http://news.antiwar.com/2012/07/14/nsa-whistleblower-spy-agency-gathering-info-on-virtually-every-us-citizen/
“The global proliferation of IEDs and associated technology is pervasive and continues to threaten US interests at home and abroad,” Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, head of the military’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, told a congressional hearing on Thursday.
Obama signed an executive order meant to prioritize government communications over privately-owned communications in the event of a national emergency or devastating terrorist attack.
Above: The Genia Photonics' Picosecond Programmable Laser scanner is capable of detecting every tiny trace of any substance on your body, from specks of gunpowder to your adrenaline levels to a sugar-sized grain of cannabis to what you had for breakfast.
NSA Whistleblower: Spy Agency Gathering Info on ‘Virtually Every US Citizen’
The NSA's domestic surveillance activities are violating fundamental rights to privacy and due process
by John Glaser, July 14, 2012
National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney said on Friday that the US government is secretly gathering information “about virtually every US citizen in the country,” in “a very dangerous process” that violates Americans’ privacy.
NSA Headquarters
Binney, who resigned from the NSA in 2001 over its sweeping domestic surveillance program, delivered a keynote address at the HOPE Number 9 hackers conference in New York.
“They’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country…and assembling that information,” Binney explained. “So government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.”
In the decade after 9/11, in an environment of acute threat inflation, covert national security agencies like the NSA have been flooded with new funding and broadened powers. In the name of keeping Americans safe from foreign threats, basic liberties have been discarded.
Similarly, investigative journalist James Bamford wrote in Wired in March that “the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas.”
One anonymous official familiar with the NSA’s surveillance program told Bamford, “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
In an interview with Current TV in May, another NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, made similar claims of the capability and intent of the NSA’s surveillance activities. “The vast capability of the NSA was increasingly being turned inside the US,” he said, “to surveil networks, emails, phone calls, etc.”
“The United States of America was turned into the equivalent of a foreign nation for the purposes of dragnet electronic surveillance,” Drake added.
In the same interview, Binney said “the real problem I see is that the DoJ is covering up for all the crimes that this administration and the previous administration has been committing against every one in the public.”
and....
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/07/14/us-general-hypes-threat-of-ieds/
US General Hypes Threat of IEDs
Gen. Barbero laughably claims IEDs are a 'pervasive' threat to ordinary Americans
by John Glaser, July 14, 2012
Improvised explosive devices were made infamous and frequently used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now a top US general is claiming IEDs are a threat to the homeland.
“The global proliferation of IEDs and associated technology is pervasive and continues to threaten US interests at home and abroad,” Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, head of the military’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, told a congressional hearing on Thursday.
Americans may be surprised that this is a significant threat to their every day lives, especially because most citizens have never even heard of IEDs because they, in fact, are not a threat. Barbero tried to illustrate how “pervasive” IEDs are becoming outside Iraq and Afghanistan, but he couldn’t name a single American who wasn’t wearing a military uniform and occupying another country that’s been killed by one.
“Since January 2011, there have been more than 10,000 global IED events occurring in 112 countries, executed by more than 40 regional and transnational threat networks,” he added. Oh, scary.
“The threat is indeed real,” Barbero insisted. Except that it isn’t. He seems to have flubbed his numbers a bit, considering the National Counterterrorism Center’s annual report for 2011 found that there were about 10,000 acts of violence that occurred last year that the government classifies as terrorism.
Exactly zero of them occurred in the US and, of those that died, .001% of them were American (and all but one were civilian contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq).
The fact that this US general is the head of a military bureaucracy specifically dedicated “defeating” to IEDs should immediately prompt scrutiny of his estimation of how big the threat is. As Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote inForeign Affairs, “Warnings about a dangerous world also benefit powerful bureaucratic interests. The specter of looming dangers sustains and justifies the massive budgets of the military and the intelligence agencies, along with the national security infrastructure that exists outside government — defense contractors, lobbying groups, think tanks, and academic departments.”
and .....
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/07/13/obama-order-gives-power-to-seize-control-of-all-communications-systems/
Obama Order Gives Power to Seize Control of All Communications Systems
Telephones, cellular wireless networks, and the internet are all included in Obama's dictatorial decree
by John Glaser, July 13, 2012
President Obama has given the Department of Homeland Security, new powers to take over the telecommunications industry and internet systems in case of emergency.
Obama signed an executive order meant to prioritize government communications over privately-owned communications in the event of a national emergency or devastating terrorist attack.
Signed on June 6 the order “gives DHS the authority to seize control of telecommunications facilities, including telephone, cellular and wireless networks, in order to prioritize government communications over private ones in an emergency,” said Amie Stephanovich, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
The new law builds on important precedents. The administration claims the legal basis for the order is Section 706 of the 1934 Communications Act, which authorizes the president to “cause the closing of any facility or station for wire communication” and gives him “control of any such facility or station” if a state of war, or the threat of one, exists.
Obama’s updated version extends these powers to the internet. It is an extreme, dictatorial, wartime power that can give the president the power to shut down or control all means of communication on his say so. Modern America is so reliant on these communications systems, like cellular wireless networks and the internet, that if they were controlled by the Executive Branch, it could lead to chaos.
and....
http://gizmodo.com/5923980/the-secret-government-laser-that-instantly-knows-everything-about-you
Hidden Government Scanners Will Instantly Know Everything About You From 164 Feet Away
Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.
And without you knowing it.
The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors weresubcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded "in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress." According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.
Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.
The machine is ten million times faster—and one million times more sensitive—than any currently available system. That means that it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people.
Analyzing everything in real time
But the machine can sniff out a lot more than just explosives, chemicals and bioweapons. The company that invented it, Genia Photonics, says that its laser scanner technology is able to "penetrate clothing and many other organic materials and offers spectroscopic information, especially for materials that impact safety such as explosives and pharmacological substances." [PDF]
Formed in Montreal in 2009 by PhDs with specialties in lasers and fiber optics, Genia Photonics has 30 patents on this technology, claiming incredible biomedical and industrial applications—from identifying individual cancer cells in a real-time scan of a patient, to detecting trace amounts of harmful chemicals in sensitive manufacturing processes.
Meanwhile, In-Q-Tel states that "an important benefit of Genia Photonics' implementation as compared to existing solutions is that the entire synchronized laser system is comprised in a single, robust and alignment-free unit that may be easily transported for use in many environments… This compact and robust laser has the ability to rapidly sweep wavelengths in any pattern and sequence." [PDF]
So not only can they scan everyone. They would be able to do it everywhere: the subway, a traffic light, sports events... everywhere.
How does it work?
The machine is a mobile, rack-mountable system. It fires a laser to provide molecular-level feedback at distances of up to 50 meters in just picoseconds. For all intents and purposes, that means instantly.
The small, inconspicuous machine is attached to a computer running a program that will show the information in real time, from trace amounts of cocaine on your dollar bills to gunpowder residue on your shoes. Forget trying to sneak a bottle of water past security—they will be able to tell what you had for breakfast in an instant while you're walking down the hallway.
The technology is not new, it's just millions times faster and more convenient than ever before. Back in 2008, a team at George Washington University developed a similar laser spectrometer using a different process. It could sense drug metabolites in urine in less than a second, trace amounts of explosive residue on a dollar bill, and even certain chemical changes happening in a plant leaf.
And the Russians also have a similar technology: announced last April, their "laser sensor can pick up on a single molecule in a million from up to 50 meters away."
So if Genia Photonics' claims pan out, this will be an incredible leap forward in terms of speed, portability, and convenience. One with staggering implications.
Observation without limits
There has so far been no discussion about the personal rights and privacy issues involved. Which "molecular tags" will they be scanning for? Who determines them? What are the threshold levels of this scanning? If you unknowingly stepped on the butt of someone's joint and are carrying a sugar-sized grain of cannabis like that unfortunate traveler currently in jail in Dubai, will you be arrested?
And, since it's extremely portable, will this technology extend beyone the airport or border crossings and into police cars, with officers looking for people on the street with increased levels of adrenaline in their system to detain in order to prevent potential violent outbursts? And will your car be scanned at stoplights for any trace amounts of suspicious substances? Would all this information be recorded anywhere?
Above: A page from a Genia Photonics paper describing its ability to even penetrate through clothing.
There are a lot of questions with no answer yet, but it's obvious that the potential level of personal invasion of this technology goes far beyond that of body scans, wiretaps, and GPS tracking.
The end of privacy coming soon
According to the undersecretary for science and technology of the Department of Homeland Security, this scanning technology will be ready within one to two years, which means you might start seeing them in airports as soon as 2013.
In other words, these portable, incredibly precise molecular-level scanning devices will be cascading lasers across your body as you walk from the bathroom to the soda machine at the airport and instantly reporting and storing a detailed breakdown of your person, in search of certain "molecular tags".
Going well beyond eavesdropping, it seems quite possible that U.S. government plans on recording molecular data on travelers without their consent, or even knowledge that it's possible—a scary thought. While the medical uses could revolutionize the way doctors diagnose illness, and any technology that could replace an aggressive pat-down is tempting, there's a potential dark side to this implementation, and we need to shine some light on it before it's implemented.
The author of this story is currently completing his PhD in renewable energy solutions, focusing on converting waste to energy in the urban environment. Even while most of this information is publicly available, he wanted to remain anonymous.
Meanwhile, In-Q-Tel states that "an important benefit of Genia Photonics' implementation as compared to existing solutions is that the entire synchronized laser system is comprised in a single, robust and alignment-free unit that may be easily transported for use in many environments… This compact and robust laser has the ability to rapidly sweep wavelengths in any pattern and sequence." [PDF]
So not only can they scan everyone. They would be able to do it everywhere: the subway, a traffic light, sports events... everywhere.
How does it work?
The machine is a mobile, rack-mountable system. It fires a laser to provide molecular-level feedback at distances of up to 50 meters in just picoseconds. For all intents and purposes, that means instantly.
The small, inconspicuous machine is attached to a computer running a program that will show the information in real time, from trace amounts of cocaine on your dollar bills to gunpowder residue on your shoes. Forget trying to sneak a bottle of water past security—they will be able to tell what you had for breakfast in an instant while you're walking down the hallway.
The technology is not new, it's just millions times faster and more convenient than ever before. Back in 2008, a team at George Washington University developed a similar laser spectrometer using a different process. It could sense drug metabolites in urine in less than a second, trace amounts of explosive residue on a dollar bill, and even certain chemical changes happening in a plant leaf.
And the Russians also have a similar technology: announced last April, their "laser sensor can pick up on a single molecule in a million from up to 50 meters away."
So if Genia Photonics' claims pan out, this will be an incredible leap forward in terms of speed, portability, and convenience. One with staggering implications.
Observation without limits
There has so far been no discussion about the personal rights and privacy issues involved. Which "molecular tags" will they be scanning for? Who determines them? What are the threshold levels of this scanning? If you unknowingly stepped on the butt of someone's joint and are carrying a sugar-sized grain of cannabis like that unfortunate traveler currently in jail in Dubai, will you be arrested?
And, since it's extremely portable, will this technology extend beyone the airport or border crossings and into police cars, with officers looking for people on the street with increased levels of adrenaline in their system to detain in order to prevent potential violent outbursts? And will your car be scanned at stoplights for any trace amounts of suspicious substances? Would all this information be recorded anywhere?
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