D.C. expanding public surveillance camera net

(Washington Examiner) - Big Brother may already be watching you in the District, and he will soon have a lot more eyes trained in your direction.

The city's homeland security agency is planning to add thousands of security cameras from private businesses around the nation's capital and the Metro system to the thousands of electronic eyes that authorities are already monitoring 24/7.

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Billion-dollar spy center being built in Utah.

CAMP WILLIAMS (Desert News) - Today's groundbreaking for a $1.5 billion National Security Agency data center is being billed as important in the short term for construction jobs and important in the long term for Utah's reputation as a technology center.

"This will bring 5,000 to 10,000 new jobs during its construction and development phase," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on Wednesday. "Once completed, it will support 100 to 200 permanent high-paid employees."

Officially named the Utah Data Center, the facility's role in aggregating and verifying dizzying volumes of data for the intelligence community has already earned it the nickname "Spy Center." Its really long moniker is the Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center — the first in the nation's intelligence community.

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iPhone snitch network launched

(Infowars.com) - A new iPhone App with the misleading name "PatriotApp" attempts to draw on the power of the patriot movement, turning smartphone users into a gigantic snitch network.

You might think an app with such a patriotic name might have useful functions like a pocket constitution or quotes from our forefathers. But contrary to the services one might expect, this app allows users to report any "suspicious" behavior directly linking them with top government agencies.

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Air Force launches massive, secret satellite

(CBS) - A powerful Delta 4 rocket roared to life and climbed away from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Sunday evening on a high-priority mission to boost a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite into orbit.

The payload is believed to be an electronic eavesdropping satellite with a huge collecting antenna. In a September address to the Air Force Association, NRO Director Bruce Carlson said the Delta 4 was carrying "the largest satellite in the world."

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College student discovers FBI tracking device in his car

(The Money Times) - Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old college student in Santa Clara, California, said in an interview that he was shocked when he accidentally discovered a GPS tracking device placed underneath his car earlier this week.

After posting the image of the device, with the help of a friend, on a user-generated news site Reddit.com, he found that the device belongs to Federal Bureau of Investigation. This could only mean one thing that FBI was tracking him for some reason.

Afifi revealed that two days after finding the device and posting it online to know who it belongs to,the FBI agents showed up at his Santa Clara apartment complex. Agents indirectly hinted that he’s been under surveillance for around three to six months.

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Wiretapped phones, now Internet?

(NY Times) - Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations of the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is "going dark" as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications -- including encrypted e-mail transmitters such as BlackBerry, social networking websites such as Facebook and software that allows direct "peer-to-peer" messaging such as Skype -- to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

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Sheriffs want lists of patients using painkillers

(NewsObserver.com) - Sheriffs in North Carolina want access to state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances.

The state sheriff's association pushed the idea Tuesday, saying the move would help them make drug arrests and curb a growing problem of prescription drug abuse. But patient advocates say opening up people's medicine cabinets to law enforcement would deal a devastating blow to privacy rights.

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The government can use GPS to track your moves

(Time) - Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

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Montgomery County to use finger scans at rec centers

MONTGOMERY CO, Md. (AP) - Montgomery County residents will soon be required to scan their fingers to enter recreation centers.
Officials say switching from plastic passes to finger scanners will save the recreation department $50,000 annually.

The scanners will be put into use this fall at three centers, and will be expanded to all the county's centers next year. Privacy advocates say the measure is intrusive and unnecessary.

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Students to be tagged with RFID chips?

Public school officials in New Canaan, Connecticut, are mulling over the possibility of using radio frequency identification chips to track students. Naturally, this is being proposed as a useful tool in case of emergencies.

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Big Brother will be inspecting your trash

Beginning next year, the city of Cleveland will distribute new garbage and recycling bins embedded with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that will monitor how often the bins are hauled to the curb. If you don't put your recycling bin out often enough, a "trash supervisor" will go through your refuse to see if you've been throwing recyclables out with the garbage. If you have, you'll be fined.

Welcome to the 24-7 surveillance state.

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Feds admit to storing checkpoint body scan images

I suggested recently that any pedophile would enjoy being a TSA agent. Where else could a pervert not only ogle nude pictures of children legally but actually get paid to do so? My assumption was that the full-body image scans taken at U.S. airports were being stored. Seems I was right:

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they're viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded."

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

Just something to keep in mind the next time you walk through a security checkpoint here in the "Land of the Free."

Stealthy government contractor monitors U.S. Internet providers, worked with Wikileaks informant

(Forbes) - A semi-secret government contractor that calls itself Project Vigilant surfaced at the Defcon security conference Sunday with a series of revelations: that it monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers, hands much of that information to federal agencies, and encouraged one of its "volunteers," researcher Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal government about the alleged source of a controversial video of civilian deaths in Iraq leaked to whistle-blower site Wikileaks in April.

Chet Uber, the director of Fort Pierce, Fl.-based Project Vigilant, says that he personally asked Lamo to meet with federal authorities to out the source of a video published by Wikileaks showing a U.S. Apache helicopter killing several civilians and two journalists in a suburb of Baghdad, a clip that Wikileaks labeled "Collateral Murder." Lamo, who Uber said worked as an "adversary characterization" analyst for Project Vigilant, had struck up an online friendship with Bradley Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who currently faces criminal charges for releasing the classified video.

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TSA agent: A pedophile's dream job

Agents of the Transportation Security Administration, prancing around airports in their government-issued cop costumes, have one of the most useless jobs in the nation. Contrary to what the state and its willing accomplices in the media would have you believe, they aren't there to thwart would-be terrorists from smuggling weapons and explosives onto commercial flights, though there is always a slight chance that could actually happen. Their primary purpose is to intimidate airline passengers into submission.

Working as a TSA agent has always been the perfect alternative for those who couldn't qualify for military service or a job in what most would consider "law enforcement," but now it could be the perfect job for pedophiles. As a recent incident in Tampa illustrates, no one is safe from the probing eyes of the TSA.

A 12-year-old girl was returning home to Baltimore with a friend when she was pulled aside and subjected to a full-body image scan. In other words, she had nude pictures taken of her without her consent. Even in the U.K., where violations of civil liberties have reached Orwellian proportions, these types of scans are not conducted on children under 18 because they would violate child pornography laws.

The plan here in the U.S. is to have these porn machines in every airport. You may not mind that kind of invasion of privacy, but what would you say to having your child undressed and ogled by costumed perverts? Of course, you could opt out of the image scan and just have your kid physically groped instead.

But that's the price we pay for what passes for "freedom" in this country. Really, is there anything we Americans won't tolerate in order to feel safe?

Napolitano: Internet monitoring needed to fight homegrown terrorism

WASHINGTON (Fox News) - Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation's homeland security chief said Friday.

As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans' civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

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Surveillance 2010

Artist: Will Varner

Pushy fliers may show up on TSA's radar

WASHINGTON (USA Today) - Airline passengers who get frustrated and kick a wall, throw a suitcase or make a pithy comment to a screener could find themselves in a little-known Homeland Security database.

The Transportation Security Administration says it is keeping records of people who make its screeners feel threatened as part of an effort to prevent workplace violence.

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States want to share patient prescriptions

LOS ANGELES (AP) - While a state online drug database went into effect last year to thwart addicts who bounce from doctor to doctor to feed a habit or make a small fortune peddling meds, there's now a push to extend it beyond state lines to snare so-called doctor shoppers and curb drug abuse.

Forty states have passed legislation to allow prescription drug monitoring programs, but only 34 are operating.

Under the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act signed by President Bush in 2005, more than $50 million has been appropriated to states for programs where doctors and other authorized users, such as police in some cases, can access patient records.

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"We know who you are"

Bill would require black boxes in all new cars

(Washington Post) - All new cars would have to be equipped with "black boxes" that record performance data and federal safety regulators would be granted the authority to order immediate recalls under newly proposed auto-safety legislation being considered by Congress.

The draft of a bill was released Thursday by one of the House committees investigating Toyota's massive recalls for unintended acceleration in its vehicles. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House commerce committee, and Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chair of the Senate commerce committee, have said they intend to collaborate on automobile safety legislation this year.

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