shtfplan.com / By Mac Slavo / April 26th, 2013
Now that heavily militarized law enforcement and National Guard troops have been accepted as a necessity to preserve the safety and security of Americans, city officials across the country are undoubtedly starting to consider how they can best utilize their new found policing powers.
In Steubenville, Ohio, for example, where assaults, robberies, rapes and murders are well above the national average, city manager Cathy Davison is reportedly in talks with the state’s governor and National Guard to assist with the ever rising crime rate.
Steubenville City Manager Cathy Davison said Wednesday that calling for assistance from the National Guard is “absolutely an option”…“Oh, absolutely. It is an option and that’s part of the conversation we’re having with city council and the governor,” answered Davison.“If that’s what step we need to take to get people out of our city, can we utilize it?”
Attention on violent crime was raised this week after the Fraternal Order of Police Steubenville Lodge President Jim Marquis called a news conference at which he listed more than 40 “weapons calls” handled by the city police department since January.
Marquis suggested the rise in weapons crime was linked to the decrease in the number of officers employed by the Steubenville Police Department.
Full interview at WTOV 9
Make no mistake. This is not a one-off consideration restricted to Steubenville. With budget cuts gutting emergency services personnel across the country, and many of America’s once proud cities turning into poverty-stricken hellholes, we can fully expect crime rates to soar in coming months and years.
City council members all over the nation will be faced with similar dilemmas as they are forced to lay off more police officers.
As crime sky rockets, the residents of these cities will panic. They’ll be afraid to leave their homes, especially in areas where restrictive gun laws provide no self defense options should one be faced with a life threatening situation.
It is a near certainty that not only will these terrified citizens willingly accept a military presence in their neighborhoods, they’ll actively organize to encourage leaders in their cities and states to make it happen.
There will be no outcry, but rather, applause.
The America of the future will be replete with heavily armed law enforcement and military personnel patrolling our city streets, identification verification stops to ensure you have permission to be in a given area, and a total surveillance web monitoring the everyday activities of our once free citizens.
They Come For the Ammo: New Bill Would Require Background Checks for “Explosive Materials”
Never one to let a crisis go to waste, Senator Harry Reid has introduced a new bill that would require background checks for anyone purchasing “explosive materials” or “powders” commonly used to manufacture ammunition and fireworks.
The Boston bombers utilized black powder sourced from common fireworks to manufacture the bombs that left 3 people dead and scores wounded in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11th.
Senator Frank Lautenberg, who wrote the bill, claims the incident in Boston, “shows that background checks are needed for explosive materials.”
The purchase of black powder in amounts over 50 pounds already requires a background check, but the new bill would lower the thresholds and will also include “smokeless powders,” which are used for the production of ammunition.
The move by Reid and Lautenberg, who both supported President Obama’s failed comprehensive national gun control overhaul last month, has Second Amendment advocates concerned. According to The Truth About Guns the language of the bill, which is yet to be made available, may place stringent restrictions on the purchase of certain quantities of ammunition:
Because a potential terrorist could conceivably take apart ammunition and use the propellant to manufacture a bomb, ammunition purchases containing enough powder to exceed the new threshold set forth by the bill will likely require a federal background check, similar to purchasing a firearm.
Reid and Lautenberg will also give the Attorney General power to forbid the sale of explosive powders to anyone who is believed to be purchasing it for the purpose of terrorism, a term that has been broadly defined in contemporary America to include anyone who may have second amendment oriented views, reads survival literature, home schools their kids, prefers precious metals over centrally printed Federal Reserve notes, or expresses a fear of big government.
The bill may never make it past committee, but it introduces a dangerous new strategy that shifts the gun-control focus away from firearms and targets gun accessories, magazines, and ammunition.
The Boston bombers utilized black powder sourced from common fireworks to manufacture the bombs that left 3 people dead and scores wounded in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11th.
Senator Frank Lautenberg, who wrote the bill, claims the incident in Boston, “shows that background checks are needed for explosive materials.”
“It defies common sense that anyone, even a terrorist, can walk into a store in America and buy explosive powders without a background check or any questions asked.”
“Requiring a background check for an explosives permit is a small price to pay to ensure the safety of our communities.”
The purchase of black powder in amounts over 50 pounds already requires a background check, but the new bill would lower the thresholds and will also include “smokeless powders,” which are used for the production of ammunition.
The move by Reid and Lautenberg, who both supported President Obama’s failed comprehensive national gun control overhaul last month, has Second Amendment advocates concerned. According to The Truth About Guns the language of the bill, which is yet to be made available, may place stringent restrictions on the purchase of certain quantities of ammunition:
Depending on the bill’s language, it would include not only loose gunpowder (such as that used by handloaders) but could also cover standard ammunition cartridges.
Lautenberg and Reid are trying to label these propellants as “explosives” in the wake of the Boston bombings and use that tragedy to limit general access to ammunition and reloading components . . .
It’s a back door way to make gun ownership more difficult and possibly put smaller local ammunition manufacturers out of business.
Because a potential terrorist could conceivably take apart ammunition and use the propellant to manufacture a bomb, ammunition purchases containing enough powder to exceed the new threshold set forth by the bill will likely require a federal background check, similar to purchasing a firearm.
Reid and Lautenberg will also give the Attorney General power to forbid the sale of explosive powders to anyone who is believed to be purchasing it for the purpose of terrorism, a term that has been broadly defined in contemporary America to include anyone who may have second amendment oriented views, reads survival literature, home schools their kids, prefers precious metals over centrally printed Federal Reserve notes, or expresses a fear of big government.
The bill may never make it past committee, but it introduces a dangerous new strategy that shifts the gun-control focus away from firearms and targets gun accessories, magazines, and ammunition.
http://www.infowars.com/bloomberg-new-yorkers-will-never-know-where-our-cameras-are/
Bloomberg: New Yorkers will ‘never know where our cameras are’
RT
April 27, 2013
April 27, 2013
New York City police officials intend to expand the already extensive use of surveillance cameras throughout town. The plan, unveiled Thursday, comes as part of a drive for increased security around the US following the Boston Marathon attack.
New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly announced the plan during a press conference with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which the two announced that the suspected Boston Marathon bombers were planning to attack New York next. The pair said they hope to discourage criminals by using so-called “smart cameras” that will aggregate data from 911 alerts, arrest records, mapped crime patterns, surveillance cameras and radiation detectors, among other tools, according to The Verge.
“You’re never going to know where all of our cameras are,” Bloomberg told reporters gathered outside City Hall. “And that’s one of the ways you deter people; they just don’t know whether the person sitting next to you is somebody sitting there or a detective watching.”
Kelly said the Domain Awareness System, nicknamed “the dashboard,” would centralize already existing data captured on the between 3,500 and 6,000 cameras already placed throughout the city with new technology developed in conjunction with Microsoft. The project is expected to take three years to complete and cost between $40 and $50 million.
The commissioner previously said that at least 16 terror plots had been thwarted in New York City since the attack on September 11, 2001, asserting that such law enforcement success show that the surveillance tools put in place since then have been effective. His boast came in the face of the New York Civil Liberties Union and similar privacy advocates who have asked for more transparency on the issue of police monitoring.
“The privacy issue has really been taken off the table,” Kelly said Thursday. “I don’t think people are concerned about it. I think people accept it in a post-9/11 world.”
Mayor Bloomberg agreed, using the press conference to slam the “special interests” who have objected to his policies. The American Civil Liberties Union, for one, has criticized Bloomberg’s administration for installing thousands of cameras in Lower Manhattan in a surveillance initiative that has since expanded north through Midtown.
“The role of surveillance cameras played in identifying the suspects was absolutely essential to saving lives, both in Boston, and now we know here in New York City,” the mayor said Thursday. “We’ve made major investments in camera technology – notwithstanding the objections of some special interests.”
“People are all worried about privacy,” he continued. “Yes, it is a concern, but given the balance you have between keeping people safe and total privacy, the direction the whole world is going is more cameras and better-quality cameras.”
http://rt.com/usa/boston-marathon-surveillance-drones-452/
Boston police chief wants drones for next year’s marathon
Published time: April 26, 2013 16:57
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (Reuters/Neal Hamberg)
United States Vice President Joe Biden says the 2014 Boston Marathon will be "bigger, more spectacular" than ever before, and the city’s police commissioner could see that through with some serious changes starting at next year’s race.
Notwithstanding last week’s terrorist attack that killed three and wounded hundreds, Boston, Massachusetts is expected to continue its tradition of hosting the annual 26-mile run next spring. Speaking to the city’s Herald newspaper though, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says he’s looking to add at least one new element in 2014: unmanned aerial vehicles.
Weighing in with regards to how his city will ensure another attack won’t ruin next year’s marathon, Davis says he’s looking towards obtaining a drone aircraft to conduct surveillance from the Boston sky.
“Drones are a great idea. I don’t know that would be the first place I’d invest money, but certainly to cover an event like this, and have an eye in the sky that would be much cheaper to run than a helicopter is a really good idea,” he tells the Herald.
Elsewhere in the interview, Commissioner Davis says the city must do everything possible to prevent terrorists from attacking their city again. “We need to harden our target here,” Davis says. “We need to make sure terrorists understand that if they’re thinking about coming here, we have certain things in place that would make that not a good idea. Because they could hit any place. They’re going to go for the softest, easiest thing to hit.”
“We need to gather all the information we can as to what happened and make a determination as to the overall commitment the city of Boston has to the threat of terrorism,” he says. “That’s very, very important to me. It’s very important to the mayor. I’m sure there will be a lot of questions about that.”
Indeed questions are quickly amounting, and they’ve been asked of officials in Massachusetts and else since well before last week’s attack. The Federal Aviation Administration expects tens of thousands of drones in US airspace by the end of the decade, and already the FAA is approving Certificates of Waiver or Authorization (COA) for a number of law enforcement agencies on target to fully take America into the age of drones.
The FAA says that 327 COAs were active as of February of this year, but a recent report published by the Los Angeles Times suggests that surveillance drones could fully permeate airspace earlier than once thought. According to the Times, the FAA issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, a statistic that Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Jennifer Lynch says is “far more than were previously known.”
The EFF has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the FAA in recent years to try and get the facts of the expansive use of drones, but the federal agency has been less than fully compliant in terms of answering their questions. Discrepancies exist in the statistics that have been released, admits the EFF, but at the same time what has been brought to light through these FOIA requests reveals a great deal about domestic drone use that might otherwise not be made public.
Thanks to efforts by the EFF and others, Americans now know the names of dozens of law enforcement and educational entities that have applied for a permit to put experimental drones up in the sky, and that list includes institutions such as Cornell University, the Houston, Texas Police Department and a number of federal agencies, especially branches of the US Department of Homeland Security.
And while no record of an applicant looking for a drone permit in Massachusetts has been published, it’s quite possible that the unmanned planes will be cleared to fly over cities like Boston and Lowell in little time. In fact, some Massachusetts legislators are already looking at stopping the spread of drones in their state before law enforcement agencies capitalize on the aircraft’s surveillance capabilities: in January, Republican State Senator Robert L. Hedlund introduced S.B. 1664, “An Act to regulate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.”
If Sen. Hedlund’s bill is passed, Massachusetts law enforcement will be limited with how they operate drones within the state. The senator’s act has been approved by a number of colleagues in the state capitol, and if enacted it will forbid police agencies from using UAVs for dragnet surveillance. Hedlund’s law limits drone to single out only persons of interest named in official court warrants, and biometric matching technology would not be allowed to be implemented on any other person picked up by a drone’s cameras.
Earlier this month, the Florida State Senate voted unanimously to ban law enforcement agencies there to conduct overhead spy missions using unmanned aerial vehicles except in situations where the DHS believes that drones could deter a high-risk terrorist attack.
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