotic’ type of influence that was rapidly emerging in the United States and that was, in a way, more threatening than the fictional types of control pictured in the novels.

According to Packard, US corporate executives and politicians were beginning to use subtle and, in many cases, completely undetectable methods to change people’s thinking, emotions and behaviour based on insights from psychiatry and the social sciences. Most of us have heard of at least one of these methods: subliminal stimulation, or what Packard called ‘subthreshold effects’ – the presentation of short messages that tell us what to do but that are flashed so briefly we aren’t aware we have seen them. In 1958, propelled by public concern about a theatre in New Jersey that had supposedly hidden messages in a movie to increase ice cream sales, the National Association of Broadcasters – the association that set standards for US television – amended its code to prohibit the use of subliminal messages in broadcasting. In 1974, the Federal Communications Commission opined that the use of such messages was ‘contrary to the public interest’. Legislation to prohibit subliminal messaging was also introduced in the US Congress but never enacted. Both the UK and Australia have strict laws prohibiting it. Subliminal stimulation is probably still in wide use in the US – it’s hard to detect, after all, and no one is keeping track of it – but it’s probably not worth worrying about.

Research suggests that it has only a small impact, and that it mainly influences people who are already motivated to follow its dictates; subliminal directives to drink affect people only if they’re already thirsty. Packard had uncovered a much bigger problem, however – namely that powerful corporations were constantly looking for, and in many cases already applying, a wide variety of techniques for controlling people without their knowledge. He described a kind of cabal in which marketers worked closely with social scientists to determine, among other things, how to get people to buy things they didn’t need and how to condition young children to be good consumers – inclinations that were explicitly nurtured and trained in Huxley’s Brave New World.

Guided by social science, marketers were quickly learning how to play upon people’s insecurities, frailties, unconscious fears, aggressive feelings and sexual desires to alter their thinking, emotions and behaviour without any awareness that they were being manipulated. Related: United States, New Zealand, Canadian, United Kingdom & Australian Governments Hacked Smartphones, Planted Spyware In Google Phone Apps

By the early 1950s, Packard said, politicians had got the message and were beginning to merchandise themselves using the same subtle forces being used to sell soap. Packard prefaced his chapter on politics with an unsettling quote from the British economist Kenneth Boulding:

"A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government."

Could this really happen, and, if so, how would it work? The forces that Packard described have become more pervasive over the decades. The soothing music we all hear overhead in supermarkets causes us to walk more slowly and buy more food, whether we need it or not. Most of the vacuous thoughts and intense feelings our teenagers experience from morning till night are carefully orchestrated by highly skilled marketing professionals working in our fashion and entertainment industries.

Yes, New Zealand has a national chain of supermarkets that are actually called New World... where you can take your New World grocery Order - oh the irony

Politicians work with a wide range of consultants who test every aspect of what the politicians do in order to sway voters: clothing, intonations, facial expressions, makeup, hairstyles and speeches are all optimised, just like the packaging of a breakfast cereal. Fortunately, all of these sources of influence operate competitively. Some of the persuaders want us to buy or believe one thing, others to buy or believe something else. It is the competitive nature of our society that keeps us, on balance, relatively free. Related: Elites Panic As Information Control Flounders: Google Devising Method To Rank Websites By 'Truthfulness' But what would happen if new sources of control began to emerge that had little or no competition? And what if new means of control were developed that were far more powerful – and far more invisible – than any that have existed in the past? And what if new types of control allowed a handful of people to exert enormous influence not just over the citizens of the US but over most of the people on Earth?

It might surprise you to hear this, but these things have already happened. Related: How The CIA Made Google To understand how the new forms of mind control work, we need to start by looking at the search engine – one in particular: the biggest and best of them all, namely Google. The Google search engine is so good and so popular that the company’s name is now a commonly used verb in languages around the world. To ‘Google’ something is to look it up on the Google search engine, and that, in fact, is how most computer users worldwide get most of their information about just about everything these days. They Google it. Google has become the main gateway to virtually all knowledge, mainly because the search engine is so good at giving us exactly the information we are looking for, almost instantly and almost always in the first position of the list it shows us after we launch our search – the list of ‘search results’. That ordered list is so good, in fact, that about 50 per cent of our clicks go to the top two items, and more than 90 per cent of our clicks go to the 10 items listed on the first page of results; few people look at other results pages, even though they often number in the thousands, which means they probably contain lots of good information.

Google decides which of the billions of web pages it is going to include in our search results, and it also decides how to rank them. How it decides these things is a deep, dark secret – one of the best-kept secrets in the world, like the formula for Coca-Cola. Because people are far more likely to read and click on higher-ranked items, companies now spend billions of dollars every year trying to trick Google’s search algorithm – the computer program that does the selecting and ranking – into boosting them another notch or two. Moving up a notch can mean the difference between success and failure for a business, and moving into the top slots can be the key to fat profits. Related: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems Late in 2012, I began to wonder whether highly ranked search results could be impacting more than consumer choices. Perhaps, I speculated, a top search result could have a small impact on people’s opinions about things. Early in 2013, with my associate Ronald E Robertson of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in Vista, California, I put this idea to a test by conducting an experiment in which 102 people from the San Diego area were randomly assigned to one of three groups.

In one group, people saw search results that favoured one political candidate – that is, results that linked to web pages that made this candidate look better than his or her opponent. In a second group, people saw search rankings that favoured the opposing candidate, and in the third group – the control group – people saw a mix of rankings that favoured neither candidate. The same search results and web pages were used in each group; the only thing that differed for the three groups was the ordering of the search results. To make our experiment realistic, we used real search results that linked to real web pages. We also used a real election – the 2010 election for the prime minister of Australia. We used a foreign election to make sure that our participants were ‘undecided’. Their lack of familiarity with the candidates assured this. Through advertisements, we also recruited an ethnically diverse group of registered voters over a wide age range in order to match key demographic characteristics of the US voting population. All participants were first given brief descriptions of the candidates and then asked to rate them in various ways, as well as to indicate which candidate they would vote for; as you might expect, participants initially favoured neither candidate on any of the five measures we used, and the vote was evenly split in all three groups.

Related: Got Chrome? Google Just Silently Downloaded This Onto Your Computer Then the participants were given up to 15 minutes in which to conduct an online search using ‘Kadoodle’, our mock search engine, which gave them access to five pages of search results that linked to web pages. People could move freely between search results and web pages, just as we do when using Google. When participants completed their search, we asked them to rate the candidates again, and we also asked them again who they would vote for. We predicted that the opinions and voting preferences of 2 or 3 per cent of the people in the two bias groups – the groups in which people were seeing rankings favouring one candidate – would shift toward that candidate. What we actually found was astonishing. The proportion of people favouring the search engine’s top-ranked candidate increased by 48.4 per cent, and all five of our measures shifted toward that candidate. What’s more, 75 per cent of the people in the bias groups seemed to have been completely unaware that they were viewing biased search rankings. In the control group, opinions did not shift significantly.

Google's own by-line was a piss take

This seemed to be a major discovery. The shift we had produced, which we called the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (or SEME, pronounced ‘seem’), appeared to be one of the largest behavioural effects ever discovered. We did not immediately uncork the Champagne bottle, however. For one thing, we had tested only a small number of people, and they were all from the San Diego area. Over the next year or so, we replicated our findings three more times, and the third time was with a sample of more than 2,000 people from all 50 US states. In that experiment, the shift in voting preferences was 37.1 per cent and even higher in some demographic groups – as high as 80 per cent, in fact. We also learned in this series of experiments that by reducing the bias just slightly on the first page of search results – specifically, by including one search item that favoured the other candidate in the third or fourth position of the results – we could mask our manipulation so that few or even no people were aware that they were seeing biased rankings. We could still produce dramatic shifts in voting preferences, but we could do so invisibly.

Still no Champagne, though. Our results were strong and consistent, but our experiments all involved a foreign election – that 2010 election in Australia. Could voting preferences be shifted with real voters in the middle of a real campaign? We were skeptical. In real elections, people are bombarded with multiple sources of information, and they also know a lot about the candidates. It seemed unlikely that a single experience on a search engine would have much impact on their voting preferences. To find out, in early 2014, we went to India just before voting began in the largest democratic election in the world – the Lok Sabha election for prime minister. The three main candidates were Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, and Narendra Modi. Making use of online subject pools and both online and print advertisements, we recruited 2,150 people from 27 of India’s 35 states and territories to participate in our experiment. To take part, they had to be registered voters who had not yet voted and who were still undecided about how they would vote. Participants were randomly assigned to three search-engine groups, favouring, respectively, Gandhi, Kejriwal or Modi. As one might expect, familiarity levels with the candidates was high – between 7.7 and 8.5 on a scale of 10. We predicted that our manipulation would produce a very small effect, if any, but that’s not what we found.

This prick is all over the place

On average, we were able to shift the proportion of people favouring any given candidate by more than 20 per cent overall and more than 60 per cent in some demographic groups. Even more disturbing, 99.5 per cent of our participants showed no awareness that they were viewing biased search rankings – in other words, that they were being manipulated. SEME’s near-invisibility is curious indeed. It means that when people – including you and me – are looking at biased search rankings, they look just fine. So if right now you Google ‘US presidential candidates’, the search results you see will probably look fairly random, even if they happen to favour one candidate. Even I have trouble detecting bias in search rankings that I know to be biased (because they were prepared by my staff).

They can't get rid of you Donald

Yet our randomised, controlled experiments tell us over and over again that when higher-ranked items connect with web pages that favour one candidate, this has a dramatic impact on the opinions of undecided voters, in large part for the simple reason that people tend to click only on higher-ranked items. This is truly scary: like subliminal stimuli, SEME is a force you can’t see; but unlike subliminal stimuli, it has an enormous impact – like Casper the ghost pushing you down a flight of stairs. We published a detailed report about our first five experiments on SEME in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in August 2015. We had indeed found something important, especially given Google’s dominance over search. Google has a near-monopoly on internet searches in the US, with 83 per cent of Americans specifying Google as the search engine they use most often, according to the Pew Research Center. So if Google favours one candidate in an election, its impact on undecided voters could easily decide the election’s outcome.

Keep in mind that we had had only one shot at our participants. What would be the impact of favouring one candidate in searches people are conducting over a period of weeks or months before an election? It would almost certainly be much larger than what we were seeing in our experiments. Other types of influence during an election campaign are balanced by competing sources of influence – a wide variety of newspapers, radio shows and television networks, for example – but Google, for all intents and purposes, has no competition, and people trust its search results implicitly, assuming that the company’s mysterious search algorithm is entirely objective and unbiased. This high level of trust, combined with the lack of competition, puts Google in a unique position to impact elections. Even more disturbing, the search-ranking business is entirely unregulated, so Google could favour any candidate it likes without violating any laws. Some courts have even ruled that Google’s right to rank-order search results as it pleases is protected as a form of free speech. Does the company ever favour particular candidates? In the 2012 US presidential election, Google and its top executives donated more than $800,000 to President Barack Obama and just $37,000 to his opponent, Mitt Romney.

And in 2015, a team of researchers from the University of Maryland and elsewhere showed that Google’s search results routinely favoured Democratic candidates. Are Google’s search rankings really biased? An internal report issued by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2012 concluded that Google’s search rankings routinely put Google’s financial interests ahead of those of their competitors, and anti-trust actions currently under way against Google in both the European Union and India are based on similar findings. In most countries, 90 per cent of online search is conducted on Google, which gives the company even more power to flip elections than it has in the US and, with internet penetration increasing rapidly worldwide, this power is growing. In our PNAS article, Robertson and I calculated that Google now has the power to flip upwards of 25 per cent of the national elections in the world with no one knowing this is occurring. In fact, we estimate that, with or without deliberate planning on the part of company executives, Google’s search rankings have been impacting elections for years, with growing impact each year. And because search rankings are ephemeral, they leave no paper trail, which gives the company complete deniability.

Power on this scale and with this level of invisibility is unprecedented in human history. But it turns out that our discovery about SEME was just the tip of a very large iceberg. Recent reports suggest that the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is making heavy use of social media to try to generate support – Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and Facebook, for starters. At this writing, she has 5.4 million followers on Twitter, and her staff is tweeting several times an hour during waking hours. The Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, has 5.9 million Twitter followers and is tweeting just as frequently. Is social media as big a threat to democracy as search rankings appear to be? Not necessarily. When new technologies are used competitively, they present no threat. Even through the platforms are new, they are generally being used the same way as billboards and television commercials have been used for decades: you put a billboard on one side of the street; I put one on the other. I might have the money to erect more billboards than you, but the process is still competitive. What happens, though, if such technologies are misused by the companies that own them? A study by Robert M Bond, now a political science professor at Ohio State University, and others published in Nature in 2012 described an ethically questionable experiment in which, on election day in 2010, Facebook sent ‘go out and vote’ reminders to more than 60 million of its users.

The reminders caused about 340,000 people to vote who otherwise would not have. Writing in the New Republic in 2014, Jonathan Zittrain, professor of international law at Harvard University, pointed out that, given the massive amount of information it has collected about its users, Facebook could easily send such messages only to people who support one particular party or candidate, and that doing so could easily flip a close election – with no one knowing that this has occurred. And because advertisements, like search rankings, are ephemeral, manipulating an election in this way would leave no paper trail. Are there laws prohibiting Facebook from sending out ads selectively to certain users? Absolutely not; in fact, targeted advertising is how Facebook makes its money. Is Facebook currently manipulating elections in this way? No one knows, but in my view it would be foolish and possibly even improper for Facebook not to do so. Some candidates are better for a company than others, and Facebook’s executives have a fiduciary responsibility to the company’s stockholders to promote the company’s interests. The Bond study was largely ignored, but another Facebook experiment, published in 2014 in PNAS, prompted protests around the world. In this study, for a period of a week, 689,000 Facebook users were sent news feeds that contained either an excess of positive terms, an excess of negative terms, or neither.

Those in the first group subsequently used slightly more positive terms in their communications, while those in the second group used slightly more negative terms in their communications. This was said to show that people’s ‘emotional states’ could be deliberately manipulated on a massive scale by a social media company, an idea that many people found disturbing. People were also upset that a large-scale experiment on emotion had been conducted without the explicit consent of any of the participants. Facebook’s consumer profiles are undoubtedly massive, but they pale in comparison with those maintained by Google, which is collecting information about people 24/7, using more than 60 different observation platforms – the search engine, of course, but also Google Wallet, Google Maps, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Chrome, Google Docs, Android, YouTube, and on and on. Gmail users are generally oblivious to the fact that Google stores and analyses every email they write, even the drafts they never send – as well as all the incoming email they receive from both Gmail and non-Gmail users. Related: Make Them Forget: How ‘Irrelevant’ News Disappears From Google Searches According to Google’s privacy policy – to which one assents whenever one uses a Google product, even when one has not been informed that he or she is using a Google product – Google can share the information it collects about you with almost anyone, including government agencies. But never with you. Google’s privacy is sacrosanct; yours is nonexistent. Could Google and ‘those we work with’ (language from the privacy policy) use the information they are amassing about you for nefarious purposes – to manipulate or coerce, for example? Could inaccurate information in people’s profiles (which people have no way to correct) limit their opportunities or ruin their reputations?

Certainly, if Google set about to fix an election, it could first dip into its massive database of personal information to identify just those voters who are undecided. Then it could, day after day, send customised rankings favouring one candidate to just those people. One advantage of this approach is that it would make Google’s manipulation extremely difficult for investigators to detect. Extreme forms of monitoring, whether by the KGB in the Soviet Union, the Stasi in East Germany, or Big Brother in 1984, are essential elements of all tyrannies, and technology is making both monitoring and the consolidation of surveillance data easier than ever. By 2020, China will have put in place the most ambitious government monitoring system ever created – a single database called the Social Credit System, in which multiple ratings and records for all of its 1.3 billion citizens are recorded for easy access by officials and bureaucrats. At a glance, they will know whether someone has plagiarised schoolwork, was tardy in paying bills, urinated in public, or blogged inappropriately online.

As Edward Snowden’s revelations made clear, we are rapidly moving toward a world in which both governments and corporations – sometimes working together – are collecting massive amounts of data about every one of us every day, with few or no laws in place that restrict how those data can be used. When you combine the data collection with the desire to control or manipulate, the possibilities are endless, but perhaps the most frightening possibility is the one expressed in Boulding’s assertion that an ‘unseen dictatorship’ was possible ‘using the forms of democratic government’. Since Robertson and I submitted our initial report on SEME to PNAS early in 2015, we have completed a sophisticated series of experiments that have greatly enhanced our understanding of this phenomenon, and other experiments will be completed in the coming months. We have a much better sense now of why SEME is so powerful and how, to some extent, it can be suppressed.

We have also learned something very disturbing – that search engines are influencing far more than what people buy and whom they vote for. We now have evidence suggesting that on virtually all issues where people are initially undecided, search rankings are impacting almost every decision that people make. They are having an impact on the opinions, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of internet users worldwide – entirely without people’s knowledge that this is occurring. Related: Check Out The Creepy Picture Google Paints Of Your Daily Habits This is happening with or without deliberate intervention by company officials; even so-called ‘organic’ search processes regularly generate search results that favour one point of view, and that in turn has the potential to tip the opinions of millions of people who are undecided on an issue. In one of our recent experiments, biased search results shifted people’s opinions about the value of fracking by 33.9 per cent. Perhaps even more disturbing is that the handful of people who do show awareness that they are viewing biased search rankings shift even further in the predicted direction; simply knowing that a list is biased doesn’t necessarily protect you from SEME’s power.

Remember what the search algorithm is doing: in response to your query, it is selecting a handful of webpages from among the billions that are available, and it is ordering those webpages using secret criteria. Seconds later, the decision you make or the opinion you form – about the best toothpaste to use, whether fracking is safe, where you should go on your next vacation, who would make the best president, or whether global warming is real – is determined by that short list you are shown, even though you have no idea how the list was generated.

Related: Google Should Apply ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ Worldwide – EU Watchdogs Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a consolidation of search engines has been quietly taking place, so that more people are using the dominant search engine even when they think they are not. Because Google is the best search engine, and because crawling the rapidly expanding internet has become prohibitively expensive, more and more search engines are drawing their information from the leader rather than generating it themselves. The most recent deal, revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October 2015, was between Google and Yahoo! Inc.

Looking ahead to the November 2016 US presidential election, I see clear signs that Google is backing Hillary Clinton. In April 2015, Clinton hired Stephanie Hannon away from Google to be her chief technology officer and, a few months ago, Eric Schmidt, chairman of the holding company that controls Google, set up a semi-secret company – The Groundwork – for the specific purpose of putting Clinton in office. The formation of The Groundwork prompted Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, to dub Google Clinton’s ‘secret weapon’ in her quest for the US presidency. We now estimate that Hannon’s old friends have the power to drive between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Clinton on election day with no one knowing that this is occurring and without leaving a paper trail. They can also help her win the nomination, of course, by influencing undecided voters during the primaries. Swing voters have always been the key to winning elections, and there has never been a more powerful, efficient or inexpensive way to sway them than SEME.

We are living in a world in which a handful of high-tech companies, sometimes working hand-in-hand with governments, are not only monitoring much of our activity, but are also invisibly controlling more and more of what we think, feel, do and say. The technology that now surrounds us is not just a harmless toy; it has also made possible undetectable and untraceable manipulations of entire populations – manipulations that have no precedent in human history and that are currently well beyond the scope of existing regulations and laws. The new hidden persuaders are bigger, bolder and badder than anything Vance Packard ever envisioned. If we choose to ignore this, we do so at our peril.

Unleashing GCSB To Spy On Kiwis One More Step On Road To Police State March 15 2016 | From: TheDailyBlog

The Anti-Bases Campaign is appalled by the recommendations made in the newly-released Intelligence Agencies review.

The authors have proposed overthrowing a basic tenet of spy operations in this country and paved the way for a massive expansion in surveillance of NZ citizens. This is just another retrograde step on the road to a police state. Previous restrictions on domestic spying by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) are to be removed; the basic democratic protection against the spies turning their cutting edge mass surveillance machinery on domestic life is to be eliminated. The report justifies the increasing power of the agencies by proposing more transparency and oversight. Ironically, Sir Michael Cullen, the key author of the report, is the man who exemplifies the inadequacy of trying to monitor these organisations as he was the person who, when he was in Government, continually gave false assurances denying illegal activity in the past.

The glaring deficiency in the review is the complete lack of consideration of the activities of the Five Eyes system which are the major part of the GCSB activities. The super-secret group carries out operations designed to give Washington the means to manipulate political, economic and diplomatic activities around the world. NZ’s part in this is despicable and reprehensible. Any suggestion that oversight by a handful of Kiwi commissioners will reveal the truth about the operations being carried out by Five Eyes is laughable. New Zealand, instead, needs to follow the example of Canada, one of our four Big Brothers in Five Eyes. Canada has suspended sharing Canadians’ metadata with its Five Eyes partners until it is satisfied about safeguards.

Related: Canada stops sharing Five Eyes data NZ can only restore its reputation in the world by closing down the Waihopai spy base and pulling out of the Five Eyes system. Plus it needs to close down the SIS and transfer its functions to the Police who (theoretically at least) have to justify their actions in a court of law.

Oliver Stone Reveals Clandestine Meetings With Edward Snowden, NSA Worries March 15 2016 | From: HollywoodReporter

“We moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in the U.S.,” the director says about his upcoming movie about government whistle-blower Edward Snowden, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Fears of interference by the National Security Agency led Oliver Stone to shoot Snowden, his upcoming movie about government whistle-blower Edward Snowden, outside the United States.

"We moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in the U.S.,” Stone said on March 6, speaking before an audience at the Sun Valley Film Festival in Idaho, in a Q&A moderated by The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Galloway. "We felt like we were at risk here. We didn’t know what the NSA might do, so we ended up in Munich, which was a beautiful experience.”

Even there, problems arose with companies that had connections to the U.S., he said: “The American subsidiary says, ‘You can’t get involved with this; we don’t want our name on it.’ So BMW couldn’t even help us in any way in Germany.” While in Sun Valley, the three-time Oscar winner held a private screening of Snowden for an invited audience of around two dozen. Those who attended the screening, at the former home of Ernest Hemingway, included actress Melissa Leo, who plays documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras.

Guests were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, but that did not prevent three of them from speaking to this

reporter. All praised the work-in-progress. “What he did that’s so brilliant is, he gave this kid’s whole back story, so you really like him,” said one audience member. When Stone (whose films include Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Wall Street) was first approached to make the movie, he hesitated. He had been working on another controversial subject, about the last few years in the life of Martin Luther King Jr., and did not immediately wish to tackle something that incendiary again.

“Glenn Greenwald [the journalist who worked with Poitras to break the Snowden story] asked me some advice and I just wanted to stay away from controversy,” he said. “I didn’t want this. Be that as it may, a couple of months later, the Russian lawyer for Snowden contacts me via my producer. The Russian lawyer told me to come to Russia and wanted me to meet him. One thing led to another, and basically I got hooked.” In Moscow, Stone met multiple times with Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since evading the U.S. government’s attempts to arrest him for espionage. “He’s articulate, smart, very much the same,” he said. “I’ve been seeing him off and on for a year - actually, more than that. I saw him last week or two weeks ago to show him the final film.” He added: “He is consistent: he believes so thoroughly in reform of the Internet that he has devoted himself to this cause… Because of the Russian hours, he stays up all night. He’s a night owl, and he’s always in touch [with the outside world], and he’s working on some kind of constitution for the Internet with other people. So he’s very busy. And he stays in that 70-percent-computer world. He’s on another planet that way. His sense of humor has gotten bigger, his tolerance. He’s not really in Russia in his mind - he’s in some planetary position up there. And Lindsay Mills, the woman he’s loved for 10 years - really, it’s a serious affair - has moved there to be with him.” Spending time with Snowden, and researching what happened to him, Stone said, “It’s an amazing story. Here’s a young man, 30 years old at that time, and he does something that’s so powerful. Who at 30 years old would do that, sacrificing his life in that way? We met with him many times in Moscow, and we did a lot more research, and we went ahead.” He added, “I think he’s a historical figure of great consequence.” Despite the director’s involvement in the movie, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden and Shailene Woodley as Mills, “No studio would support it,” he said. “It was extremely difficult to finance, extremely difficult to cast. We were doing another one of these numbers I had done before, where preproduction is paid for by essentially the producer and myself, where you’re living on a credit card.” Eventually, financing came through from France and Germany. “The contracts were signed, like eight days before we started,” he noted. “It’s a very strange thing to do [a story about] an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America. And that’s very disturbing, if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-American. They say we have freedom of expression; but thought is financed, and thought is controlled, and the media is controlled. This country is very tight on that, and there’s no criticism allowed at a certain level. You can make movies about civil rights leaders who are dead, but it’s not easy to make one about a current man.”

Snowden opens in the U.S. on September 16.

U.S. Military Spending Millions To Make Cyborgs A Reality March 10 2016 | From: CNN

The U.S. military is spending millions on an advanced implant that would allow a human brain to communicate directly with computers.

If it succeeds, cyborgs will be a reality. The Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), hopes the implant will allow humans to directly interface with computers, which could benefit people with aural and visual disabilities, such as veterans injured in combat. The goal of the proposed implant is to "open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics" according to DARPA's program manager, Phillip Alvelda. In January, DARPA announced it plans to spend up to $62 million on the project, which is part of its Neural Engineering System Design program. The implant would be small -- no larger than one cubic centimeter, or roughly the size of two stacked nickels -- according to DARPA. The implantable device aims to convert neurons in the brain into electronic signals and provide unprecedented "datatransfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world," according to a DARPA statement announcing the new project.

DARPA sees the implant as providing a foundation for new therapies that could help people with deficits in sight or hearing by "feeding digital auditory or visual information into the brain." A spokesman for DARPA told CNN that the program is not intended for military applications. Related: U.S. military is on its way to getting its Iron Man But some experts see such an implant as having the potential for numerous applications, including military ones, in the field of wearable robotics -- which aims to augment and restore human performance. Conor Walsh, a professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Harvard University, told CNN that the implant would "change the game," adding that "in the future, wearable robotic devices will be controlled by implants." Walsh sees the potential for wearable robotic devices or exoskeletons in everything from helping a medical patient recover from a stroke to enhancing soldiers' capabilities in combat.

Yep, they're doing Terminators too. And they aren't all so camp

The U.S. military is currently developing a battery-powered exoskeleton, the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, to provide superior protection from enemy fire and in-helmet technologies that boost the user's communications ability and vision. The suits' development is being overseen by U.S. Special Operations Command. In theory, the proposed neural implant would allow the military member operating the suit to more effectively control the armored exoskeleton while deployed in combat. However, Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Harvard, was skeptical of the proposed innovation, calling the idea a "bunch of hype with no results." He told CNN, "We have little to no idea how exactly the brain codes complex information" and cited the problems from foreign objects triggering brain inflammation that can cause serious neurological issues.

And this weird shit - a Terminator cow?

Pinker described "neural enhancement" for healthy brains as being a "boondoggle," but he suggested that there could be some benefit for people suffering from brain-related diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In its announcement, DARPA acknowledged that an implant is still a long ways away, with breakthroughs in neuroscience, synthetic biology, low-power electronics, photonics and medical-device manufacturing needed before the device could be used. DARPA plans to recruit a diverse set of experts in an attempt to accelerate the project's development, according to its statement announcing the project. Pinker remained skeptical, however, telling CNN: "My guess is that it's a waste of taxpayer dollars."

Cashless Crisis: “With Digital Payments, Civilization Comes To An End Until Power Is Restored” February 28 2016 | From: SHTFPlan

As most of the Western world is pushed into abandoning cash and embracing a fully digital cashless grid, it is apparent how vulnerable populations will become in times of crisis.

If the power grid were to go down in a storm or an attack, it is readily apparent that the system of commerce would

go down with it; payments would stop and desperate people would line up for help. Related: Marc Faber On Cashless Society Insanity And Why Wall Street Hates Gold Those with their own supplies, barter items and physical commodities will remain the most comfortable, but the very fabric of society could come unglued. Will they really ban cash when so much could go wrong? Paul-Martin Foss writes for the Carl Menger Center:

“Cash is being displaced by credit and debit cards, which are themselves beginning to be displaced by new digital currencies and payment systems… But despite all the advances brought about by the digital revolution, there are still quite a few drawbacks. The most obvious is that it is reliant on electricity. One major hurricane knocking out power, a midsummer brownout, or a hacker attack on the power grid could bring commerce to a halt. With cash, transactions are still possible. With digital payments, civilization comes to an end until power is restored. Unless you have food stored or goods with which to barter, you’re out of luck. Just imagine a city like New York with no power and no way to buy or sell anything. It won’t be pretty. […] With digital currencies such as Bitcoin, there is the problem that they are created out of thin air. One bitcoin represents the successful completion of a cryptographic puzzle, but all that means is that some computing power was used up to create a unique electronic file. That’s all it is, just a series of ones and zeros. There is nothing tangible about Bitcoin and, indeed, if you lose the hard drive on which you stored your bitcoins, those bitcoins are lost forever."

On top of that, the potential for manipulation and the built-in assault of surveillance and tracking is enough to cripple liberties in the world that is cementing its patterns around this new technology.

Related: When Cash Is Outlawed... Only Outlaws Will Have Cash What happens when online platforms don’t like your speech or your rights? What happens if their policy blocks you from buying something – like a gun – that you have the right to buy, or prevents you from spending your money, potentially freezing your account without notice. Again, the Menger Center makes the point:

“Take a look at PayPal, for instance. PayPal’s terms of service forbid use of the service to buy or sell firearms, firearms parts, or firearms accessories. Many individuals who have used PayPal to sell firearms parts find their accounts frozen or shut down by PayPal. Similar things have happened to gun stores having their bank accounts frozen or having their credit card payment processors refuse to process… […] Cases such as this will only be more widespread in the future, especially as governments continue to pursue the war on cash. If cash is eliminated and electronic systems become the only way anyone can pay for anything, all it will take is a little bit of government pressure on payment system operators to stop processing payments for X or Y and voila, you can longer buy X or Y. What good is money in the bank if you can’t use it to buy what you want? In fact, governments may dispense with pressure on payment systems and just monitor transactions as they occur, automatically rejecting payments for goods they don’t want … Every transaction made electronically can be tracked and traced. If every purchase you make is done electronically, your entire purchase history is open to scrutiny."

The powerful banking lobby, of course, wants a digital cashless system, because it will enrich them with transaction fees and penalties, continue and expand fractional reserve lending, and give them the power to monitor all the transactions, at detailed levels with data for every purchase. But despite this monitoring, money and transactions will not necessarily be more secure. You cannot “hold” your money, you must be able to access it, and that depends upon authorization of the system. It can be hacked or erased in a split second. Can you keep the financial system from limiting your rights and invading your privacy?

Keiser Report: War on Cash And how would America under the digital grid – perhaps 10x worse than Greece when the ATM's are shut down, the banks closed, the grid off and cash eradicated, while the population is forced under the yoke. Not only is this grid vulnerable, but it is also becoming unavoidable. Read more: Banning Cash “Necessary to Give Central Banks More Power” Cash Ban: Greeks Face “Permanent Cash Controls and Compulsory Use of Plastic Money” Once Cash Is Banned They Will Be Able To Force You To Buy Products: “Just Tax Their Excess Account Balance” Americans Face Impoverishing War on Cash: “More Big Banks Are Shunning Cash” Want Cash? Next-Gen ATMs Demand Biometric Verification: “Smartphone and Eye Scan To Dispense Money”

Reality Check: Why McAfee Says FBI Really Wants To End Encryption, Not Hack Just One iPhone February 26 2016 | From: TruthInMedia

By now you know that the FBI is demanding and a federal magistrate judge is ordering Apple to build a backdoor to its operating system.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says they need it for only one phone, only this one time. But nobody is buying that, including the man who says if that is true, he can do it. This is a Reality Check you won’t see anywhere else. The case involves an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, Syed Farook. Farook’s iPhone, which was given to him by his government employer, is locked and the FBI says they can’t get into it unless they get help from Apple. So what exactly is the FBI asking for?

To be clear, Apple cannot extract information directly from Farook’s - or anyone else’s - iPhone. That is because all data on an iPhone is encrypted. The security measures for iOS 8, which rolled out in 2014, ensure that no one, not even Apple, can access information on an iPhone by sneaking through a software “backdoor.” Now a federal judge says Apple has to create that backdoor. Apple says they fight this all the way to the Supreme Court.

John McAfee is the creator of McAfee security software and is one of the foremost cyber security experts in the world. I spoke to him by Skype, and he says this fight is really over encryption as a whole.

“The problem is that once you put a backdoor into a piece of software, every hacker in the world is going to find it and use it, and [then] we’re in a world of hurt,” he says.

McAfee says that if the FBI is telling the truth about their intentions and they really need to get into just this one, then he and his team of hackers have agreed to hack that San Bernardino shooter’s phone for the FBI for free. And he says they can do it in less than three weeks.

“But what I have done is said, look, you know, if in fact you are sincere in wanting to get access to just that one phone, my team and I will do it,” he says. “We can crack it - easily. I guarantee it. There is no un-crackable encryption. We all know that. They have not responded [to my offer] and I do not think they will because it’s not just that one phone they want. They want a key to everyone’s phone.”

McAfee does say there is a bigger issue at hand, because what the FBI and the federal government is actually doing here is a move that will destroy encryption. In an op-ed he writes;

“After years of arguments by virtually every industry specialist that back doors will be a bigger boon to hackers and to our nation’s enemies than publishing our nuclear codes. “We all say the same thing,” McAfee says. “You can’t do it and keep us safe as a nation. . . . And you can’t do it and keep us safe as individuals. ‘Cause I guarantee that once that backdoor goes in, all of our bank accounts are going to be emptied by the the bad hackers. All of our social security numbers are going to be known.”

What you need to know is that if McAfee is right, the FBI can demonstrate their true intentions easily. Let the nation’s best hackers open that one phone. But if this move is as many people believe - actually a move to force Apple to end encryption then the ramifications are much bigger than government and terrorists. Breaking encryption will impact every American’s privacy, banking, finances and online identity. Encryption isn’t the tool that bad guys use to hide. It is the only thing that actually can make you safe online.

Mark Zuckerberg Is Claimed To Be David Rockefeller’s Grandson - Facebook Started With $500 Million From The C.I.A. February 24 2016 | From: GoldSilver / TapNewsWire

With all the talk about Facebook of late and the most recent bans / blocking / censorship I thought I would add my 2 cents and perhaps let people know a bit about this lad.

You know when this guy popped on the scene I was curious how he could do such a big start up. So I checked him out. Mark Kuckerberg was revealed by the TapNewsWire. His two grandfathers are David Rockefeller and Maurice (Hank) Greenberg of AIG fame. He has an agenda, in service to the Cabal. Hell, Bill Clinton is apparently the greatgrandson of JD Rockefeller. The change of name is I am sure deliberate to hide who he is as well as his arrest for pot. It doesn’t mean anything to me I was just curious and now with all the new nonsense I wanted to see if anyone else knew this? The Face on Facebook belongs to Mark Zukerberg the alleged homosexual from upstate New York. But what is the most important is that his Grandfather is the 100 year old David Rockefeller. You know the one from the Trilateral Commision, The Bilderberg Group, Owner of the Chase Manhatten Bank, Council on Foreign Relations.

You read this guys bio and its like a who’s who of the NWO planners. The Likes of Henry Kissenger, who refers to us as useless eaters, Allen Dulles who was implicated in the Kennedy assasination. Board of Directors of Exxon, J P Morgan Chase. This guy is friends with every piece of trash that wants us all dead. And then we have his son David who’s son is Mark Zukerberg whos net worth is estimated at 35.7 BILLION. Sick yet? Why he has a different name I have no idea. A search does not reveal the names of his parents. It does list his wife Pricella Chan. So he’s 31 years old with bags full of money and the son of David Rockefeller. I have known this for a long time and I just assumed everyone else knew. So if you did forgive me if you didn’t it should make a few balls fall into place. Zuckerberg means ‘sugar mountain’. That’s their secret word for Facebook no doubt. A mountain of information from which they can extract billions. Bill Gates comes from a multibillionaire eugenicist family, which was kept well hidden in the early years of Microsoft. The same families control it all. Yet is this story true?

That is actually what his business card says:

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Is Claimed To Be Grandson Of David Rockefeller It has been revealed that Mark Zuckerberg is the grandson of David Rockefeller. His true name is Jacob Greenberg, also grandson to Hank Greenberg. He is royalty. Some police records show a Jacob Greenberg was arrested for possession of marijuana when a much younger man. His mugshot was taken, which looks like a younger FaceBook icon with 99% reliability. It was later revealed that this could indeed be the man the world knows as Mark Zuckerberg. Also, the Rothschilds own 8% of FaceBook shares. The hidden agenda for the FaceBook social network is to aid the growth of the police state and one world government movement.

Jacob Rothschild and David Rockefeller

According to the TAP Blog, the venture Facebook was funded with $500 million from a CIA owned bank. One can only wonder if the other giant Googlehas similar disguised progeny. The adopted name Zuckerberg means sugar mountain in German. The fast rising social network is indeed a mountain of information from which they can extract $billions. In recent weeks, the face of FaceBook has been revealed, as numerous members making comments about their support for gun ownership have had their FB accounts frozen, Big Brother at work. The Tap Blog is a collective of motivated researchers and writers who join forces to distribute information and voice opinions avoided by the world’s media. Unless you wish to provide the nefarious leadership crew a constant trail for your life, complete with various control gates, close your FaceBook account.

See the YouTube video that sheds more light on Big Brother . For years the Jackass has refused all invitations, since many of them are actually generated from the FB kitchen in false manner, verified numerous times. FaceBook attempts to expand from computer derived invitations, not human ones, like an electronic cancer. Refusals for LinkedIn and other social media networks are also routinely done. The Jackass would like to add some other famous family lines. Jimmy Carter was fathered by Joe Kennedy Sr. Thus he is half brother to John, Robert, and Edward from Camelot. It seems that Miss Lillian the mother was Joe’s secretary, with more than dictation being taken by the woman when under the elder’s employ. That explains why Jimmy never had a father revealed during his presidency. Not to be outdone, William Jefferson Clinton is great grandson to John D Rockefeller the oil magnate.

John D Rockefeller

Bill Clinton was selected, due to his penchant for bond fraud and keen interest in cocaine binges. After his election and residence at the Arkansas governor mansion, the AirForce base nearby to Little Rock had its runway lengthened threefold by the CIA. It was then suitable to accommodate the larger aircraft that transported narcotics to Panama. The hidden Camelot US Royalty of elite scum goes on.

Stop Censorship: Time For Us All To Finally Break Google, Facebook and Twitter? February 23 2016 | From: TheLastGreatStand

As much as I hate to read that there are other people on the various different social platforms like Google, Facebook, and Twitter who are having the same kinds of problems I am facing when it comes to censorship, reading both the articles referenced below almost provided a sense of satisfaction that I’m not imagining things.

As the video and articles below detail, the level of censorship being used by Google, Facebook, and Twitter today is bordering on simply “unbelievable” to anyone who isn’t experiencing it first hand. When trying to explain to a person who isn’t being censored, the extent to which many of us are being silenced daily, often times we’re looked at like we have five heads. The news media’s job is to report “news,” and yet despite social media giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter silencing an entire nations of people on social media, the mainstream media says nothing. Why? Because they’re all part of the same giant machine pushing for socialism. The United States is truly entering very troubling times right now, as we head full throttle towards the next iteration of a failed socialist state. Never before in history has a country the size of the United States had any measure of success under socialist principles, but that fact is completely lost on so many of today’s Americans whose only concern seems to be, “What can you do for ME?”

Thanks to the uber liberal Department of Indoctrination… excuse me… I mean Department of Education… our school system has become an abject failure. It shocks the conscious that young people are graduating from universities today with so little “knowledge” of history, that they are flocking to Bernie Sanders in droves because he’s promising them “free college tuition.” They lack the critical thinking skills that would enable them to see past the instant gratification “wants” that idiots like Obama, or Clinton, or Sanders provide for them. As a society, we have failed these young people. How is it that an entire generation cannot grasp the fact that, “there is no such thing as a free lunch?” Last century alone, the utopia promised by Socialist / Marxist / Communist politicians who promised a more “fair” and “equitable” lifestyle for their people came at a cost of almost 100 MILLION dead human beings. The notion that, “it will be different this time,’” is only further proof we’ve failed the youth and our education system is broken. George Santayana once famously said:

“When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In the following video, the narrator discusses a topic that is becoming all to familiar to some Americans. Luke Rudkowski talks about the shocking and sad news about Twitter’s new algorithm along with their new “Trust and Safety Council” that will be used to censor any conservative leaning voices on what was once a platform of free speech.

In the video above, Rudkowski refers to what he calls the “Death of Twitter.” Much like Facebook, and other social mediums he explains how Twitter is no longer interested in what YOU want to get information about. Instead, Twitter is now using brand new ad friendly and brand friendly algorithms that will TELL you what you should be interested in. If your belief system or values don't align with those of a far left persuasion, and you decide to voice those beliefs, you can expect to get your account suspended or thrown in the “Twitter Gulag” for some indefinite amount of time. Keep in mind, Twitter’s suspension ban, and locking notifications do not inform users which rule they have supposedly broken, instead Twitter simply states that the user has somehow impinged on the the terms of service, and their account is suspended.

Finding out the reason an account has been punished is generally impossible on Google, Facebook, or Twitter. After first receiving an email from Facebook with a survey saying I was one of their “most valuable advertisers,” I responded asking:

“As one of Facebook’s “most valuable advertisers,” why is it that every time ask for Facebook’s policy on posting in groups, so I can make certain I am not in violation of it, none of my emails are responded to?"

Here's the reality: If you openly favor conservative ideals like pro-life, the Second Amendment, or criticize the government’s violation of the Constitution, expect your posts to be censored heavily, or your account banned all together. Everywhere you look, Free Speech is being annihilated. Not only are companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, censoring you, they are reporting people to Obama's new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, who has Created a Gestapo To Target Americans With “Anti-Government Views”. Anyone who reads, The Department Of Justice Prepares To Step Up War On "Domestic Extremists." will most likely be blown away at how militant the government has become about a person's belief system or their religious convictions. Per a Department of Defense training manual obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act request, we learned that the criteria a SECRET UNELECTED OBAMA OFFICIAL has for determining a “domestic extremist” is as follows:

“Americans who are ‘reverent of individual liberty,’ and ‘suspicious of centralized federal authority’ are possible ‘extreme right-wing’ terrorists. The document linked above also lists people who embrace “individual liberties” and honor “states’ rights,” among other characteristics, as potential “extremists” who are likely to be members of “hate groups.” Finally, the document goes on to call the Founding Fathers, “extremists.”

Writing at Liberty Unyielding on Saturday, retired Naval Intelligence officer J. E. Dyer said that it’s time to “break” the Internet as we know it, starting with the big three social media and search engine sites, namely, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

“They’re all implementing policies to shut down the voices of freedom in their forums,” she said. “It’s one thing to police obscenity and personal attacks. It’s another thing entirely to define the word ‘gun’ as an offense, and bias content-oriented algorithms against it.” "It’s ridiculous to “suspend” users for posting politically conservative content – and yet, in the blogger forums I correspond with, such suspensions are now commonplace. “I’m in Facebook jail” for X number of days has become a constant refrain. We’re not talking about people who use expletives or make threats online. We’re talking about people who merely post conservative sentiments and memes, and links to (very mainstream) conservative websites. The social media and browsing giants are private companies. They can run things the way they want; it’s their dime. But that’s why they need to be broken. They can’t be allowed to become a vehicle for marginalizing non-compliant voices. The default model for social media and browsing needs to be variety, diversity, and freedom – not intellectual conformity. Freedom is what needs to pay off."

She makes a sound argument, citing the weekend’s explosion over Twitter’s arbitrary suspension of blogger Robert Stacy McCain.

Twitter, she notes, has a new policy where speech is monitored and controlled by a “Trust and Safety Council,” which is run by such distinguished enemies of free speech as “Feminist Frequency and the Dangerous Speech Project.” Orwellian? That’s putting it mildly.

Twitter, she adds, is a private company and “can live by delusional bias if it wants to; it should just have to pay a steep price for doing so.” Twitter is also engaging win what’s known as “shadowbanning.” According to Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, it’s very real:

"Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view. . . However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines."

A similar phenomenon is happening at Facebook, Dyer adds:

"Something similar to shadowbanning has been evident at Facebook in the last several weeks, to anyone who runs a conservative Facebook page. The trend that’s been especially noticeable to me is this one: meme images of the type that used to quickly get thousands of shares and likes, and dozens or hundreds of comments, can now go for days and gather only a few dozen shares and likes. What these images have in common is that they’re eye-catching, funny, meme-tastic – and pro-gun rights.

The conclusion is that such memes aren’t getting exposure, because Facebook’s algorithms have been biased against them. This is probably related to Facebook’s recent banning of private, non-dealer gun sales, and presumably is not inadvertent. “Again,” she notes, “Facebook is a private company.” Google, she wrote, has come up “with a new extension for the Chrome browser that will literally change, to suit the pro-abortion user, the language posted to the web by originators. The change this extension will make is to turn “pro-life” into “anti-choice.”"

She goes on to warn of a sort of “weaponised” Internet where those who do not opt in to the Orwellian thought-control can and ultimately will be made invisible and tracked like criminals.

“There was a time when it was enough for conservatives to have success with news and opinion content online. But the Internet is being transformed at a much less visible level now: at the level of basic browsing and social media algorithms, the dynamic but obscure arrangements that enable us to ‘see’ and connect with each other to exchange information,” she said. To deal with this, she said, we must develop an “alternet,” but that will require resources and the will to create something where freedom remains.

I’ve written time and again about the abuses meted out to users by Facebook. Facebook - recently called the world’s most dangerous censor - is already working to shape and control language in Europe, with the blessings of European governments.

“I know there are potential inventors and investors out there,” Dyer said in conclusion. “The market need is obvious, and will only become more so. Get your thinking caps on, and let’s break this thing.” Dyer continues: "What we need now is, literally, alternatives to the existing social media and browsing giants. The giants, acting as administrators of quasi-public spaces, are becoming hostile to intellectual freedom, in a way that will soon turn into predation against it. The model of “all the world” connecting via Facebook is going to have to be shattered, and replaced by a different model in which competition will penalize censorship."

Breaking The Web The good news is that we have a big, disruptive watershed coming up, possibly this year, when the central organization of the Internet is taken out of the hands of the United States government. This is (re)scheduled to happen on 1 October 2016, and it very well might. This will be an unmitigated disaster for today’s Internet freedom, if it does happen. The attacks on Web freedom will begin immediately (although they will be less visible in the U.S.). The shift will start small, but it will be real, and relentless. Within a short time – probably weeks, maybe even days – browsing, providing Internet service, and operating websites will become a significantly different experience for those in more-authoritarian as opposed to lessauthoritarian countries.

America won’t be immune. Without a publicly accountable department of the U.S. federal government in charge, more and more things will begin to happen that hardly anyone knows about, but that will affect everyone. Being surprised and confused that our Web experience is changing is something we can expect within months of the transfer date. So why do I say this is good news? Because it will force us to develop a true “alternet.” The technology is there, but the motivation has been lacking. The day is coming when it won’t be lacking anymore. The outlines of an Internet weaponized against us are already visible: an Internet by which we can be marginalized and punished, and over which we exert less and less discretion as to how much we want to interact with it. But that weaponizable Internet depends on being monolithic, and having the authorization-vetoes of governments hanging over it.

It’s time for a new paradigm of the Internet, one without the infrastructure features we have come to assume are inevitable. The role of the FCC, for example, needs to be fundamentally rethought. I’m not convinced we even need 95% of what the FCC does. A lot has to break to get to a new paradigm – but a lot is going to break. The reason for a customer revolt is scheduled on the calendar, and the giant companies are helping out by trying to make college-campus censorship the standard of dialogue on the Web. I know there are potential inventors and investors out there. The market need is obvious, and will only become more so. Get your thinking caps on, and let’s break this thing.

US Intelligence Chief: We Might Use The Internet Of Things To Spy On You February 13 2016 | From: TheGuardian

James Clapper did not name specific agency as being involved in surveillance via smart-home devices but said in congressional testimony it is a distinct possibility

The US intelligence chief has acknowledged for the first time that agencies might use a new generation of smart household devices to increase their surveillance capabilities. Related: 'Internet of Things' an Absolute Goldmine for Big Brother, Admits Top US Spy As increasing numbers of devices connect to the internet and to one another, the so-called internet of things promises consumers increased convenience – the remotely operated thermostat from Google-owned Nest is a leading example. But as home computing migrates away from the laptop, the tablet and the smartphone, experts warn that the security features on the coming wave of automobiles, dishwashers and alarm systems lag far behind. In an appearance at a Washington thinktank last month, the director of the National Security Agency, Adm Michael Rogers, said that it was time to consider making the home devices “more defensible”, but did not address the opportunities that increased numbers and even categories of connected devices provide to his surveillance agency.

However, James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, was more direct in testimony submitted to the Senate on Tuesday as part of an assessment of threats facing the United States.

"In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper said.

Clapper did not specifically name any intelligence agency as involved in household-device surveillance. But security experts examining the internet of things take as a given that the US and other surveillance services will intercept the signals the newly networked devices emit, much as they do with those from cellphones. Amateurs are already interested in easily compromised hardware; computer programmer John Matherly’s search engine Shodan indexes thousands of completely unsecured web-connected devices.

Online threats again topped the intelligence chief’s list of “worldwide threats” the US faces, with the mutating threat of lowintensity terrorism quickly following. While Clapper has for years used the equivocal term “evolving” when asked about the scope of the threat, he said Tuesday that Sunni violent extremism “has more groups, members, and safe havens than at any other point in history”. The Islamic State topped the threat index, but Clapper also warned that the US-backed Saudi war in Yemen was redounding to the benefit of al-Qaida’s local affiliate. Domestically;

"Homegrown extremists” are the greatest terrorist threat, rather than Islamic State or al-Qaida attacks planned from overseas. Clapper cited the San Bernardino and Chattanooga shootings as examples of lethal operations emanating from self-starting extremists “without direct guidance from [Isis] leadership”.

US intelligence officials did not foresee Isis suffering significant setbacks in 2016 despite a war in Syria and Iraq that the Pentagon has pledged to escalate. The chief of defense intelligence, Marine Lt Gen Vincent Stewart, said the jihadist army would “probably retain Sunni Arab urban centers” in 2016, even as military leaders pledged to wrest the key cities of Raqqa and Mosul from it. Contradicting the US defense secretary, Ashton Carter, Stewart said he was “less optimistic in the near term about Mosul”, saying the US and Iraqi government would “certainly not” retake it in 2016. The negative outlook comes as Carter traveled on Tuesday to meet with his fellow defense chiefs in Brussels for a discussion on increasing their contributions against Isis.

On the Iran nuclear deal, Clapper said intelligence agencies were in a “distrust and verify mode”, but added: “We have no evidence thus far that they’re moving toward violation.”

Clapper’s admission about the surveillance potential for networked home devices is rare for a US official. But in an overlooked 2012 speech, the then CIA director David Petraeus called the surveillance implications of the internet of things “transformational … particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft”. During testimony to both the Senate armed services committee and the intelligence panel, Clapper cited Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and the Islamic State as bolstering their online espionage, disinformation, theft, propaganda and datadestruction capabilities. He warned that the US’s ability to correctly attribute the culprits of those actions would probably diminish with “improving offensive tradecraft, the use of proxies, and the creation of cover organizations”. Clapper suggested that US adversaries had overtaken its online capabilities: “Russia and China continue to have the most sophisticated cyber programs.” The White House’s new cybersecurity initiative, unveiled on Tuesday, pledged increased security for nontraditional networked home devices. It tasked the Department of Homeland Security to “test and certify networked devices within the ‘Internet of Things’.” It did not discuss any tension between the US’s twin cybersecurity and surveillance priorities.

Connected household devices are a potential treasure trove to intelligence agencies seeking unobtrusive ways to listen and watch a target, according to a study that Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society released last week. The study found that the signals explosion represented by the internet of things would overwhelm any privacy benefits by users of commercial encryption – even as Clapper in his testimony again alleged that the growth of encryption was having a “negative effect on intelligence gathering”. The report’s authors cited a 2001 case in which the FBI had sought to compel a company that makes emergency communications hardware for automobiles – similar by description to OnStar, though the company was not named – to assist agents in Nevada in listening in on conversations in a client’s car. In February 2015, news reports revealed that microphones on Samsung “smart” televisions were “always on” so as to receive any audio that it could interpret as an instruction.

"Law enforcement or intelligence agencies may start to seek orders compelling Samsung, Google, Mattel, Nest or vendors of other networked devices to push an update or flip a digital switch to intercept the ambient communications of a target,” the authors wrote.

Waihopai Spy Base Protesters Talk GCSB, Five Eyes And Democracy In Marlborough January 29 2016 | From: MarlboroughExpress

An annual protest has drawn a colourful crowd to Marlborough to protest against mass surveillance.

About 60 people from across New Zealand gathered in Marlborough on Saturday to take a peaceful stand against Waihopai Station, southwest of Blenheim. The day began with a march through the centre of Blenheim, with one marcher dressed as Uncle Sam and another wearing an oversized mask in the likeness of Prime Minister John Key. Green Party co-leader and intelligence spokesperson Metiria Turei spoke at the march about the Government Security Communications Bureau.

"The GCSB has acted illegally. Our spy agencies are being used for political purposes like helping ministers get international jobs, New Zealanders in the Pacific are being spied on and the SIS lacks a proper compliance system," Turei said. "We cannot let their arrogance erode our civil liberties away."

The protest moved to the Waihopai spy base about 1.30pm where six police officers took shifts standing in the 30 degree Celsius heat between the protesters and the spy base.

Teacher Adrian Leason, one of the 'Waihopai three', calls for the Waihopai spy base to be closed.

Anti-Bases Campaign spokesman Murray Horton said the spy base was controlled by the United States, adding even New Zealand's prime minister knew little about its operations.

"Five Eyes is the reason for the existence of both the GCSB and Waihopai ... Its satellite interception dishes intercept a huge volume of civilian telephone calls, email and computer data communications," he said. "The collection of private information was anti-democratic and destructive", he said.

Aros Diodi travelled from Coromandel to help raise awareness at the protest.

"People need to know. It's like a big secret," she said.

There were about seven people from Marlborough at the protest.

"Marlborough does not get in behind this the way it should," Horton said.

One man jumped the fence to give police a close-up view of his placard, but there were no arrests.

"We will keep coming here as long as that [spy base] is still there. So book the overtime, boys," Horton said to police at the protest's conclusion.

Read More: Spy scandal: What we know and what we don't Waihopai three walk free Protesters call for Waihopai spy base closure Waihopai spy-base verdict irks locals

The Big Squeeze vs. Khazarian Mafia January 22 2016 | From: Geopolitics

The result of the well-coordinated operation to cut-off the Khazarian Mafia from the rest of the global economy is now undeniable.

The fiat FED dollar denominated economy is effectively shut down as indicated in the free-falling Baltic Dry Index. Related: International Shipping Shuts Down; Baltic Dry Index Freefalling We have warned that bank deposits are already being skimmed by the retreating parasites, and it’s prudent that necessary preparations should have been made already. Iran cannot be intimidated anymore. It has repelled Israel and Saudi Arabia’s big brother, i.e. the United States. If your child is being held back and being denied even the possibility of entering a gifted program based on the fact that they have attention issues, then there is problem. Related: Captured US Navy Boats Were Carrying Top ISIS Leader, USS Truman Intervened Again, we are featuring another summary of the information that’s already been in this site and some new information

detailing the personalities involved that should facilitate the understanding of what’s been going on for at least the last eight years.

Big Squeeze Now On Khazarian Mafia This article builds on past articles on this subject. For those who haven’t read those, reading this article is likely a waste of time and it will be difficult to fit this information into their heads. This is a long article and is written as a two-tiered piece. Those short of time can read the bold print and pass over the rest, and then finish with the conclusion. Many thanks to my sources, some still living but most passed. None have been associated with Veterans Today in any way. I do not enjoy writing this type of article for a number of reasons not appropriate to be discussed here. But I do feel an obligation to get this information out. ] Numerous nations around the World have now ganged up on the Khazarian Mafia (KM). It is cornered and it is losing power by the day. Expect increased surveillance and harassment by local police who take orders from Homeland Security (DHS) and receive their ridiculous conjured up Domestic Terror Watch Lists. How much real power does the Khazarian Mafia have left and for how long can it hold out? Is the Khazarian Mafia still powerful enough to start another major war in the Mideast, or even a nuclear WW3 to serve as a covering event for their impending loss of World hegemony?

There are recent reports from China that the Chinese Government has ordered that its international cargo shipping in both the Pacific and the Atlantic be restricted. One source with connections to mainland Chinese sources has verified this claim that China has given an ultimatum that there will be a big reduction in their cargo ships unloading any products until the USG begins to honor the Secret Reset Agreement they entered into in 2013 during G-20 meetings. Related: The Unfolding Global Reset that Only Few Understand The Baltic Dry Shipping Index is way down, less than half of what it was at its peak. Crude oil has dropped to $30 a barrel or less, and in Canada shale oil is even as low at $10 a barrel. American retail sales were low during Christmas and many retail chains plan to close stores at multiple locations, including the notorious Walmart. Related: International Shipping Shuts Down; Baltic Dry Index Freefalling And oil derivatives of the big Wall Street Banks are under extreme stress due to these oil prices which has now placed several of the largest in jeopardy. The US Petro Dollar is now under stress as never before and the massive continued issuing and printing after the bailouts (repetitive Quantitative Easings, #7 and counting), the secret US Treasury Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) direct foreign bank bailouts of trillions, and the secret direct USG Plunge Protection Team stock purchases in mass no longer seem to mitigate this slide. Several foreign nations have asked for their Gold back that has been stored at the Federal Reserve, but only a portion has been shipped because the vaults are now apparently empty.

Chinese and Russian purchases of massive quantities of Gold and Silver are fact, not theory, giving them a huge advantage as the Federal Reserve System’s Ponzi scheme approaches collapse. Comex paper Gold which is supposed to be backed 100% by real Gold is not. This is just another part of the Federal Reserve System’s massive Ponzi scheme which has probably already hit the iceberg and is taking on water. The Khazarian Mafia’s top leadership is being squeezed and now seems cornered. They claim to each other to work directly for Lucifer who they describe as their new “rising god” (they call this “Lucifer Rising”). Others in this small circle describe Lucifer as a renegade Third Force who will cut these folks loose in a NY Minute as soon as they serve no useful purpose anymore. And that is what now seems to be happening. Looks like their “god” is going to let them down. Oh well, should

they have expected less from pure evil?

When you dance with the devil, you are going to get burned. That’s the function of Doofus Cutouts that are propelled to the top and given power, status and riches beyond imagination. They are there to serve as disposables when it’s all said and done and they are no longer needed. They will never see it coming when they are abandoned and “cut-loose”. If there is going to be new monetary system set up for the World and that’s the way it looks, and it likely will not include the Khazarian Mafia Kingpins. As best we can determine before Chinese cargo shipping decreased, China was demanding that their Renminbi be included in a basket of currencies. And we know that the Renminbi will be backed by Gold and this basket of currencies will replace the current exclusiveness of the US Petro Dollar which functions as the World’s Reserve Currency. This same source has claimed that the Japanese Government has just agreed to be part of the Chinese created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). If these reports are accurate then this means that Khazarian Mafia is being squeezed economically.

For the G-20 nations and especially the USA to honor this Secret Reset Agreement made in 2013, the Khazarian Mafia must be removed from its position controlling the World’s Central Banking. It also apparently requires the acceptance of the Chinese Renminbi based on Gold and Silver as a part of an international basket of currencies and the removal of the US Petro Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency. Looks like the Khazarian Mafia is now being squeezed from many directions. And it is rapidly losing control which makes it desperate and dangerous. When the World’s largest Organized Crime Syndicate the Khazarian Mafia feels cornered one would expect that it would become desperate to re-establish control and take even more drastic actions that it has in the past, unless too much force is arrayed against them from more than one enemy. And now for the first time numerous enemies have arisen against the Khazarian Mafia. And two of them are quite powerful. The first and most powerful enemy appears to be the Russian Federation.

Putin and the Russian Federation have now completely checkmated the Khazarian Mafia both in the Ukraine and in Syria and is now annihilating ISIS by deployment of its superior air power. The second most powerful appears to be the American People, a very well-armed sleeping giant that is now rapidly awaking. This new exigent power of the American Masses is due to the Alternative Media of the Internet. The Internet has provided incredible speed and the fact that so many Americans are finally figuring out everything out of our elected Politicians’ mouths via the CMMM is their propaganda, big lies and false-narratives. And the recent dire economy, and massive unemployment since 2008 brought about by all these traitorous Free Trade Agreements and two illegal, unConstitutional “Wall Street Bailouts” have created a spontaneously emerging populism in the American Masses.

This massive populism is not only unprecedented but it is now accompanied by a rising anger towards the DC “doofus” career politicians and this new populism is increasingly powerful. The Khazarian Mafia has deployed false-flag attacks all around the World and in America using Cutouts. Some were massshootings in gun-free zones hyped in the Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM), and others were major bombings like at the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 or the World Trade Center in NYC on 9-11-01.

The purpose is always to justify more power to central government in order to help the Khazarian Mafia protect itself and its Evil Agenda. But now that the Khazarian Mafia is being squeezed from all sides, will we see increased harassment of investigative journalists, known truth tellers and dissidents who run counter to the Khazarian Mafia’s propaganda, big lies and falsenarratives they dispense through their CMMM? Might we start seeing mysterious and increasingly frequent disappearances like what occurred in the South American Death Squads? After all these Death Squads were all trained by the US Military and the CIA inside the USA, and these schools for torture and murder are still active.

And recently Chicago was caught running a black site for DHS to disappear Targeted Individuals. Other cities have these too. And the Pentagon and the CIA still run the Black Prison sites in East European nations and also have black prison ships which are still active. Check this for more information. We should expect the DHS to put out increasingly negative smear reports to the local Police Departments creating increased fear of known truth tellers, dissidents, patriots and gun owners? This will include folks who have been illegally placed on Domestic terror Watch lists with instructions to begin increased surveillance and harassment against them? We now know for certain that the Khazarian Mafia’s actions in the past in America have included the Bombing of the Murrah Building, first attempted bombing of the NYC Twin towers by the FBI setting up and supplying the Blind Sheikh. This was actually an acoustics test to establish needs for the devices the Khazarian Mafia used in Twin Towers attack on 9-11-01.

And the FBI (with help of the CIA and crooked US Customs agents) placed a stolen barrel of cyanide stolen from Louis Champon’s Natural Cherry Flavoring Company in Boca Raton Florida through a tunnel under the street by Wackem’out World Security. This was done to see what the effects on folks near the blast in the basement parking ramp would be. Actually the blast destroyed the toxicity of the cyanide. Naturally the FBI tried to secretly and wrongly frame Louis Champon for this and only failed through the incredible detective work of James Rothstein (NYCPD Gold Shield, police Intel and key part of the infamous NY State Crime Commission Secret 15 man Intel Task Force - now long retired for arresting Frank Sturgis aka Frank Fiorini in NYC for trying to terminate Marita Lorenz right before her secret appearance at the HSCA and turning over of photos with Ruby, Sturgiss, Oswald at the motel the night before the JFK Assassination and more). Detective Rothstein, a German Catholic, is the only member of this secret 15 man task force who has survived (most were terminated with extreme prejudice by the CIA) to suppress what they found out. Detective Rothstein is one of the greatest American Heroes in Law Enforcement we have ever had anywhere in America. His investigations led to more prosecutions of CIA pedophiles, their pedophile murders, and the CIA drug dealers than any other LE person in the history of America and his record still stands.

None of this ever was allowed into the CMMM of course. Rothstein’s astoundingly frank book is expected to be published this year and it will be very interesting. His long term efforts to bring St. John’s Abbey to justice for the pedophile sheepdipped, rat-lined ex-Nazi priests that have been kept there and protected from prosecution are well known, and he is still at it. Too bad the local police are crooked, and the FBI continues to look the other way and do their usual assigned job, cover up for the “Process”. So this World’s largest organized Crime Syndicate the Khazarian Mafia is truly capable of untold evil against the American people as well as the whole World as long as it is allowed to exist and occupy and parasitize the USG for its own purposes. Every large urban police dept. and the alphabets, especially the FBI has an Intel plant embedded there to run cover-ups for the “Process” Satanic Cult and the CIA drug trafficking, both protected by being deputized as agents of National Security”. Inside America the Khazarian Mafia has controlled the Alphabets including the FBI, its main cover up agency and entrapment/setup agency and the BATF, as well as the CIA; and they have always done a lot of the Khazarian Mafia’s illegal dirty work.

And of course after the Khazarian Mafia attacked America on 9-11-01 to create a New Pearl Harbor event, they were now in a position to establish Homeland Security (DHS) the foundation of the long planned American Police State. This plan to establish DHS was already written and ready to push through Congress awaiting a major catalytic event such as the major terrorist attack of 9-11-01 which was run by the Khazarian Mafia and its stateside assets deep inside the Administration and the Pentagon. The attack on America of 9-11-01 was designed to consolidate all American Law Enforcement under one central command directly controlled by the Khazarian Mafia, a known foreign based power, and justify becoming a nation based on preemptive wars of aggression.

The secret agenda of DHS is to transform America into a total surveillance society, a Police State rivaling East Germany under the Stasi. That is why Marcus Wolfe (former head of the Stasi) was hired as a consultant to set up DHS two years before he mysteriously died. The ultimate end game here is for the Khazarian Mafia to use DHS to transform America into GAZA II, the World’s largest open-air prison camp and to make Americans the New Palestinians. This is all part of the “Greater Israel Plan” which is no longer theory but established fact.

And the “Greater Israel Plan” is the cover story used by the Khazarian Mafia’s top leadership (aka the “Select Few”) to use its Cutouts and main action agent the American-Israeli “Israeli-first” Dual Citizen Traitors and the Likudists in Israel to do their dirty work. The American Controlled Major Mass Media (CMMM) has been losing its credibility for years, and its popularity is at an alltime low.

Since the CMMM is the main mouthpiece and propaganda/mind-kontrol agent for the Khazarian Mafia, its demise poses a big loss of power for the Khazarian Mafia. And we now know for certain its demise is being engendered by the increasing popularity of the Alternative News of the Internet. The Khazarian Mafia is now cornered and you can bet that Homeland Security (DHS) is busy at work creating smear reports at their fusion centers to send to local police with the instructions to increase the harassment of suspected domestic terrorists. Expect greatly increased surveillance and spying on all Americans even the Khazarian Mafia’s underling yes men and women and major doofuses who have been appointed to high positions of power and to provide a twisted sort of inside humor to the very top controllers that run the Khazarian Mafia System. Spying and Intel collection has become remarkably advanced and will continue to increase in frequency, scope and intrusiveness.

Much of it is used for banal entertainment by bored “no longer give a damn” NSA and NRO employees who dig watching and listening to bedroom type scenes. The NSA and NRO are collecting far more raw data than they can adequately process effectively, and it has become mostly a money-making means to asset strip more and more money from We The People and make a big show of power by the Khazarian Mafia. Some deep black and top secret technologies include; use of one’s own AC house wiring, smart TV’s, personal especially laptop and handheld computers, cell phones, wired phones, remote phones, smart TV’s and smart appliances; remote outdoor to indoor thermometers and weather meters and stations for homeowners; some TV remote controls with voice activation; really spooky new methods like driving by and shooting a special micro-transceiver nail in the siding that is matched for color and texture; wall penetrating drive-by radar systems (also used along major highways in unmarked white step vans and 18-wheelers; vehicle, aircraft, and satellite based special infrared sensors); high powered close-by receivers for picking up brain waves and decoding thought and emotional states; …

…embedded transceiver chips in all cell phones ad auto GPS and blue-tooth communication and “seek help” systems which can be remotely activated and easily traced and used a GPS tracking and used for microphones; orbital super HD electronic day and night vision cameras than can sense an ant on the ground and many license plates; deep black variable and synthetic aperture ground penetrating radar, advance gamma ray and neutron particle sensors and other even more secret means involved ground, truck, tower and satellite antennas designed to pick up brainwave transmissions which have been altered by ingested nano-particles in the atmospherically sprayed aerosol chem-trails and gasoline which include nanoparticles of aluminum and barium and other magnetic and electrical compounds which can be flashed, id’ed and used to alter brainwave transmissions for external monitoring (referred to as the “prime freak”). There are other even more advance psi-power means that are so far down the rabbit-hole they would be too discrediting to discuss in this article. But they do exist and can be effective in many situations. More on those in another article perhaps. But even worse DHS uses the special deniable contractor squads and retired miltel, FBI and CIA to gang-stalk, do personal surveillance, walk-bys, and moving in next door or as close as possible to key targeted individuals who are deemed as first line threat to their system of lies.

Paranoid yet? Haha

And as if that wasn’t enough, these special squads have specialists that deploy advanced psychotronic warfare against USG, Intel, military and corporate whistle-blowers on behalf of the Khazarian Mafia kingpins that is designed to cause chronic health problems, lethal medical disorders and suppression of thinking and acting.

Mark Novitsky Some of these devices are cell tower activated, some by doppler weather radar, some closely custom placed transmitters triangulated in from close-by spy cell and corporate proprietaries. For those that claim this is all pure fantasy and bs I can strongly reply you are wrong, dead wrong. How can I say that? Well I have personally swept Mark Novitsky’s residence with sensors used by the German Health Department and found it way over the allowable European accepted limits with some equipment red-lined. Some sources inside the home were disabled or removed, and we found strong external sources. As we started tracing and triangulating their location of external transmissions, they were suddenly turned off preventing location. Novitsky is as important in what he knows and has attempted to disclose as Snowden. 60 Minutes was going to do a big story on him but backed out at the last minute because they said it had become too complicated.

Other top Federal and Intel whistle-blowers have told Novitsky what he knows about is above their pay grade. Most avoid him like the plague. All his local Senators and Congresspersons were notified by Novitsky (evidence in writing I have seen) and all deny it and did nothing, except for Governor Mark Dayton who was a Senator at the time. Dayton has a good reputation with his staff and when terrorism struck in DC he immediately placed the safety of his staff first. He did what he could for Novitsky and We The People but was stepped on hard. Now Dayton is the Governor of Minnesota and appears to be doing his best to get the the states decaying infrastructure repaired. Novitsky has been placed on the top secret DHS “No Work under any Circumstances List” by the FBI, which follows him around and tells any employer where he applies that he is a Domestic Terrorist, “please do not hire him, he is on our Domestic Terror Watch List and under surveillance - you wouldn’t want to be put on our Watch List now, would you?” The one good job Novitsky had in a non-Intel related area after leaving the Teletech Holdings related company he worked for was ruined when the FBI showed up and delivered a National Security Letter (NSL) which his employer was allowed to read but not keep, and which threatened a $10,000 fine and up to 10 years in a federal prison if he ever disclosed anything about this NSL letter or why he was going to have to separate Novitsky. And Mark has had strange but very real recent medical problems and his first doctors were either dirty, Khazarian Mafia worker bees, Sayanims or just plain uncaring and medically lousy. The lab was either dirty or had folks inside that tampered with his blood work. Finally, he was able to find a top physician who is 100% ethical with a top academic reputation and will not kowtow to illegal government manipulations.

And who are DHS’s listed domestic terrorists? Gun owners, Ron Paul supporters, Veterans, libertarians, Christians, Islamics, Patriots, anti-war activists, dissidents and alternative media reporters and journalists and many many more individuals and groups that can be placed on the list by any supervisory agent after even one complaint of any kind and these watch lists have no oversight or appeal process. Once you are on these Watch Lists you are doomed to be on forever. Even Senator Ted Kennedy was put on the “No Fly List” by mistake and despite expensive legal efforts and big political muscle he could never get off of it. Why you wonder? Because these Terror Watch lists are creations of the Khazarian Mafia Kingpins. They are visible indicators of their unbridled twisted, sick, evil power produced by their infiltration and hijacking of America through their private pernicious usury debt-note private Fiat counterfeit Ponzi-type central banking system.

We may see increased harassment and abuse of phony domestic terror watch lists. We may see increased harassment by local police, alphabets as ordered by DHS, according to their whacked out “watch lists” that include almost everyone but the real domestic terrorists who are the Khazarian Mafia leaders and the top officials of DHS, whose job is to terrorize Americans into subservience and compliance and take away all our Constitutional Rights.

On the other hand, we may see such a rapid loss of functional day to day power by the Khazarian Mafia and their police state mechanism, DHS, that we do not see a big increase in surveillance and harassment. Maybe we will even see less now that the Khazarian Mafia is cornered and being pressed from all sides by the World and by We The People.

The confidential domestic terror “Watch Lists” lists were personally prepared under the watchful direction of Janet Napolitano while she was head of DHS. These were leaked and published on the Internet by DHS insiders who thought she and DHS was a joke but wanted to keep their pay and benefits, so we know for certain they exist and what is on them. Even though she resigned her position at DHS, she is being sued by subordinate men for sexual harassment and for moving their office into the men’s lavatory, among other things. A couple of nights ago while driving at night in the early evening, I was pulled over and needlessly rousted by a local police Officer, who claimed I crossed over the line three times on a stretch of road with no other traffic close by.

This fine very young lady police officer tailed me for a couple miles and then pulled me over. I don’t drink, use drugs, speed or drive carelessly, nor did I did not cross over any lines. After the usual license and insurance check, the Officer let me go with no ticket. But she asked me a question about something irrelevant that could she have only known about from information gained by a local stingray tap or from the local DHS Fusion Center. Not very professional. She was rousting me, and it was a message that I received and am now responding to.

A Deal with the Devil at Langley? In this same Department some years back, the prior Police Chief was provided a free trip to Langley for a special meeting. During that meeting, he was asked by the CIA to sign a secret Jurisdictional Agreement on behalf of his Department in which he agreed to submit jurisdiction on any case to the Feds that they requested.

Major amounts of military grade equipment was to be provided in exchange, including two armored cars, grenade launchers, full-auto real assault rifles and machine guns, body armor, bullet proof barriers and lots of military grade ammo. The Chief was an honorable man with integrity and refused to sign the agreement. Did he develop a strange neurological condition soon after that and have to resign? Did the CIA keep secretly working with a couple corrupt officers to distribute illegal drugs to high school kids from “DEA controlled deliveries”, a local smaller “feeder airport” through a seafood import “proprietary”, with a local drug task force (with special license plates to identify each other) either looking the other way or involved. Betcha this hasn’t stopped.

The department got a new Chief and now has the equipment offered. You can be sure that this secret transaction has already been successfully made in almost every large Urban Police Department. So far, a significant number of Sheriff’s offices have refused. The County Sheriff is the supreme law enforcement officer in any county and has authority even over the Feds. Be clear about this, these deals with the Devil at Langley to get jurisdiction over your local police are all driven by the Khazarian Mafia Kingpins who are Neo-Bolsheviks who plan to use DHS and our local Police to terrorize us, tyrannize us, completely asset strip us and then mass-murder us.

Supposedly all these “1033 Program” military equipment transfers for the big stuff have been stopped. Don’t believe it, that is mere propaganda, and the only big stuff going back is for updated electronic warfare systems, new advanced weaponry or for repair and major maintenance. For now until the Khazarian Mafia’s back is broken, expect increased surveillance and harassment by local police if you are in one of the categories on their watch lists (which is about half of the American people). This is the kind of surveillance and increased harassment Gun owners, Ron Paul supporters, Veterans, libertarians, Christians, Islamics, Patriots, anti-war activists, dissidents and alternative media reporters and journalists can expect more of as the Khazarian Mafia’s power is choked off by the whole World that is now ganging up on it.

DHS is here to militarize the American Police and turn America into a Neo-Bolshevik Stasi-style Police State and transform it into GAZA II with all Americans the New Palestinians. Once that is accomplished the Khazarian Mafia plans to treat Americans the same way Bolsheviks treated innocent Russian civilians. It raped, tortured and mass murdered 100 million of them. The Khazarian Mafia is Neo-Bolshevik and its top Policy-Makers are from the same age old bloodlines. They have recorded their intentions in stone at the Georgia Guidestones so we know this for certain. But here’s the deal. America is not Russia in 1917 and is the most armed up populace in the World. Despite all the recent efforts of the Khazarian Mafia to force our so-called “elected politicians” to disarm Americans, it will never happen. Americans have been buying guns at an increasing rate ever since the Khazarian Mafia deployed all these mass-shootings in gun free zones and major efforts to grab our guns began in earnest. Of course, most County Sheriffs in America are populist oriented and part of their local communities and elected because of the respect they have gained and maintained. But even large urban police are starting to wake up.

They have a dangerous enough job already thanks to the CIA drug trafficking into urban cities for black ops money and theirs and the BATF’s continuing gun sales to gangs, especially MS 13 and the Las Zetas who were trained by the US Military inside the USA. Most American urban police officers have no intention of going door to door to fulfill some crazy unConstitutional Presidential PDD or even a new Congressional law passed. They do not want to turn honest law-abiding American Gunowners, hunters and Veterans into a Solzenitzen-type spontaneously erupting vigilante counter-force that shoots with bigger bore, more accurate, longer reaching rifles than they can. Most police officers want to go home to their families at the end of the day, and they know that the anger of the average American is now growing against the out of control militarized swat teams that attack the wrong homes and often kill and maim innocent women and young children. Smart Officers and chiefs want to establish good community relations and be seen as the community as helpers and public servants, not their oppressors working for the ADL and DHS. By the way, most large urban police departments are trained by the ADL to view the average civilian as real or potential domestic terrorists, especially gun owners. Now because of the recent public concern for increased mass-shootings and terrorism, many police are changing their minds on gun control and actually favor conceal-carry by law abiding citizens who have met the standards and have proper training.

Too many Chiefs of big urban departments are given free junkets to Israel for such training, and while there are served some very special Koolaide in their drinks and given some sophisticated psychotronic mind-kontrol indoctrination training. Take the recent case when a dumb swat team broke in the wrong home with no proper warrant and threw a stun grenade into a baby’s crib, burning and blowing off part of the young child’s face. Or the many cases where the wrong homes are stormed by out of control savage swat looking for a few $10 rocks, and innocent life is criminally taken in an instant. Or all the illegal, unConstitutional seizures of cash and autos from innocent non-drug dealers, taken and placed into police and Federal coffers often into the private pockets of corrupt supervisors and chiefs and judges.

Related: Censorship Shock: Amazon.com Bans Investigative Book ‘Nobody Died At Sandy Hook’ And many Americans are starting to catch on to the fact that some of these mass-shootings in gun-free zones are real with real dead victims, while others like Sandy Hook are faked.

But that all are engineered, staged false-flag attacks on the Second Amendment. This has kept folks confused up until now, but thanks to the efforts of hundreds of tireless researchers the truth is now being published all over the Internet and is now readily available for all.

Conclusion: One thing is certain, the Khazarian Mafia is now cornered and its hegemony is rapidly being eroded. Its false-flag efforts to disarm Americans and any other efforts to do so will fail. The Khazarian Mafia is now doomed by the whole World which is building massive financial firewalls against it and gangingup on it. The Khazarian Mafia is being deconstructed bit by bit and you can expect they will have a hard landing and because they are such two-faced psychopaths, they will keep lying and murdering until the end.

Undoubtedly the Big Squeeze is now on the Khazarian Mafia, they are cornered and increasingly desperate and their private Fiat pernicious usury debt-based counterfeit money system has become a Ponzi scheme nearing collapse. And the BRICS System is just one of many new financial firewalls being built up against the Khazarian Mafia’s financial hegemony which is now destined to fail. There are certain factions in the Pentagon and American Intel which have so far been strong enough to place strong limits on what the Khazarian Mafia can do to retaliate, and they have been blocked from starting a nuclear WW3 with Russia as intended. Efforts by Senator John McCain and other Traitors like the retired General commanding ISIS have also failed. And all their recent efforts to attack Russia through Crimea and to destroy Syria and Iran have also failed because of the new military power and technological supremacy of the Russian Federation under the dynamic leadership of President Putin.

If these reports are true that China is severely restricting their container shipping companies until the Khazarian Mafia honors the Secret Reset Agreement, this is indeed a very interesting development. And if true it suggests that all the hype in the CMMM that China’s economy is worse than ours is likely exaggerated. A better guess is that China has prepared for this for quite a while and is no longer so dependent on American sales, perhaps already having established some lucrative new markets with Russia, South America, Malaysia and other trading partners. Is this part of a major economic trap for the Khazarian Mafia and its US Petro Dollar? In time we shall find out, and it make not take too long.

Couple Receives Notice Of Search 12 Months After It Happened And Why That Should Worry You To The Extreme January 19 2016 | From: AotearoaAWiderPrespective

A golden bay couple received a letter from the police. Attached to that was a signed search warrant. What was also attached was a “postponement” notice. The search had taken place, without their presence, 12 months earlier.

It appears that the police felt they could have something to do with a threat issued against Fonterra. the threat was that milk powder would be contaminated with 1080. Related: Satanists Escape Plan Involves Killing Natives Of New Zealand The couple, who had an impeccable record of non-violence and peaceful activism both here and in their native country Germany, was stunned to learn that the police had been in their house and had gathered hair tooth paste swabs and computer printouts. They had also downloaded telephone data and other storage data from their computers, and Ipads. They were also stunned that the police had been allowed to do so without their presence and been able to keep it secret for 12 months. During the period National has been in power several draconian law changes where pushed through. One of them the the way the police can search your home and the way they can spy on you. While most law abiding citizens assumed that it was to help the police find real nasty criminals such as drug dealers and gang members involved in crime or dangerous terrorists, for those of us political activists and bloggers it was just a matter of time for these powers to be used for the intimidation of people involved in activism of any kind.

The Kleinen family being a perfect example of people who are active and politically aware and who still had a modicum of trust in the system. From the article you will learn that they are no longer willing to cooperate with the police or even contact them. For them to find out a year after the fact that the police had been in their home secretly in January 2015 and had taken personal and private information as well as samples of their DNA without their knowledge as well as raiding their home another time in March 2015 when they were present broke whatever trust they have and it will do so for a lot more people. While the fact that the police can enter your home without your presence, secretly and without supervision is terrifying in and of itself just imagine what could happen if this becomes the norm and the police see this as a normal part of their investigation.

What is next? Will they start planting evidence if they don’t like your political views? Will they, as we witnessed in the Nicky Hager raid, lie to the judge to get search warrants for their political masters and set people the government doesn’t like up to be jailed after kangaroo court proceedings? Some 20 million Russians were killed in Russia by Stalin whose secret police and KGB torture centres and kangaroo court judges were willingly complicit in doing just that! The experience this couple has had will paly out ever more brutally in the coming years if we don’t fight this tooth and nail!

New “X-Files” Will Take On 9/11 Conspiracy, World Government And NSA Spying January 18 2016 | From: ActivistPost

Government corruption was always one of the main themes that played out in the classic television show X-Files, and it was typically shown in the form of UFO and alien cover-ups.

However, the show’s creator said in a recent interview that the new revival of the series will also touch on some of the more political conspiracies that take place in our world. X-Files creator Chris Carter said Edward Snowden and issues like the 9/11 conspiracy will be fair game in the new revival of the show. The new series will feature the same classic characters, David Duchovny as Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully.

“A lot of the rights and liberties that were signed away [with the Patriot Act] are being abused now, and no one seems to care,” Carter said. “We see the admitted spying by the government. These are not things we’re making up and it informs everything Mulder and Scully are doing,” he added.

Entertainment Weekly reported that the new series featured issues like, “war in the Middle East, NSA spying, chem-trails (here called ‘aerial contaminants’), police militarization, supposed FEMA prison camps, and the eventual military ‘takeover of America’ by a UN-like group of ‘multinational elites.’” “The idea of a New World Order is relevant,” Carter says. The article states that this elaborate web of conspiracies will tie back to the alien cover-up that took center stage in the older series. Carter continued;

“I’ve kept my finger to the wind and trying to figure out what’s relevant and possible credible. People know the show deals with science and fact and also deals with far-flung theories about not only the supernatural but government conspiracies. It throws out as many questions as it does answers. And I have to say what it’s done for me and the writers it has

given us a whole new open field which to run. It’s given the show an interesting new life and context that it might not have had in 2002."

The Biggest Leak In History Reaches New Zealand January 7 2016 | From: Converge / NickyHager

During 2015 the Edward Snowden leaks relating to New Zealand finally reached the news, the largest number of secret intelligence documents about New Zealand ever to reach the public. Snowden revelations had been appearing country by country for two years before they arrived here, so there is a risk that they might be taken a bit for granted.

But we do well to remember that leaks like this are not at all the normal state of affairs. The usual state with intelligence agencies is simply silence: no information, no news and no debate, unless of course the agencies themselves have chosen to release some self-justifying public relations. It is inevitable that we will return to that silence before too long, so we should make the most of the rare insights that Edward Snowden has given us. What follows is an overview of what we've learned; first the global picture and then about New Zealand in the Five Eyes alliance (US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ). The most well-publicised and shocking news in the Snowden documents was the scale of surveillance by the US-UK intelligence agencies: Tapping undersea cables, eavesdropping covertly from embassy buildings in numerous foreign capitals, intercepting the Internet in numerous ways, hacking into computer and telecom networks, routinely accessing US-based companies like Google and Facebook and much, much more.

Related: Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald & David Miranda Call For Global Privacy Treaty

No, Everyone Doesn’t Do It Some apologists say "everyone does it". But that isn't factually true. The Anglo-American surveillance network outstrips all other big powers in trying to spy on the whole Internet and all the communications on earth. It is a bizarre, science fiction-like mission. Two things have driven the massive expansion of surveillance. The most important is the growth of digital electronics. Sixty five years ago when the Five Eyes alliance began, the primary target of electronic spying was long distance radio. The five agencies used every technical opportunity to monitor and extract usable intelligence from this sole medium of communication. Twenty years ago - early in the digital age - when New Zealand intelligence staff told me about the alliance-wide mass surveillance systems used at the Waihopai station, the bulk communications of the world were relayed via satellites and these were the focus of the electronic spy agencies. This intelligence source was exploited to the maximum extent possible.

But today there are thousands of different digital systems and networks that communicate and store information. Each tiny detail of the booting of a computer, each aspect of a social media platform, each component of a mobile phone: they all provide potential vulnerabilities and access points for the teams of the electronic spies. This is what the Snowden documents revealed. This is why the scale of surveillance has increased so much. The AngloAmerican intelligence agencies continue to believe they should spy to the maximum extent possible and technology has hugely increased what is possible. Technical opportunity combined fatefully with political opportunity. The September 11, 2001 attacks gave the intelligence agencies greatly increased resources and political support to expand their operations. Now, 14 years later, the September 11 attacks are in the past and many people understand the mess created by the War on Terror. But all the main elements of the mass surveillance regime built in those years remains.

The electronic spy agencies have a profound effect on world politics. The primary purpose of intelligence agencies is to help their countries to have power and influence over other countries; much the same role as military force. Intelligence agencies are the unseen influences in every international issue and dispute. This is, at heart, what it means to be a Five Eyes intelligence ally: taking sides in these international issues and disputes. Some publicity of the Snowden revelations has made it seem as though the main casualties of mass surveillance systems were Americans and allied citizens, as national security intelligence gathering systems were secretly turned against domestic populations. There is more on this subject below. But the main use by far of the Five Eyes intelligence systems is spying on the rest of the world. That is what the agencies are for, that is where the vast majority of the casualties are and that is the subject that most deserves our concern.

NZ Spies On Friends The New Zealand-related Snowden revelations instantly made this clear. As the headline of the first newspaper story said: "The Price Of The Five Eyes Club: Mass Spying On Friendly Nations". A Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) report, obtained by Snowden from the computers of the National Security Agency (NSA), showed the New Zealand agency routinely spying on Samoa, Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati and all our other Pacific neighbours.

Private information on their governments, diplomats, economic negotiation positions and everything else from these supposed friends is handed on to the Five Eyes partners. The details are here. Some commentators argued that New Zealand needs to know the secrets of these nations for national security reasons, but that is weak and missed the point. The reason why New Zealand spies on these countries is as a long-term duty within the Anglo-American intelligence alliance. The world is divided up between the US and its allies and New Zealand's agency got the job of spying on every country from French Polynesia to the Solomon Islands. Old alliance obligations are put ahead of everything else. It is worth remembering that agencies like the GCSB get their legitimacy from the idea that they are fighting threats to the very security of the country. That is how they built up their powers: Cold War-type spying justified for dire Cold War-type threats. But there has been endless mission drift and normalising of the use of national security-type capabilities against targets that are not a serious threat at all. The South Pacific microstates are a sad example of this.

Other leaked documents showed GCSB staff used the NSA's XKeyscore system to monitor the emails of senior public servants in the Solomon Islands government. New Zealand was running inconsistent public and private foreign policies. In one, New Zealand is friendly to, and supports, the Solomons; in the other, New Zealand sells out the Solomons to gain political benefits in its US and UK relations. The GCSB duties in the alliance cover many other countries too, as listed in an April 2013 NSA profile of the GCSB in a section headed “What Partner Provides to NSA”. The review said the GCSB “continues to be especially helpful in its ability to provide NSA ready access to areas and countries … difficult for the US to access”. It said the “GCSB provides collection on China, Japanese/North Korean/Vietnamese/South American diplomatic communications, South Pacific island nations, Pakistan, India, Iran and Antarctica”.

These targets are largely disconnected from the rest of New Zealand's foreign policies and are not really about New Zealand's relations with those countries and territories at all. They are mainly about contributing to the intelligence alliance in its mission of spying on the whole world. A strange example of this is New Zealand helping to spy on Bangladesh. The main security threat by far to Bangladesh is flooding because of climate change. New Zealand could be helping. We could give aid. But, unbeknown to the New Zealand Parliament and public, New Zealand's main (in fact, practically only) interaction with that country is helping spy on it, as part of the US war on terror. The story can be read here.

Spying On Chinese Consulate Some of the GCSB spying has more direct and serious implications for New Zealand. The most striking example of this is about whether it is sensible for New Zealand to spy on its possibly most important trading partner to show its loyalty to old colonial intelligence ties.

- www.gcsb.govt.nz

This is about China. In public, the National government professes close and friendly relations with China. Many of the Government's economic plans revolve around increasing exports to that country. And it is strongly in New Zealand's interests not to get caught in big power rivalry between the US and China. But in secret, within the spy agencies, China comes first on the list of intelligence targets that New Zealand takes on for the US-led intelligence alliance. Probably the most surprising thing we found in the Snowden papers was plans for a joint GCSB-NSA operation to hack into the communications of the Chinese Consulate in Auckland.

- www.gcsb.govt.nz

This seems almost crazy, with little practical gain likely compared to the obvious risks. But up until 2013, when Snowden left the NSA with his trove of internal documents, planning was full steam ahead for breaking international law and tapping into the Consulate communications. We wrote the story carefully, because Snowden's access to documents stopped before there was time to see that that the Consulate spying was underway. But my view was that it was such a sensitive subject that the Government would quickly deny the story if the spying had not gone ahead. When the story was published, the Government said nothing.

- www.gcsb.govt.nz

Intelligence agencies like to hint about the remarkable intelligence that New Zealand receives in exchange for contributing to the Five Eyes alliance. However the leaked GCSB and NSA documents contained far more about what New Zealand gives to the NSA than what it gets in return. The main benefit to New Zealand appears to be that New Zealand spies get access to high-tech NSA surveillance and analysis technology: setting up and training New Zealand staff to be able to contribute to the alliance-wide intelligence missions.

Spying For Tim Groser There was only one story about New Zealand using its access to the international intelligence systems to get a particular benefit for New Zealand. It's a grubby and embarrassing story.

The story dates from early 2013, when Trade Minister Tim Groser was frantically travelling the world lobbying to be appointed as Director General of the World Trade Organisation. Candidates from eight other countries - Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, Brazil, Kenya, Ghana, Jordan and Costa Rica were also going for the job. The National government used the Five Eyes Internet mass surveillance systems to spy on the other candidates' emails. In other words, it cheated, using the intelligence agency to do a favour for a mate. It is hard to imagine a more petty use of national security systems. That's what they got in return for spying on our friends, trading partners and neighbours. The final revelations worth mentioning are about the Waihopai station. Internal GCSB documents revealed for the first time precisely what systems are used there. I recommend this article, or here with the illustrations.

Waihopai’s Odd Codenames The Snowden-leaked documents reveal that the Waihopai staff use all of the following systems: Apparition - finds position of isolated "VSAT" satellite users Darkquest - analyses satellite communications Fallowhaunt - targets “VSAT" satellite communications Juggernaut - targets and processes cellphone communications Latentheat - breaks the intercepted satellite signals down into individual messages Legalreptile - collects text messages and call metadata Lopers - searches for phone numbers in intercepted messages

Semitone - processes fax and voice messages Stonegate - collects and processes dial-up and fax modem data Surfboard - targets land-line phones Venusaffect - "command and control" of other systems Wealthycluster - processes digital comms, especially voice over Internet protocol (VoiP) Xkeyscore - targets and processes bulk Internet traffic. Plus others with equally odd names for which we could not figure out the function. These are not GCSB or New Zealand systems. They are NSA systems, standard equipment in one of the standardised Five Eyes satellite interception stations dotted around the world. They are a reminder of how thoroughly un-New Zealand the Waihopai operation is. The final subject raised by the Snowden revelations is how much the Five Eyes intelligence systems have been turned against these countries' own citizens.

Spying On New Zealanders Back when I was interviewing a range of GCSB staff in the 1990s, they assured me that there were strict rules against any of the Five Eyes agencies spying on their own or one of the other four countries' citizens. Except in exceptional situations, I think this was true. It is now clear that technological change and the War on Terror politics have changed this. I think it is very important to be as precise as possible on this subject. The idea of mass surveillance (whether it is correct or not) has an insidious and damaging effect on people. It corrodes our sense of private space and of private thoughts, and our sense of self. This means that people speaking publicly about the effects of intelligence activities have to be careful not to create needless fear. I will run through what I think is, and is not, going on.

First, following the Snowden revelations there have been claims that everyone is being monitored all the time: every time they take out a library book, speak on the phone or go on the Internet. This is not true and it's vital that we reassure people. The principle underlying mass surveillance systems is that they do try to catch everyone's communications in a giant spy net, so that when they want to target someone or some subject, the data is available. But this does not mean that everyone is being actively watched; that some shadowy intelligence officer somewhere

is actually monitoring those library books and emails. Something like 99.99% of people caught in the electronic net will never be actively monitored. Sometimes their Internet browsing may be incidentally caught in an overseas Internet capture system, but it will almost certainly remain an unexamined piece of hay in a huge intelligence haystack.

We should be concerned about the real target groups (for instance currently some Muslim people) but we should not spread unnecessary fear to others. Nearly everyone who ever worries that they might be a target of mass surveillance systems is luckily wrong. They can live their lives feeling unviolated because it is genuinely alright. The next point is that there is no evidence of mass surveillance systems in New Zealand. What I mean is that there is no evidence that internal New Zealand communications are intercepted en masse and processed into metadata or other intelligence. That is what the GCSB helps do to other countries, but not what happens here. When Police or other Government agencies want to monitor a New Zealander or person within New Zealand, they mostly use a completely separate system. These systems are known in the trade as "LI" (lawful interception) systems. A 2004 law (the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act) made it obligatory for all telcos, Internet service providers (ISPs) and network companies to install interception-capable equipment.

This means that when the Police or other agencies want to monitor an individual or group, they can get a warrant, plug into the company's servers via the LI back doors and extract all the specified people's data. This is the same law enforcement arrangement seen in many similar countries which, like New Zealand, were lobbied in the 1990s and early 2000s by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to introduce the systems. But it is designed for targeted monitoring with a warrant. That's how it is mostly done in New Zealand. It has bad aspects, but nonetheless is more like traditional phone tapping than mass surveillance. Thus the way it is supposed to work is that the GCSB/Five Eyes systems are used on other countries, but only the LI systems are used within New Zealand for investigating crimes and so on.

Stay Tuned For A Convenient Law Change Then came the War on Terror, when increasingly the US and allied intelligence agencies turned their national security-style systems onto their own citizens. At the same time the growth of the Internet has meant that New Zealanders' communications can often be caught in the spy nets far away. Nowadays, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders' Internet traffic will be caught in Five Eyes Internet surveillance as it passes over US and British territory and automatically "ingested" into gigantic databases of Internet metadata (a record of who was communicating with whom, when and where.) This doesn't mean New Zealanders are being actively targeted and it doesn't mean that anyone will actively look at most people's data. But it does mean that it is a lie that New Zealanders are not being monitored in GCSB-aided mass surveillance systems. When John Key assured the public that there was no mass surveillance of New Zealanders, he was referring to tapping of undersea cables. But the place that the GCSB definitely does mass surveillance is satellite communications monitored at Waihopai and that is where New Zealanders are being caught.

This is an issue right now. Large numbers of New Zealanders are being inadvertently caught in GCSB mass surveillance systems and by law this should not be occurring. So despite rewriting its laws to legalise the last round of unlawful GCSB monitoring, it appears the GCSB is still unlawfully monitoring a large number of New Zealanders (such as those communicating in the Pacific region). Following the New Zealand Snowden revelations, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security is currently investigating this situation. The GCSB will be looking for a way to legalise these latest unlawful operations. I suspect that the agencies will use the current far-from-independent Intelligence Review to get a recommendation for a convenient law change. So, sadly, New Zealand has in part caught up with the rest of the world. Our citizens are affected by the Five Eyes surveillance systems like people in all the rest of the world.

No Controls Or Limits On Foreign Spying But, as I said, if we care about minimising the harm to people we will not overstate it. These systems affect people everywhere but least of all in the Five Eyes nations, including New Zealand. Even where New Zealanders are caught in the net, this is not the same as active targeting and monitoring.

We should care far more about the publics and governments of other countries, who are constant targets of the Five Eyes harvest. For them there are no controls and no limits, and in our region it is silently aided by New Zealand through the GCSB.

Alex Jones Exposes The Truth Behind Star Wars December 24 2015 | From: Infowars

Once again, science fiction mirrors reality...

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has hit theaters, continuing the cinematic saga of an interplanetary civilization’s struggles with galactic war and tyranny. Alex Jones breaks down the hidden truth behind the Star Wars films detailing the global warfare driven by a planetary empire on the verge of descending into a militarized police state.

Worst Anti-Privacy Bill Since The Patriot Act, Passes Hidden In A Budget Bill And Media Is Silent December 22 2015 | From: ActivistPost / Various

On Friday, Congress passed a $1.15 trillion omnibus spending package to continue funding the federal government, which included an already defeated, and extremely controversial cyber security bill, that was inserted into the spending package as a means of assuring its passage.

Sorry, they got their way this time

In spite of this massive revelation and horrific blow to privacy, the mainstream media remains mum. While many outlets are covering the passage of the spending bill, they are completely omitting anything about CISA. Related: CISA Quietly Passed by Congress thru Sleight of Hand The New York Times, for example, broke the story Friday morning about Congress passing the omnibus measure. However, they conveniently left out any mention of CISA. Aside from the tech sites who know about the dangers of this measure, the entire realm of mainstream media is choosing to remain silent. The Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), quietly pushed back in 2014 before being shut down by civil rights and privacy advocates, was added into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill by House Speaker Paul Ryan as a means circumventing rampant opposition to the anti-privacy legislation. First it was SOPA, but they couldn't get that through:

SOPA Related: The TPPA Is Worse Than We Thought: Environmental Risks, Runaway Corporate Power, Weakened Democracy: A Total Corporate Power Grab Nightmare

Then they came up with CISPA, but they couldn't get that through.

CISPA Related: SOPA’s Evil Twin Sister – CISPA

If they can't get what they want through in one bill, they morph it into another and keep on truckin' until they do:

The CISA legislation, which Rep. Justin Amash called “the worst anti-privacy legislation since the USA PATRIOT Act,” has now been passed by Congress and will be signed into law by President Obama as part of the government spending package. Advocates of the CISA provisions say their aim is to help prevent cyber threats, but critics say that the legislation essentially gives corporations legal immunity when sharing consumers’ private data about hacks and digital breaches with the Department of Homeland Security. According to a report by Wired:

“It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness."

Originally, the CISA anti-privacy legislation was shelved after a public outcry against the bill, but corporations soon realized the bill would provide them with legal immunity for sharing customers’ private data with the government and began a renewed effort to pass CISA. And miraculously, even in defeat, a bad bill became worse, and a crisis became an opportunity.

“They took a bad bill, and they made it worse,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute, told Wired. “They’ve got this bill that’s kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they’ve seen an opportunity to push it through without debate. And they’re taking that opportunity.”

By including CISA into the government’s overall spending package, it meant that for anti-privacy legislation to be defeated the spending bill had to also be defeated, which would have meant a government shutdown beginning next week.

“Unfortunately, this misguided cyber legislation does little to protect Americans’ security and a great deal more to threaten our privacy than the flawed Senate version. Americans demand real solutions that will protect them from foreign hackers, not knee-jerk responses that allow companies to fork over huge amounts of their customers’ private data with only cursory review.” Sen. Ron Wyden said of the insertion of the CISA into the spending bill."

It’s a shameful testament to the power of corporations and the intelligence community, to craft legislation that the American people clearly don’t support and then hide it within a budget bill to gain passage of the legislation, due to the fact that the public would never support it otherwise. What’s more is that the Praetorian guard, also known as the mainstream media is choosing to keep it out of the public’s eye.

“There’s plenty wrong with this omnibus, but there’s nothing more egregious than the cyber language they secretly slipped in,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) told The Hill by email.

Sadly, this seems to be business as usual in Washington, D.C.

When corporations and government craft and push their own legislation, which by large measure individuals and the public don’t support, corporate fascism is clearly at the doorstep. A dangerous stage is being set for turnkey totalitarianism in the United States. Please share this article with your friends and family who will most assuredly not hear about it on the TV or radio. Brought to you by: Full Disclosure: The Internet Dark Age - Five Eyes Sources And Methods Uncovered Disabling The FVEY ECHELON / GCHQ / NSA / CSEC / DSD / GCHB Systems

Gordon Campbell On The Police Harassment Of Nicky Hager December 21 2015 | From: Scoop

So now we know. If you’ve done something to really annoy the Establishment – hello, Kim Dotcom, Heather Du Plessis Allen, Nicky Hager and teapot tapes photographer Bradley Ambrose

Not only will you rocket to the top of the priority list for the Police and their scant resources, but chances are they’ll overstep their lawful authority while turning you over. Meanwhile the dodgy behaviours and payments documented in Hager’s book Dirty Politics will go un- investigated. How many more examples of Police partiality in the use of its investigative discretion do we need? The Police are a tool. Cross their political masters and you’ll pay the price. In the case of the Hager investigation there are several disturbing aspects. Beforehand, the Police knew they were unlikely to find any evidence relevant to the identity of the hacker they were trying to find. Hager was officially not a suspect. Justice Clifford’s decision says that this was a mission motivated by little more than hope.

Secondly, what the judge called the Police’s “fundamental error” was that they failed to reveal to the District Court judge issuing the search warrant that the target of their warrant was a journalist – and therefore someone likely to enjoy the protections afforded to journalists under the Evidence Act. This looks particularly suspicious when – at 8.30am in a search that went on to 6pm – the Police actually asked Hager whether he wanted to invoke his journalistic privilege. Which Hager immediately did. As a result, this prevented the Police from examining the material they were gathering. It became evidence that had to be bagged and sealed, and could be opened subsequently only at the order of (another) judge. Therefore, if this was a raid designed to get evidence that would quickly uncover the hacker’s identity, it had become pointless almost as soon as the Police gained entry to Hager’s house. The more important point being: If the Police knew about the probability of journalistic privilege being invoked, why didn’t they tell the District Court judge beforehand – in which case, the judge might have asked them some awkward questions.

With hindsight, it looks like a willful lack of disclosure by the Police officers concerned. (Lets leave aside for now the issue of how the Police managed to find a judge who must be the only person in New Zealand unaware that this Nicholas Alfred Hager bloke named on the warrant was, in fact, a journalist. Did it not occur to the judge to ask any questions at all? Given that the scrutiny of the judge is supposed to be a check and balance on Police getting search warrants willy nilly, this part of the story isn’t very re-assuring, either.) So, where are we now? Hager has had his belongings (some of them the basic tools of his trade) held in Police custody for well over a year. Hopefully – if the Police don’t appeal the decision – those belongings will now be returned, and lets hope that the inconvenience gets added to the compensation and damages payment Hager is now surely liable to receive, after being on the receiving end of an unlawful Police warrant and search.

Already there has been a lot of talk about how Justice Clifford’s decision has set a precedent and raised the bar on journalistic privilege. I don’t really think so. The rules were already there in black and white in the Evidence Act, and the Police broke them at will. If sufficiently motivated, they will do so again. The next time someone royally pisses off the political Establishment, it’s a safe bet that the Police will come knocking on their door. In this case, the Police were hoping to find something that might criminalise Hager, and shut him up for good. If that didn’t happen, they could at least harass him, inconvenience him and disrupt his ability to do his work for months and months on end. That goal has been achieved. Ultimately, you can bet no Police officer will be sanctioned over this affair. And as always, the taxpayers will pick up the compensation tab for the Police incompetence (and/or malice) that has marked their behavior on this occasion.

Police Raid On Nicky Hager’s Home Ruled Unlawful December 18 2015 | From: AotearoaAWiderPerspective / RadioNZ

Today was a good day for what remains of our besieged democracy! The police raid on Nicky Hager’s home was ruled illegal and unlawful! My congratulations to Nicky Hager and many, many thanks for his courage and dignified response.

I know from experience how damaging and stressful both bullying on that scale and the subsequent effort to get justice can be. We need people like Nicky Hager to be able to do their work and we need whistle blowers to be safe when they expose people in power and their nasty dirty politics! Related: Privacy Implications Of Westpac's Release Of Nicky Hager's Personal Information Also my heartfelt gratitude for Justice Clifford for the clear and forceful ruling he has made! There should be repercussions for the people involved and heads should roll over the bullying tactics of the police and their superiors!

The High Court in Wellington has found police failed to disclose relevant information to the judge who issued a search warrant. The warrant was obtained and the search took place after blogger Cameron Slater laid a complaint when information from his computer, obtained by a hacker known as Rawshark, was published in Mr Hager’s book Dirty Politics. Justice Clifford declared the warrant was “fundamentally unlawful”. Speaking on Checkpoint Mr Hager said it was a good day for journalism;

“If this decision had gone the wrong way then all around the country, and into the future, there would have been people we needed to be speaking up on issues as sources – telling the media what was going, on letting the public know about things – who would have been more frightened of doing that. He said the police action was a case of, “raid first and sort it out later. What the police thought they could do... they thought they could raid the house, take all our stuff, and then sometime in the future in a court case decide whether they were allowed it or not.”

Mr Hager said he was very happy with the decision, for his family and what he said were the important principles it upheld. He said the public’s right to receive information about the actions of people in positions of authority was at the heart of the case.

Listen to Mr Hager on Checkpoint ( 4 min 47 sec )

Mr Hager said it also acknowledged that the confidential sources used in investigative journalism, and in his case his book Dirty Politics, deserved legal protection. He said more hearings would follow on other police actions taken against him, and he would be seeking costs and damages. Mr Hager had asked the court to rule on the legality of the search warrant and the search of his home last October. Police said they received Justice Clifford's decision this afternoon and would take time to study the decision and consider further legal options with Crown Law. Crown admits breach in Hager search Crown responds to issues raised by Hager's lawyers Court hears about 'chilling' effect of Hager search NZ spies on Asian countries, says Hager Pacific politicians 'routinely' spied on Related: Dissident Solutions: What’s Happening To Nicky Hager?

Donald Sutherland Explains The Real Meaning Of 'The Hunger Games' And Why Its Message Must Be Understood December 1 2015 | From: TheFreeThoughtProject

There are some inside Hollywood, who are trying to wake up the world - Donald Sutherland is one of them.

Hollywood actor, Donald Sutherland just dropped a bombshell on the military industrial complex. Sutherland, who plays President Coriolanus Snow in the blockbuster movie series Hunger Games, was recently asked what the movie was really about – he held no punches in his answer.

“The young people who see this film must recognize that for the future ‘blind faith in their leaders,’ as Bruce Springsteen said, ‘will get you dead.'”

Comment: It is interesting to note that the family 'Sutherland' is listed as one of the top 300 family bloodlines of the Illuminati. However this does not mean that Donald is Illuminati, although his significance in the enterainment industry is curious. The point is though, that just because a person has the surname of an Illuminati bloodline family does not necessarily mean that any such particular individual is "Illuminati". My family name is on that same list also, and while I know there are some in my family line that are "Illuminati", I most certainly am not. Sutherland continued:

“If there’s any question as to what it’s an allegory for I will tell you. It is the powers that be in the United States of America. It’s profiteers. War is for profit. It’s not “to save the world for democracy” or “for king and country. No, bulls**t. It’s for the profit of the top 10%, and the young people who see this film must recognize that for the future ‘blind faith in their leaders,’ as Bruce Springsteen said, “will get you dead.”

Those who are awake to the war machine, and have watched the movies or read the books, have undoubtedly seen the underlying anti-establishment theme within. However, those who do not notice it should heed Sutherland’s words.

It is no question that war is for the profit of very few people. In fact, as the famous, two-time Medal of Honor recipient, Major General Smedley Butler of the USMC said;

“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?"

Sutherland does get one thing wrong, however, and that is the percentage that he assigns to those who profit from war. It is nowhere near 10% as he states. Those who profit from war, as Smedley Butler points out above, are a tiny group of people. The ruling elite.

It’s the weapons manufacturers, the arms dealers, the inside politicians, and the state itself. Everyone else involved in war, including those who die for it, are merely pawns. They are cogs in the machine whose only purpose is to spread death and destruction. Please share this article and video so that others, who may have missed the point of this movie series, may see its true purpose – calling out the elite for the criminals that they are.

What You're Not Being Told About Booz Allen Hamilton And Edward Snowden November 30 2015 | From: Truthloader

Edward Snowden didn't actually work for the NSA, he worked for a contractor called Booz Allen Hamilton.

How did it come to be that Snowden, working for a private company, was able to leak information about a top secret surveillance program?

Truthloader is a channel dedicated to citizen journalism. We find the best examples of crowd-sourced video and independent content, then use our expertise to add context and analysis. We respond to the stories you're interested in, so if you've got a story you'd love us to get to the bottom of, tweet us, Facebook us, or respond to our videos with a comment and perhaps check out our reddit.

Censorship Shock: Amazon.com Bans Investigative Book ‘Nobody Died At Sandy Hook’ Because It Disagrees With Government Version Of What Happened November 28 2015 | From: NaturalNews

In a stunning demonstration of online book burning, Amazon.com has just banned a book because of its contents.

The book Nobody Died at Sandy Hook consists of analysis from a dozen contributor authors, and it’s edited by Jim Fetzer, Ph.D. The book concludes that Sandy Hook was a staged FEMA drill carried out by the government to push an agenda of nationwide gun control. Use hashtag #StopAmazonCensorship to Tweet this story. We have a full download of the book below in PDF form, so keep reading if you want to find out what's so "dangerous" about this book that Amazon had to ban it... Whether the authors' conclusions are well-founded or complete lunacy isn't the point here. Amazon.com has selectively targeted this book for censorship due to the political incorrectness of the author's conclusions. Remember, Amazon.com went out of its way to ban Confederate flags in the aftermath of another shooting, enforcing a grotesque, almost Stalinist political correctness in its decision to pull Confederate flag merchandise from its online store (including children's toys like the General Lee car from Dukes of Hazzard).

Yet at the same time, Amazon sells tens of thousands of books asserting all sorts of bizarre things, from authors who believe the Earth is literally flat to Adolf Hitler's pro-genocidal Mein Kampf.

"If you Disagree with the Government, Amazon can Pull your Book..." Amazon's banning of Fetzer's book is a dangerous precedent of banning books based on their non-conformity with political correctness. "Amazon gave me no reason," Fetzer told Natural News.

“The situation is completely absurd... if you disagree with a government version of anything, Amazon can pull your book."

This brings up the possibility that Amazon might soon ban U.S. history books that show the country's Founding Fathers in a positive light, for example. Will books on Thomas Jefferson soon be memory holed by the Amazon Ministry of Truth? What about books that question the cancer industry or Monsanto's GMOs? Notably, Jeff Bezos is both the founder of Amazon.com and the owner of the Washington Post, a highly politicized paper whose "science" writers parrot Monsanto talking points with absolute obedience. On Fetzer's blog, he further explains that Amazon.com had already accepted his book for publication, then reversed its position when sales began to take off:

Create Space and amazon.com review every submission for its suitability for publication and conformity to their guidelines before they are accepted for publication. They accepted and published NOBODY DIED AT SANDY HOOK on 22 October 2015, nearly a month ago. There is no good reason for this book to now be taken down for further review other than that it has become a

sensation and has the potential to embarrass the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama, which appears to be the underlying problem.

Click here to search GoodGopher.com for "Sandy Hook." Good Gopher is the indy media search engine I created as an alternative to the Google censorship now experienced by nearly everyone across the independent media.

What's so Dangerous About a Book that most Americans think is Complete Fiction Anyway? According to Amazon.com, selling a pro-genocide book by Adolf Hitler seems perfectly acceptable, yet something in Jim Fetzer's "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook" is so incredibly offensive (or dangerous) that it must be banned at all costs. It begs the obvious question: What is so dangerous about Fetzer's book that Amazon.com must banish it from retail? Perhaps 90% of Americans would take one look at the title and consider the book to be a complete joke from the start. They'd call it "loony conspiracy theory" material and wouldn't give it a second thought. So why bother banning it? Or is the book so compelling that it runs the risk of making "believers" out of former skeptics? If "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook" is filled with complete nonsense, then why risk making it a sensation from the censorship angle alone? (See the latest indy media headlines on censorship at Censorship.news.)

Amazon.com sells all sorts of books filled with complete nonsense, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5. If a book's factual basis is the determining factor for whether it should be carried by the online retailer, then half of Amazon.com's inventory must now be reviewed and possibly pulled. Clearly, something in "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook" has the powers that be so frightened that they are desperately trying to memory hole the book.

What if Sandy Hook were Totally Staged? I haven't read the book, and school shootings are not my investigative focus, so I'm not yet informed enough to make any conclusive statements on this topic. But my curiosity is raised, and there are some things we already know about the fraud of staged news events and political events taking place right now. For example, we know the mainstream media is largely fake and staged. We know CNN uses "crisis actors" and that a few of these crisis actors were also on location at the Sandy Hook event, crying on cue and playing out their roles for the TV cameras (see the video links below).

We also know that some of these same crisis actors appear multiple times on camera at different staged events such as the Boston Bombing and the Umpqua Community College shooting. See the following videos for examples of footage on these "crisis actors." (I can't vouch for the authenticity of all these videos, by the way. This is just a sampling of what's out there on this topic...) Same crisis actor at Sandy Hook and Boston Bombing Sandy Hook crisis actors read cue cards for the cameras Crisis actors busted: Fake Sandy Hook eyewitness Sandy Hook hoax and lies And this one from just six days ago: Sandy Hook crisis actors pose as Paris attack victims! We also know for a fact that Sandy Hook was seized upon by gun control opponents in an attempt to destroy the Second Amendment rights of all Americans. The crisis appears to have been ready made for precisely such a political push, complete with the imagery of children's bodies and sobbing parents which, according to Fetzer, was nothing more than elaborate theater. That's the basis of his book, after all: That the entire "shooting" was staged as a drill. Nobody really died at Sandy Hook, he says, and a quick glance at his book definitely raises some interesting questions.

5-Star Ratings from Amazon.com Readers... Soo Why was it Banned? As the screen shot shows below, this book was receiving 5-star reviews from Amazon readers. (h/t to Rense.com for the screen shot.)

And you can click here for a cached image proving the book was being sold on Amazon. If readers were loving the book -- and even if they weren't -- why would Amazon.com pull it from retail?

Download the Book here and View for Yourself We have permission from the author to post the full copy of this book as a PDF. Click this link to download the entire book (PDF). We're also interviewing Fetzer and will be posting the interview on TalkNetwork.com tomorrow, during the Health Ranger Report show which airs at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern. Listen in at TalkNetwork.com.

Censoring Unpopular Thought Amazon's censorship effort should be disturbing to all of us, regardless of whether we agree or disagree with the conclusions of the author of this banned book. By banning this book because of its speech, Amazon.com now believes it has a right to determine "truth" in books and ban those books that contradict the company's opinions on current events. Amazon.com, in other words, has just become your Big Brother, and it's going to decide what you can and cannot read. To me, that's far more alarming than anything we might find in the pages of "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook," regardless of whether it's truth or fiction.

If Amazon.com is now the arbiter of what kind of political information you're allowed to read, then we're already deep into the corporatocracy of a police state society... and it all gives even more credence to the possibility that Fetzer's book rings true with an increasing number of Americans who are waking up to what's really happening.

Britain Is Too Tolerant And Should Interfere More In People's Lives, Says David Cameron November 27 2015 | From: Indpendent

The PM is unveiling measures to crack down on 'extremists'. Britain is too “passively tolerant” and should not leave people to live their lives as they please just because they obey the law, David Cameron has said.

At the National Security Council today Mr Cameron unveiled a series of measures that he said would crack down on people holding minority “extremist” views that differed from Britain’s consensus.

“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone',” he said. “It's often meant we have stood neutral between different values. And that's helped foster a narrative of extremism and grievance.”

Speaking on BBC Radio 4 today, however, the Home Secretary Theresa May said that tolerance and rule of law were ‘British values’.

“[The measures are part of a] bigger picture, a strategy which will also have as a key part of it actually promoting our British values, our values of democracy, rule of law, tolerance and acceptance of different faiths,” she said. She said the measures would focus on “seeking to undermine the very values that make us a great country to live in”.

Ms May first set out the proposals presented by Mr Cameron before the general election but was prevented from bringing them forward by the Liberal Democrats.

The package of powers, first proposed in March, would allow courts to force a person to send their tweets and Facebook posts to the police for approval. Ofcom will have new powers to pressurise broadcasters which show content deemed “extreme” while the Charity Commission would be mandated to scrutinise charities who “misappropriate funds”. The Prime Minister's comments about tolerance were met with criticism on social media.

Snowden Vindicated As Judge Shuts Down NSA Bulk Spying In Epic Smackdown November 13 2015 | From: DCclothesline / Geopolitics

On Monday, a federal judge ordered a halt to the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program in a reiteration and confirmation of a previous ruling that found the practice “unconstitutional” - and even “Orwellian.”

“This court simply cannot, and will not, allow the government to trump the Constitution merely because it suits the exigencies of the moment,” stated Washington, D.C. District Court Judge Richard Leon in his mordant 43-page ruling. Related: Snowden Celebrates ‘Broadly Influential’ Ruling Against NSA Dragnet Edward Snowden immediately hailed the decision, pointing out significant passages from the court to his millions of Twitter followers. Of particular importance - and, indeed, at the heart of both known and potentially unknown domestic spy programs - remains the impossible reckoning between Fourth Amendment protections and the government’s claims of a national security imperative.

“Moved by whatever momentary evil has aroused their fears, officials - perhaps even supported by a majority of citizens - may be tempted to conduct searches that sacrifice the liberty of each citizen to assuage the perceived evil. But the Fourth Amendment rests on the principle that a true balance between the individual and society depends on the recognition of ‘the right to be let [sic] alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men,’”the ruling stated, with emphasis added by Snowden. In another tweet, the whistleblower summarized the ruling: “Judge rejects government claim that so long as you aren’t targeted individually, dragnet searches of your life are OK.”

Though Leon’s judgment arrives mere weeks before metadata collection would naturally end under the USA Patriot Act’s Section 215 upon implementation of the newly passed USA Freedom Act, he emphasized potential implications of any undue delay in bringing such spying to a close, stating:

“In my December 2013 Opinion, I stayed my order pending appeal in light of the national security interests at stake and the novelty of the constitutional issues raised. I did so with the optimistic hope that the appeals process would move expeditiously. However, because it has been almost two years since I first found that the NSA’s Bulk Telephony Metadata

Program likely violates the Constitution and because of the loss of constitutional freedoms for even one day is a significant harm […] I will not do that today.”

In other words, the judge harshly repudiated the government’s already poorly disguised emphasis on national security to justify bulk collection as wholly secondary to the individual’s right to privacy under the Constitution. Leon’s 2013 ruling was struck down in August this year, when an appeals court found the plaintiff in Klayman v. Obama had not established the legal standing necessary to dispute the constitutionality of the NSA program. Once amended appropriately, the judge was able to make a ruling on the original case and issue an injunction to halt bulk collection. In this ruling, Leon sharply admonished the appeals court for its reversal, saying:

“Because the loss of constitutional freedoms is an ‘irreparable injury’ of the highest order, and relief to the two named plaintiffs would not undermine national security interests, I found that a preliminary injunction was not merely warranted — it was required.” [emphasis by the judge]

Seemingly irritated at the insult of the government maintaining its position on the necessity of bulk collection while ignoring the preceding twenty-two months to find less invasive means to achieve the same goal, Leon searingly stated:

“To say the least, it is difficult to give meaningful weight to a risk of harm created, in significant part, by the Government’s own recalcitrance.”

Pointing out the painfully obvious, Leon derided fictitious claims the government needs bulk data collection at all, considering the program thwarted exactly zero terror attacks throughout its entire duration. In rebuttal to claims the contentious NSA program remains reasonably effective, the judge flatly stated:

“This is a conclusion I simply cannot reach given the continuing lack of evidence that the Program has ever actually been successful as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.”

Pulling no punches, Leon concludes with a scathing challenge to the naïveté and blind acceptance Congress mistakenly presumed the public and court would give the contentiously invasive program:

“To be sure, the very purpose of the Fourth Amendment would be undermined were this court to defer to Congress’s determination that individual liberty should be sacrificed to better combat today’s evil.”

Employing linguistic subtlety which, at times, borders on a verbal smackdown, Judge Richard Leon brilliantly sent the NSA, Congress, and rest of the government a message that couldn’t be denied this second time around: Nobody buys your bullshit.

The Refugee Crisis False Flag Will [Aims To] Usher In A UN Global Biometric ID System November 10 2015 | From: WND / Various

Thousands of Muslim migrants 'disappear' from camps. Where oh where have the Muslim migrants gone?

That is the question German authorities are asking themselves after some troubling reports of disappearances. Related: George Soros letter reveals globalist plan to destroy the First World by eliminating national borders with global migrant blitzkreig invasions According to German press reports, keeping track of all the Muhammads and Alis pouring across borders is proving ever so tricky for European countries being flooded with people on the move from the Middle East and Africa. Now, the United Nations is partnering with a private company to offer a solution – a new “universal” identification system that will comply with the United Nations’ sustainability goal of getting “legal” biometric IDs that include iris scans, photographs and fingerprints, “into the hands of everyone in the world by the year 2030.” It offers hope for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of getting legal ID into the hands of everyone in the world by the year 2030 with its Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative. As author-blogger Pamela Geller noted this week, citing German press reports, more than one in two refugees from one camp went missing and are now unaccounted for and considered “on the run.” At least 580 refugees initially were reported to have disappeared from Camp Shelterschlefe. Now, in a “terrible new twist,” the disappearances are spreading.

“It’s become an epidemic,” Geller said. “7,000 migrants have left the Brandenburg shelters. Where are they going? Who is sheltering these illegals, many with ties to ISIS?”

Such a high number of people hiding is “completely unacceptable,” according to the German authorities. “Where are they hiding? Could they be connecting with sleeper cells?” Geller writes.

“Is it any wonder that Europeans are scrambling for guns?” Geller added, referencing a report by WND earlier this week that long guns are flying off the shelves in Austria and other countries where it’s still legal for average citizens to buy firearms.

Die Welt is reporting that thousands of refugees have left their assigned accommodations.

“It’s become an epidemic,” Geller said. “7,000 migrants have left the Brandenburg shelters. Where are they going? Who is sheltering these illegals, many with ties to ISIS?”

the news outlet reports. Refugees disappear daily from the initial welcoming centers in Brandenburg without giving notice. “They are simply not there anymore,”

Authorities said they believed the missing persons to be heading on their own to stay with family or friends already in Germany or in other countries throughout Europe, or at least that’s the hope. Several hundred migrants have disappeared each week since the beginning of September without signing in, Ingo Decker, the spokesman of the Potsdam Ministry of the Interior, told Die Welt.

“Eventually, these refugees are simply not there anymore,” he

said.

On Wednesday alone, more than 600 people left the welcoming center, Susan Fischer, the deputy ministry spokeswoman, reported to the newspaper. According to official figures of the state government, more than 17,000 newcomers came into the country since early September. About 7,800 have been housed in cities and villages, about 2,700 people are still in the initial reception centers. That leaves at least 7,000 who have left and are AWOL. A report from German news outlet Faz.net headlined “Refugees disappearing from lodging,” says around 700 refugees disappeared from emergency accommodations in Lower Saxony. Voices calling for a direct registration by the governmental agencies are getting louder. National authorities required cities and towns in the region to accommodate 4,000 on short notice and now can’t account for all of them.

Germany’s welcome mat ‘setting the stage’ Paul McGuire, an analyst who has appeared on Fox News and the History Channel and co-author of the new book, “The Babylon Code: Solving the Bible’s Greatest End Times Mystery,” says the heavy influx of Muslim migrants almost assures there will be another terrorist attack at least as big as what happened in Paris earlier this year at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office.

He said sources in Germany tell him the majority of the nearly 1 million migrants who have streamed into the country are between 18 and 25.

“There’s no way they could be this stupid and let this many in. It has the look of something intentional,” he said.

“I’m getting emails from people in Germany. They know this is being done on purpose, to destroy their villages and towns.”

McGuire said he was in France just a few days after the Charlie Hebdo attack.

“They were sitting ducks, and the people of France were completely shocked,” he said. “So they’re setting the stage for another attack.”

McGuire said the leaders of the global “hardcore left,” such as billionaire philanthropist George Soros, are using the Muslim migrants as a battering ram against the walls of the Christian West. Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban was quoted by a public radio outlet this week calling out Soros for his backing of the migrant invasion, saying:

“His name is perhaps the strongest example of those who support anything that weakens nation states, they support everything that changes the traditional European lifestyle. These activists who support immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network.”

McGuire said the Muslim migrants are particularly useful to socialist globalists like Soros.

“They are like a bludgeoning group, they can bludgeon everything Christian out of our society,” he

said.

“The hard left uses them because they demand all these laws and special accommodations, and inevitably they enact Shariah and force the culture to go into retreat, and then you have this weak Christianity that can’t withstand anything.”

‘Driving the new world order’ McGuire sees a perfect storm brewing in which global authorities will need to keep better track of people, especially refugees, but the new rules will end up applying to everyone.

“So these migrants are coming to drive the new world order, to bring order out of chaos,” he

said.

“You destroy nationalism, destroy social cohesion, and then these Muslim groups coming in will create a crisis and force a response that will feature a state crackdown and the need for heightened security, and one of the ways you do that is through universal IDs. It’s just evil.”

A large portion of Germany’s missing refugees had not been registered, nor had they applied for asylum, which is a recipe for chaos. The local authorities point out that they have no authority to hold people. The same rules apply to refugees sent from the Third World to American cities. Once they are resettled in a city, whether it’s Denver or Minneapolis, Des Moines or Detroit, they are free to migrate anywhere in the United States. The refugees are placed on a fast track to full citizenship and signed up for various welfare benefits by resettlement agencies affiliated with Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Jewish and evangelical-Christian organizations. A congressional research study found that 91 percent of refugees from the Middle East receive food stamps. Local politician Angelika Jahns criticized the current situation in Germany. “We need to know who is staying in Lower Saxony,” she told Die Welt. She said the refugees should be registered as soon as they arrive in Lower Saxony, but they are not forced to do so by the German national government. The problem of refugees gone missing is clearly on the radar of global elites, and in fact they are already using the refugee crisis to promote a sweeping new global ID system, WND has learned.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in May 2015 awarded a three-year contract to a firm called Accenture to “identify and track” refugees in a pilot program targeting camps in Africa and Asia with a new biometric ID, reports FindBiometrics.com, a trade journal covering the biometric and information management industries. Accenture is an international technology services provider based in Chicago. Here is how FindBiometrics describes the project:

“The UNHCR will use Accenture’s Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) for the endeavor. BIMS can be used to collect facial, iris, and fingerprint biometric data, and will also be used to provide many refugees with their only form of official documentation. The system will work in conjunction with Accenture’s Unique Identity Service Platform (UISP) to send this information back to a central database in Geneva, allowing UNHCR offices all over the world to effectively coordinate with the central UNHCR authority in tracking refugees. “Starting with a pilot project in the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, the program has blossomed over the last couple of years to provide services in refugee camps in Thailand and Chad, with over 220,000 people identified in the two countries so far. It’s an ambitious project, but Accenture has experience with large-scale biometric system initiatives, having helped the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Biometric Identity Management with a major border control project, for example. This latest endeavor will see the company’s technology used in important humanitarian efforts – and in fact it seems to have already helped hundreds of thousands.”

U.N. Agenda 2030 calls for ‘universal ID’ for all people This “universal ID,” which grabs the biometric data of refugees, is just a starting point for the United Nations. The goal is to eventually bring all people into the massive data bank. The proof is in the U.N.’s own documents. The U.N. Agenda 2030 document adopted by 193 of the world’s heads of state, including President Obama, at the Sept. 25 U.N. conference on sustainability in New York, includes 17 goals and dozens of “targets.” Target 16.9 under the goal of “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions” reads as follows:

“By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.”

The World Bank is also throwing its weight behind the United Nations biometric project being conducted by Accenture.

In a new report issued in collaboration with Accenture, the World Bank is calling on governments to “work together to implement standardized, cost-effective identity management solutions,” according to FindBiometrics. A summary of the report states that about 1.8 billion adults around the world lack any kind of official identification. “That can exclude those individuals from access to essential services, and can also cause serious difficulties when it comes to transborder identification,” according to FindBiometrics.

“That problem is one that Accenture has been tackling in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been issuing Accenture-developed biometric identity cards to populations of displaced persons in refugee camps in Thailand, South Sudan, and elsewhere. The ID cards are important for helping to ensure that refugees can have access to services, and for keeping track of refugee populations.”

Then comes the final admission by the World Bank that the new biometric IDs are not just for refugees.

“Moreover, the nature of the deployments has required an economically feasible solution, and has demonstrated that reliable, biometric ID cards can affordably be used on a large scale. It offers hope for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of getting legal ID into the hands of everyone in the world by the year 2030 with its Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative.”

It is a serious problem for the authorities that many thousands of people are on their way on their own in the federal territory, Decker told Die Welt.

He said refugees might be registered multiple times as the registration is based on information given by the registrants, which almost always come without any papers.

“The same guy that is Muhammad Ali here in Eisenhüttenstadt can be Ali Mohammed a little bit later in

Hamburg,” Decker

said.

“The states must live with that for the time being, because a proper registration at the border is currently not in sight.”

Once the U.N.’s biometric labeling of all humanity is in place, this will no longer be a problem.

Windows 10 To Automatically Download On Your PC November 8 2015 | From: WND

Not interested in installing Windows 10 on your computer after reading news reports indicating Microsoft will track your online behavior and save your search queries, private emails and contents of private folders, including photos?

Too bad. You may not be given much of a choice. Microsoft’s Windows 10 is preparing to automatically download onto computers currently installed with Windows 7 or 8 – without the computer users’ knowledge, London’s Guardian reported. Related: ‘Incredibly Intrusive’: Windows 10 Spies On You By Default According to the report, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will become a “recommended update” in 2016, and anyone who has automatic updates activated will have the new program installed automatically on their PC. After it has downloaded, the Windows 10 installer will begin. At that point, users will need to actively cancel Windows 10.

That is, if they aren’t in the habit of just hitting “OK” when presented with a prompt, as many users often do. In the meantime, until 2016, the Windows 10 upgrade will be considered “optional” and could still be downloaded if a user has the computer set to install automatic updates, which can be disabled.

“If you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous version if you don’t love it,” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Windows and

Devices group. Just weeks ago, Forbes reported Microsoft claimed an “accident” caused the downloads to begin installing on many computers without user permission. As WND reported in August, a report from Newsweek warned: “From the moment an account is created, Microsoft begins watching. The company saves customers’ basic information – name, contact details, passwords, demographic data and credit card specifics.” “But it also digs a bit deeper,” the report says.

“Other information Microsoft saves includes Bing search queries and conversations with the new digital personal assistant Cortana; contents of private communications such as email; websites and apps visited (including features accessed and length of time used); and contents of private folders,” the warning explains. “Furthermore, ‘your typed and handwritten words’ are collected.’”

All of the warnings come from the company’s software privacy statement, which includes the statement that Microsoft collects information “to provide you a personalized user dictionary, help you type and write on your device with better character recognition, and provide you with text suggestions as you type or write.” Alec Meer at the RockPaperShotgun blog warned it’s not something that should be ignored.

“Unless you pay close attention to the fluffy options offered when you first install Microsoft’s new operating system, it’s going to quietly track your behavior and use it to fire targeted ads at you, as well as keeping tabs on your location history, data from messages, calendars, contacts and God knows what else.”

The blog noted that “some of this stuff” can be turned off, but the key point is that people “aren’t so hot” about paying for tools to access the Web and such, so “the money comes from harvesting data and flogging it to advertisers and other organizations who want to know exactly what we’re all up to online.”

He continued;

“If you ever wondered why they’ve made the Windows 10 upgrade free to Win 7 & 8 users, here’s one possible answer. Windows 10 has all sorts of user tracking baked right in.”

The Daily Mail reported another complication with the software last summer. The update to Windows 10, the report said:

“Automatically made [a man's] porn collection into a slideshow and used it as a screensaver. And to make matters worse, the malfunction was discovered by his wife, who was greeted by the explicit images first thing in the morning.”

The report said a user posted the story online so others would not repeat the mistake, which reportedly happened when the images were saved into the “My Pictures” folder. It is from that folder the software draws data to build slideshows, the report said.

“I have no idea how to shut that feature off and that computer is staying shut down until I do,” the man wrote, according to the Mail. “Free Windows and a free trip to the doghouse. Thanks Microsoft!”

In August, Newsweek reported an estimated 14 million machines already were running Windows 10.

“The company says it uses the data collected for three purposes: to provide and improve its services; to send customers personalized promotions; and to display targeted advertising, which sometimes requires the information be shared with third parties.”

The report said Microsoft’s practices actually are similar to Google’s, which analyzes the content of users’ emails to provide a “more personalized product.”

Online privacy group European Digital Rights told the Times that the MS policy not only was bad news for privacy.

“Your free speech rights can also be violated on an ad hoc basis,” the group said.

Kirsten Fiedler, of EDR, told the Mail, “Microsoft basically grants itself the right to collect and process everything you do, say and write on your device – which is contrary to the fundamental right to privacy.” The RockPaperShotgun blog posted some instructions for opting out of the Microsoft data collection plan. The actions won’t, the blog said, reduce the ads seen.

“But they do mean that not quite so much information about you will be gathered and sold, and also that the ads you do see won’t be ‘relevant’ to what algorithms have decided your interests are.”

Related: Windows 10 Spies On Almost Everything You Do, Unless You Opt Out

Bombshell! Europe Drops Charges Against Edward Snowden, Offers Asylum And Protection November 5 2015 | From: ActivistPost

This week, the European Parliament voted to offer Edward Snowden asylum and protection and drop all criminal charges against him.

When at one time most of the world was bullied by the US government into pressing charges against Snowden and forcing him into exile, the entire European continent has now officially given him a pass. Related: EU Parliament Votes To Drop Charges Against Snowden Thursday’s 285 – 281 vote officially recognized Snowden as an “international human rights defender” and ensured that he would be free from arrest within European borders.

The final resolution mentioned that “too little has been done to safeguard citizens’ fundamental rights following revelations of electronic mass surveillance.” Snowden is currently living in asylum in Russia and is wanted in the United States for charges under the federal Espionage

Act, but Russia has declined to extradite him. He has been unable to leave due to the fear of being kidnapped by the US military when he left the country, but now it may be possible for him to travel to Europe. Snowden posted on his Twitter page that this could be a good sign of a shift in attitude towards his cause. Earlier this year, it was reported that a federal appeals court ruled that the controversial NSA spy program which collects phone records is actually illegal.

Snowden recently joined Twitter, making himself more visible and approachable to the general population than ever before. Within a day of opening his first social media account since leaking information about the NSA spy program, Snowden gained over one million followers. However, there was only one account that he decided to follow, the NSA. The whistleblower’s first tweet read, “Can you hear me now?”

Edward Snowden’s New Revelations Are Truly Chilling October 10 2015 | From: TrueActivist

Former intelligence contractor and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told the BBC's Panorama that the UK intelligence centre GCHQ has the power to hack phones without their owners’ knowledge

In an interview with the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ which aired in Britain last night, Edward Snowden spoke in detail about the spying capabilities of the UK intelligence agency GCHQ. He disclosed that government spies can legally hack into any citizen’s phone to listen in to what’s happening in the room, view files, messages and photos, pinpoint exactly where a person is (to a much more sophisticated level than a normal GPS system), and monitor a person’s every move and every conversation, even when the phone is turned off.

These technologies are named after Smurfs, those little blue cartoon characters who had a recent Hollywood makeover. But despite the cute name, these technologies are very disturbing; each one is built to spy on you in a different way: “Dreamy Smurf”: lets the phone be powered on and off

“Nosey Smurf”:lets spies turn the microphone on and listen in on users, even if the phone itself is turned off “Tracker Smurf”:a geo-location tool which allows [GCHQ] to follow you with a greater precision than you would get from the typical triangulation of cellphone towers. “Paranoid Smurf”: hides the fact that it has taken control of the phone. The tool will stop people from recognising that the phone has been tampered with if it is taken in for a service, for instance. Snowden says: “They want to own your phone instead of you.” It sounds very much like he means we are being purposefully encouraged to buy our own tracking devices. That kinda saved the government some money, didn’t it? His revelations should worry anyone who cares about human rights, especially in an era where the threat of terrorism is used to justify all sorts of governmental crimes against civil liberties. We have willingly given up our freedoms in the name of security; as a result we have neither.

We seem to have forgotten that to live as a free person is a basic human right: we are essentially free beings. We are born naked and without certification; we do not belong to any government nor monarchy nor individual, we don’t even belong to any nation or culture or religion- these are all social constructs. We belong only to the universe that created us, or whatever your equivalent belief. It is therefore a natural human right not to be not be under secret surveillance by your own government, those corruptible liars who are supposedly elected by and therefore accountable to the people. The danger for law-abiding citizens who say they have nothing to fear because they are not terrorists, beware: many peaceful British protesters have been arrested under the Prevention Of Terrorism Act since its introduction in 2005.

Edward Snowden‘s disclosure confirms just how far the attack on civil liberties has gone since 9/11 and the London bombings. Both events have allowed governments the legal right to essentially wage war on their own people, through the Patriot Act in the USA and the Prevention Of Terrorism Act in the UK. In Britain, as in the USA, terrorism and activism seem to have morphed into one entity, while nobody really knows who the real terrorists are any more. A sad but absolutely realistic fact of life in 2015: if you went to a peaceful protest at weekend and got detained, you’re probably getting hacked right now.

It’s one more reason to conclude that smartphones suck. And as much as we convince ourselves how cool they are, it’s hard to deny their invention has resulted in a tendency for humans to behave like zombies, encouraged child labor, made us more lonely than ever, turned some of us into narcissistic selfie–addicts, and prevented us from communicating with those who really matter (the ones in the same room at the same time). Now, Snowden has given us yet another reason to believe that smartphones might be the dumbest thing we could have ever inflicted on ourselves.

Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald & David Miranda Call For Global Privacy Treaty October 7 2015 | From: DemocracyNow

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, Brazilian privacy activist David Miranda and others have launched a new campaign to establish global privacy standards.

The proposed International Treaty on the Right to Privacy, Protection Against Improper Surveillance and Protection of Whistleblowers would require states to ban mass data collection and implement public oversight of national security programs. The treaty would also require states to offer asylum to whistleblowers. It is being dubbed the "Snowden Treaty." At a launch event last week, Edward Snowden spoke about the need for the treaty via teleconference from Russia.

“This is not a problem exclusive to the United States or the National Security Agency or the FBI or the Department of Justice or any agency of government anywhere. This is a global problem that affects all of us," Snowden said.

Watch the video statements or read the transcript at: DemocracyNow

‘Incredibly Intrusive’: Windows 10 Spies On You By Default September 14 2015 | From: RT

Microsoft’s new Windows 10 operating system is immensely popular, with 14 million downloads in th first two days. The price of the free upgrade may just be your privacy, though, as changing Windows 10’s intrusive default settings is difficult.

Technology journalists and bloggers are singing Windows 10’s praises, often using the words such as “amazing,”“glorious” and “fantastic.” The operating system has been described as faster, smoother and more user-friendly than any previous version of Windows. According to Wired magazine, more than 14 million people have downloaded their upgrade since the system was released on Wednesday. While the upgrade is currently free of charge to owners of licensed copies of Windows 8 and Windows 7, it does come at a price. Several tech bloggers have warned that the privacy settings in the operating system are invasive by default, and that changing them involves over a dozen different screens and an external website. According to Zach Epstein of BGR News, all of Windows 10’s features that could be considered invasions of privacy are enabled by default. Signing in with your Microsoft email account means Windows is reading your emails, contacts and calendar data. The new Edge browser serves you personalized ads. Solitaire now comes with ads. Using Cortana – the voice-driven assistant that represents Redmond’s answer to Apple’s Siri – reportedly “plays fast and loose with your data.”

“I am pretty surprised by the far-reaching data collection that Microsoft seems to want,” web developer Jonathan Porta wrote on his blog. “I am even more surprised by the fact that the settings all default to incredibly intrusive. I am certain that most individuals will just accept the defaults and have no idea how much information they are giving away.”

As examples, Porta cited Microsoft having access to contacts, calendar details, and “other associated input data” such as “typing and inking” by default. The operating system also wants access to user locations and location history, both of which could be provided not just to Microsoft, but to its “trusted partners.”

“Who are the trusted partners? By whom are they trusted? I am certainly not the one doing any trusting right now,” Porta wrote, describing the default privacy options as “vague and bordering on scary.”

Alec Meer of the ‘Rock, Paper, Shotgun’ blog pointed out this passage in Microsoft’s 12,000-word, 45-page terms of use agreement:

“We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to.”

While most people are used to ads as the price of accessing free content, writes Meer, Microsoft is not making it clear enough that they are “gathering and storing vast amounts of data on your computing habits,” not just browser data. Opting out of all these default settings requires navigating 13 different screens and a separate website, the bloggers have found.

Meer was underwhelmed with Microsoft executives’ claims of transparency and easily understandable terms of use.

“There is no world in which 45 pages of policy documents and opt-out settings split across 13 different Settings screens and an external website constitutes ‘real transparency,’”he wrote.

Tracking and harvesting user data has been a business model for many tech giants. Privacy advocates have raised concerns over Google’s combing of emails, Apple’s Siri, and Facebook’s tracking cookies that keep monitoring people’s browser activity in order to personalize advertising and content.

When The Nation’s Permanent Interests Override Its Impermanent Politicians September 3 2015 | From: Stuff

Submissions to the Independent Review of Intelligence and Security have closed. No doubt the "independent reviewers", Sir Michael Cullen and Dame Patsy Reddy, are already up to their elbows

in the earnest recommendations of their fellow citizens. By March of next year we will learn what they have made of them.

SIS director Rebecca Kitteridge knows how difficult her job will become if her fellow citizens are unwilling to concede the legitimacy of the SIS's role.

In all probability, neither Cullen nor Reddy will end up recommending much more than a little tweaking here and there to New Zealand's national security apparatus. The terms of reference of their inquiry were extremely narrowly set – always an indicaItion that nothing too dramatic is expected by the politicians who set the process in motion.

A few judicious redefinitions of the scope and powers of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) is the most we should anticipate. (Especially after the prime minister has strongly and publicly hinted that this is what his government is expecting!)

Indeed, any government attempting to make more than minor changes to either institution is asking for trouble. In 1977, the National prime minister, Robert Muldoon, ignited a firestorm of nationwide protests when he announced his intention to legislate a substantial increase in the powers of the SIS. The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Bill, which dramatically expanded the Service's capacity to intercept private communications, and forbade the public identification of its agents, was passed by Parliament, but only at the cost of a significant portion of the citizenry's trust and goodwill. That New Zealand's so-called "intelligence community" is anxious to retain and build public trust and goodwill has been evident over the past fortnight in the substantive public relations campaign it has waged in advance of the independent review. SIS director Rebecca Kitteridge knows how difficult her job will become if her fellow citizens are unwilling to concede the legitimacy of the SIS's role. But, if losing the trust and goodwill of New Zealand's citizens is a bad thing, losing the trust and confidence of New Zealand's allies would be much, much worse. This would, however, be the most likely outcome if the recommendations of those who made submissions to the Independent Review from the left were ever to be taken up and implemented by a future left-leaning government. The submission from the Anti-Bases Campaign, for example (whose spokesperson is the redoubtable left-wing activist Murray Horton) has recommended to Cullen and Reddy that: "New Zealand immediately exits the Five Eyes regime."

The reviewers will, of course, ignore this demand – if only because it falls outside the scope of their inquiry. But, what if a

future Labour-Green government was persuaded to withdraw from the UKUSA Agreement to which New Zealand has been party for more than 60 years? It is precisely in circumstances such as these that the true function of our national security apparatus would be demonstrated. It was the United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger who infamously remarked of the democratically elected socialist government of Chile:

“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

On September 11, 1973, that government was overthrown by the Chilean armed forces.

On November 10, 1975, outraged that his government was under CIA surveillance, the Australian Labour prime minister Gough Whitlam let it be known that he would be closing down the joint CIA/National Security Agency's satellite tracking station at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The following day, Whitlam's government was dismissed by Sir John Kerr, the Australian governor-general. (The Pine Gap station was critical to the effectiveness of the "Five Eyes regime".) In the eyes of both the Chilean armed forces, and Australia's national security apparatus, the permanent national interests of their respective states had been placed at serious risk by political figures who either did not understand, or were hostile to, those interests. In arriving at these conclusions, both institutions relied upon the intelligence and advice of their nation's principal military and economic ally, the United States. Although neither Cullen or Reddy will admit it, "national security" is all about identifying which permanent national interests are best kept beyond the reach of democracy's impermanent practitioners.

Why Punish People For Speeding? Speed Advisories Would Be Fine August 22 2015 | From: InfoWars

This is a contentious subject but the fact of the matter when you really look at it is that speeding fines are nothing more than revenue generation. This argument makes complete sense yet, people are so beaten down by the official line that they don't have a chance to ever get to consider logical points. There will NEVER be a zero road toll as long as we have road transport. If you get into a car, you put yourself at risk of a terminal road accident. End of story.

It has been established that highway patrol officers in New Zealand have ticketing quotas - they just will not admit it. Cha-ching $$$

Why should anyone be subject to punishment merely for driving “x” speed? Is it not of a piece with punishing someone for merely consuming alcohol? [Comment: This is a systemic problem and a systemic issue. The powers that be have put systems in place to weed out police applicants who have an IQ over a certain limit. They do not want free thinkers, they want a police force in place that will not question the authority of their superiors.] The justification usually given is that “speeding” might cause harm.

The definition of POLICE: POLICy Enforcement officers: They - (most of them unknowingly) are NOT working to protect or serve - nor to provide safer communities together. They are working to protect the policies of the state, and therefore The Crown (The City of London and ultimately The Vatican - the ancient and elite 'ruling class'). The "police" are the civilan arm of the enforecement of the attempted New World Order, here to keep the great unwashed subservient to the ruling elite and abiding by their 'laws'. Click on the link, look it up. The evidence as been around for a very long time indeed.

Ok, sure. The same is true about drinking beer. Someone (generally) might drink beer and beat his wife. But we do not presume (for now) that everyone who drinks beer will beat his wife – and thus, drinking beer must be forbidden. And violators of this policy punished. What about punishing (hold onto that thought) people when – and only if – they actually do cause harm? Not before – and not because they might. Or because “someone” else has. It’s a crazy idea, I realize. [This is the fundamental point of common law: If there is no damage to a person or property there is no crime]. Imagine: You’d only have to sweat cops or face a judge if you (and not some other person you never even met) could plausibly be charged with having caused harm to an actual victim or damaged the actual property of someone else. Mark that. A flesh and blood victim would have to be presented.

And it would be the obligation of the courts to prove that harm was done to establish guilt before requiring restitution (much preferable to punishing people, which smacks of house training a puppy). There would be an end to this business of people being put through the system who’ve harmed no one. Who are punished for manufactured offenses against the state. Can the state be a victim? Is the Tooth Fairy real? It’s absurd – and vicious.

Do you feel guilty of wrongdoing when pulled over by a cop for not wearing a seatbelt? Who have you harmed? What justification – other than “it’s the law” – is there for punishing you? How about driving faster than an arbitrary number plastered on a sign? You get pulled out from a crowd of others doing the same thing; none of you harming anyone or even plausibly threatening it. It’s merely your unlucky day. Your time to pay.

As the cop slides in behind you, does your internal monologue run along the lines of, “well, yeah… I did a bad thing… I deserve this.” Or do you feel disgust, anger – and resentment? Of course. This has serious implications. Laws without a moral basis are just arbitrary rules. They have no moral force – and that makes people subjected to them feel abused. Which they have been. Meanwhile, it also makes it more difficult to deal with the relatively small number of people in society who actually do cause harm to others. If you doubt this, take a drive into a “bad” neighborhood; where are all the cops?

They’re manning radar traps and safety checkpoints in the “nice” neighborhoods! Remember the "Drive 55" idiocy that lasted from about 1974 to 1995? Overnight – and for the next 20 years – it became illegal “speeding” to drive 70 when the day before it had been legal to do that and – presumably (being legal) “safe.” How does it become “unsafe” to drive 70 on the same road today that it was (apparently) “safe” to drive 70 on yesterday? What was it Bob Dooole used to say? You know it, I know it, the American people know it. Millions of people were simply ripped off – had their money stolen from them under color of law. The contempt and corruption this bred is incalculable. It festers to this day. Because while "Drive 55" is history, the same rigmarole exists on secondary roads. Every day, thousands of people are pulled over and literally robbed. Issued what amount to ransom notes – state-sanctioned extortion – for driving at reasonable and prudent velocities that happen to have been codified as illegal “speeding.” The fact that virtually every one “speeds” – this includes cops – is the clearest, most inarguable proof that the laws are absurd. And their enforcement a sort of low-rent sadism that also happens to be very profitable. What’s the solution? Speed limits as such ought to be thrown in the woods. They are arbitrary, morally indefensible – and most of all, one-size-fits-all.

People are individuals and some people are better at certain things than others. This includes driving. Tony Stewart is a better driver than I am. But I am a much better driver than my mother-in-law. Why should Tony Stewart be dumbed-down to my level? And why should I be dumbed-down to my mother-in-law’s? Imposing arbitrary, one-size-fits-all limits on anyone for anything is by definition unfair. Arbitrary man-made “speeding” laws based on a dumbed-down/least-common-denominator standard amount to ugly and stupid people punishing the good-looking and smart ones. The people who support such laws support anticipatory and pre-emptive punishment. That is, laws that assume something bad will happen if “x” is not punished. And which punish the “offender” as if something bad had actually happened. Even if it never did. Innocence of having caused harm is (currently) no defense. It’s not necessary for the government to produce a victim. All that’s necessary, legally speaking, is for the state to prove that “the law” was violated. Comrade Stalin would approve. Cue the keening wail that, absent speed limits, people will drive excessively fast and lose control. Yet they do exactly that already – speed limits notwithstanding. Just as people still drive soused (and senile, too). The difference between the harm-caused/actual victim approach – and the “it’s the law” approach – is that the former only holds those who actually do lose control – for whatever reason – accountable. Everyone else is free to go about their business. To live as adults – rather than be treated as presumptively unintelligent children.

What a concept!

Speed advisories would be fine. For example a sign letting you know that there is a sharp curve ahead and maybe reducing speed would be good. Drivers unfamiliar with that road – and never having driven that curve before – may find this information helpful. But why should the local who is familiar with that road – and who drives that curve everyday – be subject to punishment for taking the curve at a higher speed? Assuming, of course, that he does so competently, without causing harm to anyone in the process? That was once the American Way. Not “do as you please” – the dishonest, demagogic bleat of Clovers. But rather, do as you please… so long as you don’t cause harm to others. The false choice offered by Clovers is total control in exchange for total safety – the “risk free” world. But this is a quixotic quest that can never end, because risk cannot be removed from this life. We all get sick – and die eventually. Entropy happens. What can be excised, however, is the risk to our liberties, our peace of mind, our enjoyment of life – presented by random and arbitrary interferences and punishments based not on what we’ve done, but on what “someone” might do. This post originally appeared at Eric Peters Autos.com.

United States, New Zealand, Canadian, United Kingdom & Australian Governments Hacked Smartphones, Planted Spyware In Google Phone Apps June 2 2015 | From: TruthInMedia

A new document from whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals that the United States, Canada, and other so-called “Five Eyes” nations hacked weaknesses in one of the world’s most popular mobile browsers to access smartphone traffic. The hacking involved using apps in the Google and

Samsung app stores.

Consistent with much of the Snowden revelations, the “mainstream” media has largely ignored the story. According to the “Top Secret” document, the spying agnecies of Canada, the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand started targeting the UC Browser in 2011 after it was discovered that a leak released details of millions of users. UC Browser is the most popular app in China and India. The agencies stated goal was to exploit the weakness to collect data on suspected terrorists or intelligence targets. Some cases apparently involved implanting spyware on targeted smartphones. The Five Eyes nations were looking to exploit similar leaks in other mobile apps. CBC reports that the document shows the surveillance agencies did not alert the companies or the public about weaknesses. The latest document release from Snowden was reported by The intercept and Canada’s CBC. Canada’s Communications Security Establishment surveillance agency refused to comment on the CBC report, while the British GCHQ stated that all surveillance programs are “carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework.” The U.S. National Security Agency and New Zealand surveillance agency did not respond to CBC News. Australia’s signals intelligence agency refused to comment. Not everyone believes the government’s claims of accountability and promises that the program was only used in search of terrorists. Michael Geist, a professor at University of Ottawa and an expert on internet law, told the CBC:

“All of this is being done in the name of providing safety and yet … Canadians or people around the world are put at risk.”

The documents also reveal that the Five Eyes agreed not to spy on each others’ citizens and instead focused their attention on apps stores in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Cuba, Morocco, the Bahamas and Russia.

Every Man, Woman And Child: Why NSA surveillance Is Worse Than You've Ever Imagined May 26 2015 | From: Sott

Last summer, after months of encrypted emails, I spent three days in Moscow hanging out with Edward Snowden for a Wired cover story. Over pepperoni pizza, he told me that what finally drove him to leave his country and become a whistleblower was his conviction that the National Security Agency was conducting illegal surveillance on every American [and everyone in every other country covered by the Five Eyes network]. Thursday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York agreed with him.

In a long-awaited opinion, the three-judge panel ruled that the NSA program that secretly intercepts the telephone metadata of every American — who calls whom and when — was illegal. As a plaintiff with Christopher Hitchens and several others in the original ACLU lawsuit against the NSA, dismissed by another appeals court on a technicality, I had a great deal of personal satisfaction.

Comment: Interesting to note that Establishment-media outlet Reuters published this article. Also, John Key is either blatantly lying about this - either that or he is so misiniformed he is too incompetent to hold office as Prime Minister of New Zealand

It's now up to Congress to vote on whether or not to modify the law and continue the program, or let it die once and for all. Lawmakers must vote on this matter by June 1, when they need to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

Comment: Even if lawmakers actually vote to modify what the NSA is doing - which they most likely won't because they are likely already blackmailed or want to appear "strong" on issues of "national security" - the NSA is, with few exceptions, super-secretive and practically an entity unto itself; it would never allow its goals of profit and totalitarian awareness be curtailed. It is a behemoth bureaucracy of malevolent intent that serves no one but the few within the 1% who are the real movers and shakers on the planet. And few of those interested parties have anything in common with normal and healthy-minded humans.

A key factor in that decision is the American public's attitude toward surveillance. Snowden's revelations have clearly made a change in that attitude. In a PEW 2006 survey, for example, after the New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed the agency's warrantless eavesdropping activities, 51 percent of the public still viewed the NSA's surveillance programs as acceptable, while 47 percent found them unacceptable. After Snowden's revelations, those numbers reversed. A PEW survey in March revealed that 52 percent of the public is now concerned about government surveillance, while 46 percent is not. Given the vast amount of revelations about NSA abuses, it is somewhat surprising that just slightly more than a majority of Americans seem concerned about government surveillance. Which leads to the question of why? Is there any kind of revelation that might push the poll numbers heavily against the NSA's spying programs? Has security fully trumped privacy as far as the American public is concerned? Or is there some program that would spark genuine public outrage? Few people, for example, are aware that a NSA program known as TREASUREMAP is being developed to continuously map every Internet connection — cellphones, laptops, tablets — of everyone on the planet. "Map the entire Internet," says the top secret NSA slide. "Any device, anywhere, all the time." It adds that the program will allow "Computer Attack/Exploit Planning" as well as "Network Reconnaissance." One reason for the public's lukewarm concern is what might be called NSA fatigue. There is now a sort of acceptance of highly intrusive surveillance as the new normal, the result of a bombardment of news stories on the topic. I asked Snowden about this;

“It does become the problem of one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic," he replied, "where today we have the violation of one person's rights is a tragedy and the violation of a million is a statistic. The NSA is violating the rights of every American citizen every day on a comprehensive and ongoing basis. And that can numb us. That can leave us feeling disempowered, disenfranchised."

In the same way, at the start of a war, the numbers of Americans killed are front-page stories, no matter how small. But two years into the conflict, the numbers, even if far greater, are usually buried deep inside a paper or far down a news site's home page.

In addition, stories about NSA surveillance face the added burden of being technically complex, involving eye-glazing descriptions of sophisticated interception techniques and analytical capabilities. Though they may affect virtually every American, such as the telephone metadata program, because of the enormous secrecy involved, it is difficult to identify specific victims. The way the surveillance story appeared also decreased its potential impact. Those given custody of the documents decided to spread the wealth for a more democratic assessment of the revelations. They distributed them through a wide variety of media — from start-up Web publications to leading foreign newspapers. One document from the NSA director, for example, indicates that the agency was spying on visits to porn sites by people, making no distinction between foreigners and "U.S. persons," U.S. citizens or permanent residents. He then recommended using that information to secretly discredit them, whom he labeled as "radicalizers." But because this was revealed by The Huffington Post, an online publication viewed as progressive, and was never reported by mainstream papers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, the revelation never received the attention it deserved.

Comment: Nazis used the word "undesirables".

Another major revelation, a top-secret NSA map showing that the agency had planted malware — computer viruses — in more than 50,000 locations around the world, including many friendly countries such as Brazil, was reported in a relatively small Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, and likely never seen by much of the American public.

Comment:That's a new oneon this reader, but somehow not surprising. The question is why, however. Why view so many others - even friends - as "the enemy". And what other bag of dirty tricks is the NSA up to that we have no clue of?

Thus, despite the volume of revelations, much of the public remains largely unaware of the true extent of the NSA's vast, highly aggressive and legally questionable surveillance activities. With only a slim majority of Americans expressing concern, the chances of truly reforming the system become greatly decreased. While the metadata program has become widely known because of the numerous court cases and litigation surrounding it, there are other NSA surveillance programs that may have far greater impact on Americans, but have attracted far less public attention.

In my interview with Snowden, for example, he said one of his most shocking discoveries was the NSA's policy of secretly and routinely passing to Israel's Unit 8200 — that country's NSA — and possibly other countries not just metadata but the actual contents of emails involving Americans. This even included the names of U.S. citizens, some of whom were likely Palestinian-Americans communicating with relatives in Israel and Palestine. An illustration of the dangers posed by such an operation comes from the sudden resignation last year of 43 veterans of Unit 8200, many of whom are still serving in the military reserves. The veterans accused the organization of using intercepted communication against innocent Palestinians for "political persecution." This included information gathered from the emails about Palestinians' sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions and other private matters to coerce people into becoming collaborators or to create divisions in their society.

Another issue few Americans are aware of is the NSA's secret email metadata collection program that took place for a decade or so until it ended several years ago. Every time an American sent or received an email, a record was secretly kept by the NSA, just as the agency continues to do with the telephone metadata program. Though the email program ended, all that private information is still stored at the NSA, with no end in sight. With NSA fatigue setting in, and the American public unaware of many of the agency's long list of abuses, it is little wonder that only slightly more than half the public is concerned about losing their privacy. For that reason, I agree with Frederick A. O. Schwartz Jr., the former chief counsel of the Church Committee, which conducted a yearlong probe into intelligence abuses in the mid-1970s, that we need a similarly thorough, hard-hitting investigation today.

“Now it is time for a new committee to examine our secret government closely again," he wrote in a recent Nation magazine article, "particularly for its actions in the post-9/11 period."

Until the public fully grasps and understands how far over the line the NSA has gone in the past — legally, morally and ethically — there should be no renewal or continuation of NSA's telephone metadata program in the future. James Bamford writes frequently on intelligence and is the author of three books about the National Security Agency, most recently, "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America." Chief Constable Simon Bailey, chair of Operation Hydrant, said that referrals to new suspects “are increasing on an almost daily basis.”“The numbers I refer to today are a snapshot in time,” he added. So far Operation Hydrant, which was created by National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC), is investigating a number of alleged abuse inquiries, but is not specifically leading a particular investigation.

Comment: The NSA is a technocratic beast; a runaway train with a gaping maw that would seek to label every man, woman and child on the planet as either a threat or a sheep to the very apparatus it seeks to serve. Its power and intent are largely unknown and unimaginable to most because information about it, until only the last few years, has been scarce. It also didn't have the name recognition of the CIA though it is several times larger! And is the stuff of dystopian science fiction novels. Though presented with a decidedly fundamentalist Christian point of view, the book Project L. U. C. I. D.: The Beast 666 Universal Human Control System by Texe Marrs is well researched and points to what the NSA has been doing for quite a while now. It is all the more interesting since the book was written nearly twenty years ago, and well marks the NSA's development and the growing fruition of its true purpose.

Watchdog Starts Second Spy Probe / Spy Review Hobbled Before It Begins May 21 2015 | From: NewZealandHerald / DominionPost

Herald story triggers look at agency’s role in minister’s bid for top world trade job + Is it a whitewash from the outset?

A new inquiry into NZ's electronic surveillance service is being started as the country's intelligence watchdog tries to find out if it makes good decisions about who to spy on, and how it stays politically neutral. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Cheryl Gwyn, linked the inquiry to claims the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) spied on foreign diplomats competing against Trade Minister Tim Groser to lead the World Trade Organisation.

Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Cheryl Gwyn

But she said it was unlikely she would be able to probe the allegations. Instead, she said, the inquiry would study the way the GCSB chose its targets, what its decision-making process was and how it stuck to its duty to be neutral in cases where there might be political advantage. The Groser claims were among a string of stories broken by the Herald in a collaborative reporting project with investigative journalist Nicky Hager and The Intercept, the US news site with access to the trove of secret documents obtained by intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Tim Groser

It is the second inquiry to be started after the Herald published stories based on top-secret GCSB and National Security Agency documents. The first inquiry was into New Zealand spying in the Pacific. Ms Gwyn said the new inquiry was instigated by her office;

"I consider the issues raised about the process followed when the GCSB considers undertaking particular intelligence activity are of sufficient public importance to warrant an own-motion inquiry. "While it is unlikely I will be able to publicly confirm or deny the specific allegations relating to this process, I can inquire more generally into how the GCSB determines, within its statutory constraints, what intelligence activity to undertake and what policies and procedures are in place to regulate its activities."

Ms Gwyn said the inquiry would study how the GCSB established whether a proposed spying job fitted its legal role and New Zealand's needs. It would also look at the GCSB analysis of benefits and risks, and how it handled situations in which there could be perceptions of political advantage. It would also consider how the GCSB kept its minister informed in situations where there was a "potentially contested assessment" of the justification for the spying. The Herald reported that the GCSB set up search filters to extract online references to those competing from other countries for the WTO job.

Criticism was voiced after the story appeared over how this served New Zealand's interests as the WTO job is meant to be administrative and neutral.

Editorial: Spy Review Hobbled Before It Begins? The new committee carrying out a wide-ranging review of intelligence oversight is not equipped for the task.

Sir Michael Cullen is part of the committee carrying out a review of intelligence oversight

Sir Michael Cullen served while an MP on the Intelligence and Security committee, a toothless watchdog which meets for only a few hours a year and has no power to hold the spies or their political masters to account. This committee is a constitutional monstrosity: it meets at the pleasure of the prime minister and he controls it. It is not a select committee that can test the executive. Cullen showed no inclination to question the role of the committee. He was, it seems, perfectly happy to serve on a hollow and useless institution. The Labour Party, in fact, [also] has in general been uninterested in reform of the spy services and their oversight. The appointment of Dame Patsy Reddy as the other inquirer is even stranger. Reddy is a lawyer and businesswoman who serves on many boards. She has no experience in the field of intelligence. She might, perhaps, have been a useful lay member of a larger inquiry. She certainly does not have the firepower to be one of only two investigators.

Dame Patsy Reddy, DNZM with the Governor-General of New Zealand, Lt Gen The Rt Hon Sir Jerry Mateparae

Intelligence pundit Paul Buchanan says the committee needs truly independent members, preferably from overseas, and far more than two. He is right. This matters a great deal, because there have been successive scandals in the spy services and the public is in desperate need of reassurance about the democratic accountability of those services. They won't get it from this committee. It is true that the Inspector-General of Security, Cheryl Gwyn, has shown a genuine independence in her inquiries. Her investigation of the spies' role in the Phil Goff affair was truly damning.

Phil Goff

She has also rightly launched an inquiry into the scandalous revelation that the GCSB spied on the overseas rivals of Trade Minister Tim Groser in his failed bid to head the World Trade Organisation. But the inspector can't do an independent investigation of the role of the politicians who appointed her and whom she serves. For that, another agency is needed. The best approach, as former prime minister Geoffrey Palmer has argued, is to set up a parliamentary select committee, similar to the congressional oversight committees in the United States.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer

For too long the spies have used the mystery of their profession to avoid proper democratic oversight. The various abuses uncovered by Edward Snowden should have shattered this mystique forever. The spies have enormous powers and their oversight has been lamentable.

Edward Snowden

Prime Minister John Key has dismissed Snowden's revelations as "just wrong".

All the evidence suggests that Snowden is right. But Key's response in these matters is typically mere bluster, and so is Chris Finlayson's.

Chris Finlayson

The Minister in charge of the SIS and the GCSB responded to questions on radio in his usual waspish and unpleasant way. Clearly Key and Finlayson won't hold the spies to account. So somebody else needs to do it.

Zuckerberg's Internet.org Will Control What Billions Do Online May 17 2015 | From: NoFakeInternet

We all deserve access to the real open Internet. Stand with people around the world demanding Zuckerberg stops restricting access to the open Internet.

People in countries like India, Zimbabwe, Brazil, and Paraguay are speaking out about Facebook's so-called Internet.org platform and its ability to control what billions of Internet users can do online. Zuckerberg's partnership with telecom giants, Internet.org, provides access to a fake Internet where selected services are prioritized over others. This scheme threatens innovation, free expression, and privacy online. The fake Internet will also restrict access to local service providers struggling to get a foothold online. We all now know Zuckerberg's Internet.org platform is not the real Internet. Not even close. Internet users around the world would rather he use his influence for good and promote access to the real open Internet, not just his fake imitation. But their goal is control. They want to decide what you see, all while exposing you to massive security holes and vulnerabilities. Internet.org is a reckless violation of net neutrality. What’s worse: Zuckerberg's closed Internet platform failed to consult impacted users and fundamentally undermines longstanding efforts to create affordable access to the open Internet. Everyday users, Internet freedom groups, and prominent websites around the world oppose these types of schemes to restrict access to independent web services. As Matias Insaurralde from Paraguay puts it: “Giving access to just a few sites in a country that historically had bad connectivity and very high costs sounds like a bad joke.” And we know Facebook is also already moving to take control of existing users’ web surfing. Now it's up to Internet users everywhere to make sure that the net remains free and open for us and the next wave of users. Do your part by sending a clear message today.

Have You Ever Felt Like The Government Doesn’t Really Care What You Think? May 12 2015 | From:RepresentUs

Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?

Their study [which took place in the US but which is equally applicable to all other western countries] took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans has essentially no impact at all. This video gives a quick rundown of their findings — it all boils down to one simple graph:

Read more at: RepresentUs

Military Electronic Warfare Expert Warns Of Covert Genocide May 10 2015 | From: ChemtrailsPlanet

Since the 1950s, Soviet/Russian and U.S. Militaries have been researching electromagnetic frequencies to determine which are the most harmful to humans

The statement coincided with a visit from the UN's top climate negotiator. Maurice Newman, chairman of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's business advisory council, said the UN is using false models which show sustained temperature increases because it wants to end democracy and impose authoritarian rule.

April 29, 2015 James G. (“Jerry”) Flynn, Captain (Retired) 5181 Gainsberg Road, Bowser, B.C., V0R 1G0 778 424-9609 Parliamentary Health Committee (HESA) 2015 Ottawa, ON. Canada Dear Committee Members, Safety Code 6 plus Corruption = An Emerging Genocide! Distinguished international scientists and leading health researchers in the recondite science of non-ionizing radiation know that the most dangerous threat to human health – EVER – is the ongoing, unchecked proliferation of wireless radio devices, such as Smart Meters, baby monitors, cell phones, cell phone towers, cordless phones, Wi-Fi routers, Wi-Fi and WiMAX installations (which can blanket entire major cities!), GPS, Bluetooth, tablet and laptop computers, Interactive TV games, RFIDs, etc., all of which emit toxic “low-level, pulsed, non-thermal radio frequency (RF) radiation”! For clarity, “microwaves” are electromagnetic waves with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz in the RF spectrum, which spans from 3 kHz to 300 GHz. I am a retired Canadian Armed Forces captain who spent 22 of my 26 years in the military in the arcane fields of Electronic Warfare (EW) and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). At the zenith of my career, I was the Executive Officer and Operations Officer at one of Canada’s largest and most sensitive intelligence-gathering stations, where for two years I personally directed some 200-plus specially-trained radio operators and technicians. Subsequently, I was posted into National Defense Headquarters (NDHQ), Ottawa, into the Directorate of Electronic Warfare (DEW). In this two-year period, I worked closely with U.S., Canadian and NATA army E.W. units, completed a lengthy NATO army EW officers’ course in Anzio, Italy and participated in a major NATO army EW field exercise in the Black Forest of Germany.

Earlier in my career, I conducted EW aboard two Canadian warships in exercises with Canadian, U.S. and other international naval allies. My bread and butter for more than 22 years was the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. Military History All governments need to realize that, since at least the 1950s, Soviet/Russian and U.S. Militaries have each spent vast sums of money painstakingly studying and cataloguing all RF frequencies to determine which are the most harmful to humans! The Soviets irradiated the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for 23 years (1953-1976) for just 6-8 hours a day, five days a week, using similar frequencies, similar modulations, and even less power than are used in today’s Smart Meters, baby monitors, cell phones, etc.! Even though the Embassy was irradiated for what amounted to just 25% of the time, three U.S. ambassadors died: two from cancer, one from Leukemia-like symptoms; 16 women developed breast cancer, and most other staff suffered illnesses of some sort. The U.S. military responded by launching its Project Pandora (1954-1971), from which they too learned which specific frequencies, with which modulations, at what power densities had the most devastating effects on humans – which included: cancers, heart attacks, hysteria, trauma, suicides, etc. Governments need to realize that all modern militaries now possess ever-expanding arsenals of EW weapons, which use precisely the same RF frequencies that inexcusably ignorant Industry Canada today permits wireless and telecom companies, and now utilities, to utilize in their wireless products (see below)! Militaries have long known that:



Microwaves are the “perfect” weapon, for one cannot hear, see, smell, taste or feel them, plus they leave no trace of evidence!

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Frequencies within the band 900 MHz (or 0.9 GHz) to 5 GHz are the most lethal against humans because they penetrate more deeply all organ systems of the body and therefore put all human organs at risk! (Yet Industry Canada has authorized baby monitors, Smart Meters and all of today’s other wireless devices to operate in this very band of frequencies!)

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‘Pulsed’ radiation is more harmful to humans than is “continuous wave” radiation. (Yet Industry Canada permits today’s wireless products to emit pulsed radiation!)

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The harmful effects of EMR (electromagnetic radiation) are cumulative; they add up!



Certain frequencies are unique in that the weakest levels of radiation, for reasons unknown, cause more harm to humans than does more powerful radiation.



Soviet/Russian scientists produced thousands of studies, which were offered to the West, showing that non-thermal radiation (the kind emitted by today’s wireless products) is harmful to all life forms. Both the corrupt WHO (World Health Organization) and ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection) – who study only thermal radiation – refused the offer, thus denying Western scientists the opportunity to learn about non-thermal radiation from the Soviet/Russian studies!

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http://www.weepinitiative.org/LINKEDDOCS/scientific/20080117_bevington_emfs.pdf

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http://www.emfacts.com/2012/08/rncnirp-to-issue-report-on-russian-rf-research/

Non-Military Science Distinguished scientists and leading health researchers around the globe know that:



There is no such thing as a ‘safe’ threshold of radiation; the only ‘safe’ level is zero!

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The non-thermal RF radiation (also called EMR) emitted by all wireless devices is cumulative; it all combines and blends together, like an ever-thickening fog!



Non-thermal EMR causes, promotes or is linked to the exponential rise in all of today’s major illnesses, including all cancers, ADHD, asthma, Multiple Sclerosis, leukemia, Alzheimer’s, dementia, Autism, ADD, Parkinson’s, ALS, etc. (Yet Health Canada refuses to admit this!)



Cancers and other major diseases have a latency period of 10-15 years or more!

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Cell phones have never been tested for ‘safety’ in any jurisdiction to prove they can be used by and/or around people on a continuous 24/7/365 basis, in perpetuity)!

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In 1984, the U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) exempted cell phones from having to undergo mandatory ‘pre-market’ testing because industry convinced them that cell phone radiation was too weak to be of concern. This opened the flood-gates for today’s constellation of wireless devices, including Smart Meters, all of which use the same technology on similar frequencies!

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Not one peer-reviewed scientific study exists – anywhere – showing that cell phones are safe!

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The U.S. Cell phone industry’s own six-year study ($28.5-million USD, in ’93-’99) showed they are not safe!

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All cell phone Owner Manuals contain, in very fine print, warnings for the user not to hold the phone closer than, in the case of Blackberry – 0.98”; Apple – 5/8”; Motorola – 1” from any part of the body – not just the head!

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Since 2001 Motorola, Nokia, Siemens and other cell phone companies have taken out global patents that acknowledge cell phone radiation can lead to cancers!

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Wireless and cell phone companies, and electric utilities cannot get insurance against health-related claims attributed to wireless radiation!

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In 2010, CTIA’s (Cellular Telecommunications Internet Association)’s own Sr. VP External and State Affairs told a public audience in California: “I have not told you once, not once, that cell phones are safe; The FCC is telling you they are safe!” (CTIA is the industry’s association that lobbies all levels of government across the U.S. on behalf of its members)

It is absolutely frightening to realize how completely inept and negligent the Government of Canada has been since the 1980s in fulfilling its duty to protect the public from the toxic non-thermal EMR” emitted by wireless radio devices! Aside from Health Canada – who are notoriously corrupt, dating back to the 1970s – not one competent senior health authority exists – either in Ottawa or in any of the provinces – who has any meaningful knowledge of or expertise in this form of radiation – which is literally everywhere today! This means that: No provincial Minister of Health; No provincial senior public health officer (PHO); No national Chief PHO; No member of Canada’s “Pan-Canadian Public Health Network”; Nor, I suspect, any senior member of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) is capable of protecting the Canadian public, because they are all ignorant of non-thermal EMR – which Health Canada steadfastly insists does not harm people! Shocking! Disgraceful! Absolutely criminal! It is impossible to exaggerate the unprecedented danger all Canadians find themselves in today (as is the case for most people in the world), which could not possibly have happened had this admittedly recondite subject matter (non-ionizing radiation) been taught to aspiring medical doctors in medical schools; been recognized or understood by the CMA; or had our series of national Chief PHOs been selected more carefully. With no one to provide oversight, Health Canada continues to be able to do much as it pleases. One has only to Google: “Michael Repacholi, World Health Organization, Corruption,” to gain a glimpse of the corruption just one scientist brought, not only to Health Canada, but to ICNIRP and then to the WHO itself! Another glimpse can be had by Googling: “Health Canada, Conflict of Interest, Sharon Noble.” All governments in Canada and the public need to also note that, with no competent health authority to question or challenge its decisions, Health Canada has been free to promulgate a ‘one size fits all’ radiation Exposure Limit in Safety Code 6, which applies to all Canadians – regardless of size or the state of one’s health!

It makes no distinction between tiny developing embryos, pregnant women, newborn babies, children, normalsized adults, huge men and women, the sick and elderly! Yet scientists have known for years that a baby’s skull absorbs at least five (5) times as much radiation as does an adult’s! All levels of government, all health care authorities across Canada, and the CMA itself need to wake up and realize that both Health Canada and Industry Canada are – and have been for decades – deeply embedded with what has become a corrupt cartel of the four radiation Regulatory Agencies: WHO, ICNIRP, IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). All share similar egregiously high radiation Exposure Limits – which are amongst the highest/most dangerous in the world! All have strong ties to the electricity industry! http://www.next-up.org/pdf/who_conflict.pdf Neither Health Canada nor any of its corrupt cartel colleagues will recognize (admit) that:



Non-thermal EMR can be harmful to humans and all life forms! (Their collective position is: “If the radiation does not heat the skin, it cannot be harmful”!)

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Powerline (60 Hz) electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) are harmful to people! (Scientists say that a safe ambient level of EMFs in a home would be not more than 1 mG (milliGauss)! They’ve known for decades that an ambient level of just 3-4 mG causes Leukemia in children! Russia allows up to 1.5 mG; Sweden, up to 2.5 mG! Note: Contrast the above with all members of the ‘Western cartel; who are tied to the electricity industry: Health Canada – says EMFs have not been proven harmful, and therefore it allows EMFs up to 1,000 m’G! IEEE – allows up to 10,000 mG! ICNIRP and WHO – both allow 2,000 mG for short term exposure in residences, and up to 9,000 mG for short term occupational exposure! http://www.nextup.org/pdf/who_conflict.pdf



EHS is a legitimate impairment or disability people experience when constantly exposed to EMR and/or EMFs! (Discovered by German scientists in 1932, the WHO finally recognized EHS in 2005, as have many countries of the world. It is known that Nikola Tesla was EHS!

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http://www.weepinitiative.org/LINKEDDOCS/scientific/20080117_bevington_emfs.pdf

Governments must no longer ignore what the Soviet/Russian and U.S. Militaries learned from their sevendecades-long exhaustive research: a) microwaves are the perfect military weapon; b) low-level, pulsed, non-thermal radiation – at even the weakest levels – is harmful to all living things; and, c) the most lethal frequencies within the entire RF band are between 900 MHz to 5 GHz – and are particularly lethal to a human’s central nervous system and immune system. Any EMR emitted on microwave frequencies is a potential weapon – not a consumer product! That Industry Canada could see fit to permit today’s wireless radio devices, such as Smart Meters, baby monitors, cell phones, etc., to utilize the above-mentioned band of lethal frequencies speaks volumes for their gross ignorance of what militaries have long known. There exist today literally thousands of studies done by honest scientists from around the world showing that any wireless radio device is harmful to people, flora and fauna! The evidence is simply too compelling. In all decency, it must no longer be ignored! In closing, I have evidence to support everything I have said above. My earnest hope is that each of you is now better able to understand today’s reality. One cannot exaggerate the scale and scope of today’s corruption — that now literally threatens the entire globe! Unless you and other honest elected officials elsewhere put a stop to this insanity, mankind’s worst-ever genocide will become a reality! I am available to answer questions. Thank you for your time. Sincerely,

Jerry Flynn James G. (“Jerry”) Flynn, Captain (Retired) 5181 Gainsberg Road, Bowser, B.C., V0R 1G0 778 424-9609

A Totalitarian Society Has Totalitarian Science May 7 2015 | From: JonRappoport

And vice versa. Totalitarian science lets you know you’re living in a totalitarian society

The totalitarian party principles from George Orwell's "1984"

The government, the press, the mega-corporations, the prestigious foundations, the academic institutions, the “humanitarian” organizations say:

"This is the disease. This is its name. This is what causes it. This is the drug that treats it. This is the vaccine that prevents it." “This is how accurate diagnosis is done. These are the tests. These are the possible results and what they mean." “Here are the genes. This is what they do. This is how they can be changed and substituted and manipulated. These are the outcomes."

“These are the data and the statistics. They are correct. There can be no argument about them. “This is life. These are the components of life. All change and improvement result from our management of the components." “This is the path. It is governed by truth which science reveals. Walk the path. We will inform you when you stray. We will report new improvements." “This is the end. You can go no farther. You must give up the ghost. We will remember you.”

We are now witnessing the acceleration of Official Science. Of course, that term is an internal contradiction. But the State shrugs and moves forward. The notion that the State can put its seal on favored science, enforce it, and punish its competitors, is anathema to a free society. For example: declaring that psychiatrists can appear in court as expert witnesses, when none of the so-called mental disorders listed in the psychiatric literature are diagnosed by laboratory tests. For example: stating that vaccination is mandatory, in order to protect the vaccinated (who are supposed to be immune) from the unvaccinated. An absurdity on its face. For example: announcing that the science of climate change is “settled,” when there are, in fact, huge numbers of researchers who disagree. And then, drafting legislation and issuing executive orders based on the decidedly unsettled science. For example: officially approving the release and sale of medical drugs (“safe and effective”) which go on to kill, at a conservative estimate, 100,000 Americans every year. And then refusing to investigate or punish the purveyors of these drug approvals (the FDA). For example: permitting the widespread use of genetically modified food crops, based on no long-term studies of their impact on human health. And then, arbitrarily announcing that the herbicide, Roundup, for which many of these crops are specifically designed, is non-toxic. For example: declaring and promoting the existence of various epidemics, when the viruses purportedly causing them are not proven to exist and/or not proven to cause human illness (Ebola, SARS, West Nile, Swine Flu, etc.)

A few of you reading this have been with me since 1988, when I published my first book, AIDS INC., Scandal of the Century. Among other conclusions, I pointed out that HIV had never been shown to cause human illness; the front-line drug given to AIDS patients, AZT, was overwhelmingly toxic; and what was being called AIDS was actually a diverse number immunesuppressing conditions. Others of you have found my work more recently, since I started this site in 2001. I always return to the subject of false science, because it is the most powerful long-term instrument for repression, political control, and destruction of human life. As I’ve stated on many occasions, medical science is ideal for mounting and launching covert ops aimed at populations because it appears to be politically neutral, without any allegiance to State interests. Unfortunately, medical science, on many fronts, has been hijacked and taken over. The profit motive is one objective, but beyond that, there is a more embracing goal: Totalitarian control. It aims to replace your freedom, consciousness, and intelligence with its own synthetic versions.

WIRED Magazine Now Totally Admits What The Entire Media Called 'Loony Conspiracy Theories' Just Five Years Ago To Be Real April 25 2015 | From: NaturalNews

Remember when it was considered the subject matter of tin foil hat-wearers to surmise that everything we do, say, or search for online is being tracked by covert government agencies acting in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution?

Well, now it's become common knowledge that we live in this exact, illicit surveillance society, as is now openly admitted by popular media sites such as WIRED. A recent piece by the site's Bruce Schneier lifts a veil on the mass surveillance activities taking place by the likes of the National Security Agency (NSA), whose cover was blown by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, and subsequently by several others. Initially, it was thought that such technological capacity only existed in sci-fi films, and that surely government agencies don't have the time or resources to collect information on, well, everyone. But now it turns out that this premise is actually a reality -- the military-industrial complex, in the name of "national security" and the faux "war on terror" is actively collecting what Schneier explains is a treasure trove of metadata on practically every [western person] American. And it is doing so without consent or constitutional approval, with seemingly no recourse for those who would choose, if they could, to opt-out. "We may not like to admit it, but we are under mass surveillance," writes Schneier for WIRED, dispelling all accusations that government spying is some kind of loony conspiracy theory.

NSA and other treasonous organizations surveil Americans to maintain military dictatorship, not to protect "national security"

In his eye-opening report, Schneier highlights the difference between data, or more precisely the content of a person's conversations and emails, and metadata, which he dubs the context of a person's entire life. By simply analyzing who you call regularly rather than what you're actually saying during a call, for example, agencies like the NSA are able to compile what they believe to be an accurate profile of what you're doing and thinking. Based on this information, the powers that be believe they're entitled to make decisions about your "threat" level - not in terms of a real threat to freedom or liberty, of course, but a threat to the establishment that's fighting wars, destroying economies, and controlling the world, in essence, in the construction of a centralized world order. It's all about power and control, in other words, and the cohort of metadata that can be gathered through internet search histories, mobile phone calls, and other sinister tracking protocols is the direct means to this end. Your privacy isn't a concern in any of this, and the corporations involved in making these data mining activities a reality are oftentimes just accessories to treason. Because in truth, the activities of agencies like the NSA are what really constitute terrorism, not the everyday movements, thoughts, and communications of a supposedly "free" people. Data mining and spying by the government are both patently criminal activities, and no amount of "national security" propaganda will ever change that fact. And yet these practices continue because most people aren't willing to stop them.

"Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody's life," admitted NSA General Counsel and traitorStewart Baker about what our infiltrated government apparatus is up to when it comes to tracking the population. "If you have enough metadata you don't really need content. We kill people based on metadata."

In the words of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

"The U.S. government ... has engaged in massive, illegal dragnet surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans at least 2001."

Britain’s IoD: “Smart Meters Are A Government IT Disaster Waiting To Happen” April 9 2015 | From: TakeBackYourPower

The UK’s leading business network of company directors has issued a damning report and warning against the UK’s planned “smart” meter rollout.

IoD calls for Smart Meters scheme to be ‘halted, altered or scrapped’ to avoid ‘unjustified, over-engineered and expensive mistake’ The Government’s rollout of Smart Meters, digital energy meters designed to provide real-time usage statistics, should be “halted, altered or scrapped” to avoid a potentially catastrophic government IT disaster, the Institute of Directors warns today. In a major new report entitled “Not too clever: will Smart Meters be the next Government IT disaster?” the IoD brands the £11bn scheme, the largest government IT project in history, “unwanted by consumers, devoid of credibility and mindblowingly expensive”. The business group calls on an incoming government to review the project and “consider a fresh start”.

View or download the IoD report: Not too clever: Will Smart Meters be the next Government IT disaster? (PDF, Released March 27, 2015) Summary: Smart meters are the largest UK Government-run IT project in history, and the most expensive and complex smart meter programme in the world. The risks of such a huge programme with so much complexity are staggering. The pace of technological innovation may well leave the current generation of meters behind and leave consumers in a cycle of installation, de-installation and re-installation. Three assessments of the programme by the Major Projects Authority have not been published. This is unacceptable. It is imperative to move towards a cost-effective smart meter rollout by embracing one or all of the following costsaving and simplifying measures: i) Halting the smart gas meter deployment; ii) Removing the requirement for an in home display; iii) Reduce rollout to only those homes that have a high energy usage; iv) Abandon attempts to stretch the rollout to flats and tower blocks; v) Make the programme genuinely voluntary; vi) Abandon the programme altogether and develop a smartphone app that allows customers to take their own

readings. Over the years, the ambition and scale of Government IT projects has not been matched by appropriate management and planning. 80 per cent of surveyed IoD members believe Government’s ability to deliver successful IT projects is poor.

The Smart Meter programme, which has the hugely ambitious target of installing 100 million new pieces of kit in homes and business by 2020, was initiated by Ed Miliband as energy secretary in 2008, following an EU Directive, and confirmed by the Coalition Agreement in 2010. The report’s author, Dan Lewis, Senior Infrastructure Advisor at the IoD, calls the political consensus “a conspiracy of silence among politicians in thrall to big ideas and even bigger budgets”. Lewis continues:

“The professed aims of the Smart Meter programme are laudable, and we all recognise the benefits of reducing consumption and increasing energy awareness. But there is little credible evidence to suggest that a scheme of this size and complexity will achieve those goals.”

The IoD report highlights a number of key concerns: Despite the EU Directive, 11 nations have ruled out electricity smart meters and only 5 are pushing ahead with the 2020 target for gas meters. In contrast, as is so often is the case, the UK has gold-plated the Directive. The government refuses to publish any of the reports on the programme by the Major Projects Authority. The cost-benefit analysis conducted by the Department for Energy and Climate Change is so heavily redacted as to be almost unreadable. The Smart Meter network would be vulnerable to cyber-attack and disruption. Introducing time-of-day pricing to shift consumer demand will only work with price increases that are not politically realistic. Retail consumers really can’t change their energy consumption that much. The report places the rollout of Smart Meters within the context of previous large-scale IT fiascos, including the infamous NHS National Programme for IT, the eBorders Programme and the BBC’s disastrous Digital Media Initiative. Furthermore, a recent survey shows that 80 per cent of IoD members rate the ability of government to manage large IT projects as “poor or very poor”. Dan Lewis adds:

“This scheme is far from smart. The dishonourable roll call of government IT projects that have haemorrhaged vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to no discernible effect needs no further additions. Consumers will not forgive the already unpopular energy companies for a costly programme which fails to deliver and ends up making them poorer. Without a change of direction, whoever wins the general election is at risk of overseeing a spectacular failure in the next parliament. They would be well-advised to consider a fresh start." “Consumers do not want the meters, they have proved a costly mistake in countries where they have been rolled out, and the Government is withholding key details about their costs and benefits. This makes for a programme which is devoid of credibility, over-engineered and mind-blowingly expensive.

Perhaps the only reason why the cost and ambition of this project has not become a national scandal already is because of a conspiracy of silence among politicians in thrall to big ideas and even bigger budgets.”

A key area of concern outlined in the report is that the technology behind the scheme is untested and some parts will likely be obsolete by the scheduled switch-on date of 2020. The new wireless standard, ZigBee, which is being developed for Smart Meters is complex and expensive compared to the better-known Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Each property will also get an in home display, but there is scant evidence of consumer demand. British Gas found that only 60% of customers looked at their displays even once a month a year after installation. An incoming government should consider the following changes: Stop the smart gas meter deployment – only a handful of EU nations are planning to deploy gas smart meters by 2020. This would save billions of pounds. Remove the requirement for an in home display – expected to cost £800m in total, the displays will be out of date in a few years. Far better to connect smart meters to people’s phones, tablets and PCs Limit the rollout to homes with high energy usage – those who use more than 5,100 kWh of electricity, and 23,000 kWh of gas a year have much more to gain. This would reduce the scale of the rollout by 80%. Abandon attempts to stretch the rollout to tower blocks – the most technically challenging aspect of the project with the lowest potential returns. This would remove seven million homes from the scheme. Make the programme genuinely voluntary – offered to customers at their own expense, not subsidised by all. Abandon the whole programme and develop a smart phone app instead – look into developing a smart app which would convert a photo of their current mechanical meter into a meaningful number for the suppliers. This would cost tens of thousands of pounds rather than billions. Lewis added:

“We know that an incoming government will be under intense financial pressure, having to find further cuts to public spending. This does not fit well with increasing energy bills for a project that has such unrealistic targets, such large costs and such uncertain benefits.”

View or download the IoD report: Not too clever: Will Smart Meters be the next Government IT disaster? (PDF, Released March 27, 2015)

Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems April 7 2015 | From: Newsweek

In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, arrived from America at Ellingham Hall, the country house in Norfolk, England where Assange was living under house arrest.

For several hours the besieged leader of the world’s most famous insurgent publishing organization and the billionaire head of the world’s largest information empire locked horns. The two men debated the political problems faced by society, and the technological solutions engendered by the global network - from the Arab Spring to Bitcoin. They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting nonWestern countries to Western companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet’s future that has only gathered force subsequently. In this extract from When Google Met WikiLeaks Assange describes his encounter with Schmidt and how he came to conclude that it was far from an innocent exchange of views. Eric Schmidt is an influential figure, even among the parade of powerful characters with whom I have had to cross paths since I founded WikiLeaks. In mid-May 2011 I was under house arrest in rural Norfolk, England, about three hours’ drive northeast of London. The crackdown against our work was in full swing and every wasted moment seemed like an eternity. It was hard to get my attention. But when my colleague Joseph Farrell told me the executive chairman of Google wanted to make an appointment with me, I was listening. In some ways the higher echelons of Google seemed more distant and obscure to me than the halls of Washington. We had been locking horns with senior U.S. officials for years by that point. The mystique had worn off. But the power centers growing up in Silicon Valley were still opaque and I was suddenly conscious of an opportunity to understand and influence what was becoming the most influential company on earth. Schmidt had taken over as CEO of Google in 2001 and built it into an empire. I was intrigued that the mountain would come to Muhammad. But it was not until well after Schmidt and his companions had been and gone that I came to understand who had really visited me. The stated reason for the visit was a book. Schmidt was penning a treatise with Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, an outfit that describes itself as Google’s in-house “think/do tank.” I knew little else about Cohen at the time. In fact, Cohen had moved to Google from the U.S. State Department in 2010. He had been a fast-talking “Generation Y” ideas man at State under two U.S. administrations, a courtier from the world of policy think tanks and institutes, poached in his early twenties.

Jarod Cohen

He became a senior advisor for Secretaries of State Rice and Clinton. At State, on the Policy Planning Staff, Cohen was soon christened “Condi’s party-starter,” channeling buzzwords from Silicon Valley into U.S. policy circles and producing delightful rhetorical concoctions such as “Public Diplomacy 2.0.” On his Council on Foreign Relations adjunct staff page he listed his expertise as “terrorism; radicalization; impact of connection technologies on 21st century statecraft; Iran.” It was Cohen who, while he was still at the Department of State, was said to have emailed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to delay scheduled maintenance in order to assist the aborted 2009 uprising in Iran. His documented love affair with Google began the same year when he befriended Eric Schmidt as they together surveyed the post-occupation wreckage of Baghdad. Just months later, Schmidt re-created Cohen’s natural habitat within Google itself by engineering a “think/do tank” based in New York and appointing Cohen as its head. Google Ideas was born. Later that year two co-wrote a policy piece for the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal Foreign Affairs, praising the reformative potential of Silicon Valley technologies as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Describing what they called “coalitions of the connected,” Schmidt and Cohen claimed that:

"Democratic states that have built coalitions of their militaries have the capacity to do the same with their connection technologies.… They offer a new way to exercise the duty to protect citizens around the world [emphasis added]."

Schmidt and Cohen said they wanted to interview me. I agreed. A date was set for June. By the time June came around there was already a lot to talk about. That summer WikiLeaks was still grinding through the release of U.S. diplomatic cables, publishing thousands of them every week. When, seven months earlier, we had first started releasing the cables, Hillary Clinton had denounced the publication as “an attack on the international community” that would “tear at the fabric” of government. It was into this ferment that Google projected itself that June, touching down at a London airport and making the long drive up into East Anglia to Norfolk and Beccles. Schmidt arrived first, accompanied by his then partner, Lisa Shields. When he introduced her as a vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations - a U.S. foreign-policy think tank with close ties to the State Department - I thought little more of it. Shields herself was straight out of Camelot, having been spotted by John Kennedy Jr.’s side back in the early 1990s. They sat with me and we exchanged pleasantries. They said they had forgotten their Dictaphone, so we used mine. We made an agreement that I would forward them the recording and in exchange they would forward me the transcript, to be corrected for accuracy and clarity. We began. Schmidt plunged in at the deep end, straightaway quizzing me on the organizational and technological underpinnings of WikiLeaks. Some time later Jared Cohen arrived. With him was Scott Malcomson, introduced as the book’s editor. Three months after the meeting Malcomson would enter the State Department as the lead speechwriter and principal advisor to Susan Rice (then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, now national security advisor). At this point, the delegation was one part Google, three parts U.S. foreign-policy establishment, but I was still none the wiser. Handshakes out of the way, we got down to business. Schmidt was a good foil. A late-fiftysomething, squint-eyed behind owlish spectacles, managerially dressed - Schmidt’s dour appearance concealed a machinelike analyticity. His questions often skipped to the heart of the matter, betraying a powerful nonverbal structural intelligence. Read the full story at: Newsweek

Hundreds Of Smart Meters Simultaneously Explode April 3 2015 | From: TakeBackYourPower

The utilities lied when they said “smart” or “AMI” meters would make the electricity grid “resilient” and “self-healing.” Nothing could be further from the truth, and this latest episode is more proof of the failure of “smart” meter programs everywhere.

On Monday, hundreds of “smart” meters simultaneously exploded in Stockton, California, when a truck ran into a utility pole. Watch the video here CBS News reported that “neighbors in the South Stockton area described it as a large pop, a bomb going off, and strong enough to shake a house.” The catastrophic failure of these PG&E “smart” meters — which are not approved by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) — not only damaged meter bases and other homeowner property, but left those 5,800 customers without power. That’s right — whenever these plastic, unproven meters fail, they shut your power off, as shown in this Cambridge University research paper.

Last July, the province of Saskatchewan ordered the removal of all 105,000 “smart” meters, following a rash of fires. Portland OR, Lakeland FL, Arizona and Ontario followed suit with mass removals. Quebec firefighters are up-in-arms that Hydro-Quebec agents have actually been unlawfully taking “smart” meters from fire scenes prior to investigation. Analog meters are not susceptible to fires. The risk of fires is a “smart” new feature for all customers, brought to you by your PR-spinning utility. Back in 2011, after a similar power surge ignited 80 “smart” meters in Palo Alto, California, a spokesperson for The Utility Reform Network (TURN) stated:

“In the collective memory of TURN, we have not seen similar incidents with analog meters.”

The total number of separate incidents of fires and explosions caused by “smart” meters is now very likely to exceed a thousand or more, although the true number is not known due do widespread coverups and denials by utilities. In addition to the ongoing stream of incendiary events, so-named “smart” meter programs: Are enshrouded in fiscal negligence; Are not shown to save energy;

Are linked with systemic billing inaccuracy and widespread increase of bills; Facilitate “time-of-use” billing and future artificial austerity measures; Facilitate monitoring of your activities and external control of your home; Open the door to unprecedented hacking vulnerabilities; and Emit pulsed microwave radiation typically thousands of times stronger than a cell phone, leaving many unsuspecting homeowners feeling ill. It is difficult to imagine a more blatant failure, or a more harmful deployment of unproven technology. If this is true, how can utilities be getting away with it? The “smart” meter deployments in your area are actually part of a corporate-government collusion to deploy a mass in-home data-capturing (read surveillance) and control grid — the “internet of things”. Here are three main takeaway points: 1. As new appliances are being designed to collect detailed activity and report in real-time through the “smart” meter, it’s estimated that the combined data they collect on all of us will be worth more than the entire electricity industry. 2. Industry wants to pocket trillions in this shift to an information economy, with you as the resource being packaged and sold — without your consent, of course. 3. With industry selling the wireless convenience and glorious modernization of it all, these deployments are being pushed through under the guise of climate action. Go Green!

If this sounds like a stretch, examine the evidence for yourself. The “smart” meter agenda, once fully spawned, would facilitate an unprecedented transfer of money, control, information and security from people to the corporate-government complex (CGC). The reason why there has been so much industry and government propaganda around the”smart” meter issue is because the scope of this pillaging is, again, unprecedented. This is also why those attempting to change to a sane course of action from within the CGC have not yet been successful. But as awareness spreads, scandals increase (like this one in California), and people take inspired action, I see that the “smart” meter agenda will fail and the pseudo-powers behind it will fall. So, what are we going to do about it? By protecting our individual rights, we are protecting all of life. Advocate groups worldwide are encouraged to demand immediate halt and reversal of all “smart” meter deployments, whether they be for electricity, water, or gas. It does not matter how much money was invested before people became aware of the facts about harm being perpetrated. We’re aware now. An “opt-out” program — whether paid or free — must categorically be rejected because asking for an “opt-out” is voting that you generally approve the installation of a surveillance grid, the harming of everyone else, and the practice of corporate extortion. Individually, here are three things you can do right now. 1. Once you become aware of the facts, remove your consent in writing (see example). This is simple, yet fundamental: your utility has made you an offer. You have the right to (and need to, contractually) either refuse or conditionally accept in writing, any written piece of paper they send your way. Note: everything they send you — indeed every communication they have with you — is essentially a contract offer, which in commerce is deemed accepted if it’s not rebutted. 2. Spread the word. Share the facts and solutions, starting with those you know: family and friends, via email and social media. Get together and form a local action group. Subscribe your email via www.takebackyourpower.net and stay tuned to developments.

3. Hold the individuals involved liable for causing or allowing this widespread crime. While this is not legal advice, an effective strategy appears to be treating their offer of a “smart” meter purely as a commercial transaction. You can use the same commercial codes and contract laws on which the for-profit corporate system is based, against its agents. Also, here are couple areas of law which are applicable and being used by some groups:

ultrahazardous activity: “An activity or process that presents an unavoidable risk of serious harm to the other people or others’ property, for which the actor may be held strictly liable for the harm, even if the actor has exercised reasonable care to prevent that harm.” -https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/ultrahazardous_activity

strict liability: 1.Civil (tort): Liability incurred for causing damage to life, limb, or property by a hazardous activity or a defective product, without having to prove that the defendant was negligent or directly at fault. It arises not from any wrongdoing but from the fact of the activity or product being inherently hazardous or defective. 2.Criminal: Liability imposed by a statute without the necessity of proving criminal intent (see mens rea), and intended to absolutely forbid certain acts such as preparation and sale of adulterated or contaminated food. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/strict-liability.html

We will continue to release news and developments on our website, www.takebackyourpower.net, where you can watch our award-winning feature film which covers the shocking true story about “smart” meters.

Intelligence Services Block Activists’ Emails And Frame Them With Fake Emails March 28 2015 | From: Zerohedge

You send an email to a reporter saying that you’ve got proof of criminal wrongdoing by a government official … or a big bank. You never receive a response.

Or you send an email to an expert on monetary policy asking if the Federal Reserve’s policies help the rich at the expense of the little guy … or an expert on radiation asking if the Fukushima accident might endanger public health. You never receive a response. This might be for any number of perfectly innocent reasons, including: Your email ended up in their spam folder They’re busy They’re not interested enough to write back They think you’re a bore or a crank But there could be another explanation … By way of background, China has blocked gmail for its citizens. Yahoo blocked emails relating to the Occupy protests. Bahrain uses British software that allows the government to frame political activists by creating messages from that person that they never typed. 35 other countries use the same software. Tunisia monitored and blocked the emails of activists, so they were never delivered. For example:

"There is also technical surveillance whereby downloading or adding attachment to an email must go through a central server. Under the pretext of protecting public order and national security, a 1998 post and telecommunications law enables the authorities to intercept and check the content of email messages and in fact electronic surveillance such as filtering of email messages of government opponents have been reported.

Global Voices Advocacy Director and Tunisia Activist Sami Ben Gharbia conducted a test from the Netherlands with two Tunisia-based activists and confirmed by logging to their email accounts from the Netherland that what he sees is not what they receive when they login from Tunisia, and that they cannot access some of the messages they receive."

The Tunisian government used software from Western companies to block emails of political dissidents. A prominent American political writer said that – if Tunisia is doing it – you can bet that Western countries are, as well. Indeed, Snowden revealed that the British spy agency GCHQ has developed numerous offensive digital tools, including:

Ability to deny functionality to send/receive email or view material online. *** Ability to spoof any email address and send email under that identity. *** Mass delivery of email messaging to support an Information Operations campaign.

The potential for stifling dissent is staggering.

Police Given Personal Information Without Search Warrants March 27 2015 | From: NewZealandHerald

Officers obtaining personal data from range of organisations by citing clauses in legislation.

Broad swathes of people's personal data are being sought regularly by police from airlines, banks, electricity companies, internet providers and phone companies without search warrants by officers citing clauses in the Privacy Act. Senior lawyers and the Privacy Commissioner have told the Herald of concerns over the practice which sees the companies voluntarily give the information to police. Instead of seeking a legal order, police have asked companies to hand over the information to assist with the "maintenance of the law", threatened them with prosecution if they tell the person about whom they are interested and accept data with no record keeping to show how often requests are made. The request from police carries no legal force at all yet is regularly complied with. Production orders and search warrants, by contrast, carry a legal compulsion after being approved by a judge or senior court official. The practice has emerged in recent cases cited by a number of lawyers and has seen a district court judge question the legal right of police to access a defendant's electricity records without a legal order because of the "increasingly intrusive nature of the information gathered by power companies". Privacy Commissioner John Edwards said he was undertaking research to see if his office should become a central register recording the number of such requests. He said he intended to lead discussion with holders of information over how they could publicly declare the number of requests received.

"I have been concerned for some time there is not full transparency and accounting over the various means (those holding information) agencies are engaging with law enforcement agencies."

He said a range of law enforcement bodies were citing clauses in the Privacy Act to get people's personal details. Clauses in Principle 11 of the act allowed personal information to be provided if it was for "the maintenance of the law", "protection of the public revenue", to "prevent or lessen a serious threat" to inviduals and similar clauses. But the broad intent of Principle 11 was to protect information, he said:

"It is not a power to obtain information for the police."

Mr Edwards said the ability to access information quickly was understandable when time was a critical factor. He said there was value in a public declaration by companies and others supplying information to police under the clauses.

"It may well impose a greater discipline." It would mean people could "see how their information is flowing between different types of entities".

Police assistant commissioner Malcolm Burgess said "there are controls around how information is both requested and provided". But he said there was no information held by police to show how often information was requested in this way because:

"there is currently no business requirement to do so". "While the Privacy Act provisions can be used to access low level information, such as basic account details, higher level data must be obtained through a production order."

Jonathan Eaton QC provided to the Herald with an excerpt from a recent district court case in which the judge questioned whether a company surrendering a customer's electricity information without a legal order was "authorised". The judge said:

"Indeed, giving the increasingly intrusive nature of the information gathered by power companies, one must question whether this is material which out to be handed over without the authority of a production order."

Mr Eaton said the issue had yet to be properly tested in court and prosecutors were in danger of having evidence tossed out if it was judged to have been obtained by improper process. He said there was also a burden of transparency on companies which held personal information.

"There's a very reasonable argument they have an obligation to inform their customers."

Criminal Bar Association president Tony Bouchier said he had a client whose phone and bank records had been provided to police with "absolutely no record whatsoever that any warrants had been issued". He said those providing information to police had an "obligation" to tell their customers they had done so. Barrister Chris Wilkinson-Smith said a client's personal information had been provided by an airline to police under a Principle 11 clause, showing booking details, immediate and future travel plans and personal information used to make the booking. The information was revealed by the airline - which he did not name - after police said it would help with "maintenance of the law". In this case, the person was the target of police inquiries into drug distribution. He said he had also had cases where TradeMe provided information without any sign of legal orders. He said police often sought search warrants to obtain information, which meant there was independent oversight.

"The danger for police is, if they don't go through the search warrant process, there could be the criticism they have taken a short cut."

Under the law the obligation to guard customers information lies with the company that holds it. Vodafone and Air NZ were approached for information about the way they handled warrantless requests by police under the Privacy Act. Both companies said they acted in according to the law but refused further information. A spokesman for Vodafone said questions about how often it provided information to police should be directed to police.

"Where disclosure is made in response to authorities' lawful demands, our responsibility to respect our customers' right to privacy is being balanced against wider public interest considerations."

The company's "transparency report" is silent on providing information under the Privacy Act clauses even though it details search warrants and ther invasive powers available to New Zealand's intelligence agencies. In contrast, Spark detailed the process and type of information it made available. A spokesman said concerns about the safety of people would result in call or text metadata for the last week, IP address traces, location data of where calls were made and the name and address of the account holder. For "maintenance of the law" requests, it would tell police if the numbers were active in the last seven days and trace listed numbers to the account holder. A spokesman said it did not keep data on the number of requests made or complied with. TradeMe was the sole holder of information identified by the Herald to publicly declare the number of Principle 11 clause requests it received. Police made warrantless requests for information on 1663 occasions ending June 2014 while other government agencies made 641 requests.

You Can Defeat Mass Surveillance: Here’s How (Pictorial Guide) March 25 2015 | From: TheFifthColumnNews

Ft. Meade, MD (TFC) – Back in June 2014 I wrote an article; Don’t Ask for your Privacy, Take it back for the Reset the Net campaign.

“The hope of this campaign is to emerge in a post June 5th world with a more secure standard of communications.” The only reason why mass surveillance works is because most of our communications are being sent in plain text, as easily read as you are reading this very article. Whether this is done willingly by the service provider or maliciously by the Government using devices and exploits without their knowledge, Encryption will keep (some of) your rights in tact, for now. While I do admit there is a modest barrier to entry into the realm of secure communications, there is a number of ‘Out of the Box’ solutions emerging to attempt to reduce this barrier. I will detail these still in development solutions in the footer, and cover some of the more established solutions that require a small amount of setup next. (With a pictorial guide) Secure instant messaging: Pidgin (w OTR plugin, Mobile users Get ChatSecure for Android or ChatSecure for iOS.) Hide your IP (with exceptions!): Tor (Mobile users Get Orbot for Android.) Encrypted GSM/SMS: TextSecure & RedPhone (Android only, iOS users get Signal 2.0) On the complaints about Tor, Let me detail a few of the weakness that exist in Tor so that you may be able to understand its strengths. Tor was initially developed and funded by the US Government to give itself plausible deniablity for its own illegal and malicious actions against businesses and countries worldwide. If only the US Government used Tor it wouldnt be very Anonymous, So it has to be a free for all to provide anonymity. That said, The Government doesnt like supporting malicious actors other than itself. So, Darknet sites (The .onion network) were attacked. The reason this attack worked is for two reasons.

One, Using Tor in a browser provides a wide attack vector via the Flash and JavaScript scripting engines. A script in Flash or JavaScript can report back the IP Address in the context of that code, before it passes over Tor. This is because the code is running locally in your browser and not on the server which does not know your IP address.

Two, If every Tor node you are using is in fact owned by the US Government, a top-down view of all US Government nodes can in theory reveal your IP as an educated guess, but it is not conclusive. Using Tor outside of a browser and not on the Darknet/.onion network will defeat this attack. Me personally, when I use Tor. I exclude all nodes that reside in a FVEY (Five Eyes) Member country. That is US, CA, AU, UK and NZ. I use an open source project called AdvTor to do this. Pidgin is a messaging client that supports numerous protocols. The one I will focus on is XMPP, previously known as Jabber. The XMPP server I use is creep.im, You can add me using [email protected]. Here is a list of many XMPP servers. There is no reason Pidgin shouldn’t be the MSN or ICQ of this decade. Most people have resigned to using Facebook for their messaging needs, But this is a horribly insecure centralized target for … pretty much everyone. XMPP allows you to use any number of servers in any number of countries to route your conversations thru, all with full encryption. Read the full story at: TheFifthColumnNews

France Moves To Make ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Illegal By Government Decree March 23 2015 | From: 21stCenturyWire

The apparent "Political elites" and super-bureaucrats are worried. It’s becoming harder to control consensus reality.

A history stitched together by lies and cover-ups, political assassinations, slight-of-hand false flag deceptions, secret societies, dual loyalties and stolen fortunes – this has been the exclusive privilege of organized crime and the ruling elite for centuries. Putting aside history’s ‘big ticket’ items though, the real reason for this authoritarian trend is much more fundamental. By knocking out their intellectual competition, political elites and their media moguls hope to minimalize, and thus eliminate any alternative analysis and opinion by applying the completely open-ended and arbitrary label of “extremist” to speech. They want to wind back the clock, where a pre-internet, monolithic corporate media cartel held a monopoly on ideas. SEE ALSO: JE SUIS HYPOCRITE: Enemies of Press Freedom Hijack ‘Charlie’ in Paris Although France has taken the lead in this inter-governmental effort (see below), the preliminary assault began this past fall with British Prime Minster David Cameron publicly announcing on two separate occasions, that all of these so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ (anything which challenges the official orthodoxy) should be deemed as “extremist” and equivalent to “terrorist” and should be purged from society on the grounds of ‘national security’. The first came with Cameron’s warped speech at the UN, and afterwards, a similar charge was made by the UK leader against anyone who dares press the issue of institutional paedophilia and child abuse. Watch this UN speech by Cameron where he clearly claims that ‘conspiracy theorists’ are the ‘root cause’ and indeed, an equal threat to national security as ISIS terrorists currently running amok in Syria and Iraq (start 4:26)…

As yet, few are aware of how in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, French Prime Minster, Francois Hollande delivered an official declaration (see full report and text from his speech below). However, Hollande takes it beyond the usual hyperbole and focuses on giving the state an administrative and legal foothold for policing both speech and thought crimes in France. If this is can be accomplished in France, then a European [and beyond] roll-out would soon follow. Ironically, in order to achieve this fascist leap forward, Hollande has equated “conspiracy theories” to Nazism, and is calling for government regulations to prevent any sharing or publishing of any views deemed as ‘dangerous thought’ by the state. Specifically, Hollande is citing “Anti-Semitism” and also anything which could inspire ‘acts terrorism’ – as the chief vehicles

for what the state will be designating as ‘dangerous thoughts’. With the thumb of Hebdo still pressing down, this may just sound like politics writ large by the French leader, but in reality it’s full-blown fascism.

Worse yet, with all of the world leaders gathered togther in Paris in January supposedly marching solidarity for ‘free speech’ and proudly chanting “Je Suis Charlie” (image above), that Hollande would use this as political cover to restrictfree speech in Europe should shock even. RINF reports how the new censorship regime has already been implemented this week: “Earlier this week, the Interior Minister of France — with no court review or adversarial process — ordered five websites to not only be blocked in France, but that anyone who visits any of the sites get redirected to a scary looking government website, saying:

While it could be argued that the four websites initially listed by the government for ‘blocking’ were exclusively for ISIS/ISILrelated activity and thus, should be kept hidden, the government has made no caveat in its reams of policy literature, other than some vague language as to what it defines as ‘extremist’, as to where this growing list will stop, or indeed, if it has any limits at all.

Because this process is extrajudicial, then there will be no warning to gov’t targets of this new regime. In fact, as RINF reports, this has already happened:

“In that first batch was a site called “islamic-news.info.” The owner of that site not only notes that he was never first contacted to “remove” whatever material was deemed terrorist supporting (as required by the law), but that nothing in what he had posted was supporting terrorism.”

Will French gov’t censors also block this website – because it is challenging the government’s new public filtering program? Are we entering a new intolerant, Chinese-style policing culture in Europe, and throughout the west? Certainly they have the ability and the legal clearance to do just that right now. Fear of losing control over manipulative narratives has always been a primary obsession with those in power, and clearly, based on what we’ve seen here – governments are making an aggressive move on free speech now. Skeptics will no doubt argue that this 21WIRE article itself constitutes a conspiracy theory. If that was the case, then why have western governments, particularly those in the US and Britain, already spent millions, if not billions in state funds in order to infiltrate, disrupt, and occupy forum websites, and social networking groups of so-called ‘conspiracy theorist and even creating entirely new groups just to contradict them? Does that not already prove what the government modus operandi is? As if that wasn’t enough already, now France wants to take it to a whole new authoritarian level. It may sound ridiculous, but this is exactly what is taking place in government as we speak. History shows that once this new regime is in place, they will not relinquish any new powers of censorship, and so a long, intellectual dark age is certain to follow…

(Translation by Roger Lagassé)

Thierry Meyssan Voltaire Network At the request of President François Hollande, the French Socialist Party has published a note on the international “conspiracy theorist“ movement. His goal: to prepare new legislation prohibiting it to express itself. In the US, the September 11, 2001 coup established a “permanent state of emergency“ (Patriot Act), launching a series of imperial wars. Gradually, the European elites have aligned with their counterparts across the Atlantic. Everywhere, people are worried about being abandoned by their States and they question their institutions. Seeking to retain power, the elites are now ready to use force to gag their opposition. The President of the French Republic, François Hollande, has assimilated what he calls “conspiracy theories” to Nazism and called to prevent their dissemination on the Internet and social networks. Thus he declared, on January 27, 2015 at the Shoah Memorial:

“[Anti-Semitism] maintains conspiracy theories that spread without limits. Conspiracy theories that have, in the past, led to the worst “(…)” [The] answer is to realize that conspiracy theories are disseminated through the Internet and social networks. Moreover, we must remember that it is words that have in the past prepared extermination. We need to act at the European level, and even internationally, so that a legal framework can be defined, and so that Internet platforms that manage social networks are held to account and that sanctions be imposed for failure to enforce” [1].

Several ministers also decried what they called conspiracy theorists as so many “fermenters of hate and disintegrators of society.” Knowing that President Hollande calls “conspiracy theory” the idea that States, whatever their regimes – including democracies – have a spontaneous tendency to act in their own interests and not in that of their constituents, we can conclude that he presented this confused amalgam to justify a possible censure of his opponents. This interpretation is confirmed by the publication of a note entitled “Conspiracy theories, current status” by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a Socialist Party think tank of which Mr. Holland was the first secretary. [2] Let’s leave aside the political relations of François Hollande, the Socialist Party, the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, its political radicalism Observatory and the author of the note and let’s focus on its message and its ideological content. Definition of “conspiracy theories“ The terms “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy theorism” have developed in France in the wake of the publication of my book on US imperialism post-September 11, titled The Big Lie [3]. At the time, we had trouble understanding what the terms meant because they referred to American political history. In the United States, are commonly called “conspiracy theorists” those according to whom President Kennedy had not been assassinated by one man but by many, forming a conspiracy (in the judicial sense). Over time, these expressions entered in the French language and have overlapped with memories of the 30s and the Second World War, those of the denunciation of the “Jewish conspiracy“. These are therefore now polysemous, sometimes evoking the law of the state-Stator silence and, at other times, European anti-Semitism. In its note, the Jean-Jaurès Foundation gives its own definition of conspiracy theorism. It is…

“an ’alternative’ narrative that claims to significantly upset the knowledge we have of an event and therefore competes with the “version” which is commonly accepted, stigmatized as “official”” (p. 2).

Observe that this definition does not apply solely to the delusions of the mentally ill. Thus, Socrates, through the myth of the cave, affirmed his challenge to the certainties of his time; Galileo with his heliocentric theory challenged the prevailing interpretation of the Bible of his time; etc. For my part, and since they see me as the “pope of conspiracy theorists” or rather the “heretic” in the words of Italian philosopher Roberto Quaglia, I reaffirm my radical political commitment, in keeping with the French republican radicalism of Leon Bourgeois [4], of Georges Clemenceau, [5] of Alain [6] and of Jean Moulin. [7] For me, as for them, the state is a Leviathan which by nature abuses those it governs.As a radical Republican, I am aware that the state is the enemy of the common good, of the Res Publica; which is why I wish not to abrogate it, but to tame it. The republican ideal is compatible with various political regimes-including monarchies, as was enacted by the authors of the Declaration of 1789. This opposition, which the current Socialist Party disputes, has so shaped our history as Philippe Pétain repealed the Republic to proclaim the “French State“. Immediately after his assuming presidential office, I denounced Hollande’s Petainism [8]. Today, Mr. Hollande claims to be of the Republic to better fight it and this inversion of values plunges the country into confusion. Who are the “conspiracy theorists“? The “conspiracy theorists” are thus citizens who oppose the omnipotence of the State and who wish to place it under surveillance. The Jean-Jaurès Foundation describes them as follows:

“[It’s] a heterogeneous movement, heavily entangled with the Holocaust denial movement, and which combines admirers of Hugo Chavez and fans of Vladimir Putin. An underworld that consist of former left-wing activists or extreme leftists, former “malcontents”, sovereignists, revolutionary nationalists, ultra-nationalists, nostalgists of the Third Reich, anti-vaccination activists, supporters of drawing straws, September 11th revisionists, anti-Zionists, Afrocentricists, survivalists, followers of “alternative medicine”, agents of influence of the Iranian regime, Bacharists, Catholic or Islamic fundamentalists “(p. 8).

One will note the amalgams and abuse of this description aiming to discredit those it designates. Myths of the “conspiracy theorists“ The Jean-Jaurès Foundation continues its vilification by accusing “conspiracy theorists” of ignoring the realities of the world and naively believing hackneyed myths. Thus, they would believe in the “World Zionist plot“, the “illuminati conspiracy” and the “Rothschild myth” (p. 4). And to credit these three statements, it cites an example solely on the “Rothschild myth“: blogger Etienne Chouard – whose work is not simply about the Republic, but goes beyond to treat Democracy [9] – says the Pompidou-Rothschild 1973 law is the source of the debt of France. And the Foundation goes on to refute this assertion by quoting an article published by Libération… Continue this story at Voltaire Network READ MORE 'CONSPIRACY NEWS' AT: 21st Century Wire Conspiracy Files

NZ Politics Daily: Can We Trust The Police? March 22 2015 | From: NationalBusinessReview

The integrity and competence of the New Zealand Police is under intense scrutiny, following the release of the highly critical watchdog report on the police investigation into the Roastbusters scandal.

The report raises questions, yet again, of how much faith the public can put in the Police. So far the reactions in the political sphere suggest we shouldn’t place too much confidence in the law enforcement agencies, and that significant reform is required. For some of the more interesting and assertive examples of this, see my blog post Top tweets about the IPCA Roastbusters report.

Police Incompetence The IPCA’s report is described today by the Dominion Post newspaper as “A portrait of carelessness and incompetence” – see the editorial, Police failed vulnerable young women. The newspaper says the police incompetence described in the report is “shocking” and “mystifying, especially as most cases were investigated by specialist detectives.” For details of the findings you can download the actual Report on Police’s handling of the alleged offending by ‘Roastbusters’, or read excellent summary articles such as Teuila Fuatai’s Roast Busters report reveals errors. The most surprising example of incompetence highlighted by the report was the apparent police misunderstanding of the law, which is discussed best in Danyl Mclauchlan’s blog post, Two excerpts from the IPCA report into the Roastbusters Critiques the “police logic”. He says:

“Here’s what’s amazing. The officers making these decisions were detectives in the Child Protection Unit. They’re a special team trained to ‘exclusively focus’ on child abuse and they either did not understand the law around the age of consent or deliberately misinterpreted it.”

To explain other elements of police incompetence, Barry Soper uses an analogy:

“it was a bit like burglaries being committed in the same neighbourhood, with the burglar leaving his calling card at each one of them and the police failing to join the dots, reaching the obvious conclusion that the same person was responsible for lifting the loot” – see: Operation Clover needs a fourth leaf.

See also, Murielle Baker’s Radio New Zealand item, IPCA report provokes strong response, which includes the observation of lawyer Catriona Maclennan, that the police:

“seem to almost think that a complaint and evidence from a victim are required for a prosecution. But that's obviously not the case, or no one would ever be prosecuted for homicide. I think they need to evaluate more carefully where evidence for prosecution could come from."

For these and other reasons, the report is “horrifying” says Toby Manhire in his column Police reform pledges exposed in report.

Police Lack of Accountability Police unwillingness to accept and demonstrate full culpability is highlighted in today’s Otago Daily Times editorial, A damning indictment, saying that:

“The authority's findings are damning and will inevitably open up questions of accountability once again, as well as the adequacy of police procedures and communication with agencies, notably Child, Youth and Family”.

The editorial says that Police failure to communicate with the young men involved, and their families, is perhaps the “most chilling” revelation in the report. Bloggers are condemning this lack of accountability in stronger terms. Blogger No Right Turn says that:

“Two of the officers - Officers C and E - appear to have been absolutely crap at their jobs, and are specifically identified as failing to meet the police's investigative standards. Police PR is absolutely silent on what has been done about these officers, and in particular, whether they have been sacked - there's not even the usual bullshit about more training” – see: The RoastBusters report.

Similarly, Danyl Mclauchlan complains that:

“Police can blandly say they accept criticisms and recommendations and apologise to victims, etc, but if they don’t sack incompetent officers specifically identified as being the cause of this debacle then none of it means anything”.

An Isolated Problem, or Systemic? Much of the political debate has been on the question of whether the major problems found in the report constitute an isolated one-off problem, or a wider systemic issue for the force. Police Minister Michael Woodhouse has said he believes it’s a case of individual actions rather than wider problems – see the Herald report, IPCA: Police 'let down' Roast Busters' alleged victims. Rape Prevention Education director Dr Kim McGregor says she “had spoken to top police officers about the issue”, and that:

"They know that they have pockets in areas where maybe there's an old-school attitude... Some of the heads within certain districts have misogynistic views towards women” – see Murielle Baker’s IPCA report provokes strong response.

McGregor is quoted elsewhere saying that the problem “sounds like a systemic failure”. She points the finger at the police bosses:

“I think we need to look higher, look at who was managing that team and why they were not able to liaise the way they should have". "We just need the police to step up and sort out those pockets of poor practice, sort out any managers, leaders who have misogynistic views, who don't take reports of sexual violence seriously, and that culture needs to come from the top” – see Newswire’s Greens: Roast Busters taskforce needed.

In the same article, Police Association president Greg O'Connor points the finger instead at a lack of resources, saying “police's workload was ‘impossible’, meaning systemic failures were inevitable”. There’s support for O’Connor’s position in Rachel Smalley’s column, Roast Busters case handling a shambles. She says that “a lack of resourcing mean police have a huge workload, and systemic failures are therefore inevitable”. Blogger No Right Turn also asks about the scale of the problem in the police:

“there's an obvious question: if the police were so crap at investigating these cases, are they also crap at others? How many other rapists are going free because police just can't be arsed doing their jobs properly?” – see: The RoastBusters report.

The IPCA’s report does actually address this issue, saying that:

"the Authority has not found any evidence of ongoing and widespread poor practice nationally".

But, according to No Right Turn, this response is to be expected, because the IPCA: “didn't look. Instead, they leant their mana (such as it is) to protect the reputation of a police force which has manifestly failed to do their job. Because at the end of the day, that's the IPCA's job. Not to get to investigate, not to hold the police to account, but to protect them and the system they are part of. And as long as that is the case, things will never change”.

Police Reform Demanded There are increasing calls now for the Government to implement some significant reform of the Police. Much of this comes out of the observation that the institution of the Police appears incapable of reforming itself – an observation actually made by the IPCA itself, in saying that the authority is "disturbed" by the lack of progress by the police in implementing change demanded by previous inquiries. Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei is therefore leading the charge for an independent taskforce to be established. Turei says:

"We have come to the unfortunate conclusion that the police are not capable of making the changes themselves, and they can't be trusted to take seriously the complaints of sexual violence victims in every case” – see Chris Bramwell’s Greens want police culture 'rebuild'. Turei believes “public trust in the police has been completely destroyed”.

Others are expressing skepticism about the police apologies and promises to change. Barry Soper says:

“We've seen top cop Mike Bush offering mea culpas, saying they weren't up to their normal high standards and they were disappointed in themselves. How many times have we heard that before?” – see: Operation Clover needs a fourth leaf.

Again, No Right Turn comments:

“what's most disturbing is that these are all issues we've seen before, in the Police-rape cases. And despite a commission of inquiry recommending changes, and despite the police saying they have made them, nothing appears to have changed”. – see: The RoastBusters report.

Making the most elaborate case for reform is Selwyn Manning, who argues that the IPCA report:

“findings demonstrate how the Police, as an institution, is unable to self-assess what ought to be done about this enduring culture of leniency toward sexual crimes and abuse.” – see his blog post, NZ Police Must Be Exorcised of Culture of Sexual Offending Leniency. Manning calls for: “an authority outside the Police club be established and empowered to root out this culture once and for all”. He argues that this is necessary because; “These conclusions paint a picture of an arrogant force resistant to outside commands”.

Police issues are being strongly politicised, and more public and parliamentary debate can be expected. Yesterday Parliament went into an urgent debate on the issue, which included some interesting speeches and accounts from Jarcinda Ardern and Catherine Delahunty – see Jo Moir’s MP recounts 'date-rape and assault' as young woman. There will continue to be pressure on the Government, and especially on whether they are responding adequately to the release of the report. For example, the Herald’s political reporter Adam Bennett (@AdDeville) has tweeted, “Shouldn't Police Min Michael Woodhouse be speaking out more about #Roastbusters report?” Similarly, drawing attention to the lack of media releases in response, satirist Lyndon Hood (@lyndonhood) has tweeted what, at first, looks like an incomplete sentence: “The following is an ehaustive list of Government press releases on the IPCA report:” The petitions are also up and running – see Action Station’s Demand Justice for 'Roast Busters' Survivors. Finally, for a fascinating insight into one person’s experience of police culture and why it doesn’t change, you can read former police inspector (and politician) Ross Meurant’s controversial 2011 North and South magazine feature, When the good guys are the bad guys.

In Today's Tyrannical "We Told You So" News: EU Calls For Tracking Computers In All Vehicles To Monitor, Regulate Travel March 21 2015 | From: NaturalNews

The controlling surveillance state is deepening, prying further into people's lives like a chisel carving its way through skin and bone. Governments have become opportunistic control freaks, centralizing their micromanagement powers whenever possible. [The dupes will say "Yes, but that it just happening in Europe" - but the astute now see that this is the very same "thin end of the wedge" scenario that has snuck into the world quite successfully on so many occasions because the dumbed down, sleeping masses were too stupid, pathetic and gutless to face reality beyond the distractions that have been purposely fed to them.]

[If you are incapable of comprehending this notion then you would be best to return to your favourite inane Master Cook / Idiotic Singing Pleb show thing - and never attempt to consider anything beyond such superficial excrement ever again.] Please excuse the increased use of highlighting - but we are now in the most extreme of times; and some points simply are of too much importance - and the amount of material that needs to be exposed is increasing exponentially. Now the European Union is rolling out plans to monitor travel on all European roads, tracking drivers' mileages and time traveled per vehicle. This controlling scheme is not for surveillance alone; it's essentially a plan to tax every driver for the for the distance they travel on European roads. Could you imagine being taxed for every quarter-mile you drive? A senior European politician is doing just that, calling on all European vehicles to be installed with road-pricing systems. This would include mandatory installation of a computer that would track how long one has driven on European roads and how far. This plan would serve as a built-in tax, harmonizing all road toll charges across the EU. The plan would end roadside tollss and replace them with time-tracking and/or distance-tracking toll micromanagement systems.

EU Transport Commissioner says computer system should regulate distance traveled One of the plan's advocates, Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc, is also trying to make the computer system as efficient as possible. She said that the EU travel regulations will put "a burden on car drivers" while becoming an "obstacle to their mobility." Bulc is advocating for a plan that charges drivers per kilometer and not by time. Her plan also includes a way to limit the speed of cars to minimize fuel loss. Bulc doesn't want to encourage speeding drivers by pressuring them for every minute they are operating their vehicle. Instead, she thinks it's safer and more efficient to charge drivers by the mile. It doesn't matter which way she looks at it, the plan to install computers in all vehicles is a gross violation of propertyand privacy, and another way centralized government can micromanage the people and their finances. Bulc said;

"It doesn't matter where you come from - everyone will only pay for the distance they have actually driven and it

will be billed on a device throughout Europe. We're currently investigating just such an idea." She continued: "There are many options - a fee could be obligatory but it's also possible to make it optional i.e. that countries decide themselves whether and on which roads they want to levy a road use charge based on kilometres driven."

The built in pay-by-the-mile scheme was slammed by UKIP transport spokesman Jill Seymour MEP. She said;

"It doesn't matter where you come from - everyone will only pay for the distance they have actually driven and it will be billed on a device throughout Europe. We're currently investigating just such an idea." She continued: "There are many options -- a fee could be obligatory but it's also possible to make it optional i.e. that countries decide themselves whether and on which roads they want to levy a road use charge based on kilometres driven." "[L]ook how the EU overrides the democratic decision of the British people: an unelected Slovenian bureaucrat in Brussels announces in a German newspaper interview that she wants to force all British drivers to fit computers in their cars which will count every mile they drive." She pointed out: "Britain will be forced into an EU-wide scheme in which Commissioner Bulc will force all drivers to pay for using our own roads, and the money will go straight to Brussels." She continued her argument: "This would be outrageous on three counts. First, it would be the imposition of a tax on tens of millions of UK citizens without the consent or control of parliament. Second, the money raised would not go to HM Treasury but to the bureaucrats in Brussels who would then undemocratically decide how the money would be spent on their own EU road schemes. Third, the idea that every British car would be fitted with a high-tech computer tracking every trip a driver makes is an invasion of privacy which we cannot tolerate."

[And her final point is exactly why 'we the people' need to stand up and oppose these incremental, tyrannical "Legislative" additions / adjustments / advancements. It is so obvious that we are, and have been continuously, over time been "Legislated" into a box of ever dimisnishing dimensions - where does it end and at what point will you realise that your freedom is the target of an extermination effort?]

Analysis: The Questions The Government Must Answer About The Snowden Revelations March 19 2015 | From: NewZealandHerald

Wrong, says the Prime Minister of the surveillance stories. But John Key won't say why. Don't believe what you read in the newspaper, says the Foreign Minister of reports New Zealand was spying on the Solomon Islands government.

Can we tell the public what the British public now know to be true about their own security agencies? asks David Fisher?

However, there's no benefit in having discussions about it through the media, says Murray McCully. And those doing the spying at the Government Communications Security Bureau won't assist, saying it doesn't comment on "operational" matters. So, between the leaked top secret documents and the denials, how do we cut through to what's actually happening? Broadly, the claim in relation to the GCSB is that it sucks up vast amounts of raw data from the Pacific which is then stored with the United States' National Security Agency. The data taken from the Pacific can be searched using a computer system called XKeyscore which is operated from access points around the world including at Waihopei at the top of the South Island. Is it true that there is bulk collection of people's data? And if so, is the information shared outside New Zealand? The answer could be in the practices in some of the other countries with which we partner in the Five Eyes intelligence grouping of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Five Eyes is a surveillance network with its roots in World War II, bound by a formal agreement called the UKUSA agreement. For almost 70 years since then, it has seen the five countries cooperate on intelligence gathering and sharing. There are many close similarities in the way the various bodies operate. The nations are close - we send staff to work with them and likewise, their intelligence staff work out of New Zealand. To operate effectively as a network, we have to cooperate effectively. Part of doing this is similar laws, methods and systems. So, when the UK's Intelligence and Security Committee released its report into its surveillance practices last Friday, there was much in there which matches the allegations made here and gives credence to claims about how New Zealand operates.

The UK inquiry, a historic event, followed the leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It paid tribute to the close links between the intelligence agencies and those abroad, stating:

"The (security) Agencies have long-standing intelligence-sharing agreements with many international partners."

It heard from the Government Communications Headquarters - it's partner to our GCSB - that "SIGINT (signals intelligence) partners can receive intercepted material directly from each other". The committee's report quoted GCHQ as saying "our default position is to make all our reported intelligence sharable with our [Five-Eyes] partners". Reported intelligence is that which has been developed beyond the raw feeds it has available but the report also covered the sharing of "raw intercept", confirming that GCHQ did seek and receive such information from the NSA. It did so legally, and did so without a warrant because on the occasions it did seek the raw data there was already a warrant in force. On the issue of "raw intercept", the British committee signalled further safeguards would likely be needed. The committee also found that metadata - what it called "who, when, where" information - was also provided by overseas partners. This type of information included communications by email, land and mobile phones, social media communications and other contacts between two or more points. In terms of value, this was considered greater than other means of interception. It would seem our partner agencies do both of the activities the GCSB is said to have done. That is, they provide information between intelligence organisations, both fully formed "by default" and in its raw form. There is also metadata provided between Five Eyes members. There is sharing, but what then of the scale of the interceptions?

"Bulk collection" does occur, the British committee confirmed. It says while GCHQ has the capacity to intercept the communications of individuals, it has to find those people first. GCHQ needs to be able to conduct bulk collection "so that they can generate leads and obtain the information they need to then target those individuals".

Using keywords for searching, the British GCHQ hunts across the internet stream searching for a match. Its report used the analogy of hunting for a needle in a haystack with a magnet. The results are categorised, reduced again by algorithms and search tools before producing a manageable list of material from which selections can be made to access actual communications. Bulk interception operates across a small percentage of those networks making up the internet, the committee was told. Even though it collects "vast numbers of communications", the total accessed on a global scale was "a very small percentage". It chose which to access based on the greatest likelihood of positive results. Yes, the tool could be turned inwards and search for British citizens but GCHQ first needed authorisation from the UK Secretary of State. That came with a complication, the committee found. The nature of the internet was such that communications involving British people - protected as Kiwis are protected in relation to the GCSB - were often through offshore webservers and companies. Those communications would also be swept up. It questioned whether the British distinction of "internal" versus "external" communications was still valid in the internet age. The committee found bulk interception necessary, citing - as other US inquiries have been unable to - security threats which would otherwise have been unknown.

But it also made "substantial recommendations for immediate improvements to the existing system of authorisation and oversight". It also called for increased transparency, greater oversight and more protections for British citizens. It seems then, that our partner agencies do engage in "bulk collection", of the sort described by former GCSB director Sir Bruce Ferguson in his Radio New Zealand interview.

"You cannot these days just individually select people... you put out a big net, catch stuff, you throw out the stuff you don't want ... and you keep the stuff you do want," he said.

The British committee also revealed for the first time by the committee that GCHQ and its sister agencies had acquired "bulk personal datasets" of individuals - huge amounts of personal details about people which were subject to no oversight. The report is silent on whether the datasets, gathered from commercial and government organisations, are shared with Five Eyes partners. On the type of collection, methods and scale, it is extremely likely we are walking in step with partners with which we have shared intelligence aims and material for almost 70 years. For us to do other than the British do - and the Americans - would create a level of dysfunction across a collaborative network. The British report- from a society and a committee not known for its openness - detailed the methods its agencies used and gave the reasons why. It examined the safeguards and, in many areas, found they were lacking. It also acknowledged there was "a legitimate public expectation of openness and transparency in today's society". Intelligence agencies need secrecy, it said, but "the Government must make every effort to ensure that as much information as possible is placed in the public domain". New Zealand soon has its own review of the intelligence agencies, scheduled to begin before the middle of the year. What a challenge for New Zealand. We, the smallest Five Eyes partner, have membership of the network through our history as a former colony of the United Kingdom. Can we produce an inquiry report at least as detailed as that released in the United Kingdom last Friday? Can we tell the public what the British public now know to be true about their own security agencies? And if not, why?

No Public Accountability For The GCSB, Prime Minister Goes Back On His Word + Documents Shine Light On Shadowy New Zealand Surveillance Base March 14 2015 | From: EveningReport / TheIntercept / NewZealandHerald / TelevisionNewZealand

"You Shouldn't Worry If You've Got Nothing To Hide” is one of the mantras trotted out when New Zealanders complain about the GCSB having access to their private communications. There is some speculation that the 'Fonterra 1080 poisoning threat' debacle is in fact a false flag cook-up to distract the mainstream media from the ongoing NSA / GCSB / FVEY spying evidence that is braising the Prime Ministers goose somewhat publicly. Related: John Key On "Mass Collection" Versus "Mass Surveillance"

Let’s turn that mantra around as ask those running the GCSB why the feel they have to hide from public everything they do. Is it because, as recent revelations show, the agency is more about serving the interests of the US government than that of New Zealanders?

No Public Accountability for the GCSB March 9 2015 | EveningReport

When I [Keith Locke] was an MP I ran up against a brick wall when I asked any questions about the GCSB, the Waihopai spy station or the Five Eyes. “We don’t comment on matters of national security” was the routine reply from the Prime Minister (Helen Clark followed by John Key).

The PM’s stonewalling has become even more absurd now that the Snowden documents have shown that the GCSB is intercepting and collecting virtually all the communications in Pacific Island states. When asked whether former GCSB head Bruce Ferguson was right that the agency does engage in mass communications data collection, the PM said he didn’t know what Ferguson meant? He also said there was no obligation on the GCSB to inform any New Zealander that details about their private communications were being collected. Everything the GCSB does is lawful, Key, claimed, forgetting the Privacy Act and forgetting his previous assurance that the GCSB Act does not allow for mass surveillance of New Zealanders To me there doesn’t seem any question that the GCSB is illegally engaged in the wholesale collection of the communications of any New Zealander visiting or living in a Pacific Island, or any New Zealander emailing or phoning someone in the Pacific). The targeting of Pacific Island government communications (as mentioned in one NSA document) is also contrary to the Vienna convention, and not what a good neighbour should do. The rejoinder of Key apologists, that “all nations do it” is simply not true, and we would rightly be outraged if a foreign government was intercepting all of our government communications. Parliamentary oversight of the GCSB is a joke. There is an Intelligence and Security Committee, which operates in secret and is now limited to National and Labour politicians. They are told very little as evidenced by the comments of a former Intelligence and Security Committee member, Peter Dunne, who has expressed surprise that the GCSB is collecting communications data wholesale and passing it on to the NSA. Let’s not accept the PM’s obfuscations. Let’s demand enough information to allow us to have a proper debate about what GCSB is doing in our name. And let us have better parliamentary oversight of the agency through an all-party select committee whose hearings are where possible in public, like other parliamentary committees.

Prime Minister Goes Back On His Word: Statement #1: Key: I'll resign if GCSB conducts mass surveillance 10:51 AM Tuesday Aug 20, 2013 | New Zealand Herald

Prime Minister John Key says he and the head of GCSB would resign if the spy agency were found to have conducted mass surveillance. He made the comment to reporters at Parliament in the light of assurances that the changes to the GCSB Act 2003 would not mean mass surveillance of New Zealanders. Asked if he and GCSB chief Ian Fletcher would resign if there were mass surveillance, he said yes.

"But the facts of life are it won't happen." For that to happen, the GCSB would have to undertake illegal activity. He clarified later saying "both" would resign if there was mass surveillance. "If I wholesale blatantly flout the law as Prime Minister I'm never going to survive anyway."

The Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill will be debated in Parliament this afternoon. Labour plans to move an amendment to try to get written into the law a policy statement by Mr Key last week in which he said he said he would not grant warrants to the GCSB to look at the content of New Zealanders communications under the cyber security function in the first instance, but if the agency detected a serious cyber intrusion, it would have to come back to him for a second warrant. Labour would require the leave of the House to introduce such an amendment because the part it relates to has already been dealt with. Mr Key indicated that National would oppose leave for Labour to do that, saying it was not necessary. Meanwhile, [now Ex] Justice Minister Judith Collins has confirmed that the police in the past have used the GCSB's specialist capability to intercept the communications of paedophiles.

Such assistance to other agencies has been on hold since September last year, pending the current bill passing which will unequivocally give the GCSB the legal power to spy on New Zealanders in certain circumstances.

Prime Minister Goes Back On His Word: Statement #2: Key says he won't quit if mass collection of Kiwis' communications proved 17:27 Mon, 9 Mar 2015 | Television New Zealand

Prime Minister John Key says he would not resign if it is proved that the GCSB carries out mass collection of New Zealanders' communications. Mr Key has always insisted he would quit if it was proved that New Zealanders were subject to mass surveillance. He insists the GCSB has told him that it is not capable of doing mass surveillance and is not legally allowed to do it. Late last week former GCSB boss Sir Bruce Ferguson told Radio New Zealand that there was mass collection of New Zealanders' data as part of spying operations in the Pacific. Sir Bruce also maintained however that it was legal as it was collected inadvertently and that the information on Kiwis was not used. When asked today about whether there was a difference between the terms "collection" and "surveillance", Mr Key responded by saying he was "sure the lawyers would tell you there is a difference". When pressed further, he refused to comment, saying he wasn't going to go into the GCSB's operational details.

Only the minister responsible for the GCSB would know for sure if that agency is conducting illegal mass surveillance. John Key is the minister responsible for the GCSB.

Documents Shine Light on Shadowy New Zealand Surveillance Base March 8 2015 | TheIntercept

Near the heartland of New Zealand’s renowned wine country, there is a place that visitors are not allowed to go. The peculiar large white domes that protrude from the earth in the Waihopai Valley are surrounded by razor wire and shrouded in secrecy.

But now, newly revealed documents from the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden shine a light on what is behind the security perimeter. The buildings there are crammed with sophisticated NSA spying technology, used by New Zealand to sweep up text messages, emails, phone calls, and other communications in bulk across the Asia-Pacific. The documents, revealed Saturday by the Sunday Star-Times in collaboration with The Intercept, show how closely New Zealand has worked with the NSA to maintain surveillance coverage of the region. The files also offer an unprecedented insight into the Waihopai base, exposing how it’s been integrated into a global eavesdropping network. The spying station intercepts data from satellites, and is operated by Government Communications Security Bureau, or GCSB, New Zealand’s equivalent of the NSA. Waihopai is part of a group of surveillance stations used by the so-called Five Eyes, an alliance that New Zealand is part of alongside the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. The Snowden documents show that Waihopai relies heavily on NSA technology to conduct electronic eavesdropping. The NSA tools and systems at the base include LATENTTHREAT, which breaks the intercepted satellite signals down into individual communications; LEGALREPTILE, which collects text message and call metadata, showing who is contacting whom and when; SEMITONE, which monitors fax and voice messages; FALLOWHAUNT, which targets communications sent over small “VSAT” satellites; JUGGERNAUT, which processes intercepted calls from mobile phone networks (including voice, fax, data and text messages); LOPERS and SURFBOARD, both used to snoop on phone calls; and XKEYSCORE, a system used to gather intercepted Internet data, such as emails and details about people’s online browsing habits. According to the NSA documents, the Waihopai station is codenamed IRONSAND. Its primary targets are large international telecommunications satellites that provide communications to and from all of New Zealand’s Pacific Island neighbors and other Asia-Pacific nations. Waihopai’s principal target in 2005, a secret GCSB report from three years ago shows, was a satellite positioned high above the Kiribati islands. This satellite was damaged and stopped operating after a power failure in mid-January 2005. Its work was transferred to another satellite, named IS-701, and later to IS-18, which is now Waihopai’s main target.

GCSB is legally barred from spying on New Zealand citizens except under a warrant. But there is a secret exception that allows the agency to spy on the governments of islands populated by New Zealand citizens.

“Note: The governments of Cook Islands and Niue may be targeted, but not their citizens since they are entitled to hold New Zealand passports,”

- notes a secret 2012 NSA document on New Zealand’s surveillance policies. In practice, this means politicians and public servants can be targeted for surveillance on the islands even if they are New Zealand citizens. Cook Island opposition leader William Heather told the Sunday Star-Times he was shocked to learn that the GCSB had spied on the island’s residents.

“We are only a small dot in the Pacific,” he said, questioning why New Zealand would “spy on the family.”

On Wednesday, The Intercept and the New Zealand Herald revealed how the Waihopai base was being used to spy on communications across the Pacific Islands and share intercepted data in bulk with the NSA and the other Five Eyes.

Following the story, the Tongan prime minister said the spying was “a breach of trust,” the New Zealand Labour party leader Andrew Little called the spying a “mass invasion of privacy,” and the Greens filed a legal complaint against the surveillance, which the party’s co-leader Russel Norman said amounted to “crimes under New Zealand law against entire countries.”

New Zealand’s prime minister John Key insisted that the revelations were wrong, but then refused to explain why, telling a press conference he had: “no intention of telling you about how we do things.” Meanwhile, former GCSB chief Sir Bruce Ferguson admitted that “mass collection” of data was indeed being undertaken in the Pacific, and said it was “mission impossible” to eliminate New Zealanders’ communications from the data being swept up.

Responding to the latest revelations on Saturday, GCSB declined to comment. In a statement issued to The Intercept and the Sunday-Star Times, the agency’s acting director, Una Jagose, said:

“We do not comment on operational matters. Everything we do is authorized under legislation and subject to independent oversight.”

NSA spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines said in a statement that the agency would not comment “on specific, alleged foreign intelligence activities.” Vines added: “The National Security Agency works with foreign partners to address a wide array of serious threats, including terrorist plots, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and foreign aggression.

NSA’s activities with foreign partners comply with U.S. laws and the applicable laws under which our partners operate.”

10 George Orwell Quotes That Predicted The World Today March 13 2015 | From: InfoWars

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

George Orwell, author of 1984, had tremendous insight on how the global elite would dominate society, and he predicted the current political climate in America today as you’ll see from this list by Justin King of the Anti-Media: George Orwell ranks among the most profound social critics of the modern era. Some of his quotations, more than a half a century old, show the depth of understanding an enlightened mind can have about the future.

1) “In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” Though many in the modern age have the will to bury their head in the sand when it comes to political matters, nobody can only concern themselves with the proverbial pebble in their shoe. If one is successful in avoiding politics, at some point the effects of the political decisions they abstained from participating in will reach their front door. More often than not, by that time the person has already lost whatever whisper of a voice the government has allowed them.

2) “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” Examining the nightly news in the run up to almost any military intervention will find scores of talking heads crying for blood to flow in the streets of some city the name of which they just learned to pronounce. Once the bullets start flying, those that

clamored for war will still be safely on set bringing you up-to-the-minute coverage of the carnage while their stock in Raytheon climbs.

3) “War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.” It’s pretty self-explanatory and while it may be hard to swallow, it’s certainly true. All it takes is a quick look at who benefited from the recent wars waged by the United States to see Orwell’s quip take life.

4) “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” My most prized books are a collection of history books from around the world. I have an Iraqi book that recounts the glory of Saddam Hussein’s victory over the United States in 1991. I have books from three different nations claiming that one of their citizens was the first to fly. As some of the most powerful nations in the world agree to let certain facts be “forgotten,” the trend will only get worse. History is written by the victor, and the victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

5) “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Even without commentary, the reader is probably picturing Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning. The revolutions of the future will not be fought with bullets and explosives, but with little bits of data traveling around the world destroying the false narratives with which governments shackle their citizens.

6) “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” Make no mistake about it; if an article does not anger someone, it is nothing more than a public relations piece. Most of what passes for news today is little more than an official sounding advertisement for a product, service, or belief.

7) “In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer…” In every conflict, it is not the side that can inflict the most damage, but the side that can sustain the most damage that ultimately prevails. History is full of situations in which a military “won the battles but lost the war.”

8) “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” Haditha. Panjwai. Maywand District. Mahmudiyah. These names probably don’t ring a bell, but it is almost a certainty that the reader is aware of the brutality that occurred in Benghazi. The main difference is that in the first four incidents, those committing the acts of brutality were wearing an American flag on their shoulder.

9) “Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.” Everyday there is a new form of censorship or a new method of forcing people into self-censorship, and the people shrug it off because it only relates to a small minority. By the time the people realize their ability to express disapproval has been completely restricted, it may be too late. That brings us to Orwell’s most haunting quote.

10) “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” Once the people are indoctrinated with nationalistic beliefs, and the infrastructure to protect them from some constantlychanging and ever-expanding definition of an enemy is in place, there is no ability for the people to regain liberty. By the time all of the pieces are in place, not only is opportunity to regain freedom lost, but the will to achieve freedom has also evaporated. The reader will truly love Big Brother.

Key Must Explain How GCSB Spying On Citizens Is Lawful + Pacific Action Needed Against Spy Net March 10 2015 | From: Pacific Freedom Forum / Green Party

John Key needs to come clean with New Zealanders and explain how it is lawful for the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to spy, without a warrant, on New Zealand citizens who are part of the governments of the Cook Islands and Niue, said the Green Party today. Related: NSA Global Spy Stations Revealed: 'Sniff It All, Collect It All, Know It All, Process It All, Exploit It All'

Documentation revealed today by the Sunday Star Times show that the GCSB’s targeting rules include New Zealand citizens are part of the governments of the Cook Islands and Niue.

Key must explain how GCSB spying on citizens is lawful

“The documents show the GCSB knew spying on New Zealanders from the Cook Island and Niue was illegal, but they decided to ignore this anyway,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman. “What was the justification for spying on people when the GCSB knew it was illegal?" “Is John Key saying that New Zealanders in the Cook Islands and Niue are second class citizens who do not deserve the protection of our spy laws?" “The facts show that there has been mass illegal spying on New Zealanders in the Pacific and John Key needs to explain why it was done."

“This spying agenda accelerated under his leadership, and he needs to tell the public if New Zealand, why he allowed something so blatantly illegal to occur." “It is not good enough to refuse to engage with the issue as John Key has been doing." “Every other world leader has fronted and offered an explanation; John Key, on the other hand, thinks he is above explaining this mess to New Zealanders." “The Green Party hopes the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security will be able to provide some answers to this debacle following our request to her to start an inquiry into the matter,” said Dr Norman."

Pacific Action Needed Against Spy Net - PFF Pacific leaders need to take action against wholesale spying by foreign powers, warns the Pacific Freedom Forum.

"Freedom of speech includes secure, private communications," says PFF Chair Titi Gabi. "This is true for not just journalists and their sources, but also for political leaders, community leaders, activists and advocates."

This week's news about the "full take" spying delivers details promised last year by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden. Ten Pacific countries are listed in media reports as being targets of spying by New Zealand's GCSB, which gives the NSA full access - and control - over the data. The countries are given as Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati and Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and French Polynesia. However another investigative journalist, Nick Hager, was quoted as saying the spying basically involves "all" Pacific Island countries. PFF co-Chair Monica Miller said that concerns about mass surveillance must now extend to the highest levels of power in the Pacific.

"We are all familiar with concerns about the chilling effects on freedoms of speech of laws and threats from various governments. But now its the turn of the public to be concerned about those effects on their own governments."

PFF notes questions of outright illegality under New Zealand law given the fact that Niue and the Cook Islands people are New Zealand citizens by birthright. New Zealand got support from the entire Pacific in its campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, campaigning with the slogan "New Zealand stands up for small states". PFF says the spying highlights the need for more regional awareness and action on cyber security.

Surveillance Society / Police State

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http://www.wakeupkiwi.com/surveillance-society-2.shtml

Surveillance Society / Police State

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Part 2:

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Part 3:

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Part 4:

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Snowden Documents Show Extent Of NZ Spying On South Pacific Nations March 7 2015 | From: NBR

Note: After publishing this article it would appear that the National Business Review has been leaned upon by the Prime Ministers Office in a lame attempt to whitewash this story - As may be seen in the revised link above. The oringinal NBR article is referenced below. The article is now entitled "John Key Rejects Snowden Docs As 'Outdated'". The cabal is in a failing

backslide and their inept minions cannot thwart exposures prior to media release now. Documents released to media today by the US National Security Agency (NSA) leaker Edward Snowden show New Zealand signals intelligence agencies spy on South Pacific nations.

The documents, dated at July 2009 and entitled “GCSB SIGINT Development Quarterly Report” are a series of official reports disseminated among the so-called Five Eyes countries. They show New Zealand has been spying on the digital communications of various South Pacific nations. The communications collected reportedly include digital, email, telephone metadata, landline and mobile conversations and other forms. Prime Minister John Key stated yesterday that he believed the information expected for release would be “wrong.” However, the reports are all stamped with the logo of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) with a redacted address, presumably that of the director of the GCSB. The internal report states that the GCSB in 2009 was facing a “rapid pace” of technological change throughout the South Pacific as newer cable communications began to supersede older methods such as satellite communications. Targets for the GCSB include Fiji, Samoa, New Caledonia and Vanuatu. The collection site is listed as the GCSB’s signals intelligence station at Waihopai in Marlborough. Other documents from Mr Snowden are expected to be released over the coming days.

Greens Scream, Tech Liberty Raises Practical Concerns As Customs Asks For Right To Demand Passwords March 7 2015 | From: NationalBusinessReview

Customs wants the right to demand people disclose passwords for laptops, smartphones and other gadgets as they enter New Zealand even if it has no warrant – and the threat of up to three months'

jail if they refuse.

The agency's call comes in a discussion paper on proposed changes to the Customs and Excise Act (1996). Customs says it wants to move with the times and align our law with "comparable countries, such as Australia, the US, Canada and the UK." It sees inspecting an electronic device potentially becoming part of a routine bag search. Greens ICT spokesman Gareth Hughes says "These proposed new powers are unnecessary and an affront to Kiwis’ privacy. Customs can already access travellers’ electronic devices if they get a warrant, such as for anti-money laundering and antiterrorism purposes or other suspected criminal activities. There needs to be a clear threshold and due process for law enforcement agencies accessing private electronic devices. No agency should be able to demand access to private information without a very good reason." Bad for business Labour's Clare Curran notes Customs also wants people to hand over keys to encrypted files without a warrant. She says that's bad for business.

“This is another example of New Zealand falling into line with its Five Eyes partners, the US, Australia, Canada and the UK and is another step toward the erosion of civil liberties and privacy," she says. “It’s also a disturbing new piece of evidence that encryption as a business model is under threat. It could lead to stifling innovation of new businesses which provide encryption services and even dissuade people from travelling to a country with such draconian laws."

Practical concerns Tech Liberty co-founder and NZ Council for Civil Liberties chairman Thomas Beagle is also concerned about privacy

implications. "This is particularly a problem when there is solid evidence that Customs has already been doing searches at the border at the request of the Police rather than for the customs purposes enabled by law," he says. He also raises practical issues.

"We think the proposal is not going to achieve what Customs want it to, and there is too much risk of innocents being caught up in it," he says. "Anyone with criminal digital content is going to store it on Dropbox or similar, travel with a clean laptop and then download the files when they get here." "Or if they are silly enough to travel with sensitive files, how high would the penalty be for not handing over the password have to be to make it worth while giving it up?"

He adds that if someone refuses to hand over the combination for a lock on a brief case, that's only a shor- term problem. A Customs officer can literally force the issue with a hammer and chisel. But if someone is asked for the password for a laptop, they can always weigh the threat of three months' jail for not handing it over versus the penalty they could face for, say, having evidence of money laundering or participating in a child porn ring on their computer, Mr Beagle says. The problem for a Customs officer is that they have no way of telling if someone is refusing to hand over a password out of sheepishness, or if there is major offending involved. It could be that someone has simply forgotten their password in the stress of the situation.

"As for those worried that otherwise people might escape, we do have a policeforce with extensive powers granted by the Search & Surveillance Act (2012)," he says. Additionally, Customers already has the right to inspect electronic devices under the d Countering Financing of Terrorism Act (2009)." "But of course it would have to have probable cause and get permission from a judge," he says.

The Tech Liberty co-founder prefers that route. "Customs has long been suspected of exceeding its powers to do searches on behalf of the Police," he claims.

Breaking: Google Gives New Meaning To “Orwellian” March 3 2015 | From: JonRappoport

“…if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.” (1984, George Orwell)

The New Scientist has the stunning story (2/28/15, “Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links,” by Hal Hodson):

“The internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free ‘news’ stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness.”

Great idea, right? Sure it is. The author of the article lets the cat out of the bag right away with his comment about “antivaccination” websites. These sites will obviously be shoved into obscurity by Google because they’re “garbage”…whereas “truthful” pro-vaccine sites will dominate top ranked pages on the search engine. This is wonderful if you believe what the CDC tells you about vaccine safety and efficacy. The CDC: an agency that opens its doors every day with lies and closes them with more lies. The New Scientist article continues:

“A Google research team is adapting [a] model to measure the trustworthiness of a [website] page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the [ranking] system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a page. ‘A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy,’ says the team…The score they compute for each page is its Knowledge-Based Trust score.”

Right. Google, researchers of truth. Assessors of trustworthiness. Who in the world could have a problem with that? Answer: anyone with three live brain cells. Here’s the New Scientist’s capper. It’s a beaut:

“The [truth-finding] software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.”

Right. Uh-huh. So Google, along with its friends at the CIA, will engineer a new and improved, greater flood of (dis)information across the Web. And this disinfo will constitute an overwhelming majority opinion…and will become the standard for measuring truth and trustworthiness. Think about what kinds of websites will rise like foul cream to the top of Google page rankings:

“All vaccines are marvelously safe and effective, and parents who don’t vaccinate their kids should be prosecuted for felonies.” “GMOs are perfectly safe. ‘The science’ says so.” “The FBI has never organized a synthetic terror event and then stung the morons it encouraged.” “Common Core is the greatest system of education yet devised by humans.” “People who believe conspiracies exist have mental disorders.”

In other words: (fake) consensus reality becomes reality. Which is the situation we have now, but the titanic pile of fakery will rise much, much higher. Also, think about this: the whole purpose of authentic investigative reporting is puncturing the consensus…but you’ll have to search Google for a long time to find it. In the field of medical fraud, an area I’ve been researching for 25 years, the conclusions of standard published studies (which are brimming with lies) will occupy page after page of top Google rankings. Let me offer a counter-example to the Google “knowledge team.” Here is a woman who has examined, up close and personal, more medical studies in her career than the entire workforce of Google. She is Dr. Marcia Angell. For 20 years, she was an editor at The New England Journal of Medicine. On January 15, 2009, the New York Review of Books published her stunning statement: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” In two sentences, Angell carries more weight than 20,000 blowhard “science bloggers,” to say nothing of lying drug companies and that criminal agency called the FDA. Angell torpedoes an entire range of medical literature, based on her hard-won experience. But you can be sure that when it comes to “medical facts,” the Google “truth team” will ascribe absolutely no merit (ranking) to her conclusion or its implications. You may say, “But these search engines are already slanting the truth.” The new Google program is going to double down. It’s going to set up its own Ministry of Truth. It’s going to standardize algorithms that unerringly bring about officially favored lies. Stories on vote fraud?

Stories contradicting the official line on mass shootings? Stories on the US government funding terrorist groups? Stories on the hostile planetary intentions of Globalists? Stories on corporate criminals? Secrets of the Federal Reserve? Stories on major media censoring scandals? Counter-consensus stories on 9/11, the JFK assassination, the US bankers and corporations who funded both sides in WW2? All anti-establishment versions of history? After Google launches this Ministry of Truth program, you’ll have to put on diving gear and go deep underwater to find any trace of them. Welcome to a new day.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” (Opening line, 1984, Orwell)

Let’s take all this one step further. Google’s director of research is Ray Kurzweil, who many people know as the promoter of a “utopian” plan to hook the population up (through direct brain-machine interface) to a vast super-computer. The super-computer will pass along virtually all human knowledge. Kurzweil believes such a momentous breakthrough will endow humans with a mystical level of consciousness. Even if this technological wet dream could be realized, we can now see what “connecting to all human knowledge” means: It means accepting all official knowledge. Being blind to counter-knowledge. It’s time to reverse AI (Artificial Intelligence) and call it IA (Intelligent Androids). IAs would be humans who are programmed to be androids. IAs accept truth as it delivered to them by official sources. Google makes its contribution by promoting official sources. And hiding other sources. Yes, this surely seems like Nirvana. You will be fed the Good and protected from the Evil. Sound familiar? Thank you, Google. When are you going to apply for non-profit status and open your Holy Church of Information?

“Today’s sermon will be delivered by the director of the CIA. It is titled, ‘Data: everything you need to know, everything you must not believe.’ Breathe deeply. Your neuronal circuits are now being tuned to our channel…”

The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole The Keys To The Encryption Castle February 25 2015 | From: TheIntercept

American and British spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data. The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania. In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.” With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt. As part of the covert operations against Gemalto, spies from GCHQ - with support from the NSA - mined the private communications of unwitting engineers and other company employees in multiple countries. Gemalto was totally oblivious to the penetration of its systems - and the spying on its employees:

“I’m disturbed, quite concerned that this has happened,” Paul Beverly, a Gemalto executive vice president, told The Intercept. “The most important thing for me is to understand exactly how this was done, so we can take every measure to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, and also to make sure that there’s no impact on the telecom operators that we have served in a very trusted manner for many years. What I want to understand is what sort of ramifications it has, or could have, on any of our customers.” He added that “the most important thing for us now is to understand the degree” of the breach.

Leading privacy advocates and security experts say that the theft of encryption keys from major wireless network providers is tantamount to a thief obtaining the master ring of a building superintendent who holds the keys to every apartment.

“Once you have the keys, decrypting traffic is trivial,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The news of this key theft will send a shock wave through the security community.”

For the full story see: TheIntercept

Snowden Documentary CitizenFour Grabs Oscar February 24 2015 | From: RT

A Laura Poitras’ film about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has won Hollywood’s highest accolade by snatching the Oscar for Best Documentary.

“The disclosures of Edward Snowden don’t only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself," Poitras said during her acceptance speech. "When the most important decisions being made affecting all of us are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control," she pointed out, thanking Edward Snowden "for his courage, and for the many other whistleblowers." Poitras added that she is sharing the award with Glenn Greenwald and "other journalists who are exposing truth." She was joined on stage by editor Mathilde Bonnefoy, producer Dirk Wilutzky and Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills. As the filmmaker and her collaborators walked offstage on Sunday night, Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris couldn't help quipping: "The subject of 'CitizenFour,' Edward Snowden, could not be here tonight for some treason."

As the filmmaker and her collaborators walked offstage on Sunday night, Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris couldn't help quipping: "The subject of 'CitizenFour,' Edward Snowden, could not be here tonight for some treason." In response to the news, Snowden, who was charged under the federal Espionage Act and is currently living in asylum in Russia, wrote in a statement, released by the American Civil Liberties Union:

“When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received." “My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world,” Snowden said.

The documentary features a series of face-to-face meetings between Berlin-based filmmaker Laura Poitras, who appeared to be on the US Homeland Security “watch list” at one point, and the whistleblower Snowden, who got in touch with Poitras last January when she was working on a feature about surveillance in the post-9/11 era. "Every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not," Edward Snowden warns in the documentary’s trailer:

For the full story see: RT

Digital Electronic “Internet of Things” (IoT) And “Smart Grid Technologies” To Fully Eviscerate Privacy February 19 2015 | From: GlobalResearch

The “Internet of Things” (IoT) and Smart Grid technologies will together be aggressively integrated into the developed world’s socioeconomic fabric with little-if-any public or governmental oversight.

This is the overall opinion of a new report by the Federal Trade Commission, which has announced a series of “recommendations” to major utility companies and transnational corporations heavily invested in the IoT and Smart

Grid, suggesting that such technologies should be rolled out almost entirely on the basis of “free market” principles so as not to stifle “innovation.” As with the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, the FTC functions to provide the semblance of democratic governance and studied concern as it allows corporate monied interests and prerogatives to run roughshod over the body politic. The IoT refers to all digital electronic and RFID-chipped devices wirelessly connected to the internet. The number of such items has increased dramatically since the early 2000s. In 2003 an estimated 500 million gadgets were connected, or about one for every twelve people on earth. By 2015 the number has grown 50 fold to an estimated 25 billion, or 3.5 units per person. By 2020 the IoT is expected to double the number of physical items it encompasses to 50 billion, or roughly 7 per individual The IoT is developing in tandem with the “Smart Grid,” comprised of tens of millions of wireless transceivers (a combination cellular transmitter and receiver) more commonly known as “smart meters.” Unlike conventional wireless routers, smart meters are regarded as such because they are equipped to capture, store, and transmit an abundance of data on home energy usage with a degree of precision scarcely imagined by utility customers. On the contrary, energy consumers are typically appeased with persuasive promotional materials from their power company explaining how smart meter technology allows patrons to better monitor and control their energy usage. Almost two decades ago media sociologist Rick Crawford defined Smart Grid technology as “real time residential power line surveillance” (RRPLS). These practices exhibited all the characteristics of eavesdropping and more. “Whereas primitive forms of power monitoring merely sampled one data point per month by checking the cumulative reading on the residential power meter,” Crawford explains,

"Modern forms of RRPLS permit nearly continued digital sampling. This allows watchers to develop a fine-grained profile of the occupants’ electrical appliance usage. The computerized RRPLS device may be placed on-site with the occupants’ knowledge and assent, or it may be hidden outside and surreptitiously attached to the power line feeding into the residence. This device records a log of both resistive power levels and reactive loads as a function of time. The RRPLS device can extract characteristic appliance “signatures” from the raw data. For example, existing [1990s] RRPLS devices can identify whenever the sheets are thrown back from a water bed by detecting the duty cycles of the water bed heater. RRPLS can infer that two people shared a shower by noting an unusually heavy load on the electric water heater and that two uses of the hair dryer followed."

A majority of utility companies are reluctant to acknowledge the profoundly advanced capabilities of these mechanisms that have now been effectively mandated for residential and business clients. Along these lines, when confronted with questions on whether the devices are able to gather usage data with such exactitude, company representatives are apparently compelled to feign ignorance or demur. i210Yet the features Crawford describes and their assimilation with the IoT are indeed a part of General Electric’s I-210+C smart meter, among the most widely-deployed models in the US. This meter is equipped with not one, not two, but three transceivers, the I-210+C’s promotional brochure explains One of the set’s transceivers uses ZigBee Pro protocols, “one of several wireless communication standards in the works to link up appliances, light bulbs, security systems, thermostats and other equipment in home and enterprises.” With most every new appliance now required to be IoT-equipped, not only will consumer habits be increasingly monitored through energy usage, but over the longer term lifestyle and thus behavior will be transformed through power rationing, first in the form of “tiered usage,” and eventually in a less accommodating way through the remote control of “smart” appliances during peak hours Information gathered from the combined IoT and Smart Grid will also be of immense value to marketers that up to now have basically been excluded from the domestic sphere. As an affiliate of WPP Pic., the world’s biggest ad agency put it, the data harvested by smart meters “opens the door to the home. Consumers are leaving a digital footprint that opens the door to their online habits and to their shopping habits and their location, and the last thing that is understood is the home, because at the moment when you shut the door, that’s it.”

ESAs the FTC’s 2015 report makes clear, this is the sort of retail (permissible) criminality hastened by the merging of Smart Grid and IoT technologies also provides an immense facility for wholesale criminals to scan and monitor various households’ activities as potential targets for robbery, or worse. The FTC, utility companies and smart meter manufacturers alike still defer to the Federal Communications Commission as confirmation of the alleged safety of Smart Grid and smart meter deployment. This is the case even though the FCC is not chartered to oversee public health and, basing its regulatory procedure on severely outdated science, maintains that microwave radiation is not a threat to public health so long as no individual’s skin or flesh have risen in temperature. Yet in the home and workplace the profusion of wireless technologies such as ZigBee will compound the already significant collective radiation load of WiFi, cellular telephony, and the smart meter’s routine transmissions. The short term physiological impact will likely include weakened immunity, fatigue, and insomnia that can hasten terminal illnesses. Perhaps the greatest irony is how the Internet of Things, the Smart Grid and their attendant “Smart Home” are sold under the guise of convenience, personal autonomy, even knowledge production and wisdom. “The more data that is created,” Cisco gushes, “the more knowledge and wisdom people can obtain. IoT dramatically increases the amount of data available for us to process. This, coupled with the Internet’s ability to communicate this data, will enable people to advance even further.” In light of the grave privacy and health-related concerns posed by this techno tsunami, the members of a sane society might seriously ask themselves exactly where they are advancing, or being compelled to advance to.

Is Your Computer Hard Drive Hiding An NSA Spy Program? February 18 2015 | From: Infowars

Majority of the world's computers now spy for the NSA. According to Kaspersky Lab, the Moscowbased security software maker, the NSA has managed to insert spying software on most computer hard drives.

The program is hidden on hard drives manufactured by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, Reuters reports.

Kaspersky did not pinpoint the country responsible for the software, but said it is closely related to Stuxnet, the cyber weapon developed by the Americans and the Israelis, with help from the Germans and the British. Stuxnet was used to sabotage Iran’s effort to enrich uranium for its nuclear program. However, in addition to setting back Iran’s nuclear program, the sophisticated malware engineered by the U.S. and Israel at the Dimona complex in the Negev desert was exploited to push for restrictive cybersecurity measures in the United States. A former NSA employee told the news agency the NSA values the hard drive spy program as much as Stuxnet. Kaspersky said its research discovered the program on personal computers in 30 countries. Most of the infections were on computers in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. Although Kaspersky said the targets include government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, it is not unreasonable to conclude it is used to spy on American citizens engaged in political activity the establishment considers threatening. In July of last year journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed the NSA has targeted a number of political activists for surveillance. “I have long viewed this as one of the most important stories in the Snowden archive because it puts a face on the NSA’s surveillance overreach and illustrates, yet again — that domestic spying abuses usually target minorities, marginalized groups, and dissidents,” Greenwald said.

Citizen Four: The Edward Snowden Documentary February 13 2015 | From: CitizenFour

Citizen Four is a real life thriller (currently in cinemas), unfolding by the minute, giving audiences unprecedented access to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald’s encounters with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, as he hands over classified documents providing evidence of mass indiscriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Poitras had already been working on a film about surveillance for two years when Snowden contacted her, using the name “CITIZENFOUR,” in January 2013. He reached out to her because he knew she had long been a target of government surveillance, stopped at airports numerous times, and had refused to be intimidated. When Snowden revealed he was a high-level analyst driven to expose the massive surveillance of Americans by the NSA, Poitras persuaded him to let her film.

Citizen Four places you in the room with Poitras, Greenwald, and Snowden as they attempt to manage the media storm raging outside, forced to make quick decisions that will impact their lives and all of those around them. Citizen Four not only shows you the dangers of governmental surveillance—it makes you feel them. After seeing the film, you will never think the same way about your phone, email, credit card, web browser, or profile, ever again.

Automakers Stumped: Report Says Hackers Can Hijack Almost Any Car February 12 2015 | From: RT

Almost all automobiles sold today contain systems that can potentially be compromised by hackers, a United States Senator warns, but automakers appear largely unaware of the implications, according to his report.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) is calling on the world’s automobile makers to implement mandatory safeguards after his congressional inquiry revealed a widespread absence of security and privacy protection with regards to cars currently being sold around the world. Security that could curb hacking against automobiles or allow sensitive information to be compromised must be put in place by the auto industry, Markey’s office warns in the report published Monday, and current protection, when it’s brought to bear, is largely inconsistent. The report warns modern automobiles are increasingly collecting sensitive information about personal driving habits and history, which is often held indefinitely and then offered to third-parties, in turn allowing companies the ability to keep detailed information about not just car performance, but also where a driver has traveled. READ MORE: Car-hacked: Cyber-criminals could target driverless vehicles, cause chaos – expert

"Drivers have come to rely on these new technologies, but unfortunately the automakers haven’t done their part to protect us from cyber-attacks or privacy invasions. Even as we are more connected than ever in our cars and trucks, our technology systems and data security remain largely unprotected,” Sen. Markey, a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a statement on Monday. “We need to work with the industry and cyber-security experts to establish clear rules of the road to ensure the safety and privacy of 21st-century American drivers.”

Markey’s team considered studies by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2013 and 2014 in preparing the report, and sent questionnaires to 20 automakers inquiring about each manufacturer’s technology, security precautions and privacy policies. Only 16 of the automakers responded, according to this week’s report, but their answers were enough to leave Sen. Markey’s office issuing a plea for car companies to increase security measures concerning the cars’ increasingly advanced technologies and privacy protections for the data it records. Read the full story at: RT

The Police State Is Upon Us - Paul Craig Roberts February 1 2015 | From: PaulCraigRoberts

Anyone paying attention knows that 9/11 has been used to create a police/warfare state. Years ago NSA official William Binney warned Americans about the universal spying by the National Security Agency, to little effect. Recently Edward Snowden proved the all-inclusive NSA spying by releasing spy documents, enough of which have been made available by Glenn Greenwald to establish the fact of NSA illegal and unconstitutional spying, spying that has no legal, constitutional, or “national security” reasons.

Yet the people are not up in arms. The people of the western countries have accepted the government’s offenses against them as necessary protection against “terrorists.”

Neither Congress, the White House, or the Judiciary has done anything about the wrongful spying, because the spying serves the government. Law and the Constitution are expendable when the few who control the government have their “more important agendas.” Bradley Manning warned us of the militarization of US foreign policy and the murderous consequences, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks posted leaked documents proving it. Were these whistleblowers and honest journalists, who alerted us to the determined attack on our civil liberty, rewarded with invitations to the White House and given medals of honor in recognition of their service to American liberty? No. Bradley Manning is in federal prison, and so would be Julian Assad and Edward Snowden if Washington could get its hands on them. Binney escaped the Police State’s clutches, because he did not take any documents with which to prove his allegations, and thus could be dismissed as “disgruntled” and as a “conspiracy kook,” but not arrested as a “spy” who stole “national secrets.”

Glenn Greenwald - The journalist entrusted by Edward Snowden for the initial NSA material releases

Greenwald, so far, is too prominent to be hung for reporting the truth. But he is in the crosshairs, and the Police State is using other cases to close in on him. These are only five of the many people who have provided absolute total proof that the Bill of Rights has been overthrown. Washington continues to present itself to the world as the “home of the free,” the owner of the White Hat, while Washington demonstrates its lack of mercy by invading or bombing seven countries on false pretenses during the past 14 years, displacing, killing, and maiming millions of Muslims who never raised a fist against the US. Many commentators have written articles and given interviews about government’s ever expanding police powers. The totality of the American Police State is demonstrated by its monument in Utah, where an enormous complex has been constructed in which to store every communication of every American. Somehow a son or daughter checking on an aged parent, a working mother checking on her children’s child care, a family ordering a pizza, and sweethearts planning a date are important matters of national security. Some educated and intelligent people understand the consequences, but most Americans perceive no threat as they “have nothing to hide.”

The Founding Fathers who wrote the Bill of Rights and attached it to the US Constitution did not have anything to hide, but they clearly understood, unlike modern day Americans, that freedom depended completely on strictly limiting the ability of government to intrude upon the person. Those limits provided by the Founding Fathers are gone. The hoax “war on terror” demolished them. Today not even the relationships between husband and wife and parents and children have any protection from arbitrary intrusions by the state. Essentially, government has destroyed the family along with civil liberty. Those insouciant Americans who do not fear the police state because they “have nothing to hide” desperately need to read: Home-schooled Children Seized By Authorities Still In State Custody. In Police State America, authorities can enter your home on the basis of an anonymous “tip” that you are, or might be, somehow, abusing your children, or exposing them to medicines that are not in containers with child-proof caps or to household bleach that is not under lock and key, and seize your children into state custody on the grounds that you present a danger to your children. The government does not have to tell you who your accuser is. It can be your worst enemy or a disgruntled employee, but the tipster is protected. However, you and your family are not. The authorities who receive these tips treat them as if they are valid. A multi-member goon squad shows up at your house. This is when the utterly stupid “I have nothing to hide” Americans discover that they have no rights, regardless of whether they have anything to hide. We owe this police power over parents and children to “child advocates” who lobbied for laws based on their fantasies that all parents are serial rapists of children, and if not, are medieval torturers, trained by the CIA, who physically and psychologically abuse their children. In the opinion of “child advocates,” children are brought into the world in order to be abused by parents. Dogs and cats and the fish in the fishbowl are not enough. Parents need children to abuse, too, just as the Police and the Police State need people to abuse. Of course, sometimes real child abuse occurs. But it is not the routine event that the Child Protective Services Police assume. A sincere investigation, such as was missing in the report on the home-schooled children, would have had one polite person appear at the door to explain to the parents that there had been a complaint that their children were being exposed to a poisonous substance in the home. The person should have listened to the parents, had a look at the children, and if there was any doubt about the water purifier, ask that its use be discontinued until its safety could be verified. But nothing sensible happened, because the Police State does not have to be sensible. Instead, a half dozen goon thugs show up. The parents are put outside in the snow for 5 hours while the children are scared to death with questions and then carried away from their home, mother, and father. In pur Police State countries, this is called Protecting Children. We owe this tyranny to the idiot “child advocates.” It is no longer important to protect children from child molesters, unless they are Catholic child pedophiles. But it is absolutely necessary to protect children from their parents. So, yes, dear insouciant American fool, whether you have anything to hide or not, you are in grave danger, and so are your children, in Police State America. You can no longer rely on the Constitution to protect you. This is the only way that you can protect yourself: grovel before your neighbors, your co-workers, your employees and employers, and, most definitely, before “public authority” and your children, as your children can report you. Don’t complain about anything. Do not get involved in protests. Don’t make critical comments on the Internet or on your telephone calls. Don’t homeschool. Don’t resist vaccines. Turn your backs to leaders who could liberate you as it is too dangerous to risk the failure of liberation. Be an abject, cowardly, obedient, servile member of the enserfed, enslaved American population. Above all, be thankful to Big Brother who protects you from terrorists and Russians.

You, dear insouciant, stupid, American are back on the Plantation. Perhaps that is your natural home. In his masterful A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn documents that despite their best efforts the exploited and abused American people have never been able to prevail against the powerful private interests that control the government. Whenever in American history the people rise up they are struck down by brute force. Zinn makes totally clear that “American freedom, democracy, liberty, blah-blah” are nothing but a disguise for the rule over America by money. Wave the flag, sing patriot songs, see enemies where the government tells you to see them, and above all, never think. Just listen. The government and its presstitute media will tell you what you must believe.

How The CIA Made Google January 29 2015 | From: Medium

Insurge Intelligence, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information.

Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’ The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet. This exclusive is being released for free in the public interest, and was enabled by crowdfunding. I’d like to thank my amazing community of patrons for their support, which gave me the opportunity to work on this in-depth investigation. Please support independent, investigative journalism for the global commons.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, western governments are moving fast to legitimize expanded powers of mass surveillance and controls on the internet, all in the name of fighting terrorism.US and European politicians have called to protect NSA-style snooping, and to advance the capacity to intrude on internet privacy by outlawing encryption. One idea is to establish a telecoms partnership that would unilaterally delete content deemed to “fuel hatred and violence” in situations considered “appropriate.” Heated discussions are going on at government and parliamentary level to explore cracking down on lawyer-client confidentiality. What any of this would have done to prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks remains a mystery, especially given that we already know the terrorists were on the radar of French intelligence for up to a decade. There is little new in this story. The 9/11 atrocity was the first of many terrorist attacks, each succeeded by the dramatic extension of draconian state powers at the expense of civil liberties, backed up with the projection of military force in regions identified as hotspots harbouring terrorists. Yet there is little indication that this tried and tested formula has done anything to reduce the danger. If anything, we appear to be locked into a deepening cycle of violence with no clear end in sight. As our governments push to increase their powers, Insurge Intelligence can now reveal the vast extent to which the US intelligence community is implicated in nurturing the web platforms we know today, for the precise purpose of utilizing the technology as a mechanism to fight global ‘information war’ — a war to legitimize the power of the few over the rest of us. The lynchpin of this story is the corporation that in many ways defines the 21st century with its unobtrusive omnipresence: Google. Google styles itself as a friendly, funky, user-friendly tech firm that rose to prominence through a combination of skill, luck, and genuine innovation. This is true. But it is a mere fragment of the story. In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex. The inside story of Google’s rise, revealed here for the first time, opens a can of worms that goes far beyond Google, unexpectedly shining a light on the existence of a parasitical network driving the evolution of the US national security apparatus, and profiting obscenely from its operation.

The Shadow Network For the last two decades, US foreign and intelligence strategies have resulted in a global ‘war on terror’ consisting of prolonged military invasions in the Muslim world and comprehensive surveillance of civilian populations. These strategies have been incubated, if not dictated, by a secret network inside and beyond the Pentagon. Established under the Clinton administration, consolidated under Bush, and firmly entrenched under Obama, this bipartisan network of mostly neoconservative ideologues sealed its dominion inside the US Department of Defense (DoD) by the dawn of 2015, through the operation of an obscure corporate entity outside the Pentagon, but run by the Pentagon. In 1999, the CIA created its own venture capital investment firm, In-Q-Tel, to fund promising start-ups that might create technologies useful for intelligence agencies. But the inspiration for In-Q-Tel came earlier, when the Pentagon set up its own private sector outfit. Known as the ‘Highlands Forum,’ this private network has operated as a bridge between the Pentagon and powerful American elites outside the military since the mid-1990s. Despite changes in civilian administrations, the network around the Highlands Forum has become increasingly successful in dominating US defense policy. Giant defense contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton and Science Applications International Corporation are sometimes referred to as the ‘shadow intelligence community’ due to the revolving doors between them and government, and their capacity to simultaneously influence and profit from defense policy. But while these contractors compete for power and money, they also collaborate where it counts. The Highlands Forum has for 20 years provided an off the record space for some of the most prominent members of the shadow intelligence community to convene with senior US government officials, alongside other leaders in relevant industries. I first stumbled upon the existence of this network in November 2014, when I reported for VICE’s Motherboard that US defense secretary Chuck Hagel’s newly announced ‘Defense Innovation Initiative’ was really about building Skynet — or something like it, essentially to dominate an emerging era of automated robotic warfare. That story was based on a little-known Pentagon-funded ‘white paper’ published two months earlier by the National Defense University (NDU) in Washington DC, a leading US military-run institution that, among other things, generates research to develop US defense policy at the highest levels. The white paper clarified the thinking behind the new initiative, and the revolutionary scientific and technological developments it hoped to capitalize on.

The Highlands Forum

The co-author of that NDU white paper is Linton Wells, a 51-year veteran US defense official who served in the Bush administration as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, overseeing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other spy agencies. He still holds active top-secret security clearances, and according to a report by Government Executive magazine in 2006 he chaired the ‘Highlands Forum’, founded by the Pentagon in 1994. New Scientist magazine (paywall) has compared the Highlands Forum to elite meetings like “Davos, Ditchley and Aspen,” describing it as “far less well known, yet… arguably just as influential a talking shop.” Regular Forum meetings bring together “innovative people to consider interactions between policy and technology. Its biggest successes have been in the development of high-tech network-based warfare.”

Linton Wells II (right) former Pentagon chief information officer and assistant secretary of defense for networks, at a recent Pentagon Highlands Forum session. Rosemary Wenchel, a senior official in the US Department of Homeland Security, is sitting next to him

Given Wells’ role in such a Forum, perhaps it was not surprising that his defense transformation white paper was able to have such a profound impact on actual Pentagon policy. But if that was the case, why had no one noticed? Despite being sponsored by the Pentagon, I could find no official page on the DoD website about the Forum. Active and former US military and intelligence sources had never heard of it, and neither did national security journalists. I was baffled.

The Pentagon’s Intellectual Capital Venture Firm In the prologue to his 2007 book, A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity, John Clippinger, an MIT scientist of the Media Lab Human Dynamics Group, described how he participated in a “Highlands Forum” gathering, an “invitation-only meeting funded by the Department of Defense and chaired by the assistant for networks and information integration.” This was a senior DoD post overseeing operations and policies for the Pentagon’s most powerful spy agencies including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), among others. Starting from 2003, the position was transitioned into what is now the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. The Highlands Forum, Clippinger wrote, was founded by a retired US Navy captain named Dick O’Neill. Delegates include senior US military officials across numerous agencies and divisions —

 “captains, rear admirals, generals, colonels, majors and commanders” as well as “members of the DoD leadership.” What at first appeared to be the Forum’s main website describes Highlands as “an informal cross-disciplinary network sponsored by Federal Government,” focusing on “information, science and technology.” Explanation is sparse, beyond a single ‘Department of Defense’ logo. But Highlands also has another website describing itself as an “intellectual capital venture firm” with “extensive experience assisting corporations, organizations, and government leaders.” The firm provides a “wide range of services, including: strategic planning, scenario creation and gaming for expanding global markets,” as well as “working with clients to build strategies for execution.” ‘The Highlands Group Inc.,’ the website says, organizes a whole range of Forums on these issue. For instance, in addition to the Highlands Forum, since 9/11 the Group runs the ‘Island Forum,’ an international event held in association with Singapore’s Ministry of Defense, which O’Neill oversees as “lead consultant.” The Singapore Ministry of Defense website describes the Island Forum as “patterned after the Highlands Forum organized for the US Department of Defense.” Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed that Singapore played a key role in permitting the US and Australia to tap undersea cables to spy on Asian powers like Indonesia and Malaysia. The Highlands Group website also reveals that Highlands is partnered with one of the most powerful defense contractors in the United States. Highlands is “supported by a network of companies and independent researchers,” including “our Highlands Forum partners for the past ten years at SAIC; and the vast Highlands network of participants in the Highlands Forum.” SAIC stands for the US defense firm, Science Applications International Corporation, which changed its name to Leidos in 2013, operating SAIC as a subsidiary. SAIC/Leidos is among the top 10 largest defense contractors in the US, and works closely with the US intelligence community, especially the NSA. According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the first to disclose the vast extent of the privatization of US intelligence with his seminal book Spies for Hire, SAIC has a “symbiotic relationship with the NSA: the agency is the company’s largest single customer and SAIC is the NSA’s largest contractor.” Reat the full story at: Medium

CFR’s RAND Corporation: Terror From “Everywhere” Requires More Surveillance January 15 2015 | From: InfoWars

The end game is to monitor every citizen in real-time.

Three suspected French terrorists and a fourth who allegedly crossed the border into Syria have provided ample opportunity to ramp up the police and surveillance state. Stephanie Pezard, a RAND Corporation political scientist with a specialty in French policy, told CBC News there is:

“only so much you can do to prevent attacks that basically can come from everywhere. It’s going to be mostly intelligence services that will have to make sure that everyone on their watch list is being watched.”

In the United States, the terrorist watch list is massive. The FBI’s terrorist Screening Database or TSDB as of 2008 consisted of 400,000 unique names and over 1,000,000 records. Names are provided by the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Justice Department, the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. Monitoring a small percentage of the names included would require a sprawling intelligence apparatus that would rival East Germany’s Stasi, Nazi Germany’s Gestapo or the KGB in the Soviet Union. The NSA is currently the largest and most powerful intelligence organization in the world.

“The NSA will play an integral part in permanent surveillance,” writes David Hamilton for the WikiLeaks Press.

“Technological advancements will upgrade the NSA’s surveillance capabilities to real time surveillance. Millions of innocent people have been the subject of surveillance and millions more will become subjects of surveillance.”

Not surprisingly, RAND is behind the propaganda effort to radically expand the size and scope of the surveillance grid. Real-time monitoring of “terrorists,” that is say all who pose a serious threat to the establishment, is a primary objective of the global elite. The end game for the NSA is not merely to monitor a million or so people included in a terror database, but the entire population.

The “RAND National Defense Research Institute is a federally-funded Council on Foreign Relations ‘think-tank’ sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and headed by Council on Foreign Relations member Michael D. Rich. Clients include the Pentagon, AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, IBM, Republican Party, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Department of Energy and NASA. The interlocking leadership between the trustees at RAND, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations is a classic case of Bilderberg modus operandi,” writes Daniel Estulin in his book on the Bilderberg Group.

Is Your TV Spying On You? January 14 2015 | From: DailyMail

It sounds like science fiction but many new TVs can watch you - telling advertisers your favourite shows or even filming you on the sofa. And there's no off switch!

You are sitting in bed in your pyjamas, drinking a cup of cocoa. A loved one lies next to you, watching late-night television. Pillow talk is exchanged. An alarm clock is set. Eventually the lights are turned out. Earlier, you sat on the living-room sofa eating supper, before loading the dishwasher and heading upstairs. You have, in other words, just enjoyed a perfectly normal night, in a perfectly normal home. The curtains are drawn, the central heating turned up. It’s cosy, relaxing and, above all, completely private. Or so you thought. The truth turns out to be quite the opposite. For on the other side of the world, people you didn’t know existed are keeping a beady eye on your every move. These characters can see what clothes you have been wearing and what food you’ve eaten. They heard every word you said, and logged every TV show you watched. Some are criminals, others work for major corporations. And now they know your most intimate secrets. It may sound like a plot summary for a futuristic science-fiction movie. But real-life versions of this Orwellian scenario are being played out every day in towns and cities across the globe — and in most cases the victims have no idea. At fault is a common electronic device invented nearly a century ago and found in almost every modern household: the domestic television set. Put simply, our TVs have started spying on us. Last week, there was a high-profile case in point. An IT consultant called Jason Huntley, who lives in a village near Hull, uncovered evidence that a flat-screen television, which had been sitting in his living room since the summer, was secretly invading his family’s privacy. He began investigating the £400 LG device after noticing that its home screen appeared to be showing him ‘targeted’ adverts — for cars, and Knorr stock cubes — based on programmes he’d just been watching.

Huntley decided to monitor information that the so-called smart TV — which connects to the internet — was sending and receiving. He did this by using his laptop effectively as a bridge between his television and the internet receiver, so the laptop was able to show all the data being sucked out of his set. He soon discovered that details of not just every show he watched but every button he pressed on his remote control were being sent back to LG’s corporate headquarters in South Korea. There, the electronics company appeared to be using its customers’ data to make money. A promotional video shown to commercial clients suggested that data was being used to provide ‘the ad experience you have always dreamed of’. The information Huntley’s TV had sent — without his knowledge — included the contents of his private digital video collection, which he’d watched on the television. This included camcorder footage of family celebrations containing images of his wife and two young children. Most worrying of all, the device continued sending such information to Korea even after Huntley had adjusted the television’s default settings to ‘opt out’ of data sharing. Huntley wrote about the findings on his blog. After his case was picked up by mainstream news outlets, LG announced an investigation. ‘Customer privacy is a top priority,’ the firm said. ‘We are looking into reports that certain viewing information on LG smart TVs was shared without consent.’ LG has also removed its promotional video about targeted advertising from its website. The Information Commissioner’s Office says it is now investigating the firm for a ‘possible breach’ of the Data Protection Act. Jason Huntley, meanwhile, tells me he is ‘very suspicious and also a little worried’ by the affair.

‘I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this. Who knows what else these televisions are doing that we don’t know about?’

It doesn’t take much digging to find out. Talk to any IT security expert and they will tell you that Huntley’s discovery is probably the tip of the iceberg. What’s to blame is the continuing rise of smart televisions, which account for most new TV sets sold and are predicted to be in more than half of British homes by 2016. These high-tech devices differ from traditional televisions in that they are not just passive boxes that receive a signal and transfer it to a backlit screen. Instead, they are essentially computers that connect to the internet — and so also send information back the other way. In theory, this can be extremely useful. For example, many smart TVs have shopping ‘apps’ to access Amazon. They connect to iTunes. They allow us to watch YouTube, instantly download films via Netflix, stream BBC shows on iPlayer, and talk to friends using the video phone link Skype. But in practice, like almost every type of computer, they can be all-too-easily hacked. And unlike PCs, almost all of which have fairly good anti-virus ‘firewalls’, smart TVs have little or no such software. Indeed, most have been designed so that outside software — including anti-virus programmes — can never be installed. This year, Luigi Auriemma, an IT security researcher and computer programmer from Malta, demonstrated the risks that these devices pose when he showed it was possible to hack into several types of Samsung smart television. After accessing the devices via the internet, Auriemma was able to control them: turning the TVs off and on, and secretly accessing data they held about a user’s viewing habits. Had he been a criminal, he could also have obtained details of the credit cards that users had uploaded to access pay-perview TV, download films or use shopping apps. Other experts recently made the chilling discovery that it is possible to remotely access the video cameras built into the front of thousands of smart televisions, and spy on the users in their own home.

One such expert is Kurt Stammberger, who works for the IT security firm Mocana. He says the company was recently asked by a television manufacturer to do ‘penetration tests’ on its devices.

‘We weren’t just able to find out what someone was watching, and had watched,’ he says. ‘We could also install “spyware” that could, if they had a video camera, allow us to see through that camera — without even activating the little light that indicates it’s on. ‘It was a fairly straightforward thing to do. People who work in IT often place tape over their computer’s camera lens [in a laptop they are usually set into the inside of the lid] unless they want to actually use it, because it’s so common to hack them. We should all do the same with smart TVs.’

Such an attack, which Stammberger describes as ‘frighteningly easy’ to mount, could provide voyeuristic hackers with a chance to snoop on unsuspecting home-owners in their living rooms or bedrooms. You have only to witness the extraordinary success of the critically acclaimed Channel 4 show Gogglebox, in which consenting families allow the viewing public to watch them watching television, to appreciate how enticing that prospect could be. More commercially minded hackers could use such an attack to steal commercial secrets. It could even be used to spy on foreign powers.

‘It’s a serious prospect and I would be very surprised if the Government ever puts in a big order for TVs from, for example, a Chinese manufacturer such as Huawei,’ adds Stammberger, referring to the giant corporation that has been banned in America because of fears over espionage. ‘But supply chains these days are so long and so complex that it’s very rare to buy an electronic device that doesn’t have some sort of Chinese component in it.’

Gangs based largely in Eastern Europe and Russia, meanwhile, are already using so-called ‘data-mining’ programmes to trawl the internet looking for smart TVs in which owners have entered their credit card details. A single search can yield thousands of results. According to Roger Grimes, who has written eight books on IT security and worked in the field for 28 years, the gangs then sell lists of hacked credit card numbers to fellow criminals. Card details that were obtained within the past 24 hours sell for around £2.20 each. Older ones are cheaper because there is more chance the cards could have been changed or stopped.

‘What we are starting to see now is really just a foretaste of what’s going to be happening in the next couple of decades,’ says Grimes. ‘Thanks firstly to mobile devices, and now smart TVs, we are entering a brave new world where there will be computers everywhere. Bad guys will take advantage of that.’

And we may not even be safe in our own living rooms.

A Short History Lesson: From 9/11 To Warrantless Spying In New Zealand December 12 2014 | From: AotearoaAWiderPerspective

I found myself writing a comment on The Standard this morning in reaction to their publishing Brian Gould’s piece explaining why Labour outsmarted National when they voted with them to allow warrantless spying on Kiwi’s.

I found myself writing about New Zealand’s Labour party lead by Andrew Little compromising on the right of New Zealanders to be free of unlimited “Governmental” spying on them and the history leading up to these law changes. I found myself writing about Andrew Little’s and Labour’s reprehensible and dangerous lack of insight in the Geopolitical developments over the last 13 years. In fact since the events of 9/11. Let me explain what I mean with unlimited spying: When you allow a “Government” even the tiniest window of unwarranted (= uncontrolled by the third arm of Government = Elite using police or other spy agencies for their own ends) spying on it’s population you might as well give them unlimited spy time. Spying is done in secret and you can count on it the clock will only start ticking when somebody finds out they are being spied on. History is filled with examples of what happens if a people accept the fact that their “Government” spies on them. It always ends bad and it is always used to crush dissent. It is also always brought in under the exact same motivation: There is an enemy in our midst and we are in danger. In order to make sure the enemy doesn’t hurt us we have to be able to spy on everyone. The difference between what populations hear and what “Governments” mean by this is also always the same. The populations hears: We, the “Government” and you, the righteous, solid, law abiding citizens of this country, are under thread from the enemy within (Communists, Catholics, Protestants, Capitalists, Jews, Muslims, take your pick throughout history). As solid, law abiding citizens you have nothing to fear. This is your “Government” protecting you. What the “Government” is actually saying: We (the “Government”) are under thread and the enemy could be who ever we are saying it is. And yes, that could be you, the solid, law abiding citizen who finally cracks after enforced austerity, also known as

looting by the elite represented by the aforementioned “Government”, erosion of civil liberties, endless wars perpetrated by the “Government” and other things that drive normal, solid, law abiding people to a breaking point. The population subjected to this kind of behaviour always finds out what the “Government” actually meant when their family members and loved ones start to disappear. Because the consequence of allowing your “Government” to spy on its population. It is always more repression as the population starts to wake up to their new reality and starts to protest when innocents die or disappear. So here is what wrote on the Standard: Just a bit of history (I know, who needs history but you know history repeats itself if you don’t learn from it so bear with me Iprent). Around 1999 a thesis was published. It was called Rebuilding America’s defenses. It was published by a group of what we now know to be dual citizen neo-liberals calling themselves the Project for a New American Century. In it they called for a “New Pearl Harbor”. They got their New Pearl Harbor on 9/11 and a law was quickly rolled out and pushed through under urgency. It was called the Patriot law. Turns out that law was written long before 9/11 happened. The result was wholesale spying, TSA groin groping at airports, a no fly list, the wholesale militarization of the US police to name a few of the changes in the US. Now what does that have to do with Andrew Little’s and Labour’s stance on the illegal “spy at will” laws (Being safe from governmental spying in your own home is a very basic human right) they just voted in, you ask? Their compliance with the law changes proposed by our US sock puppet prime Minister show that they are dangerously naive in assuming that the law will only be used to spy on possible Muslim terrorists. It shows that they are dangerously naive and still suffer from “We are Islands very far away from everything else so we don’t have to learn about global politics and what happened in other countries that have so far accepted unwarranted spying on their own citizens as a result of what happened on 9/11itis”. Even if you believe the claptrap of what we have been told about who perpetrated 9/11 and why, it behooves the party Brian Gould calls THE OPPOSITION to be aware of how spy laws and no fly lists have affected the populations of other countries. If they can’t look over the border and see the bigger picture they have no place in our government! Additionally you might want to ask yourself why Brian Gould as a member of the MSM is grooming his audience to once again look at the other head of the same dragon as the SOLE opposition party. It seems to me to be a clear case of “you will elect the people we have chosen for you to elect”. Perhaps our puppet masters are aware that the Teflon on John Key is wearing thin and they know the populace is restless and wants a change. At least they now know that in Andrew Little they are getting a “reasonable” man willing to “compromise” the privacy of the people of New Zealand away in favor of “safety”. It all reminds me of a quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Those who are willing to give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” We have just taken the next step on Naomi Wolfs list towards Fascism and nobody seems to notice. Least of all Andrew Little and the Labour party.

New Zealand Prime Minister Uses Bogus Islamic State Threat As Excuse To Ramp Up National Security And Surveillance Powers November 6 2014 | From: NewZealandHerald

It is well known outside the cabal-run corporate media that the "Islamic State" is in fact a CIA / MOSSAD run front used as a problem-reaction-solution vehicle to further the globalist, fasacist Zionist agenda. Also see: US Allies Against ISIS Are Actually ISIS’ Main Allies

On the watch list Government agencies had a watch list of between 30 and 40 people of concern in the "foreign fighter'' context, he said.

“These are people in or from New Zealand who are in various ways participating in extremist behaviour."

In addition to those on the watch list, another 30 or 40 were on a list of people requiring further investigation. He said five New Zealand citizens or residents were known to be fighting in Syria but the number fighting in the region could be larger because dual citizens or New Zealanders could have left from other countries. Others were Isis supporters who had tried to travel to Iraq and Syria to fight and who had had their passports cancelled. Mr Key also announced a funding boost of $7 million for Security Intelligence Service across the current and next financial year to increase the number of staff to monitor and investigate foreign fighters. He set out plans to change the law to give SIS greater powers of surveillance including video surveillance on private property, with a warrant, which the police but the SIS cannot do. He also want the SIS to have the ability to conduct surveillance without a warrant for 48 hours in situations deemed urgent. It can take at least 48 hours to prepare paperwork for a warrant. Game changer Mr Key said in such cases, if the warrant was not granted, any material collected would be destroyed.

New legislation would also give the Minister of Internal Affairs power to cancel passports for up to three years, and temporarily suspend passports for up to 10 working days in urgent cases. Mr Key described the changes as "responsible and narrow" and said they would be subject to a sunset clause. He said the rise of such a well-resourced, globally-focused terrorist group which was highly skilled in social media recruitment was a "game changer" for this country. "ISIL exposes us to a type of threat that we lack both the legislative tools and resources to combat." He was limited in what information he could reveal, but said there were individuals here who were attracted to carrying out similar attacks to those seen in Australia and Canada. Mr Key said he wanted to stress that none of the people causing concern in New Zealand were representative of the Muslim community as a whole.

"The Muslim community is a peaceful one, which makes a valuable contribution to New Zealand. "I know the vast majority of Muslim New Zealanders are as distressed by the actions of ISIL and its violent extremist message as anyone else."

Parliament this afternoon debated Mr Key's speech and proposed law changes. Acting Labour leader Annette King said Labour broadly supported the law changes and said they "appear to be justified". She warned that the 48-hour pre-warrant surveillance power by the SIS should not become the norm, however. The law changes will have a sunset clause, pending a major review of intelligence agencies and their powers in the middle of next year. She welcome the fact that the bill, once introduced, would be going to a select committee where, she said, the law would be closely examined to see if it was workable, necessary and framed appropriately. Comment: The reality that history proves is that government never relinquish power once gained. Most of the underling politicians involved in this mess are too lowly to even be aware of what they are putting together. The draconian march towards fascism is being implemented piece by piece, leveraged by inventedfalse-flag threats. While most of the sheeple are still seemingly incapable of thinking for themselves, behaving like 'deer in the headlights' - the tide is turning and more and more are starting to realise that these sorts of powers, as history shows, are intended by 'those at the top' to one day be deployed indiscriminately, carte blanche - across the board. Read the full story at: NewZealandHerald

The Former Head Of The NSA And CIA Makes Statements That Imply John Key Is Lying About Mass Surveillance November 6 2014 | From: TV3

In a 3rd Degree report from TV3 that goes right inside both the NSA and GCSB, spies respond to mass surveillance allegations. The NSA confirms it has operatives working in New Zealand.

The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) has responded to election week allegations it carries out mass surveillance on New Zealanders, denying its programmes are for anything other than cyber security. Senior spies at the GCSB's headquarters in Wellington came forward this week, speaking with 3rd Degree, because of concerns of what they see as misconceptions among the New Zealand public. Allegations by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former worker at US spy organisation the National Security Agency (NSA), claim the NSA maintains bases in New Zealand, collects metadata about New Zealanders and has worked with the GCSB to tap the Southern Cross internet cable to extract data. For the full story and video click here.

Surveillance: The Hidden Ways You’re Tracked October 29 2014 | From: BBC

Just how much of your life is watched? Security expert Bruce Schneier points out that it is more than most people think, says Chris Baraniuk.

Do you have secrets? Security expert Bruce Schneier has little patience for those who say they don’t. When asked about government and corporate surveillance, there are some who shrug their shoulders and say they have nothing to fear because they have nothing to hide. Schneier’s response? “I ask them their salary and they won’t tell me. I ask them about their sexual fantasy world and they won’t tell me. The whole ‘I have nothing to hide’ thing is stupid, that’s a dumb comment,” he says. What’s more, your day-to-day behaviour is monitored in ways you wouldn’t even realise, so these details and many more could be open for all to see – and use against you. And that’s a problem, even if you happen to trust your government to use the data for good. Schneier, who spoke at BBC Future’s World-Changing Ideas Summit on 21 October (see video, above), helped journalist Glenn Greenwald analyse Edward Snowden’s leaked documents from the National Security Agency. The controversy was recently documented in the film Citizenfour, and consciously or not, Schneier’s sentiments echo Snowden’s own words in an early email to the film’s director Laura Poitras:

"Every cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, article you write, site you visit, subject line you type, and packet you route, is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not.”

Indeed, pretty much everything you do can be tracked now, says Schneier. “Everything involves a computer. You know that your Kindle tracks how fast you read, right? Everything you do online, everything you do on your phone, everything you do that involves any kind of payment system.” As an example, Schneier told the World-Changing Ideas Summit that things as simple as taxi passenger and fare data could be easily de-anonymised once combined with location data, as the data analytics firm Neustar showed recently. Visit a strip club, for instance, and it’d no longer be private. In general, assume your movements are being watched. It’s a fact already made glaringly obvious in London, when the local transport authority’s public bicycle data was unwittingly made public. Individual commuters’ journeys were easily chalked up on Google maps. Sophisticated smartphone applications are now capable of building up detailed pictures not just of our location, but the context of our environment. In a recent paper, researchers provided the example of an app called CarSafe which is able to learn the driving habits of users by interpreting data from the two cameras on modern smartphones. Schneier also pointed out at the summit that many of the mobile phone towers in your vicinity may not have been set up by

your network provider, but governments – both domestic and foreign – who want to find out who’s walking by and what they’re up to. The secretive nature of these masts makes it difficult to know how they are used, he says.

“The British government will not even acknowledge that they use them. We know they do, but they won’t even acknowledge that. The FBI does acknowledge that they use them, but is very secretive about how,” he explains. “Someone found that there are 80-100 of these in Washington DC not run by the US government. We don’t know who’s running them.”

Public wi-fi raises yet more issues, since routers that pick up your mobile phone signal are now able to triangulate your position accurately enough to tell which aisle you’re in at the supermarket. If the “MAC address” of your device – a unique identification code for your device visible to a network – can be matched to you then whoever has that data might know very intricate details of where you, personally, have spent your time. “If the government said you have to have a tracking device, for certain you would rebel,” notes Schneier. “But the government doesn’t have to say that because you do it willingly and they just get a copy of the data.” And so might anyone else. The same vulnerabilities exploited by intelligence agencies could be similarly exploited by corporations, insurance firms, health providers, or even malicious hackers, criminals or terrorists – the very people surveillance is supposed to target.

“We need to choose between security and surveillance,” Schneier told the summit audience. It’s just not possible to build electronic devices that keep data secret from everybody except, say, government officials trying to track the movements of terrorists. “Everybody gets to spy or nobody gets to spy.”

Fundamental rights This is why Schneier argues that people have a right to defend themselves from tracking. That means the right to take protective technical measures, communicate via encrypted systems or browse the Internet anonymously using services such as Tor. But recently the rapidly increasing popularity of such tools has ignited consternation at the FBI. James Comey, the Bureau’s director, has said that encryption offered by companies like Apple and Google deprives law enforcement authorities of information which could be crucial to solving crimes or saving lives. For Tom Gaffney, technical director at information security firm F-Secure, which markets software that protects users’ privacy online, the comments rang hollow. “Effectively, the government is forcing people down the route of using these tools because of their lack of transparency, their desire to track every bit of our data rather than concentrating on criminals,” he says. Gaffney also points out that data collected by private companies, whether encrypted or not, can still be held more or less forever, and there’s no way of knowing for sure how it will be used or sold in the future. The point of recognising all of this is to better understand the consequences of using free services which rely on monetising our data via advertising to remain profitable. And Schneier argues that all government tracking should be legal and targeted to individuals already suspected of criminal activity, rather than having universal surveillance through which private experiences belonging to millions of innocent citizens are recorded and stored. The information we create as we navigate the world, both physically and digitally, is sometimes referred to as a “data footprint”. This sounds relatively benign, which is why the term is a poor metaphor. The true data footprint you leave behind everywhere you go and after practically everything you do is much, much more detailed than a trace in the sand. It’s who you are: from your most public persona right down to your most private moments.

Glenn Greenwald: Why Privacy Matters October 24 2014 | From: TED

Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see - and write about - the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States' extensive surveillance of private citizens.

In this searing talk, Greenwald makes the case for why you need to care about privacy, even if you’re “not doing anything you need to hide." Glenn Greenwald is the journalist who has done the most to expose and explain the Edward Snowden files. Why you should listen As one of the first journalists privy to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s archives, Glenn Greenwald has a unique window into the inner workings of the NSA and Britain's GCHQ. A vocal advocate for civil liberties in the face of growing post-9/11 authoritarianism, Greenwald was a natural outlet for Snowden, who’d admired his combative writing style in Salon and elsewhere.

Since his original Guardian exposés of Snowden’s revelations, Pulitzer winner Greenwald continues to stoke public debate on surveillance and privacy both in the media, on The Intercept, and with his new book No Place to Hide -- and suggests that the there are more shocking revelations to come.

Five Eyes ‘Spy Fee’: NZ Annually Forks Out Over $100 Million For Intelligence Funding October 22 2014 | From: RT

The taxpayers in New Zealand are spending $103 million a year on intelligence as a kind of membership fee for the country to be part of the Five Eyes surveillance club together with the US, UK, Australia and Canada, a declassified report said.

The so-called ‘Murdoch Report’ from 2009 was made public on the request of the New Zealand Herald newspaper under the country’s Official Information Act. The document, which was put together by former Zealand’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Simon Murdoch, reviewed the operations of the country’s spy agencies after 9/11 when their intelligence-sharing relations with the US were undergoing a major transformation. The report indicated that – since September 11, 2001 – the New Zealand’s intelligence community had doubled in staff numbers and more than tripled in funding, reaching to $103 million. According to Murdoch, this money should be viewed:

“In the context of the annual ‘subscription’ paid by New Zealand to belong to the 5-Eyes community whose annual capital investment and operating outlays would dwarf ours". "It helps explain why the niche contributions that we can make to 5-Eyes burden sharing are so important and why agency heads strive to be responsive to partner demand," he added. The issue of New Zealand Intelligence Corps (NZIC) working hard on behalf of its Five Eyes partners is raised in several places in the report. New Zealand had to prove itself as a “niche contributor with capacity constraints, but some high quality competencies,” Murdoch said. The document listed a range of security challenges faced by New Zealand, including cyber threats to IT infrastructure, "imported or homegrown Islamic militancy" as well as the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Threats also included "trans-boundary criminality, civilizational friction, and resource rivalry and energy brinkmanship."

New Zealand Herald said that large sections of the report it received were blanked out, particularly, the areas, which appear to focus on the relationships with Five Eyes’ partners. The country’s intelligence agencies have always tried to avoid disclosure of the contribution they make to the Five Eyes alliance.

However, there is speculation that New Zealand is involved in satellite interception due to its favorable geographical positioning in the Pacific Ocean. The island state’s humble reputation is also believed to have been used as a staging point for electronic spying on countries that are less friendly towards the US or UK. The Five Eyes alliance was formed after World War II so that the British Commonwealth and the US could share intelligence information on the Soviet Union and its allies. The ‘Five Eyes’ term has its origins as a shorthand for the "AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY" classification level. After 9/11, the alliance further expanded its surveillance capabilities, making monitoring the Internet one of its top priorities.

New Zealand: Another "Five Eyes" Country On The UN Security Counsel And One More Step Closer To War? October 18 2014 | From: AotearoaAWiderPerspective / Stuff

World affairs: Containing the “madness” of Islamic State militants, preventing a repeat of what has occurred in Gaza this year, and finding a lasting solution to tensions in the Ukraine are among New Zealand’s priorities if elected. New Zealand’s priorities as a security counsel member.

With the election of New Zealand, sold to us like we actually have an independent vote, another five eye country hell bent on war in the Middle East has ascended to the Security Counsel. Our Priorities? Yep, fighting the “mad” Muslims, more bombs on Gaza cause they are mad there too, NATO to the rescue of Ukraine and getting rid of Veto rights for “the bad guys” hidden under the “All veto states are culpable” meme so read China and Russia.

We will be a good little state serving the Empire where countries such as Spain and Venezuela will give the US some serious headaches I hope. World war III here we come!

In a vote at the UN’s New York headquarters on Thursday local time (Friday morning NZT), New Zealand picked up 145 votes, claiming one of the “Western Europe and other nations” seats – ahead of Turkey and Spain – in the first round of voting. New Zealand will take its seat on the council for two years, starting on January 1, 2015. The last time New Zealand sat on the council was 1993-94. It had earlier stints in 1953/54 and 1966. It has been hailed a victory for small states by Prime Minister John Key, who said it came after hard work over a decade lobbying for the seat.

“We have worked very hard on the bid for close to a decade because we believe that New Zealand can make a positive difference to world affairs and provide a unique and independent voice at the world’s top table." “It has been more than 20 years since New Zealand was last on the Council and we are ready to contribute again." “It was a tough campaign against Spain and Turkey, two much bigger countries and close friends.”

Read more at: Stuff

Sophisticated Surveillance Coming To Auckland October 2 2014 | From: Stuff

Surveillance technology that uses high definition cameras and software that can put names to faces and owners to cars is coming to Auckland. The surveillance has the capability to also scan social media and news websites.

Auckland Transport, the regional transport provider, announced the multi-million dollar deal in June, and California's Hewlett-Packard Development Company said today it has the contract. No dollar sum is given. They call it a "visionary Big Data" project and in a statement said Auckland has selected HP "to drive groundbreaking future cities initiative". All the data gathered by the cameras will be processed by HP cloud servers based in Palo Alto, California. Auckland Transport's Chief Information Officer Roger Jones is quoted by HP as saying: "The safety and well-being of our citizens is always our top priority and the Future Cities initiative is a big step in the right direction".

"Only HP could comprehensively deliver the custom solution, expertise and ecosystem at this scale to transform our vision into reality."

The vast amount of data including text, images, audio and real-time video will be analysed by HP's system.

"The system will leverage data from a variety of sources, including thousands of security and traffic management cameras, a vast network of road and environmental sensors as well as real-time social media and news feeds," HP said. "We are proud to work with such an innovative and forward-thinking government agency like Auckland Transport," HP's Big Data group manager Colin Mahony said.

An Auckland Transport spokesman said there were currently five video systems and this move would consolidate things into one processing system.

"We are not installing new cameras, this is a back end system for the approximately 800 cameras we have access to covering intersections, railway and busway stations." "The system will be used to monitor traffic flows, vandalism and safety. We will not be using any capability which identifies faces or number plates."

He said Auckland Transport was in ongoing discussions with the Privacy Commissioner and would not proceed until all protocols had been signed off on. Auckland Council's memorandum of understanding, which was used to create the contract, provides draft "Surveillance Principles". It refers to live feeds and says these should be trained on "specific crime and safety hot-spots", traffic management areas and real-time matters being investigated or responded to by police.

The system... "should not be used for surveillance or monitoring of specific individuals (whether or not identifiable by name, and whether not facilitated by supporting technology) except in respect of specific criminal acts or organised crime or other reasonably suspected criminal behaviour (including terrorism) on the basis of such evidence or reasonable suspicion of criminal offending," ... the principles state..

Police are also told they should not provide access to the data to any other agencies in New Zealand or abroad except where that complies in all respects with the terms of these surveillance principles and New Zealand law.

John Key: “You Want To Spy? You Make The “Business” Plan, I’ll Change The Law!” September 16 2014 | From: AotearoaAWiderPerspective

When David Farrar on Kiwi blog alleges that Sir Bruce Ferguson Agrees with John Key and that the GCSB never collected whole sale data on all New Zealanders and that is saying something because Ferguson is not a fan of the Prime Minister and therefor it must mean Kim Dotcom, Glen Greenwald and Snowden must be full of shit he is doing what he has alwasy done: Lying Spinning.

You see, Sir Bruce Ferguson was the GCSB chef until 2011. By the time the GCSB illegally spied on Kim Dotcom he had left the building and it was Hugh Wolfensohn who was acting director at the time who had “authorized” the illegal probes. Not just on Kim Dotcom but also on around 80 other New Zealanders. What Snowden is testifying too is the fact that John Key presided over the development of a “Business” plan for whole sale data collection in 2012 AFTER Sir Bruce Ferguson had left and before the date of 8 May 2013 at which John Key presented the change in law required to enable wholesale spying legally Mr Key said cyber attacks in 2011 led the Cabinet to approve an investigation into wider cyber protection which he stopped in March 2013. Wider cyber protection I hope you will agree with me is just a spin name for wholesale spying on an entire population. Leading up to the “Moment of truth” event John Key at first denied that there was wholesale data gathering going but that is not the issue here. The issue is that the Prime minister of this country was involved in organizing wholesale spying on his population by a FOREIGN and very controversial spying agency (NSA) with the help of a NSA financed group (GCSB) to whom he appointed a hand picked dare I say it HENCHMAN and former schoolmate Ian Fletcher in what Sir Bruce Ferguson said was a very disturbing manner at a time this was highly illegal and without telling his population. He also told his population that there would be not way the amendment to the law would enable anybody to collect wholesale data while he knew very well that it would. The amendment was passed under urgency which is essentially a very nasty way of bullying laws into existence without due process in the manner used by the National party. You have to ask yourself the question as to why John Key who came here to help New Zealand or so he said, made it possible for foreign intelligence gatherers to collect large amounts of data from people who are not accused of being engaged in any criminal activities. It is clearly not in New Zealand’s interest to have their privacy being invaded in such a wholesale manner. In Holland we have a saying: U vraagt, wij draaien. It essentially stands for: you tell me what you want me to do and I’ll jump. The question is who asked and who did John Key jump for?

Dotcom's 'Moment Of Truth': With Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Bob Amsterdam And Kim Dotcom September 15 2014 | From: WakeUpKiwi

The following is a brief summary taken as-it-happened: (See below for video) Laila Harre introduced the panel and speaks about democracy and the global importance of this event, making reference to the 'Powers that Were'.

Glenn Greenwald Greenwald gave Key a fairly good dressing down over his unprofessional remarks ('henchman' and 'loser') and his knee-jerk reaction to what Key suspected might be revealed tonight. He noted that Key has responsed by de-classifying information that had selectively been 'classified' without being actually declared a risk to national security. He noted that despite the Prime Minister stating that Greenwald is being paid to be here, he is not. Greenwald turned down financial compensation and asked that his usual speaking fee be donated to charity. Greenwald pointed out that while people have different opinions on Edward Snowden, the quality and accuracy of the information Snowden released has never been questioned. He said that while Key said that mass surveillance on New Zealanders was only a proposal that was ultimately dismissed, internal discussion within the NSA termed "Project Speargun" as underway, with Phase One (the undersea cable connections) being completed. Greenwald pointed out that Key lied blatantly that the new internet bill would give the government any new powers for data collection.

Greenwald comments that the assumption was made that the law would pass in time such that actions taken by the government that were illegal at the time, would be covered once the legislation came into effect. In his summary, he makes reference to Key's statement regarding resignation and the information recently disclosed.

Edward Snowden Snowden pointed out that the NSA actually has facilities in New Zealand that John Key is aware of, one of those being in Auckland and one further north.

He described his most recent role at the NSA and spoke about XKeyscore and how it operates within the FVEY (Five Eyes) Network comprised of the security services of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He descibed how the NSA has access to everyone's data, including how he could go about reading John Key's email and how he knows mass surveillance is happening in New Zealand as part of the NSA network is located here in NZ. Snowden questioned Keys decisions in determining what New Zealanders should and should not know about data collection and his motives for sudden document de-classification. He asked the question, 'why did the release of this information not matter last year when New Zealander's rights were on the line, but it is relevant now that one persons [the Prime Minister's] reputation is on the line?' Snowden reiterated that the NSA's proposed programs that were not legal in NZ at the time, and while they were illegally underway - said that NZ needed to pass new legislation in order to make the actions legal. And so a foreign power, the US, by way of the NSA - is dictating law in NZ.

Julian Assange After a humourous moment with a vacuum cleaner, Assange pays tribute to New Zealand's own Nicky Hager for paving the way to this type of information release in the early 1990's with his book Secret Power.

He goes on to discuss the Five Eyes Alliance and how New Zealand, in conjunction with the other Five Eyes countries have tried to go about creating a new structure of civilisation - and how the people of New Zealand are not likely to back the actions of their government in the creation of such an Orwellian undertaking - should they be aware of it. Assange noted that the 'powers that be' within the GCSB have exchanged the rights of New Zealanders in order to have this position within the Five Eyes Alliance. New Zealand is seen as a junior partner by some, however it is equal in status to the other countries in the alliance, except the United States. He noted that covert agencies are not to be trusted as there is no scrutiny of them. Dotcom thanked Snowden and Assange for what they are doing for all internet users worldwide. Assange pointed out that all three of them (Dotcom, Snowden and himself) share the same prosecutor. He referenced that fact that the US is making efforts for their laws to be applied worldwide. They are applying their laws in NZ, taking control of the New Zealand police force and attempting to dictate extraditions - the US effectively annexing New Zealand by way of the major power factions in Washington DC. This becomes a problem for the whole world, with 69 nations being called into extradition cases by the the NSA in Alexandria, Virginia. Dotcom notes that there are two ways we can fight surveillance, the first being politically, and the second being encryption. Both Julian and Edward were connected to the broadcast via Mega's new fully encrypoted video conferencing solution.

Bob Amsterdam Amsterdam made reference to Key playing golf with Obama after the New Year holiday in Hawaii. He notes "free trade" and how Canada is now under 80% foreign ownership.

He warns that the TPP Agreement would see the loss of New Zealand's sovereignty and how this "free trade" agreement is driven by vested interests and Hollywood, forcing other countries to change their Intellectual Property laws to suit these interests. Greenwald warns that with Key's background as a currency trader [with Merryl Lynch], he is now playing with a limited number of chips and is imporvising, with one of those chips being New Zealand law. He noted that the New Zealand Law Society complained to the United Nations about our governments use of expediency in passing these laws. He stated also:

"As I hear the use of the word 'terror' on the streets of Auckland - who is attacking New Zealand?"

Our governments are trying to alienate us from eachother and they are using terror to invade our homes, and to invade our internet accounts and to invade our most private constitutional rights. These trade representatives have agreed amongst themselves that they need secrecy so we don't get pissed off - and they have that secrecy for four years. In a democracy is that really how these trade aggrements should be undertaken? He points out that our governments have agreed to this and that is how these agreements are taking place. There is an exportation of American law and a militarisation of justice. Amsterdam referenced the topic of dirty politics and observed that what is happening here in New Zealand now is like Watergate with email. He suggests a Royal Inguiry into the behaviour of the Key government. Amsterdam also observed that in the era of the internet, our Prime Minister, ( who is inherently a trader who doesn't adhere to the fundamental principles of human rights) that with what was done with the raid on Dotcoms home in a democratic society

- the leader of that government should have resigned on that day. Add to that, the recently uncovered information; as a country we really need to come together and put the feet of the next government to the fire - that what are or fundament rights cannot be taken away. History shows that when a government becomes empowered with information that it will ultimately turn on its own citizens.

"It is time to stop the TPPA under its present conditions."

Laila Harre Sums up Harre thanks Nicky Hager for kicking off this whole sequence of events with his book Dirty Politics and the framework that it provided. She advised that with this education that people bear all of this in mind when the Prime Minister finds his diary and begins to make his excuses tomorrow.

Video: (Duration is 2:06 - Broadcast begins at 0:22)

Overview: GCSB Has Engaged In Mass Surveillance Of New Zealanders - Greenwald September 14 2014 | From: NationalBusinessReview

An overview of the developing story in the lead-up to the Dotcom / Assange / Greenwald event tomorrow, Monday September 15.

Also see: Glenn Greenwald Rattles New Zealand With 'Spying' Claims From RT

American journalist Glenn Greenwald says John Key's repeated claim that the GCSB has not undertaken mass surveillance of New Zealanders is a lie. Mr Greenwald, who has been hired to speak at Kim Dotcom's "Moment of Truth" event at the Auckland Town Hall on Monday, told TV3's The Nation he has been working on documents for months, which revealed the interception of emails, telephone calls and all types of communications.

"The statement from the GCSB to New Zealand citizens last year that they do not engage in mass surveillance on New Zealanders is one that is not truthful," said the Pulitzer Prize winner, who is best known for covering the Edward Snowden leaks during his time with UK paper The Guardian. "What I can tell you for certain is that the Government does engage in extraordinary amounts of analysis of metadata - meaning who's talking to who and for how long ... on a massive indiscriminate scale, not just internationally, but on New Zealanders as well." He added that "New Zealand spends an extraordinary amount of resources, for a country of this size, on electronic surveillance, and every single thing that the NSA does that we have been reporting on over the last year and a couple of months involves New Zealand directly. They are full-fledged allies of this effort."

New Zealand spies on a variety of countries on behalf of the United States, Mr Greenwald said. For now, some voters will be left scratching their heads. Mr Greenwald and the Internet Party have thrown accussations at the PM, and the Mr Key has returned fire. And lots of insults have been thrown, too (failing to rise above the "henchman" fray, Mr Greenwald called the PM "unhinged"). But so far, neither side has tabled any evidence to back up its claims. Prime Minister John Key has gone on the counter-attack, rubbishing claims by visiting US journalist Glenn Greenwald and labelling him "Dotcom's little henchman".

"There is no mass surveillance of New Zealanders by the GCSB and there never has been," Mr Key told media. "Mr Dotcom's little henchman will be proven to be incorrect because he is incorrect."

Mr Key told TV3 a mass surveillance plan was considered in response to cyber attacks targeting New Zealand businesses in 2011. But it was never implemented, he said. He would declassify sensitive documents to prove that point and debunk Mr Greenwald's theory. That promise angered the Internet Party, which released a joint statemetn from Hone Harawira and Laila Harre saying:

"The reported intention of the Prime Minister to arrange the selective declassification and release of documents for his own political purposes represents an abuse of the Prime Minister’s authority in his capacity as the Minister in charge of the GCSB and the SIS ... If the purpose of classification is to protect our national interests, then what has changed today? Either these documents should have been previously released or they have been withheld to suit the Prime Ministers personal political agenda?"

The PM believed Mr Greenwald was jumping to conclusions based on partial information.

"There are a variety of reasons why, in the international environment we collect information. But when it comes to New Zealanders, there is no mass surveillance, there never has been mass surveillance. Dotcom's little henchman is wrong and unfortunately, he might have hacked some information but not all of it," Mr Key said. "Mark my words: I'm right and he's wrong and I'll prove I'm right."

Mr Key said he stood by his statement last year that he would resign if the GCSB was shown to have conducted mass surveillance.

Kim Dotcom's "Moment of Truth" event takes place at the Auckland City Town Hall on September 15 from 7pm. Doors open from 6pm, free entry.

Read the NBR story here.

NSA Search Engine ICREACH Allows Law Enforcement To Scour Data On Citizens August 27 2014 | From: RT

The United States National Security Agency has built a massive information sharing system intended to allow intelligence community analysts from across the US government access hundreds of billions of records detailing the lives of people the world over.

This “Google-like” search engine, according to journalist Ryan Gallagher at The Intercept, was developed by the NSA as early as 2007, but was only made publicly available on Monday this week thanks to classified documents disclosed to the news site by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

According to the leaked documents and Gallagher's own reporting, the ICREACH search engine created by the NSA lets analysts from nearly two-dozen other government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency, among others, share an array of sensitive details collected by the US intelligence community and its partners concerning not just foreign terror suspects, but “millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing,” Gallagher wrote.

"The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in secrecy,” Gallagher added.

With the latest article to stem from the trove of classified files pilfered by Snowden last year, however, details for the first time are now being made available about just how widespread that information sharing is, opening new questions concerning the intelligence community's seemingly endless resources. Read the full story at: RT

Check Out The Creepy Picture Google Paints Of Your Daily Habits August 23 2014 | From: OccupyCorporatism

Google has been quietly painting a picture of your daily whereabouts and travel habits with the use of your Android or Apple smartphones.

With the use of tracking map apps such as Google Maps, Facebook and Foursquare, Google knows users must log into their Google account and immediately has a reference point to begin recording the adventures of millions of citizens all across the world. Google has created Sounds of Street View (SSV) with a UK based hearing-aid corporation that will utilize “Google’s Street View programming interface, people and businesses will be able to place a sound as well as a location marker on the online map.”

Stephen Griffin, developer for SSV explained: “The concept seems to have sparked people’s imaginations, so hopefully we can start getting some great projects entered soon. “Our hope is that we get some great ‘everyday’ soundscapes but also a few really out-there concepts too, such as the internal atmosphere from one of the many Street View stadiums around the world, or perhaps the underwater expeditions!”

One purpose for implementing this “immersive technology” is to lay the foundation for future corporations to have a new “promotional opportunity” and possibly create the next wave in deceptive marketing practices.

Griffin commented: “There’s also potential for businesses, tour operators and such to think about how they communicate their brand/service when they get their own Street View internal tours. Sound adds a whole new atmospheric element to somewhere like, say, a restaurant, where you could have a welcoming message at the door, an ambient atmosphere to get potential clientele to gain a more thorough vibe.” Read the full story at: OccupyCorporatism

Jon Rappoport's Prediction About Facebook Comes True August 21 2014 | From: JonRappoport

Two years ago, I wrote about the origins of Facebook. The company had gone public with its IPO, which was tanking badly.

Here are key excerpts from the article:

“But now the Facebook stock has tanked. On Friday, August 17, [2012] it weighed in at half its initial IPO price. For the first time since the IPO, venture-capital backers were legally permitted to sell off their shares, and some did, at a loss.” “This has the earmarks of a classic shakeout and squeeze play…First, they [insiders] drive down the price of the stock, then they trade it at low levels that discourage and demoralize the public and even semi-insiders. As the stock continues to tank, they quietly buy up as much of it as they can. Finally, when the price hits a designated rock bottom, they shoot it up all the way to new highs and win big.” “The company is too important as a data-mining asset of the intelligence community to let it fall into disrepair and chaos.” “The media will play along, pretending the eventual upswing-recovery of Facebook stock happens for fundamental reasons connected to the company’s ‘better level of performance’. The media take this approach to every stock

and every company, to avoid letting the public know how massive manipulation actually runs these trading markets.”

Okay. So let’s look at what’s happened to Facebook stock since I wrote those words two years ago. From August 2012 all the way to July 2013, the stock presented a quite discouraging picture. It stayed in the 20-30 range, looked like it was going nowhere, and never threatened to move up to its original offering price of 40. Exactly. This prompted many holders to dump their shares, affording insiders the opportunity to scoop them up at bargainbasement prices. Finally, in July 2013, the insiders began the long march upward, which has continued to this day. As I write this, Facebook stock is selling at $75.39 a share, a new high. Perfect. Analysts, of course, attribute this boom to company “earnings beating projections.” They always find a reason. They’ll say anything. “The weather last year was unusually cold.” The fact is, Facebook was in good hands all the way. The heavy hitters took the price way down, kept it there, accumulated many, many shares, and then marched the price up to the sky. In Facebook, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have had a great front for their data-mining work, and they weren’t going to let it fail. As for the future, the insiders could take FB shares down again, let them languish, and then rocket them up. Why make just one big score when you can double-dip and make two?

Prime Minister Is Lying Over Nicky Hager's SIS Allegation - Phil Goff August 17 2014 | From: NationalBusinessReview

Labour front bencher Phil Goff says Prime Minister John Key is lying over allegations involving the SIS made in Nicky Hager's Dirty Politics.

The book claims Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater was tipped off to ask the Security Intelligence Service for confidential documents about a briefing Mr Goff was given in 2011 (after controvesy over whether the then Labour leader had been briefed, or not, over an affair involving alleged spying by Israeli backpackers). Mr Key says he didn’t have anything to do with the briefing papers being handed over afer an Official Information Act request, and that he didn’t speed up the process. Asked if he took the PM at his word, Mr Goff replied;

"No. I regret to have to say that, but the prime minister’s lying. Every OIA request to the SIS will go across John Key’s desk. Now, there’s some other factors that are pertinent to this. I was rung up by the head of the SIS to say he’d had an OIA release and he was telling me that he was going to release it. I said, ‘Who’s it from?’ He said, ‘A Mr Slater.’ I said, ‘What’s his first name?’ ‘Cameron Slater.’ I said, ‘You know who Cameron Slater is, don’t you?’ ‘Oh, yes, I do.’ ‘When did you get it?’ ‘I got it today.’ ‘When are you intending to release it?’ ‘Today’. That is unheard of. I’ve been in politics for 30 years. I don’t know of anyone who has had an OIA returned in less than 20 days, and I don’t know anybody that’s got an OIA released from the SIS in that way."

When The Nation interviewer Lisa Owen put it to Mr Goff that , "You were in a war of words with [then SIS head Warren] Tucker at that time. It was clear that there was a degree of animosity there. Wouldn’t it be in his interest to get that information out to embarrass you?", he replied:

"Warren Tucker is a civil servant. As head of the SIS he does nothing that is inconsistent with what John Key or whoever is prime minister of the day asks him to do. Other people, including the Dominion Post and Radio New Zealand, put in identical OIAs. They did not receive that for a long time. The fact that Slater received this is clearly under instruction from John Key, and it’s disingenuous of him to deny that. It’s dishonest."

New Nicky Hager Book: 'You Will Not Believe What You Read' August 13 2014 | From: NewZealandHerald

Dirty Politics: Nicky Hager’s new book on the Key Government launched at Unity

Dirty Politics, the new book from author and investigative journalist Nicky Hager, will feature leaked emails between National Party figures and right-wing bloggers. The book, which has been released in Wellington tonight, aims to tell the story of "how attack politics is poisoning NZ's political environment". It includes email correspondence between Whaleoil blogger Cameron Slater and Jason Ede, one of the Prime Minister John Key's press secretaries, in relation to information found on Labour's website. Mr Hager said the Prime Minister's office had been "collaborating" with National Party "proxies" who were carrying out attacks on behalf of Mr Key while working to preserve his image. The book shows Mr Slater and Mr Ede discussed the information and how to avoid being caught.

"Part of the book is about how John Key has cultivated a very respectable image of being friendly and relaxed but at the same time there has been another part of his politics which New Zealanders have not seen or understood."

Speaking to reporters this evening, Mr Hager said the book was about the "unseen side of Mr Key's political management". He denied he had a political agenda in releasing the book so close to the election.

"Any person, any of you who had access to the documents I have would have leapt at the chance to use this information because it's so illuminating about the Government."

"That's what the job is - to tell people before the election."

He said he got the material early this year and could have taken more time with the book.

"But I've worked like a dog because I believe that people have a total right to know this before the election. "So have I hurried it out before the election - totally. Is it politically motivated? It's motivated by the public interest that I think people have in knowing what's going on." Mr Hager said his book would show Mr Key "has some very serious questions to answer".

Many of those questions were about his long term press advisers who were doing things like "going inside the Labour Party's computers", organising other dirty tricks and feeding material to bloggers Mr Slater and David Farrar to orchestrate personal attacks.

"When you read the book you're going to find chapter after chapter of remarkable things that him as leader of the party... he's got a lot to answer for. "In some cases it's political blackmail, there are many cases of digging sexual dirt to try and scare and threaten people. There are many cases that looked to the country as if they were spontaneous acts of politics which were actually orchestrated from the ninth floor."

Mr Hager described Mr Slater as an "obnoxious" blogger whose attacks on a young man killed in a car crash earlier this year had led to hackers attacking the Whaleoil website. He said the attack knocked out the Whaleoil site for a number of days during which time a hacker had come away with "thousands and thousands" of documents. He said the papers revealed an "an astonishingly cynical and ugly view" of the way National's "proxies" behaved in politics. Mr Hager said people would become increasingly astonished as they read through the book because the "dirty politics" only got worse.

"You will not believe what you read and how bloody awful it is." In a speech prior to the launch, the book was described as one which "implicates John Key and senior National Party staff". It ''revolves around a cast of Key, Cameron Slater, Jason Ede, David Farrar, Judith Collins and other National Party figures''. "It shows a very different side of John Key and his Government than most New Zealanders know'', the book's publishers said.

Hager's earlier books have included Seeds of Distrust, which threatened to ankle-tap former Prime Minister Helen Clark as she headed into the 2002 election. Mr Hager followed with The Hollow Men which gave voters an inside look at the manipulations of National's 2005 campaign. His 2010 book Other People's Wars exposed New Zealand's intelligence and military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq during the "War of Terror" - a stark contrast to the friendly, public relations-driven view the New Zealand Defence Force had offered. His previous access to well-placed intelligence sources have driven speculation he was preparing to release Edward Snowden-sourced documents about New Zealand's involvement in the US-led Five Eyes spying alliance. But talk around Wellington yesterday had some leaning towards an expose on political manipulations.

Ahead of today's launch, Prime Minister John Key dismissed Mr Hager saying: "Most people know that Nicky Hager is a screaming left-wing conspiracy theorist." It's a view which is in contrast to praise from US journalism legend Seymour Hersh, who last year said: "Nicky Hager has more knowledge and understanding of the American intelligence world in Afghanistan - both its good and its very bad points - than any reporter I know."

The release of the latest book has been carried out in total secrecy. Publicity for the book ahead of the launch has been nonexistent, although the launch itself at Wellington's Unity Books has become today's must-attend Wellington function. Media commentator Russell Brown said Mr Key's comments should be seen as preparing the ground for whatever might be coming by attempting to diminish Mr Hager's credibility.

"They are generally stories people don't want told," he said of Mr Hager's work. "You can see that in the push back which comes before the book comes out."

Mr Brown, AUT's Journalist In Residence and frontman with Toi Iti for Maori Television's Media Take, said Mr Hager had proven his credentials repeatedly and should be regarded as credible.

"One very valuable thing about Nicky is that he operates at a different level to most journalists. He has a strong sense in the public interest. He can take a long time to get the detail right. We're lucky to have someone in his position."

Mr Brown said Mr Hager's books fell into either the "barnstormer" or "technical" category and he expected this one would be greeted as a "barnstormer". Mr Hager's first book was Secret Power, published in 1996. It was a world-exclusive and remains the authoritative text on the United States-led pre-digital spying network called Echelon.

CIA MKULTRA: They Intended To Use Drugs For “Everything” August 13 2014 | From: JonRappoport

Drugs to transform individuals… and even, by implication, society. Drug research going far beyond

the usual brief descriptions of MKULTRA. The intention is there, in the record.

A CIA document was included in the transcript of the 1977 US Senate Hearings on MKULTRA, the CIA’s mind-control program. The document is found in Appendix C, starting on page 166. It’s simply labeled “Draft,” dated 5 May 1955.

It begins: “A portion of the Research and Development Program of [CIA’s] TSS/Chemical Division is devoted to the discovery of the following materials and methods:”

What followed was a list of hoped-for drugs and their uses. First, a bit of background: MKULTRA did not end in 1962, as advertised. It was shifted over to the Agency’s Office of Research and Development. John Marks is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, which exposed MKULTRA. Marks told me a CIA representative informed him that the continuation of MKULTRA, after 1962, was carried out with a greater degree of secrecy, and he, Marks, would never see a scrap of paper about it. I’m printing below, the list of the 1955 intentions of the CIA regarding their own drug research. The range of those intentions is stunning. All statements are direct quotes from the “Draft” document.

Some of my comments gleaned from studying the list: The CIA wanted to find substances which would “promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness.” Serious consideration should be given to the idea that psychiatric medications, food additives, herbicides, and industrial chemicals (like fluorides) would eventually satisfy that requirement. The CIA wanted to find chemicals that “would produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way.” This suggests many possibilities—among them the use of drugs to fabricate diseases and thereby give the false impression of germ-caused epidemics. The CIA wanted to find drugs that would “produce amnesia.” Ideal for discrediting whistleblowers, dissidents, certain political

candidates, and other investigators. (Scopolamine, for example.) The CIA wanted to discover drugs which would produce “paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.” A way to make people decline in health as if from diseases. The CIA wanted to develop drugs that would “alter personality structure” and thus induce a person’s dependence on another person. How about dependence in general? For instance, dependence on institutions, governments? The CIA wanted to discover chemicals that would “lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men.” Sounds like a general description of the devolution of society. As you read the list yourself, you’ll see more implications/possibilities. Here, from 1955, are the types of drugs the MKULTRA men at the CIA were looking for: Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public. Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception. Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol. Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol. Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc. Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness. Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing”. Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use. Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc. Substances which will produce “pure” euphoria with no subsequent let-down. Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced. A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning. Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts. Substances which promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects. A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis. A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a man to perform any physical activity whatsoever. That’s the list.

At the end of this 1955 CIA document, the author [unnamed] makes these remarks:

“In practice, it has been possible to use outside cleared contractors for the preliminary phases of this [research]

work. However, that part which involves human testing at effective dose levels presents security problems which cannot be handled by the ordinary contactors". “The proposed [human testing] facility [deletion] offers a unique opportunity for the secure handling of such clinical testing in addition to the many advantages outlined in the project proposal". "The security problems mentioned above are eliminated by the fact that the responsibility for the testing will rest completely upon the physician and the hospital. [one line deleted] will allow [CIA] TSS/CD personnel to supervise the work very closely to make sure that all tests are conducted according to the recognized practices and embody adequate safeguards.”

In other words, this was to be ultra-secret. No outside contractors at universities for the core of the experiments, which by the way could be carried forward for decades. A secret in-house facility. Over the years, more facilities could be created. If you examine the full range of psychiatric drugs developed since 1955, you’ll see that a number of them fit the CIA’s agenda: Speed-type chemicals, which addle the brain over the long term, to treat so-called ADHD. Anti-psychotic drugs, to render patients more and more dependent on others (and government) as they sink into profound disability and incur motor brain damage. And of course, the SSRI antidepressants, like Prozac and Paxil and Zoloft, which produce extreme and debilitating highs and lows - and also push people over the edge into committing violence. These drugs drag the whole society down into lower and lower levels of consciousness and action. If that’s the goal of a very powerful and clandestine government agency…it’s succeeding.

Surveillance Society / Police State

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Surveillance Society / Police State

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Key Denies Claims Of NSA Secret Spy Box On Southern Cross Cable Network August 6 2014 | From: Stuff

Prime Minister John Key is flatly denying suggestions New Zealand installed controversial spyware to collect data from the Southern Cross cable.

Source: SouthernCrossCables

A $271 expenses document filed with America's National Security Agency appeared to point to talks about installing such a programme. Documents obtained by Fairfax and the Green Party showed an engineer for the NSA spent two nights in Blenheim in 2013 to talk about setting up a "special operations site [SSO]." Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said this referred to a cable access programme which would significantly expand the ability of the GCSB to intercept emails, internet communications and phone calls coming in and out of New Zealand over the Southern Cross cable. But Key’s office today issued a strongly worded denial that any such programme had been installed.

“We can categorically state that there is no such programme operating in New Zealand, and any claims that there is are utterly wrong. In answer to your second question of whether we are contemplating one, we are not and we have no intention of introducing one.”

There was no mass surveillance of New Zealanders “and we do not use our partners to circumvent the law”, Key said through a spokeswoman. The trip was disclosed in a general expense disclosure relating to any NSA travel costs not funded by US taxpayer. It declared a $271 payment for "transportation, lodging and meals." Blenheim is where the Waihopai spy station operated by the Government Communications Security Bureau is located.

The NSA document does not show whether the special operations site went ahead. A GCSB spokesman said the agency would not comment on visits or specific subjects under discussion.

"From time to time we discuss contemporary technology with partners, including where it may or may not be useful. The recent summary of the Performance Improvement Framework review of the NZIC noted that it is positive that New Zealand’s partnerships give it 'much greater and more valuable support, skill, technology and intelligence than would otherwise be available to it'." The spokesman added: "As has been previously stated, the GCSB don't do mass surveillance and we don’t use partners to circumvent the law".

Feds Doled Out Millions Towards Tor Online Anonymity Tools July 30 2014 | From: RT

The National Security Agency may be working to crack the anonymous Tor browser, but the US government actually donated close to $2 million to the project in 2013.

In fact, the large majority of the money gifted to the Tor Project has its origins in the State Department and the Department of Defense. According to the Guardian, the US government delivered a little more than $1.8 million to Tor last year – an increase over the $1.2 million given in 2012. Some of that money was direct – the State Department issued $256,900 while the National Science Foundation donated $100,325 – but most of it was delivered through third parties and non-profit organizations.

“The two largest single grantors of federal money were SRI international, a non-profit research and development centre that aims to bridge the gap between abstract research and industry, and Internews Network, an international non-profit that funds programmes supporting democracy and human rights,” wrote Alex Hern at the Guardian. “The latter gave $555,413 in funding originally from the US Department of State, while the former gave $830,269 in funding ultimately stemming from the US Department of Defense.”

Also known as “The Onion Router,” Tor is a free internet browser that allows users to bypass online censorship as well as avoid surveillance. Although the browser was initially released back in 2002, it has gained notoriety ever since revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the US intelligence agency to be collecting large amounts of data on individuals. Snowden himself has recommended Tor to users looking to keep the government at bay. Last year, a separate Guardian report revealed that the NSA and the United Kingdom’s GCHQ have made multiple attempts to break through Tor’s privacy settings, with limited success. As RT reported recently, Russia is also attempting the same, with its Interior Ministry offering $111,000 to anyone who can help the government crack the network. Meanwhile, a report by PandoDaily in July showed that most of those involved with developing Tor – itself a project built in coordination with the Navy – were funded by and still used by the US government. The website raised concern over the possibility that a conflict of interests could exist, since so much money for the project comes from the state. According to the project’s tax documents, Tor aided the Defense Department in areas related to “communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.” As effective as Tor can be, it isn’t perfect. In May, Microsoft security expert Andy Malone said that while the network itself is still effective, there are weak points that can be taken advantage of by data collectors.

“At the moment the Tor network's security has never been broken, but there are flaws around it that can be exploited,” Malone said at the time. "Tor leaks do occur through third-party apps and add-ons, like Flash. If I was doing forensics on you and thought you were on Tor I wouldn't attack the network I'd attack the weak areas around it.”

600 Million Apple Devices Contain Secret Backdoors, Researcher Claims July 24 2014 | From: RT

A security researcher considered to be among the foremost experts in his field says that more than a half-billion mobile devices running Apple’s latest iOS operating system contain secret backdoors.

Jonathan Zdziarski, also known by his online alias “NerveGas,” told the audience attending his Friday morning presentation at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City that around 600 million Apple devices, including iPhones and tablets, contain hidden features that allow data to be surreptitiously slurped from those devices. During Zdziarski’s HOPE presentation, “Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices,” the researcher revealed that several undocumented forensic services are installed on every new iPhone and iPad, making it easier that ever for a third-party to pull data from those devices in order to compromise a target and take hold of their personal information, including pictures, text messages, voice recordings and more.

"Most services are not referenced by any known Apple software,” one slide says in part, and “the raw format of the data makes it impossible to put data back onto the phone, making useless for Genius Bar or carrier tech purposes.” “The personal nature of the data makes it very unlikely as a debugging mechanism,” he added. “Why is there a packet sniffer running on 600 million personal iOS devices instead of moved to the developer mount?” he asked in one slide. “Why are there undocumented services that bypass user backup encryption that dump mass amounts of personal data from the phone? Why is most of my user data still not encrypted with the PIN or passphrase, enabling the invasion of my personal privacy by YOU?”

Read the full story at: RT

Whistleblower: Ultimate Aim Of The NSA Is Total Population Control July 13 2014 | From: RT

NSA Stores 80% Of All Phone Calls, Not Just Metadata - Full Audio

At least 80 percent of all audio calls are gathered and stored by the NSA, whistleblower William Binney has revealed. The former code-breaker says the spy agency’s ultimate aim is no less than total population control. The National Security Agency lies about what it stores, said William Binney, one of the highest profile whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA, at a conference in London organized by the Center for Investigative Journalism on July 5. Binney left the agency shortly after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center because he was disgusted at the organizations move towards public surveillance.

“At least 80 percent of fiber-optic cables globally go via the US,” Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80 percent of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.”

Binney has no evidence to substantiate his claims as he did not take any documents with him when he left the NSA. However, he insists the organization is untruthful about its intelligence gathering practices and their ultimate aim. He says that recent Supreme Court decisions have led him to believe the NSA won’t stop until it has complete control over the population.

"The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control,” Binney said, “but I’m a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone.”

During his speech at the conference, Binney praised spy-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden for disseminating the classified documents that revealed the NSA’s global spy programs. The latest revelations showed that contrary to the NSA’s claims, the majority of information the agency gathers is from ordinary citizens with no connection to terrorism. NSA gathered 'startlingly intimate' data on ordinary citizens, Snowden data reveals Washington has defended its spy programs, claiming that the NSA targets individuals with connections to known terrorist groups to thwart attacks. Binney said this was a lie and the NSA had stopped “zero attacks” with its intelligence gathering programs. One of the main factors that has allowed the NSA to increase its spy programs is the lack of oversight in the US, argues

Binney. In particular, he took issue with the Foreign Surveillance Court (FISA), which oversees the issue of search warrants against people suspected of terrorism. Binney believes the court is meaningless and always sides with the US government.

“The Fisa court has only the government’s point of view,” he said. “There are no other views for the judges to consider. There have been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations for US domestic audiences and you can double that globally.”

Revelations about US global spy programs have sparked mass indignation, with one American judge saying the surveillance was almost Orwellian in nature. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also compared US intelligence policy to the antics of the Stasi secret police in the former East Germany. Federal judge says NSA's phone surveillance program is likely unconstitutional

Germany Expels CIA Berlin Chief Over NSA Spying July 11 2014 | From: RT

Germany is expelling the CIA chief in Berlin in retaliation for the latest espionage scandals 'in addition to existing issues'. Two suspected US agents have been exposed in the past week, prompting criticism from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The expulsion comes shortly after the alleged US agents were unmasked, suspected of acting as double agents within the state security apparatus, and passing secrets to US intelligence contacts.

The move was “a reaction to persistent failure to work together in efforts towards clarification,” according to the chief of the Parliamentary Control Panel. The two new cases, which came in quick succession of one another, increase the strain on already tense relations after the revelations made about the extent of global NSA espionage in June, 2013. Merkel criticized the spy’s presence in Germany, stating that when common sense is switched on, “spying is ultimately a waste of force,” reported Der Spiegle. She added that in 21st century intelligence work, there should be a strong focus on the essentials rather than that which is just technically possible – to the point that “one can’t see the wood because of all the trees,” Merkel said.

"The order arose against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation by the General Prosecutor's Office, in addition to existing issues in recent months surrounding the actions of US intelligence agencies in Germany,” said the document.

The US stated on Thursday that it was imperative that the two nations continued to cooperate on intelligence and security matters.

"We have seen these reports and have no comment on a purported intelligence matter. However, our security and intelligence relationship with Germany is a very important one and it keeps Germans and Americans safe,"White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Reuters. "It is essential that cooperation continue in all areas and we will continue to be in touch with the German government in appropriate channels," she added.

At the same time, the US government’s representatives refused to comment on the news from Germany.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said he would not comment on Germany's decision because “any sort of comment on any reported intelligence acts would put at risk US assets, US personnel and the United States national security.” "I don't want you to come away from this exchange thinking we take this matter lightly," he said, adding that the US and Germany continue to have a strong partnership.

The State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, also declined to comment on the development.

“Our relationship with Germany is extremely important,” she said. “We’ll continue our dialogue through senior officials in the days and weeks ahead.”

A 31-year-old intelligence officer was arrested last week, and further reports on Wednesday indicated that a German soldier was also being investigated. According to German newspaper Die Welt, the soldier was said to have made “intensive contacts” with alleged US intelligence officials, and had been under surveillance by Military Intelligence (MAD) for some time.

The US has not yet denied allegations that the German intelligence official was passing classified information to the NSA. In a report published on Monday, two unidentified government officials told Reuters of the CIA’s involvement in the operation, which led to the recruitment of the 31-year-old suspected spy, who is now in the custody of German officials. The man was alleged to have passed the Americans 218 secret documents in exchange for € 25,000 ($34,100), and having been a double agent for them for two years through meetings with his contact in Austria and passing on secret documents on a USB stick. Last October, Merkel was enraged to learn she was allegedly on the NSA’s tapping list since 2002. The Chancellor called the alleged spying, which became known thanks to Edward Snowden’s leaks, "unacceptable." A German parliamentary committee has since been holding hearings on the NSA’s spying activities in Germany.

“It’s very embarrassing for the political leaders in Germany to have Americans spying on the Chancellor, or Americans spying on the Defense Ministry, or Americans spying on the German Intelligence service, or on the parliamentary investigations – it’s a big embarrassment for the German political elite,” German investigative journalist John Goetz told RT. "Germany is under a lot of pressure...not to do something. From German standards, they did quite a lot..." he said. “The German and American security systems are so interwoven you can’t even separate them – they’re basically the same infrastructure, the same architecture of security. So, if Germany was to say they don’t want to, it’s very hard for them not to because there are so many institutions that are interwoven.”

Merkel’s Mad: German Leader Indignant Over ‘Serious’ US Spying Allegations July 7 2014 | From: RT

Interesting developments off the back of observations that Germany too, now is not listening to the lies of the well-bankrupt Zionist / Nazi driven United States regime.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said allegations of a German working as a double agent for the US intelligence are “serious” and if proven correct contradict the spirit of bilateral cooperation. Germany arrests suspected 'double agent' for working for US - report Merkel on Monday joined in a chorus of German politicians voicing their concern over the arrest of a German intelligence employee for allegedly spying for the US.

“If the reports are correct it would be a serious case," Reuters cited Merkel as saying. "If the allegations are true, it would be for me a clear contradiction as to what I consider to be trusting cooperation between agencies and partners."

Berlin is now waiting for explanations from the White House. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Sunday that giving prompt clarification of the details in the case was in the “US’s own interest.” Earlier, US Ambassador to Germany John B. Emerson was summoned to the German Foreign Office. Washington has not yet commented on the matter, however. Despite the uproar the double agent scandal has caused among German politicians, the government in Berlin has been quick to assure Washington that the issue will not affect ongoing talks on a free trade deal between the European Union and United States.

"The Americans are important partners for Germany including of course in economic terms, so the TTIP (Translatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) talks ... are not in question or in doubt," government spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said, Reuters reported.

A 31-year-old German foreign intelligence agency (BND) employee has reportedly confessed to having spied for the US for two years. He was allegedly arrested when he tried to also sell some of the information he possessed to Russian intelligence. US-German relations already suffered a significant blow last October, when NSA’s large-scale surveillance on Germany was

revealed due to documents leaked by Edward Snowden. That was when Chancellor Merkel found out she was not immune to snooping by the US. The case has been investigated by a German parliamentary committee. Some of the classified materials from the hearings reportedly were part of the documents stolen by the suspected double agent. This fact enraged German MPs.

"If the suspicion of espionage is confirmed, that would be an outrageous attack on our parliamentary freedom," said Thomas Oppermann, the parliamentary leader of the SPD party, a coalition partner of Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

Germany is particularly sensitive to surveillance issues because of abuses by the Nazis and by the East German Stasi. After Snowden’s revelations activists in Berlin staged multiple protests against US mass spying. They’ve also accused Angela Merkel of too weak a response to the spying scandal. Germany offered the United States to sign a bilateral no-spy agreement, but so far the White House has refused.

Make Them Forget: How ‘Irrelevant’ News Disappears From Google Searches July 5 2014 | From: RT

The fallout of the EU’s ‘Right to be Forgotten’ ruling has impacted a number of European news publications who suddenly found some of their “inadequate” and “irrelevant” pieces disappear from the web search engine results pages.

The search engine now stands accused of heavy-handedness by several media outlets, links to which have disappeared due to Google's fear of potential legal issues.

The Guardian, the BBC, and Sky News were among those who received an ominous email in the past 48 hours saying that certain articles could no longer be linked to – articles which arguably could be deemed both relevant and in the public interest.

“We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions of Google,” read the email from the search engine. “The ruling has created a stopwatch on free expression – our journalism can be found only until someone asks for it to be hidden,” the Guardian responded after learning that six of its articles had been obliterated from Google.

Google has now restored the links to the Guardian’s website, but has not reactivated a link to a BBC article. Read the full story at: RT

New Zealand 'Reintegrated' Into Five Eyes Global Spy Network After 2-Decade Absence June 22 2014 | From: RT Comment: This stated position is rather laughable, given so much of the information that has been leaked which directly involves New Zealand in the FVEY Network over the last decade, in the least. It is well known that the key countries in the ECHELON/ FVEY network collaboraion (US / UK / Canada / Australia / New Zealand) all watch the communication data from each others' states - by way of the NSA hub that drives the system. What this means is that each government can obfuscate their spook maneouvers or 'get around' their local legislation - if it still exists - that was ostensibly put in place to prevent them from spying on their own citizens. It is very simple - when you have such an information sharing network; then if another county in the network is providing surveillance data regarding your own citizens - in 'legal' terms the local spooks get away scott free. So if GCHQ (UK) is providing surveillance intel to the US (NSA) then, in legal terms the NSA has not spied on it's own people, legally. You can figure the other combinations out yourself. The GCSB knows right now that you are reading this article, courtesy of the NSA. Have a great day!

The GCHQ "eye" facility of the British Ministry of Defence

New Zealand was welcomed back to the Five Eyes network after a two-decade absence in 2009, it has been revealed. The spy organization has been criticized for intercepting massive amounts of data about ordinary people and keeping tabs on governments. Read more: New Zealand has direct access to US surveillance. The office of the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) confirmed that New Zealand had been absent from the spy alliance for two decades, although it refrained from explaining the reason for its break from the Five Eyes. During New Zealander Prime Minister John Key’s visit to New York, DNI spokesman Brian Hale told Fairfax news agency that the “reintegration” happened in 2009 as it was believed it was "in the best interest of their nation and their group.

A wing of the New Zealand Defence House Headquarters, Wellington

The Five Eyes network was formed during WWII and includes the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. As part of the alliance, the Five Eyes shared intelligence gathered by their spy agencies to monitor the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc. However, leaked documents by spy-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the alliance’s mass indiscriminate monitoring of civilian communications across the globe. Snowden described the Five Eyes as an artifact of the post-WW2 era that has turned into “a supranational intelligence organization that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries.” When asked by press about New Zealand’s reintegration into the Five Eyes in 2009, Key said he was unaware of any such changes.

“I don't think that's right, but I remember there were some vague things,” he told Fairfax. "My understanding of it is that even through the challenging times of the relationship post the anti-nuclear legislation, New Zealand continued to be an active member of Five Eyes."

Snowden’s spy revelations triggered widespread skepticism of the New Zealand government’s collaboration with the US. A recent poll carried out by Stuff.co.nz showed that over 70 percent of New Zealanders believe the United States was gathering information on them. In addition, over 60 percent of people asked do not believe the US should have the right to do so. Read more: Kim Dotcom’s new IP address…Internet Party, that is. Key has dismissed the survey’s findings, arguing that "if a New Zealander was training with a terrorist group in a foreign environment” then most New Zealanders would support surveillance. Last year parliament expanded the powers of New Zealander spy agency the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), allowing it to support the New Zealand police, Defense Force and the Security Intelligence Service. The move proved very unpopular among New Zealanders, with elements of the opposition calling it a “death knell” for privacy rights. Key attributed the public alarm to “conspiracy” and “misinformation” orchestrated by the opposition and insisted the amendment was necessary to protect the country from multiple cyber-threats.

Facebook Will Provide Advertisers With Data On Your Visits To External Websites June 13 2014 | From: RT Comment: It has been known for years now that Facebook uses cookies to watch where their users come from and go to completely outside of their activities on Bookface itself. Now, they are turing this into a monetised product.

Facebook is to start providing advertisers with more user data, drawing from browsing habits and external websites visited, in addition to their current 'likes.' This will be the first time that Facebook has used information from outside the network. The company announced the change early on Thursday, saying the move is aimed at targeting individual users more efficiently.

“If you live in the US, you’ll be able to use ad preferences in the next few weeks, and we are working hard to expand globally in the coming months,” Facebook stated in a blog post on Thursday.

However, the move has sparked concern among privacy advocates and will likely ignite further criticism about its respect – or lack thereof – of users’ personal data.

“Facebook is continuing on a campaign to push the data envelope, raising troubling privacy and consumerprotection concerns,” Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told The Wall Street Journal.

But Facebook portrayed the changes in a more positive light.

“This is a type of interest-based advertising, and many companies already do this,” the company stated.

Facebook already has a great deal of access to its users’ personal data, with third party ‘plug-ins’ also gathering a great deal of information.

To dilute concerns, Facebook will for the first time be giving people the ability to edit all ‘interests’ on their personal record.

“If you don’t want us to use the websites and apps you use to show you more relevant ads, we won’t. You can opt out of this type of ad targeting in your web browser using the industry-standard Digital Advertising Alliance opt out, and on your mobile devices using the controls that iOS and Android provide,” the company stated.

Joseph Turow, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania, told WSJ that although allowing users to see why they are being targeted is a positive step, Facebook's ever-changing privacy policy could quell awareness over the erosion of privacy protections. Facebook “dribble[s] out what they do so that any kind of anger is dissipated,” Turow said. “I think it is a strategy, to be honest.”

Vodafone Dances Around GCHQ In 40,000-Word Spying Confession - Inspires Deutsche Telekom To Come Out Also June 9 2014 | From: RT

Includes Specific Information on New Zealand and the 28 other countries Government intelligence agencies have direct access to telecommunication companies’ infrastructure which allows them to spy and record phone calls leaving no paper trail, the UK’s largest mobile phone company Vodafone has revealed. Note: Vodafone recently acquired Verizon in the US. Although the US is not on this list, they are nicely covered by the NSA, the American equivalent of GCHQ. Vodafone Group is second only in size to China Mobile.

The world’s second-largest mobile phone company has broken its silence over its cooperation with government agencies and their efforts to eavesdrop on unsuspecting customers, but what it fails to mention speaks the loudest. Vodafone’s 88-page ‘Law Enforcement Disclosure Report’ reveals how 29 governments around the world use an open back door to eavesdrop on its customers’ private communications.

“In every country in which we operate, we have to abide by the laws of those countries which require us to disclose information about our customers to law enforcement agencies or other government authorities, or to block or restrict access to certain services,” the Vodafone reports says. “Those laws are designed to protect national security and public safety or to prevent or investigate crime and terrorism, and the agencies and authorities that invoke those laws insist that the information demanded from communications operators such as Vodafone is essential to their work.”

However, Vodafone’s corporate candidness stopped short of describing its alleged collaboration with GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the US National Security Agency. Snowden’s whistleblowing revealed that GCHQ has tapped into transatlantic fiber optic cables in a secret program, codenamed Tempora, which reportedly allows the British spy agency access to telephone communications and Internet data on millions of people. GCHQ, documents showed, teamed up with seven telecom companies, including Vodafone. The report provided a rather chilling assessment as to the power of the intelligence agencies when it makes the decision to spy on a private citizen. Read the full story at: RT

How To Stop Facebook From Using Your Browsing History June 9 2014 | From: Gizmodo It's widely known now that facebook is a CIA data collection front. Some of the original funding for facebook has been traced to another CIA owned company. As this article explains, at least there are some steps that can be taken...

Earlier this week, Facebook announced that it was going to start using all of that ever-so-illuminating app and website data it collects to serve us with more targeted ads. In other words, Facebook is getting ready to use your browsing history to benefit advertisers. Here's how to stop them. Of course, just because you're getting some new (and highly necessary) controls over how Facebook shares your data doesn't mean it's going to stop collecting the data in the first place. So while we can at least somewhat limit how all of our salacious internet habits are being used, it doesn't mean the cache of data itself is going away. What's more, the new feature is opt-out, so in order to keep your browsing history away from prying third-party eyes. You'll need to actively head over to the Digital Advertising Alliance here and let them know you're not willing to share. Read the full story at: Gizmodo

Vodafone Reveals Intelligence Agencies Have Direct Access To Telecoms Infrastructure June 7 2014 | From: RT

In what by now has become (what may be viewed as) an almost redundant / unsurprisingly predictable statement; Government intelligence agencies have direct access to telecommunication companies’ infrastructure which allows them to spy and record phone calls leaving no paper trail, the UK’s largest mobile phone company Vodafone has revealed.

The British operator said wires have been attached to its phone networks in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe, as well as around the world [ read: New Zealand ], the Guardian reported. Governments similarly connect to other telecom groups, reportedly allowing them to listen to or record live conversations. In some cases, the surveillance agencies can also track the whereabouts of a customer. ... But now Vodafone is pushing back against government surveillance through direct access to the pipes. On Friday, it will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report about how governments spy on people through the company’s infrastructure. ... Agencies do not have to identify the targeted customers to the telecom companies in any way, and the direct-access systems do not require warrants. Read the full story at: RT

On 9/11, Kiwi’s Being Droned, GCSB And Facial Recognition In Auckland May 20 2014 | From: AotearoaAWiderPerspective et al When several weeks ago the news appeared that at least one Kiwi had been a victim of a US drone attack our Government thought that the guy deserved what he got. He shouldn’t have been were he was. No judge, no jury needed. Meta data tells you everything you need to know!

What is more it now appears that GCSB was actively involved in supplying the US intelligence community with information about the man killed in the raid according to Journalist Jeremy Scahill in an interview with Patrick Gower. This morning an article appeared in the NZ Herald. “They” are rolling out a soon to be Nation wide surveillance system in Auckland which “may” (no “may” about it. We docile Kiwi’s think we need it anyway) include facial recognition. Read the full story here.

Snowden Docs: GCSB Links To US Spying Programmes May 15 2014 | From: NewZealandHerald

New documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden show New Zealand's GCSB closely enmeshed with some of the most controversial parts of the United States' spying apparatus.

The documents were released with journalist Glenn Greenwald's new book No Place To Hide, which tells the story of Snowden's National Security Agency disclosures and what they mean. Among the documents are a cluster relating to New Zealand which show: Our GCSB spies were shown instructional slides on how to operate the X-Keyscore surveillance program which trawls mass harvested email addresses, phone numbers, online chat, web-based email and attachments sent; They were privy to diplomatic espionage by other Five Eyes partners, including spying which was Canadian spies capturing the emails, text messages and phone calls between the Brazilian president and her aides; They were briefed on the NSA's efforts to deliberately put backdoors into private companies' computer networks; And the were given access to a program called "Homing Pigeon" which allowed in-air communications on passenger jets to be monitored. One NSA document tells New Zealand and its other "Five Eyes" intelligence partners the ambition is to "know it all", "collect it all", "exploit it all" and "partner it all". Read the full story at: NewZealandHerald

NSA Embedded Surveillance Tools Within Exported US Computer Hardware May 13 2014 | From: RT

While the United States has warned against buying Chinese routers due to surveillance concerns, a new book about the Edward Snowden revelations states America has been intercepting and tinkering with routers intended for foreign customers.

According to Glenn Greenwald – one of the journalists entrusted with Snowden’s leaked documents – the National Security Agency has been implanting devices into routers headed overseas since at least 2010.

“In an extract from Greenwald’s new book, titled “No Place to Hide,” the journalist states the NSA “routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers, and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers.”

Once the agency gets its hands on these products, it embeds devices that are linked to the NSA’s own system, giving officials access to foreign networks and information from all the users connected to that network. Read the full story at: RT

Anti-Surveillance Movement Calls ‘Reset The Net’ Day Of Action May 7 2014 | From: RT Updated June 7 - See below

More than 30 civil liberties groups and tech companies have formed a coalition against internet surveillance and NSA spying, with a ‘Reset the Net’ day of action planned for June 5 to mark a year since Edward Snowden’s leaks.

Screenshot from youtube.com/user/fightforthefutu

“Don't ask for your privacy. Take it back,” the website urges.

The site offers the opportunity for its visitors to sign a pledge: “On June 5, I will take strong steps to protect my freedom from government mass surveillance. I expect the services I use to do the same.” The coalition has been organized by “Fight for the Future.” Among its members are Reddit, Imgur, DuckDuckGo, CREDO Mobile, and the Free Software Foundation, who are enforced by the civil liberties groups and others, as Boing Boing and Greenpeace. The collective is calling on software developers to assimilate anti-NSA features into their products, such as mobile apps, or perhaps adding security features such as SSL (Secure Socket Layer), HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), and Perfect Forward Secrecy which are data encoding features intended to prevent the government being a go-between for communication interceptions.

“The call is simple – find some territory of the internet you can protect from prying eyes,” the ‘Reset the Net’ video states. “Government spies have a weakness: they can hack anybody, but they can’t hack everybody,” the organizers behind the Reset the Net movement say in a video released. “Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes; mistakes we can fix.”

June 5 marks the day that Edward Snowden first broke news of en-masse surveillance programs implemented by the NSA and PRISM became a household word. The groups are dispersing a privacy package for participants to use which contain free software tools for encrypting chat logs, email, phone calls and text messaging.

Screenshot from youtube.com/user/fightforthefutu

CREDO Mobile is thought to be the anonymous telecom which is currently engaged in a constitutional battle regarding governmental utilization of National Security Letters to obtain user data.

“A year after Snowden’s shocking revelations, the NSA is still spying on innocent Americans without a warrant,” Michael Kieschnick, CEO of CREDO Mobile, told Wired magazine on Tuesday. “CREDO will continue to demand Congress and the president take action to stop unconstitutional mass warrantless surveillance, and until we win real reform, we will encourage users to adopt encryption tools to protect their personal communications from government abuse of the 1st and 4th amendment,” he added.

The mass action is reminiscent of a similar online mass action in 2012 against two federal anti-piracy bills – the Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Thousands of websites, with the support of massive firms such as Google and Twitter - went into blackout or partial blackout in order to put a stop to the legislation. “We can't stop targeted attacks, but we ‘can’ stop mass surveillance by building proven security into the everyday Internet,” the collective states.

Update: June 7 Yesterday was unbelievable. Together, we as everyday Internet users harnessed the power of the largest websites on earth and launched the biggest effort in human history to shut down mass surveillance on the web. So how did we do it? Check out this infographic . We promise you will end up reading the whole thing and then feeling awesome. Click here to see how we Reset the Net. There's so much more to tell. We're still tallying up the numbers and collecting all the amazing stories of how the Internet came together to defend itself. And, we're making the biggest announcement of all. Reset the Net was not just a single day of action. We're going to continue this campaign as a longterm, concerted effort to directly block dragnet government surveillance from as much of the Internet as we can.

Each month we'll be announcing a new wave of participants who are helping Reset the Net, and escalating our demands on the largest tech companies to ensure that they're taking the most meaningful and concrete steps they possibly can to protect our privacy.

Defiant Apple, Facebook And Other Tech Companies Will Inform Public Of NSA / Government Surveillance Requests May 2 2014 | From: RT

The same technology companies that the US intelligence community has relied upon to disclose email records are now refusing to keep surveillance requests secret and informing customers when they are the subject of such requests.

In the nearly ten months since former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed extensive surveillance efforts on everyday Americans’ online activity, the companies that were forced to facilitate that surveillance have come under harsh public scrutiny. The embarrassment ignited a series of comments from executives at Google and Facebook, among others, calling on the NSA and other agencies to either stop forcing them to provide the communications that customers trust them with, or allow them to be more transparent. Now, according to a Thursday report in the Washington Post, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have updated their policies to routinely notify customers when law enforcement has requested information about them.

Yahoo enacted such a change in July, with the Post reporting Thursday that companies “have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid having suspects learn of inquiries."

With such influential companies announcing that they will essentially ignore the warning attached to subpoenas asking them to keep knowledge of the requests to themselves, experts say other companies that spend less time in the public eye will be more willing to do so.

“It serves to chill the unbridled, cost-free collection,” Albert Gidari Jr., a partner at the firm Perkins Cole who represents multiple technology companies, told the Post. “And I think that’s a good thing.”

Not all requests will be made public. Orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has denied only one NSA request in five years, will still be kept classified, as will National Security Letters from the FBI. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the US Department of Justice, warned that the companies’ divergence from the norm constitutes a massive security flaw. He told the Post there is at least one recent example in which an early disclosure put a cooperative witness in danger, though he refused to provide any further detail.

“These risks of endangering life, risking destruction of evidence, or allowing suspects to flee or intimidate witnesses are not merely hypothetical, but unfortunately routine,” Carr said.

Law enforcement’s job is also complicated by the growing number of magistrate judges who are skeptical of the government’s requests. The judicial ideology has quietly spread to courts through the country, frustrating prosecutors as much as it has excited civil libertarians. Perhaps the most outspoken opinion, though, came from Washington DC Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola, who ruled against government requests to access the Facebook page of Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis and a request to search the iPhone of a Georgetown University student accused of making ricin. Facciola has consistently sought narrower, more specific requests from investigators, as evidenced by an April ruling in a case unrelated to the two aforementioned investigations.

“For the sixth time,” he wrote, as quoted by the Post, “this court must be clear: if the government seizes data it knows is outside the scope of the warrant, it must either destroy the data or return it. It cannot simply keep it.”

Interactive Graphic: The NSA Spying Machine April 8 2014 | From: Bloomberg With every new leak from Edward Snowden’s bottomless trove of pilfered documents, it gets harder to keep track of all the bizarre ways the National Security Agency has cooked up to spy on people and governments. This may help.

Data in Motion NSA’s spies divide targets into two broad categories: data in motion and data at rest. Information moving to and from mobile phones, computers, data centers, and satellites is often easier to grab, and the agency sucks up vast amounts worldwide. Yet common data such as e-mail is often protected with encryption once it leaves a device, making it harder—but not impossible— to crack. Data at Rest Retrieving information from hard drives, overseas data centers, or cell phones is more difficult, but it’s often more valuable because stored data is less likely to be encrypted, and spies can zero in on exactly what they want. NSA lawyers can compel U.S. companies to hand over some of it; agency hackers target the most coveted and fortified secrets inside computers of foreign governments. Where the Data Goes Much of the data the NSA compiles from all these efforts will be stored in its million-square-foot data center near Bluffdale, Utah. It can hold an estimated 12 exabytes of data. An exabyte is the equivalent of 1 billion gigabytes. See the interactive graphic at: Bloomberg

Snowden Leak: NSA [ FVEY: NSA / ASD / CSEC / GCHQ / GCHB ] Plans To Infect ‘Millions’ Of Computers

March 14 2014 | From: RT Yet more previously secret surveillance operations waged by the United States National Security Agency were made public Wednesday morning thanks to leaked documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The Threat Operations Center inside the National Security Agency (NSA) (AFP Photo)

The files — published first by The Intercept this week and dissected over the course of a 3,000-word article attributed to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher — bring to light a number of previously unreported programs undertaken by the secretive US spy agency, including operations that have given the NSA the potential to infect millions of computers around the world by relying on malicious software that’s sent to targets through surreptitious means. In recent years, however, the NSA has reportedly made adjustments to these operations that enable them to by carried out automatically without the direct aid of human spies — a decision that experts say is undermining the internet as it is known today, “Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process,” the journalists wrote. That automated system named "TURBINE," they said later, is designed to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.” For the full story and some truly ugly government diagrams visit: RT

Full Disclosure: The Internet Dark Age - Five Eyes Sources And Methods Uncovered For Disabling The FVEY ECHELON / GCHQ / NSA / CSEC / ASD / GCHB Systems February 27 2014 | From: JimStoneFreelance

Removing Governmental on-line stranglehold | Disabling major capabilities (BULLRUN / EDGEHILL) | Restoring on-line privacy - immediately Uncovered – //NONSA//NOGCHQ//NOGOV - CC BY-ND On September 5th 2013, Bruce Schneier, wrote in The Guardian: “The NSA also attacks network devices directly: routers, switches, firewalls, etc. Most of these devices have surveillance capabilities already built in; the trick is to surreptitiously turn them on. This is an especially fruitful avenue of attack; routers are updated less frequently, tend not to have security software installed on them, and are generally ignored as a vulnerability”. “The NSA also devotes considerable resources to attacking endpoint computers. This kind of thing is done by its TAO – Tailored Access Operations – group. TAO has a menu of exploits it can serve up against your computer – whether you're running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or something else – and a variety of tricks to get them on to your computer. Your anti-virus software won't detect them, and you'd have trouble finding them even if you knew where to look. These are hacker tools designed by hackers with an essentially unlimited budget. What I took away from reading the Snowden documents was that if the NSA wants in to your computer, it's in. Period”. The evidence provided by this Full-Disclosure is the first independent technical verifiable proof that Bruce Schneier's statements are indeed correct. This update includes 10 pages of additional evidence, courtesy of the U.S. Government. Dedicated to the Whistle - Blower Mr Edward J. Snowden. We explain how the NSA/GCHQ core systems: Are Internet wiretapping you Break into your home network Perform 'Tailored Access Operations' (TAO) in your home Steal your encryption keys Can secretly plant anything they like on your computer Can secretly steal anything they like from your computer How to STOP this Computer Network Exploitation We expose NSA/GCHQ's most Secret Weapon - Control and how you can defeat it! Click here to download the PDF Document

Government Spies Are Forcing Privacy Email Services To Shut Down Because They Can't Spy On Emails December 12 2013 | From InfoWars GCHQ, the British counterpart and facilitator to the NSA, has forced a privacy focused email service to shut down because it could not effectively spy on the encrypted emails people were sending. As the blog IT Security Guru reports, a beta version of the PrivateSky service from London-based web security firm CertiVox was shut down early in 2013 following a government order. The secure email encryption service, which worked with both web based email and Outlook, had “tens of thousands of heavily active users” before it was targeted by government spooks, according to the developers. Brian Spector, CEO of CertiVox, tells reporters “Towards the end of 2012, we heard from the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC), a division of GCHQ and a liaison with the Home Office, [that] they wanted the keys to decrypt the customer data.” “So they had persons of interest they wanted to track and came with a RIPA warrant signed by the home secretary. You have to comply with a RIPA warrant or you go to jail.” Spector adds. “It is the same in the USA with FISMA, and it is essentially a national security warrant.” Spector further notes.

Read the full story on: InfoWars

Write Wongs! Over 500 World-Famous Authors Sign Anti-Surveillance Petition December 10 2013 | From RT

More than 500 renowned authors ncluding five Nobel laureates - from across the globe have signed a petition demanding an end to ‘mass surveillance’. It follows the revelations over the last few months of the US and other countries spying.

Their open appeal is called A Stand for Democracy in the Digital;. Among the signatories are Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk, JM Coetzee, Elfriede Jelinek, Günter Grass and Tomas Tranströmer. Others who signed the letter include Bjork, Umberto Eco, Yann Martel, Ian McEwan and many others.

WE DEMAND THE RIGHT for all people, as democratic citizens, to determine to what extent their personal data may be collected, stored and processed, and by whom; to obtain information on where their data is stored and how it is being used; to obtain the deletion of their data if it has been illegally collected and stored. WE CALL ON ALL STATES AND CORPORATIONS to respect these rights,” the open appeal read. It adds that a person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy. To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space. Read the full story on: RT

Senior NSA Whistleblower: December 2013 Presentation @ University of Toronto Streamed Live on December 5 2013 | From iSchoolUofT Thomas Drake, former senior NSA official turned whistleblower, visited Toronto December 5 and 6 to meet with surveillance researchers and civil libertarians, and gave a public lecture in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. His talk was called "Secret NSA / CSEC Surveillance versus Democracy: What's at Stake for the US & Canada?" It is absolutely riveting. A must-watch.

From iSchoolUofT

The NSA Files: 'Decoded' - Edward Snowden's Revelations Explained November 1 2013 | From TheGuardian The Snowden files reveal a number of mass-surveillance programs undertaken by the NSA and GCHQ [and the GCSB].

The agencies are able to access information stored by major US technology companies, often without individual warrants, as well as mass-intercepting data from the fibre-optic cables which make up the backbone of global phone and internet networks. The agencies have also worked to undermine the security standards upon which the internet, commerce and banking rely. See the full story at: TheGuardian

Finding Snowden November 2013 | From: Motherboard.vice “There were times when I thought it would never happen,” Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent, said about her recent trip to Moscow. “I’m still amazed.” I too was amazed when I received an encrypted email at 2am one recent October morning, with a photo of her and three other whistleblowers standing shoulder to shoulder with one of the most wanted men on the planet.

When Edward Snowden abandoned his Hawaii home, a long-term relationship, and a six-figure salary as a government contractor in order to lift the veil on the US's transnational surveillance system, he also left behind any sense of safety or security. The US Justice Department has charged the 30-year-old former "infrastructure analyst" with theft of government property, and two serious charges under the Espionage Act. The former director of the NSA, Michael Hayden, even recently "joked" during a cybersecurity panel that Snowden should be put on America’s kill list. (Rep. Mike Rogers R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, responded, "I can help you with that.")

For four high-profile former spooks, each with their own histories of whistleblowing and government persecution, arranging a secret meeting with the world’s most wanted whistleblower was no simple thing.

Read the story at: Motherboard.vice

Was The GCSB Financed By The NSA? September 30 2013 | From AotearoaAWiderPerspective John Key said he could neither confirm nor deny whether the GCSB was financed by the NSA. We do know that the English equivalent most certainly was. I wonder how much of this $ 52.6 billion black budget published in the Washington post found its way to the pockets of those in charge of organizing the Stats Sicherheits Polizei GCSB to be able to spy on all of us?

Take Back Your Power - Stopping the Smart Grid Agenda October 27 2012 | From TakeBackYourPower.net Take Back Your Power is a historic community-funded film which exposes the technocratic "smart meter" agenda, by which corporations are currently attempting to quietly assert the basis for further control in the lives and homes of the world's citizens. The film will also focus on specific solutions -- which are presently available -- for humanity to leapfrog outdated ideas of control, and co-create a better future.

Visit our website to learn how you can refuse a smart meter, subscribe, and support us in completing the film. The smart grid is an interlocking web that will monitor and control all of the electrical appliances in your home at all times. Based on wireless technology, the privacy ramifications, health effects, and opportunities for outright government control inherent in the smart grid agenda are staggering. Tonight we talk to Josh Del Sol, the filmmaker behind the forthcoming feature documentary "Take Back Your Power," about this agenda and what you can do to stop it.

Opposition Parties Say New Zealand Has Been Turned into a "Police State" March 25 2012 | From Stuff Opposition parties say New Zealand has been turned into a "police state" after Parliament last night narrowly passed the Government's controversial Search and Surveillance Bill. Parliament last night passed by the Bill by 61 votes to 57. It was opposed by all Opposition parties and the Government's support partner the Maori Party. Greens MP Stefan Browning said the legislation put the powers exercised by police in its heavily criticised 2007 so-called "terror raids" in Ruatoki in the hands of many government agencies. Those raids led to the trial of the Urewera Four, who a jury this week failed to reach a verdict on the police's case they were part of an organised criminal group.

Browning told Parliament the law went too far. "The evils of the Bill go to looking at people's texts, their voice mails, bugs in cars, chat room videos." Thousands of innocent people could have their communications caught up in electronic monitoring, Browning said. Mana Party leader Hone Harawira said 70 different government agencies could obtain surveillance warrants based on suspicion a crime could be committed. "This Bill goes way beyond what they have in Europe, in Canada and even in the US." Read the full story at Stuff

SOPA’s Evil Twin Sister – CISPA From InfoWars In the hopes of creating awareness of what CISPA actually is and how it could effect the lives of every day people, we created this infographic. Feel free to share the graphic on your site. You can find quotes from Fortune 500 CEO's who are endorsing the bill here . You can also write a letter to your local representative to protest CISPA here .

SOPA changes name to CISPA From TheContrail Fascism Comes to the Internet: Introducing CISPA Joe Wright 4/4/12 Activist Post After nearly unprecedented pushback against bills SOPA and PIPA, their apparent defeat cannot yet be claimed. Most skeptics presumed that the defeat of the aforementioned would only serve to offer a compromised "SOPA light" at some point to circumvent criticism over government censorship. Well, it didn't take long. In addition to OPEN and ACTA to combat supposed piracy issues in the U.S. and Europe respectively, we now have been presented with a full-on fascist template for Internet control where government and private corporations will work hand in hand under the very broad definition of cybersecurity. The CISPA acronym is probably the most honest of those proposed thus far, and certainly is self-explanatory: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. Cybersecurity initiatives themselves are framed in such a way as to declare the free and open Internet to be subsumed into national security infrastructure, thus giving it over to the Pentagon, NSA, and other agents for use in surveillance and even offensive war. However, CISPA goes one step further to suggest that all information transmitted on this national security infrastructure is fair game for the prying eyes of the State. Most likely the private sector must bow to any and all demands made, or face being labeled as supporters of terrorism. Both House and Senate are due to address CISPA (H.R. 3523) in the last weeks of April -- we had better make noise ten times louder than what was made against previous attempts to hijack the Internet. Once the Internet is co-opted openly by the military-industrial-surveillance complex, there will be very little chance for regaining what will be lost.

Snowden: ‘Training Guide’ for GCHQ, NSA Agents Infiltrating and Disrupting Alternative Media Online February 26 2014 | From: 21stCenturyWire

Ed Snowden’s latest leaked documents open the lid on what is perhaps the most vindictive and disgusting aspect of the government-corporate joint surveillance state seen yet…

[ TOP SECRET//COMINT//REL TO USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL ] This is Britain’s GCHQ guide to Online Covert Action, which is shared with US agencies like the NSA. According to these latest documents, there are paid government agent/contractor persons on social media posing as someone they are not, whilst on the payroll of the government.

Their job is to befriend members of the alternative media, embed themselves in the ebb and flow of day-to-day communications, and then to engage in elaborate subterfuge – by any means necessary. The training exercise below uses terms like “befriend”, “infiltrate”, “mask/mimic”, “ruse”, “set-up”, “disrupt”, “create cognitive stress”, “use deception”, “ruin business relationships”, and “post negative information on appropriate forums” – all of which is not only illegal and morally bankrupt, but also runs completely contrary to the very fundamental ‘values’ and indeed founding principles, of a modern free democratic society or constitutional republic. Government targets in this malicious operation appear to be bloggers, activists, journalists, social event organisers and anyone else deemed to be a ‘emerging leader’ or voice in the public sphere, or alternative media online. This obviously extends way beyond the practice of employing paid ‘trolls’ to pollute comment sections and redirect forum threads – which still exists under both government and corporate umbrellas. Thanks to Ed Snowden (photo, left), the public – as well as moral individuals within government and the judiciary, might fully realise just how these sort of underhanded, and unlawful operations have sunk to the lowest possible levels. It’s not enough that the governments of both the UK and US are blanket spying on each other’s populations and then swapping data, but now we see how they are aggressively targeting individuals in secret, undermining them and eventually setting out to destroy them – and all the while employing organised deception (with the full backing of the state security apparatus) to achieve a series of said ‘outcomes’. That’s conspiracy to defraud, and it’s against the law in any modern civilised society. One has to pose the question: is this type of government sanctioned gang-stalking and conspiracy to defraud civilised? Most people would answer ‘no’ of course, but unfortunately most people are not making the decisions regarding these new malicious soviet-style programs in Britain and the US.

It’s so comforting to know that the governments of Great Britain and the United States have allocated public money not only to spy on their own innocent citizens, but also that ample public money is also being spent to actively undermine free speech,

derail small businesses, to entrap and intentionally defraud and defame unsuspecting citizens that are deemed targets by some secret committee – all carried out in an extrajudicial (outside of the law) way. Sounds very much like those horrific East German Stasi tales we all point to as history’s archetypal low-point of modern society. Those who know their history, know that this type of aggressive state attack against its own citizens has nothing to do with ‘national security’ or ‘terrorism’, but is merely a case of the state using its muscle against those who are shining a spotlight on its shortcoming and internal government corruption and criminal behaviour. By (almost) anyone’s metric, it’s a shameful chapter in history. Read the full story and see documentation at: 21stCenturyWire

Mainstream Media Admits Smart Meters Are Spying Devices February 24 2014 | From: IntelliHub

Mainstream media finally recognizes the smart meter dangers that “conspiracy theorists” have warned of for years

For years researchers and activists have been warning about the health and privacy dangers involved with smart meters. As usual, the mainstream media ridiculed these warnings and insisted that smart meters were harmless. However, now it is becoming common knowledge that these smart meters can be used to spy on innocent people, and even the mainstream media is starting to catching on. Shockingly, news organizations like NBC are even picking this story up, in a recent article for NBC News, Matt Liebowitz writes: Researchers examining the privacy implications of smart-meter technology found that one German provider’s devices contained vulnerabilities that allowed them to snoop on unencrypted data to determine whether or not the homeowners were home. After signing up with the German smart-meter firm Discovergy, the researchers detected that the company’s devices transmitted unencrypted data from the home devices back to the company’s servers over an insecure link. The researchers, Dario Carluccio and Stephan Brinkhaus, intercepted the supposedly confidential and sensitive information, and, based on the

fingerprint of power usage, were able to tell not only whether or not the homeowners were home, away or even sleeping, but also what movie they were watching on TV. Smart meters are just one piece of the national surveillance puzzle that has been growing in recent decades. “Over the last several years, traffic-centric surveillance applications were the most prolific,” said Eric Ackermann, sales manager for enterprise solutions and services at Siemens Industry in California’s Orange County. “In the last two years, a vast majority of the demand has come from city water/utility, parks/recreation, police and public works.” Just last week we reported that many researchers who were labeled as “conspiracy theorists” were vindicated by the mainstream media in regards to weather control, when a mainstream scientist discussed the deep history of government weather modification on nationwide television. As the truth of our reality becomes more undeniable, the mainstream will continue to admit things that they once ridiculed.

NSA’s Mass Surveillance Of New Zealanders Online February 17 2014 | From: NBR Part of my TEDx Queenstown talk next week is about mass surveillance online. How governments are building the modern Panopticon.

I was therefore quite surprised yesterday when Prime Minister John Key said he has no reason to believe the NSA has undertaken mass surveillance on New Zealanders. To help the prime minister, let’s look at what we know about it and whether an objective person should come to the same conclusion. At the same time, let’s not overlook the FBI’s (NarusInsight) and GCHQ’s (Tempora) sterling efforts in collecting and making the data available to the NSA. In fact, the GCHQ collects even more metadata off international cables than the NSA. I’ll cover both the direct and indirect ways known to be used (thanks Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers). By way of context, note that it is entirely legal for the NSA to undertake mass (and targeted) surveillance of New Zealanders. There are virtually no limits on the NSA’s surveillance of non-Americans in the US "national interest." And, no, being part of the Five Eyes does not buy us immunity from being spied on by the NSA and GCHQ. Read the full story at: NBR

Nationalised Online ID - Here Now February 14 2014 | From: Aaron Livingston [ This article can also be downloaded from here in PDF format. Click here for 2mb Low Res Version or click here for High Res 11mb version. Please share far and wide. ] Well ladies and gentlemen it’s here thanks to the New World Order and its radical laws under Agenda 21; set to control a wide range of resources. This includes a worldwide identification system, in different countries like USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The globalist ID concept that has incarnated itself in New Zealand as "RealMe" will affect everyone rich and poor; including you! RealMe is a fully operational Online ID for everyone, and of course Work and Income[1] have gladly been the first ones to implement this ID from its inception, forcing everyone who wants an online account to sign up.

It seems to me that WINZ clients are always at the receiving end of some new implementation, restricting freedom. Also information from a reliable source told me they were forced to sign up to RealMe if they wanted to do an online tertiary course, and apply for a student loan online. According to a pamphlet[2] I collected at my local Post Shop it states the following: “If you want to do anything important online, like getting a new bank account or a copy of your birth certificate, you need to head down to your local branch with identity documents. Not ideal when you’re busy... Below is a screen shot of the RealMe ID application landing page on the New Zealand post website at: nzpost.co.nz

...The New Zealand government and New Zealand Post have created the RealMe service to help solve this problem. RealMe is the easy and secure way to prove who you are online. It will soon make applying for things on the internet simpler, faster, and easier with participating organisations”. Below is a screen shot of the RealMe home page at: realme.govt.nz

To an un-aware mind, this all sounds great! Who wouldn’t love a much simpler way for proving who you are online nationwide? All perks aside, warning bells should be ringing in your ears. This sounds like the same thing that Nazi Germany was doing back in the 40’s, yet this ID is very similar to the American biometrics system that will identify who I am, to many organisations, institutions, banks and more, according to the official organisation list[3] on the RealMe website.

Below is a screen shot of the key content from the "About RealMe" page on the RealMe website:

Where on earth did RealMe come from? Our government has made this 'thing' appear without any official warning or transparency, however stated by a RealMe article[4] this is all in aid of the new ‘Anti-Laundering’ bill that has been passed. This ID system has only just begun, yet by the end of the year (2014) we will see it being more fully implemented and it could even be used as ID for offline measures. Importantly, in light of the latest NSA Whistleblower reports, it is safe to say that this type of ID cannot be proven to be 100% secure. Given the wider context and implications of the implementation of a "National Identification" system such as this (and the general awareness level of the public at large) it is apparent that not a lot of people in New Zealand will 'get' the concept enough to question it, let aloe be aware enough to figure out how evil this thing really is. Will you take the Red or Blue Pill? The choice is yours. Notes: Footnotes: 1 http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/about-work-and-income/news/2013/new-login-and-more-features-in-my-account.html 2 Pamphlet photos: www.truth4israelnz.wordpress.com/warning-nationalised-online-id-ahead 3 https://www.realme.govt.nz/faqs/organisations-that-use-realme-services/ 4 https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/notice-of-approval-of-anti-money-laundering-and-countering-financing-of-terrorism-identity-verification-code-ofpractice-amendment-2013/ Related Articles: REALME: https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/bnz-first-of-the-big-banks-to-go-live-with-realme/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/bnz-goes-live-with-realme-service/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/tsb-bank-first-bank-to-use-the-realme-service/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/online-voting-to-be-trialled-at-2016-elections/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/notice-of-approval-of-anti-money-laundering-and-countering-financing-of-terrorism-identity-verification-code-ofpractice-amendment-2013/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/tsb-bank-kiwibank-to-use-realme/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/new-anti-money-laundering-code-sets-standard-for-customer-id-checks/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/government-backs-new-id-plan/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/news/government-backed-online-identity-verification-system-realme-ready-to-go/ https://www.realme.govt.nz/faqs/organisations-that-use-realme-services/ NZPOST: http://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/media-centre/media-release/government-backed-online-identity-verification-system-realme-ready-to-go ZDNET: http://www.zdnet.com/tsb-bank-rolls-out-governments-realme-online-id-7000023006/ http://www.zdnet.com/bnz-follows-tsb-using-realme-id-7000026122/ BEEHIVE: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/realme-makes-it-easy-get-services-online SCOOP: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1307/S00016/govt-backed-online-identity-system-realme-ready-to-go.htm STUFF: http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/8830343/Government-backs-new-ID-plan

WORK AND INCOME: http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/about-work-and-income/news/2013/new-login-and-more-features-in-my-account.html http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/about-work-and-income/news/2013/changes-to-my-account.html STUDYLINK: http://www.studylink.govt.nz/about-studylink/media-releases/2013/new-look-for-igovt-logon-coming-soon.html http://www.studylink.govt.nz/about-studylink/media-releases/2013/mystudylink-new-look-and-new-service.html http://www.studylink.govt.nz/about-studylink/media-releases/2013/igovt-logon-is-now-a-realme-login1.html Sources: www.realme.co.nz www.workandincome.govt.nz www.truth4israelnz.wordpress.com/warning-nationalised-online-id-ahead

One Million Deadly "Smart" Electricity Meters Now Installed In New Zealand January 22 2014 | From: Scoop The rollout of smart electricity meters has reached a milestone with one million of the electronic meters now installed in New Zealand homes and businesses. New Zealand’s smart meter rollout has largely been driven by three of the large electricity retailers who have used it as an opportunity to gain a competitive edge in the market. In most other countries where smart meters have been implemented the rollout has been mandated.

Carl Hansen, Chief Executive of the Electricity Authority says New Zealand’s approach is paying off for consumers. “Strong competition between retailers has meant the meters are being installed free of charge to consumers. In other countries, consumers have been charged up to $900 to have a smart meter installed. “Customers are now also seeing the benefits of more innovative pricing and services, for example many retailers are now marketing special packages for those with smart meters, particularly to encourage and reward off-peak electricity usage.” Smart meters also mean consumers are able to monitor their electricity usage more closely which can assist with reducing electricity consumption.

The non-ionising radiation from a smart meter is equicalent to having a cell tower in your home.

Genesis Energy has installed the most smart meters with 395,754 connection points (including those installed for its Energy Online brand).

By April 2015 it is estimated there will be more than 1.2 million smart meters in New Zealand, with just over 800,000 of the traditional meters remaining. Note: All data as at 31 December 2013. On this date 1,001,475 of the 2,066,827 connection points in New Zealand were

recorded as having smart meters installed.

The Dangerous and Deadly Truth About "Smart" Meters There are thousands of disasterous 'Smart' Meter horror stories from all around the world. 'Smart Meters' are dangerous (causing ill health and fires) and inaccurate - and that's just for a start. In some places they have even been banned by legislation.

The 'Smart' Meter issue is a severe one which will affect everyone if not addressed. This becomes clear once you understnad how these devices work. See the trailer for Take Your Power Back Below. For more on this see our article here.

We also have a number of related stories and videos on Wakeupkiwi - the most relevant to this are the following: Health & Wellbeing Brian Thiesen: Technical Facts and Political Adgenda of SmartMeters Health & Wellbeing The Truth About "Smart Meters" Surveillance Society / Police State Take Back Your Power - Stopping the Smart Grid Agenda Health & Wellbeing Hidden Dangers of WiFi: EMF Pollution and the Human Impacts

To find out how you can protect yourself and your family from this menace - visit stopsmartmeters.org.nz

NSA TEMPEST: Remotely Viewing Computer / Cell Phone Screens Via Radio Waves January 18 2014 | From: ClimateViewer This is a public service announcement. Using an antenna and some gadgets from your local electronics store, you can spy on your neighbors TV. If you think that’s scary, the National Security Agency [and most likely the NSA's localised counterparts in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the UK] can view your cellphone screen from over a kilometer away, listen to signals from your monitor cable, and use your computer’s power supply to snoop on you.

You can dowwnload the history of Tempest from the NSA website by clicking on the image above.

This security flaw inherent in all digital devices is the greatest threat to our privacy and has massive implications for the future of the entire digital world. This article will give some examples of how this technology works, why it matters, and provide you with a plethora of research links to get educated about this rarely discussed topic. I encourage you to read the links, protect your sensitive material as best you can, and demand the same electromagnetic protection for consumer products that the military expects. Though the NSA is not likely to be using this technique on average citizens, you can rest assured that multi-billion dollar corporations are using TEMPEST attacks to keep tabs on activists, Congressmen, and bankers alike. See the full story with video and further links at: ClimateViewer

Wanted Dead By US Officials, Snowden Tells German TV January 13 2014 | From: DWTV

Fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has claimed that US government officials "want to kill me" in an exclusive interview which German television says it conducted in Moscow. [In this interview Edward Snowden describes "The Five Eyes", and clarifies that New Zealand in one of them].

German NDR television issued a further snippet ahead of a broadcast late Sunday in Europe of an exclusive interview with Snowden in which the intelligence whistleblower claims that US officials wanted him killed. "These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket, and then watch as I die in the shower," he told NDR interviewer Hubert Seipel, who said the interview took place last Thursday. Snowden, who was granted temporary asylum in Russia in August, referred in the interview to a report by US website BuzzFeed of explicit threats against him from unnamed Pentagon and National Security Agency (NSA) officials.

The former NSA contractor is wanted by US authorities on treason charges for disclosing details of a vast intelligence operation that monitored millions of phone calls and emails across the world. The interview was aired on German ARD television, of which NDR is a member, with a German-language voice-over late on Sunday, European time. In the ARD talkshow Günter Jauch run prior to the interview's broadcast, former US ambassador to Berlin John Kornblum was asked where Snowden would be in 10 years time. Kornblum said he expected Snowden would return to the United States under a deal. "I believe there will be an arrangment," Kornblum said. Industrial espionage too? In an earlier snippet released online late on Saturday by the public broadcaster NDR, Snowden claimed that the NSA was involved in industrial espionage and did not limit its espionage to issues of US national security. "If there is information at [German electronics and engineering giant] Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security, of the United States, they will go after that information and they'll take it," Snowden said. NDR's interviewer Seipel, in a pre-broadcast interview in German also published online by NDR, said Snowden's sole "life insurance" was that he had entrusted journalists of the New York Times, Washington Post and Britain's Guardian with the material. At regular intervals, Seipel said, these media outlets triggered a series of "small thematic bombs." 'Very carefully' selected documents "The NSA is still trying to guess, how much material it involves. At the start there was talk of 200,000, then of 600,000 and now there are around 1.7 million documents," Seipel said. Snowden had "very carefully" selected documents that rather than focusing on individual persons, focused on the structure of the US secret services and alleged "violations," Seipel said. "He has shown what happens within this apparatus, also in connection with other services." "The accusation that he has endangered the lives of thousands of soldiers or secret service employees is in my view feebleminded," Seipel said, adding that Snowden had a "very strong" sense of justice. "That [President Barack] Obama said he was not a patriot is for him, I think, quite difficult enough." Interview arranged via 'safeguards' The interviewer said Snowden was "very precise in what he says, but naturally was also very cautious" to avoid breaching the terms of his asylum in Russia. Seipel said the NDR team conducted the exclusive interview using three cameras and a microphone after organizing the meeting using encrypted phone calls and several other "safeguard measures." On Thursday, in a question-and-answer session on the "Free Snowden" website, the fugitive ruled out returning to the United States, where he said there was no chance of a free trial. ipj/msh (dpa, Reuters, AFP) See Source Soty and Links at: DWTV

GCSB: They Do Listen January 4 2014 | From: TheStandard This year the biggest burst of political knowledge for me last year has been the role that the GCSB has in NZ (and security services elsewhere) and how pathetic the political and legal oversight of their role currently is. In NZ it is a self-supporting club of the heads of the security services, a pliant Prime Minister, and a Inspector-General who appears to not prepared to do much of the oversight that their role is meant to perform.

In view of the revelations about the depth of surveillance by the US and its allies (like us) over citizens coming out of the whistle-blowers overseas, you’d have to wonder how far our own paranoid individuals in the security organisations have been extending themselves into the local polity. While I’ve been travelling over Xmas, I’ve been using various political quips as an informal way of identifying political topics that have penetrated into the political conciousness of voters. This one has been the obvious winner.

'The GCSB – the only government department that really listens.' To date, I’ve been getting a 100% response rate from everyone. Left, right, green, and apolitical. Moreover, virtually no-one seems to comfortable about what they’ve been hearing. With the ever increasing information coming from Snowden and other whistleblowers from the surveillance community, I’d say that this political hot potato has a whole lot further to run over the current year. It would not surprise me if it becomes a major election topic.

NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Warns Of The Dangers Posed By Loss Of Privacy In Channel 4's 'Alternative Christmas Message' December 25 2013 | From: DailyMail In two-minute video, Snowden spoke of future concerns over surveillance Message has been broadcast since 1993 to mimic Queen's annual speech Snowden became a wanted man seven months ago for leaking Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed details of electronic surveillance by American and British spy services, warned of the dangers posed by a loss of privacy in a Channel 4's 'Alternative Christmas Message'. In a two-minute video recorded in Moscow, where Snowden has been granted temporary asylum, he spoke of concerns over surveillance in an age of huge technological advancement. 'We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person,' he said.

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all,' said Snowden. 'They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalysed thought. And that's a problem because privacy matters, privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.' The 'Alternative Christmas Message', broadcast annually on Channel 4 television since 1993, mimics the format of the yearly address to the nation by Queen Elizabeth. Read the full story and view the video at: DailyMail

The NSA Is Out Of Control And Must Be Stopped End The Nightmare Of Mass Surveillance Now December 12 2013 | From TheVerge The National Security Agency [read: NSA, GCSB, GCHQ, Echelon et al] is breaking trust in democracy by breaking trust in the internet. Every day, the NSA records the lives of millions of Americans and countless foreigners, collecting staggering amounts of information about who they know, where they've been, and what they've done.

Its surveillance programs have been kept secret from the public they allegedly serve and protect. The agency operates the most sophisticated, effective, and secretive surveillance apparatus in history. Recent disclosures about the intelligence gathering activities of the NSA, and the ensuing federal response, have demonstrated that the agency is a rogue state — unaccountable and out of control. Intelligence community leaders have openly lied to elected officials and the public about the nature and extent of the agency’s data collection efforts.

And despite their respective responsibility in carefully overseeing intelligence agencies, President Obama and Congress have shown no credibility as custodians of the NSA. So far, Congress has shown far less tolerance for baseball players allegedly lying about personal steroid use than military leaders lying about surveillance programs that undermine the bill of rights. Read the full story at: TheVerge

We Are Electromagnetic Radiation Guinea Pigs From Disclosure.co.nz A global "Smart Grid" program is being implemented which is blasting homes and businesses with more electromagnetic radiation than human beings have ever been subject to in human history. It is utterly preposterous to assume this will not lead to major human epidemics. We must now face the very serious problem that the institutions, government, corporations and foundations, that are supposed to be serving our interests are deliberately violating, exploiting, endangering and assaulting us. This video exposes electromagnetic radiation (EMR) as a major danger and violation to all current and future generations.

New Zealand Search & Surveillance Bill: Media Freedom & Independence Under Threat March 10 2012 | From TheNationalBusinessReview OPINION: Media freedoms are absolutely essential to the long-term health of any democracy. New Zealand is no exception. The production order used by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) against the National Business Review demanded that NBR give up their records, including sources, of the NBR inquiry into the South Canterbury collapse.

That collapse caused hundreds of millions of dollars of cost to tax payers. The huge losses led to allegations of improper behaviour by South Canterbury Finance. Serious questions were also raised about incompetence of the Government and its Ministry (the Treasury). They allowed the size of that risk to grow by hundreds of millions after the Crown guarantee was granted, and rejected alternative ways of solving the problem which may have saved tens if not hundreds of millions. Read the full story at TheNationalBusinessReview

CONFRIMED: Homeland Security Watches Alternative Media Websites, Twitter, Facebook and Social Media in General February 18 2012 | From: InfoWars.com In response to the InfoWars.com story detailed below we offer some indicative evidence. We are not a United States based website - this site is hosted in New Zealand - and we can confirm that we have had (what may only be an automated search robot) hits on this site from the United States Department of Homeland Security (Washington) which runs in concorance with the referenced story at InfoWars.com This does say something about the corporate and government collectivist media, in terms of the nature of the content that alternative media news websites provide - and the interest of the aforementioned controlling establishment parties in watching their ever increasing competition. It is little wonder that their machinations of intended control in the forms of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA prevail in terms of censoring and / or shutting down of the internet in whole or part as per the fascist Chinese model. You can download our Google Analytics report which shows Department of Homeland Security hits on www.wakeupkiwi.com from the United States Government 'department' which is the subject of this piece. Now, we may only be a relatively small factual media website located (fortunately) outside of the continental United States, but this does assist in illustrating a point. "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.” Read the full story for reference here.

ACTA = Global Internet Censorship – Now Even Foreign Governments Will Be Able To Have Your Website Shut Down January 31st 2012 | From: EndOfTheAmericanDream.com Global Internet censorship is here. SOPA and PIPA have been stopped (at least for now) in the United States, but a treaty known as ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) is far worse than either of them.

ACTA was quietly signed by Barack Obama back on October 1st, 2011 and most Americans have never even heard of it. But it could mean the end of the Internet as we know it. This new treaty gives foreign governments and copyright owners incredibly broad powers. If you are alleged to have violated a copyright, your website can be shut down without a trial and police may even show up at your door to take you to prison. It doesn't even have to be someone in the United States that is accusing you. It could just be a foreign government or a copyright owner halfway across the world that alleges that you have violated a copyright. It doesn't matter. So far, the U.S., the EU and seven other nations have signed on to ACTA, and the number of participants is expected to continue to grow. The "powers that be" are obsessed with getting Internet censorship one way or another. The open and free Internet that you and I have been enjoying for all these years is about to change, and not for the better. Read the full story at: EndOfTheAmericanDream.com

Obama Signs NDAA Martial Law: While Americans Shopped, The Constitution Was Shredded December 17, 2011 Obama is set to officially codify martial law. This is of course an elaboration on legistlation put into place both before and after the Patriot Act - which is itself identical to the Nazi Constitution.

From InfoWars.com

U.S. Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror … And Says that Only the White House – and Not the Courts – Gets to Decide Who Is a Legitimate Target 5th December 2011 American Citizens on U.S. Soil May be Indefinitely Detained, Sent to Guantanamo or Assassinated. The debate also has left many Americans scratching their heads as to whether Congress is actually attempting to authorize the indefinite detention of Americans by the military without charges. But that’s not all. The government can also kill American citizens. For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process. Given that the same post-9/11 policies implemented in America have also been implemented in most other western countries, inclusing New Zealand and Australia, we will likely be subjected to these same laws unless we stand up for ourselves. Read the full story at WashingtonsBlog.com

The 'Post-Democratic Society' Unolding by the Hour From the David Icke Newsletter - 4th December 2011 We are witnesses to a bankers' coup on country after country in the biggest transfer of wealth and political power from people to a tiny elite in known human history. It began with the Illuminati-engineered collapse of the banking system in September 2008. This banking crisis became a government crisis when Illuminati-controlled governments bailed out the banks and became swamped in catastrophic levels of debt. In came the Illuminati created-and-controlled IMF and European Central Bank to 'bail out' governments which included the insistence on austerity programmes for the population, selling off state assets to Illuminati corporations at knock-down prices and now increasingly appointing bankers to become unelected political leaders of allegedly 'democratic' countries. 'Coup' is the only word to describe it - 'a sudden appropriation of leadership or power; a takeover'. The criminal that is Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, oversaw the collapse of European economies and now says that the only way to 'fight' the crisis is for a massive centralised superstate - exactly what the 'European project' was designed to be from the very start. Jean Monnet, the Rothschild frontman and 'Founding Father' of what has become the EU, wrote in a letter to a friend on 30th April, 1952 : 'Europe's nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.' That is precisely what has happened and is still happening.

Facebook IPO: United States Intelligence Operation? From: TheDailyBell.com Dominant Social Theme: This Facebook IPO is very exciting and shows that young people can create incredible value in a short period of time. Mark Zuckerberg is a genius. Free-Market Analysis: No, we don't believe the hype. It's directed history, perhaps, not reality. Zuckerberg is in his later twenties. Did you ever meet anyone who'd built a US$100 billion company in a single decade, much less at a time when most young men and women are still deciding on career choices? Facebook, from what we can tell, is a kind of false flag intended to gather huge numbers of users in an environment that will be – at least gently – pro-globalist. Or at least useful to the globalist agenda.

Why do we believe that Facebook is a kind of false flag? The biggest tip-off in our view is Facebook's astonishing popularity. It's simply another social networking site but it's one that's attracted nearly a billion users. Is it really so much better than other such facilities? No ... the barriers-to-entry seem fairly modest to us. What probably differentiates Facebook from other such facilities is not its technology or brilliance but its backers. When a company gets this big this fast it seems to us that there are always the powers-that-be lurking close by. In this case, Zuckerberg seems to us to have the requisite pedigree for someone that would be subject to elite cultivation. We note a "big" movie has been made about his life. This, too, is a kind of red flag. When the elites are involved in a sizable promotion, one tool seems to be a Hollywood movie. Supposedly, Julian Assange – who also may function as a kind of false flag, in our view – is also getting a movie. He already has a book. What's even less debatable than the evident hype surrounding Zuckerberg and Facebook is the reality of the facility's initial funding. There is almost no doubt – so far as we can tell, anyway – that the initial funding Facebook received was in part organized by US Intel. Read the full story: TheDailyBell.com

If You Crack 9/11 You Can Stop The Wars, The Banksters, The Whole Lot From AotearoaAWiderPerspective.com

10 Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free From WashingtonPost.com Addendum: Before you ask why this story is relevant to New Zealand, it is important to acknowledge that many of the freedom-infringing laws that have been passed in western countries around the world since the engineered events of 9/11 have originated from United States legislation in a response to staged terror events. Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture. Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves? While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

Read more at WashingtonPost.com

The Great Internet Wars Have Begun From InfoWars.com In the video below, we note that the massive protest this week against SOPA and PIPA should not merely be about government and corporate curtailment of freedom of expression on the internet. It also crucial that it be about resistance against an all-out effort by the elite and their technocrats to turn the internet into an all-encompassing panopticon surveillance and control grid. Contrary to common belief, the internet was not built to be a networked computer system designed to withstand a nuclear war, but as a surveillance and control grid. It was not happenstance that the platform found its way into public use. Read more at InfoWars.com

NDAA Is Washington’s Totalitarian Response To Political Dissence & Economic Collapse From InfoWars.com The NDAA, as with the Patriot Act - is legislation that is intended to be rolled out worldwide as part of the global police state control grid. Do not make the mistake of assuming such atrocities are intended only for the people of America. “In 1789, France entered a period of revolutionary change which was to see the complete restructuring of the state, the collapse of the monarchy, and its replacement by a republic. By 1793, France was riven by civil war and factional struggles and had also opened hostilities upon several neighbouring states. At home, political dissent and economic collapse were repressed by the use of political terror. For many contemporaries, as for later historians, the connection between these events and the Enlightenment was highly problematic. How could an era which had seen so much struggle for the rational reform of society, government and the individual have ended with such turmoil and violence?” – Dorinda Outram. The Enlightenment. 1995. Cambridge University Press. Pg. 126. “All we have to do is remember who we are. We are not Germans. We’re not peasants in China. We’re not peasants in Russia. We have a legacy and a history of fighting for liberty. Americans have always fought for liberty. And we will fight again. So we will not be the Fourth Reich. We will not let that happen. Not without a fight.” - Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, speaking on the Alex Jones show on January 12, 2012. “I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.” – Chris Hedges, “Why I’m Suing Barack Obama,”Truthdig, January 16, 2012.

Read more at InfoWars.com

National Defense Authorisation Act Is A Hoax: You Can’t Legalize Tyranny President Obama quietly waited weeks to sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) legislation on New Year’s Eve after publicly threatening to veto the bill that, among other things, authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens. Obama’s signing statement tries to reassure observers that he wouldn’t use the “law” to detain citizens, but that is an illusion; his signing statement is meaningless, and the establishment occupying Washington have pulled a hoax on The People in violation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights to enslave them.

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Cell Phones Are Tracking Devices That Governments, Police, Big Corporations And Stalkers Can Use To Easily Track Your Movements If you regularly carry a cell phone around with you, you might as well say goodbye to your privacy. The truth is that any cell phone you buy is going to track you wherever you go 24 hours a day. Just as you leave "footprints" wherever you go on the Internet, so also your cell phone is constantly recording wherever you go in the physical world. Most people do not realize this, but the reality is that cell phones are tracking devices that governments, law enforcement authorities, big corporations and even stalkers can use to easily track your movements. If you do not know about this yet, then you are going to be absolutely amazed by what you are about to read. See the full story at EndOfTheAmericanDream.com

Senator Rand Paul Defends American Citizens Against Indefinite Detainment

From SenatorRandPaul

Surveillance Society / Police State

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http://www.wakeupkiwi.com/surveillance-society.shtml