PM Leaks Dirt on Romas/COIN Classified Intel Mass Surveillance

By Ms. Smith - Posting #152

According to a Project PM announcement, here are some of the 'classified intelligence' details about Romas/COIN (Odyssey) with capabilities to monitor and automatically analyze millions of conversations, and then secretly store a wide range of personal data. It appears as if even Apple, Google, and Disney's Pixar were trying to be brought aboard to help out in this mass surveillance apparatus.

Updated note: To be clear, all analysis and documentation to expose this mass surveillance was done by Project PM.

If you are not sitting, please do so. Although I don't advocate drinking, you might also pour a double-shot of whiskey to prepare yourself for distinctly unpleasant news about immensely sophisticated mass surveillance called Romas/COIN, or soon to be replaced by a similar program known as Odyssey. The nature and extent of the "counter intelligence" operation can be glimpsed in part by closely inspecting hundreds of e-mails among the 70,000 that were stolen in February from the contracting firm HBGary Federal.

After searching through HBGary e-mails for keywords and reading until I wanted to puke or scream, I decided to go ahead and run with Project PM's announcement. Barrett Brown of Project PM will publish these findings in full on Project PM Wiki later, but this is part of that release. According to Project PM:

For at least two years, the U.S. has been conducting a secretive and immensely sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world, allowing the intelligence community to monitor the habits, conversations, and activity of millions of individuals at once. And with an upgrade (Odyssey) scheduled for later this year, the top contender to win the federal contract and thus take over the program is a team of about a dozen companies which were brought together in large part by Aaron Barr - the same disgraced CEO who resigned from his own firm earlier this year after he was discovered to have planned a full-scale information war against political activists at the behest of corporate clients. The new revelation provides for a disturbing picture, particularly when viewed in a wider context. Unprecedented surveillance capabilities are being produced by an industry that works in secret on applications that are nonetheless funded by the American public - and which in some cases are used against that very same public. Their products are developed on demand for an intelligence community that is not subject to Congressional oversight and which has been repeatedly shown to have misused its existing powers in ways that violate U.S. law as well as American ideals.

Although military contractor Northrop Grumman had long held the contract for Romas/COIN, enter HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr in an email to Al Pisani, an executive at the much larger federal contractor TASC, with a plan related to COIN. "I met with [Mantech CEO] Bob Frisbie the other day to catch up. He is looking to expand a capability in IO [information operations] related to the COIN re-compete but more for DoD."

The layout and story is extremely long, and you'll need to read over the announcement at Project PM when it's published there. Project PM determined from the dozens of clues and references in leaked emails the unbelievable mass spying nature of Romas/COIN:

* Mobile phone software and applications constitute a major component of the program.

* There's discussion of bringing in a "gaming developer," apparently at the behest of Barr, who mentions that the team could make good use of "a social gaming company maybe like zynga, gameloft, etc." Lovegrove elsewhere notes: "I know a couple of small gaming companies at MIT that might fit the bill."

* Apple and Google were active team partners, and AT&T may have been as well. The latter is known to have provided the NSA free reign over customer communications (and was in turn protected by a bill granting them retroactive immunity from lawsuits). Google itself is the only company to have received a "Hostile to Privacy" rating from Privacy International. Apple is currently being investigated by Congress after the iPhone was revealed to compile user location data in a way that differs from other mobile phones; the company has claimed this to have been a "bug."

* The program makes use of several providers of "linguistic services." At one point, the team discusses hiring a military-trained Arabic linguist. Elsewhere, Barr writes: "I feel confident I can get you a ringer for Farsi if they are still interested in Farsi (we need to find that out). These linguists are not only going to be developing new content but also meeting with folks, so they have to have native or near native proficiency and have to have the cultural relevance as well."

* Alterion and SocialEyez are listed as "businesses to contact." The former specializes in "social media monitoring tools." The latter uses "sophisticated natural language processing methodology" in order to "process tens of millions of multi-lingual conversations daily" while also employing "researchers and media analysts on the ground;" its website also notes that "Millions of people around the globe are now networked as never before - exchanging information and ideas, forming opinions, and speaking their minds about everything from politics to products."

* At one point, TASC exec Chris Clair asks Aaron and others, "Can we name COIN Saif? Saif is the sword an Arab executioner uses when they decapitate criminals. I can think of a few cool brands for this."

* A diagram attached to one of Barr's e-mails to the group depicts Magpii as interacting in some unspecified manner with "Foreign Mobile" and "Foreign Web." Magpii is a project of Barr's own creation which stands for "Magnify Personal Identifying Information," involves social networking, and is designed for the purpose of storing personal information on users. Although details are difficult to determine from references in Barr's e-mails, he discusses the project almost exclusively with members of military intelligence to which he was pitching the idea.

* There are sporadic references such things as "semantic analysis," "Latent Semantic Indexing," "specialized linguistics," and OPS, a programming language designed for solving problems using expert systems.

* Barr asks the team's partner at Apple, Andy Kemp (whose signature lists him as being from the company's Homeland Defense/National Programs division), to provide him "a contact at Pixar/Disney."

Altogether, then, a successful bid for the relevant contract was seen to require the combined capabilities of perhaps a dozen firms - capabilities whereby millions of conversations can be monitored and automatically analyzed, whereby a wide range of personal data can be obtained and stored in secret, and whereby some unknown degree of information can be released to a given population through a variety of means and without any hint that the actual source is U.S. military intelligence. All this is merely in addition to whichever additional capabilities are not evident from the limited description available, with the program as a whole presumably being operated in conjunction with other surveillance and propaganda assets controlled by the U.S. and its partners.

Here's the team players:

* TASC (PMO, creative services)

* HB Gary (Strategy, planning, PMO)

* Akamai (infrastructure)

* Archimedes Global (Specialized linguistics, strategy, planning)

* Acclaim Technical Services (specialized linguistics)

* Mission Essential Personnel (linguistic services)

* Cipher (strategy, planning operations)

* PointAbout (rapid mobile application development, list of strategic partners)

* Google (strategy, mobile application and platform development - long list of strategic partners)

* Apple (mobile and desktop platform, application assistance -long list of strategic partners)

* We are trying to schedule an interview with AT&T plus some other small app developers.

Two days after a briefing requirement meeting, the servers of HBGary and HBGary Federal were hacked by a small team of Anonymous operatives in retaliation for Barr's boasts to Financial Times that he had identified the movement's "leadership;" 70,000 e-mails were thereafter released onto the Internet. Barr resigned a few weeks later.

Also according to Project PM, along with clues as to the nature of COIN and its scheduled replacement, a close study of the HBGary e-mails also provide reasons to be concerned with the fact that such things are being developed and deployed in the way that they are. In addition to being the driving force behind the COIN recompete, Barr was also at the center of a series of conspiracies by which his own company and two others hired out their collective capabilities for use by corporations that sought to destroy their political enemies by clandestine and dishonest means, some of which appear to be illegal. None of the companies involved have been investigated; a proposed Congressional inquiry was denied by the committee chair, noting that it was the Justice Department's decision as to whether to investigate, even though it was the Justice Department itself that made the initial introductions. Those in the intelligence contracting industry who believe themselves above the law are entirely correct.

That such firms will continue to target the public with advanced information warfare capabilities on behalf of major corporations is by itself an extraordinary danger to mankind as a whole, particularly insomuch as that such capabilities are becoming more effective while remaining largely unknown outside of the intelligence industry. But a far greater danger is posed by the practice of arming small and unaccountable groups of state and military personnel with a set of tools by which to achieve better and better "situational awareness" on entire populations while also being able to manipulate the information flow in such a way as to deceive those same populations. The idea that such power can be wielded without being misused is contradicted by even a brief review of history.

History also demonstrates that the state will claim such powers as a necessity in fighting some considerable threat; the U.S. has defended its recent expansion of powers by claiming they will only be deployed to fight terrorism and will never be used against American civilians. This is cold comfort for those in the Arab world who are aware of the long history of U.S. material support for regimes they find convenient, including those of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and the House of Saud. Nor should Americans be comforted by such promises from a government that has no way of ensuring that they will be kept; it was just a few months ago that a U.S. general in Afghanistan ordered a military intelligence unit to use pysops on visiting senators in an effort to secure increased funding for the war, an illegal act; only a few days prior, CENTCOM spokesmen were confidently telling the public that such other psychological capabilities as persona management would never be used on Americans as that would be illegal. The fact is that such laws have been routinely broken by the military and intelligence community, who are now been joined in this practice by segments of the federal contracting industry.

It is inevitable, then, that such capabilities as form the backbone of Romas/COIN and its replacement Odyssey will be deployed against a growing segment of the world's population. The powerful institutions that wield them will grow all the more powerful as they are provided better and better methods by which to monitor, deceive, and manipulate. The informed electorate upon which liberty depends will be increasingly misinformed. No tactical advantage conferred by the use of these programs can outweigh the damage that will be done to mankind in the process of creating them.

The complete Project PM announcement about Romas/COIN has been published.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: FBI Director’s Term Extension Ensures Neo-COINTELPRO Operations Will Prevail

The Development of "Privacy Killing Technologies"

Can the NSA and CIA use your phone to track your location?

Security Grifters Partner-Up on Sinister Cyber-Surveillance Project

How Software Updates Become "Hack" Patches

"Face" of Anonymous quits -- exclusive interview with Barrett Brown

Project PM Wiki - Upcoming

HBGary Email Viewer - Google

A sinister Cyber-surveillance Scheme Exposed

Risen: Govt Prying Into My Phone Records - TIs Heads Up!

By MARK SCHONE - Posting #151

James....phone records are not even the tip of the iceburg!

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen, who is fighting the government's attempt to force him to reveal his sources about CIA efforts to sabotage Iran's nuke program, says a subpoena ordering him to testify is the latest salvo in a campaign of government harassment that began under the BushFRAUD administration.

In a 22-page affidavit filed Tuesday, the New York Times reporter says the campaign of harassment apparently included tracking his ingoing and outgoing phone calls to "root out [my] confidential sources," a practice first reported by Brian Ross and Richard Esposito for ABC News in 2006.

"I have reason to believe that the story by Brian Ross and Richard Esposito is true," writes Risen. "I have learned from an individual who testified before a grand jury . . . that the Government had shown this individual copies of telephone records relating to calls made to and from me."

In 2006, Ross and Esposito reported that a senior law enforcement official had told them, "It's time for you to get some new cell phones," because phone calls of reporters at ABC News, the New York Times and the Washington Post were being tracked as part of a "widespread" CIA leak investigation. "I was mentioned by name as one of the reporters whose work the government was looking into," writes Risen.

READ the original ABC News report.

Risen submitted Tuesday's affidavit, which lists several examples of alleged harassment and intimidation, as part of a motion to kill a subpoena ordering him to testify at the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. Sterling has been indicted on 10 counts, including allegedly disclosing the information about Iran's nuclear program to Risen.

Risen has fought two previous attempts to compel him to testify against Sterling; the first subpoena was issued during the Bush administration. "This is a fight to defend the First Amendment and freedom of the press," Risen told ABC News, before referring ABC News to his attorney. Sources close to Risen say he is determined never to give up his sources even if that means going to jail.

Sterling, an ex-CIA operative, was indicted in December 2010 for allegedly giving Risen information about the CIA's attempt to use a Russian scientist to feed Iran faulty blueprints for a nuclear trigger device. The information about the operation, which Risen characterized as unsuccessful, ultimately appeared in his 2006 book "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration." It never appeared in the New York Times. An attorney for Sterling told ABC News that his client was innocent of the charges against him and would prove so in court. Sterling's trial is set to begin in September.

In his affidavit, Risen says that the Bush administration was "embarrassed" by what he disclosed in reports for the New York Times and in "State of War" about U.S. intelligence failures, warrantless wiretaps and domestic eavesdropping. "The Bush administration," claims Risen, "eventually singled me out as a target for political harassment." Risen said the Bush administration threatened to prosecute him under the Espionage Act and that a reliable source told him Vice President Dick Cheney pressured the Justice Department to "personally target me because he was unhappy with my reporting and wanted to see me in jail." He said he also received hate mail from pressure groups with White House ties and was picketed at his office by protestors who demanded his arrest.

After the publication of Risen's book, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales publicly raised the possibility of prosecuting journalists for leaks, and told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on "This Week" that prosecuting reporters was a "possibility." A Justice Department official then told the Senate, when asked, that the Justice Department had never previously prosecuted a journalist under the Espionage Act.

Risen argues in the affidavit that his reporting on Iran has served the public interest, because it may help keep the government from repeating its mistakes. "I believe I performed a vitally important public service by exposing the reckless and badly mismanaged nature of intelligence on Iran's efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction, so that the national would not go to war once again based on flawed intelligence, as it had in Iraq.".......continued

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Court Approved Wiretaps Reach a New All-Time High [PDF]

Leak Crackdown by Obama Administration

Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling

Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic

The Social Superorganism And Its Global Brain

By F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn - Posting #150

Society can be viewed as a multicellular organism, with individuals in the role of the cells. The network of communication channels connecting individuals then plays the role of a nervous system for this superorganism, i.e. a "global brain".

It is an old idea, dating back at least to the ancient Greeks, that the whole of human society can be viewed as a single organism. Many thinkers have noticed the similarity between the roles played by different organizations in society and the functions of organs, systems and circuits in the body. For example, industrial plants extract energy and building blocks from raw materials, just like the digestive system. Roads, railways and waterways transport these products from one part of the system to another one, just like the arteries and veins. Garbage dumps and sewage systems collect waste products, just like the colon and the bladder. The army and police protect the society against invaders and rogue elements, just like the immune system.

Such initially vague analogies become more precise as the understanding of organisms increases. The concepts of systems theory provide a good framework for establishing a precise correspondence between organismic and societal functions. The fact that complex organisms, like our own bodies, are built up from individual cells, led to the concept of superorganism. If cells aggregate to form a multicellular organism, then organisms might aggregate to form an organism of organisms: a superorganism. Biologists agree that social insect colonies, such as ant nests or beehives, are best seen as such superorganisms. The activities of a single ant, bee or termite are meaningless unless they are understood in function of the survival of the colony.

Individual humans may seem similar to the cells of a social superorganism, but they are still much more independent than ants or cells (Heylighen & Campbell, 1995). This is especially clear if we look at the remaining competition, conflicts and misunderstandings between individuals and groups. Thus human society is still an ambivalent system, balancing between individual selfishness and collective responsibility. In that sense it may be more similar to organisms like slime molds or sponges, whose cells can live individually as well as collectively, than to true multicellular organisms. However, there seems to be a continuing trend towards global integration. As technological and social systems develop into a more closely knit tissue of interactions, transcending the old boundaries between countries and cultures, the social superorganism seems to turn from a metaphor into a reality. Although many people tend to see the super-organism philosophy as a totalitarian or collectivist ideology, the opposite is true: further integration will basically increase individual freedom and diversity.

Most recently, the technological revolution has produced a global communication network, which can be seen as a nervous system for this planetary being. As the computer network becomes more intelligent it starts to look more like a global brain or super-brain, with capabilities far surpassing those of individual people (see our page on learning, brain-like webs for an experimental approach to make the net more intelligent). This is part of an evolutionary transition to a higher level of complexity. A remaining question is whether this transition will lead to the integration of the whole of humanity, producing a human "super-being", or merely enhance the capabilities of individuals, thus producing a multitude of "meta-beings".

In order to study these different issues, the "Global Brain Group" has been created. Its members include most of the authors that have written on the subject. Their works and others are listed in the global brain bibliography. Their discussion have inspired a Global Brain FAQ, i.e. a list of answers to the most common questions raised by this subject.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: ARM Daddy Simulates Human Brain With Million-Chip Super

Direct Interfaces into the Global Brain

"INSIGHTS"

Journal Of Memetics

The Symbiotic Intelligence Project

The Principia Cybernetica Project Memetics Publications On The Web

What are Cybernetics and Systems Science?

Correspondence between Organism and Society

Multicellular Organisms

Insect Societies

Heylighen & Campbell, 1995

Human Society

Introduction to "Slime Molds"

Introduction to "Sponges"

The Superorganism: A Totalitarian Collective?

From World-Wide Web to Super-Brain

Learning Webs

The Metasystem Transition

What Is Complexity?

Super And/Or Meta-Being(s)

The Global Brain Group

The Global Brain/Superorganism

The Global Brain FAQ

Tapping the Global Brain to Innovate

The Internet Could Become Conscious By Mid-2030s :o

A Global Consciousness Meditation

Global Brain Paint: Visualizing The Activity Of The Collective Consciousness

The Last Word on Osama Bin Laden - Take Nine

by James Corbett Report - Posting #149

This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com with the last word on Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden was one of the 54 children of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a construction magnate who made his fortune by cozying up to the royal family of Saudi Arabia. The bin Laden family has had an intimate relationship with the upper reaches of global power politics for the past half a century.

In 1976 Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half-brother, co-founded Arbusto Energy with George W. Bush.

In 1996, after the bombing of the Khobar Towers for which Osama took credit, the Saudi Binladen Group was given the contract to rebuild the facility (see article on page 14).

Also in 1996, FBI agents in the Washington field office were investigating the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a suspected terrorist organization that included Abdullah Bin Laden, the group’s president and treasurer, and Omar Bin Laden. BBC News uncovered internal FBI documents showing how the agents were ordered to stop their investigation. The case was only reopened the week after 9/11 and the day after both brothers fled the US with FBI permission.

In 1998, another FBI investigation into the Bin Laden brothers, this one initated by the New York field office, was called off by the State Department because, it was revealed, the Bin Laden family had been granted Saudi diplomatic passports in 1996 and thus had diplomatic immunity inside the United States.

On the morning of 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s half-brother, Shafig bin Laden, was the guest of honor at a meeting of the Carlyle Group in Washington which George H.W. Bush was also addressing.

In the days after 9/11, two dozen members of the Bin Laden family and over 100 members of the Saudi royal family were flown to assembly points in Texas and Washington and then flown out of the country. At least one of these flights took place during the total ban on civilian air traffic over North American airspace. Declassified FBI documents show that the Bureau believed the Bin Laden family flight out of the country—carrying suspected terrorists Abdullah and Omar Bin Laden—was chartered by Osama Bin Laden himself, but some of the passengers, including Abdullah, were not even interviewed in person by the FBI before their departure.

Of course, for the purveyors of the official conspiracy theory of Al-Qaeda, none of this has any relevance because the Saudi Binladin Group, the family business conglomerate, issued a terse, two-sentence statement in April of 1994 publicly disowning Osama. The facts, however, indicate that this public disowning was in fact a ruse.

In 2004, Osama’s half-brother Yeslam Binladin admitted that the family shared a joint Swiss bank account with Osama. The account was not closed until 1997, the year after the Khobar Towers bombing.

Yeslam’s ex-wife, Carmen, has also stated that she “cannot believe” that the family “have cut off Osama completely,” as have Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of the CIA Counter Terrorism Center, Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA Bin Laden unit, and the French intelligence service, which released a report two days after 9/11 indicating they believed the Bin Laden family to be covertly aiding Osama.

Nonetheless, the question remains: do the Bin Laden family connections to the highest circles of power in the American political establishment have any relevance to the story of Osama Bin Laden? Is there any evidence that American intelligence was involved with Osama himself over the years?

During Operation Cyclone, the US government funded the Afghan mujahedeen in their struggle against the Soviets in the largest covert operation in CIA history to that time. An estimated $5 billion in arms and funding were supplied to the jihadis, including stinger anti-aircraft missiles and other equipment that kept the Soviet Red Army bogged down in the country for years.

Officially, the CIA’s contact was limited to the Afghans themselves, and no funding was given to the so-called Arab Afghans like Osama Bin Laden, the Muslims from the Arab world who came to Afghanistan to aid in their fight against the Soviets. In reality, however, CIA funds were being funnelled to the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service that distributed those funds to the Arab Afghans through an organization called MAK, or the Bureau of Services. Osama Bin Laden was the one in charge of MAK’s finances.

This much was admitted by Osama’s brother Salem in 1985, who confessed that Osama was “the liaison between the US, the Saudi government and the Afghan rebels” at the time. In 1986, Salem asked the Pentagon for anti-aircraft missiles on Osama’s behalf.

The former chief of the US visa bureau in Jeddah, Michael Springmann, has testified that during his time there, he was respeatedly ordered by CIA officials to approve visas for Bin Laden’s mujahedeen cohorts so that they could be provided training at US military bases. 11 of the 19 alleged 9/11 hijackers would go on to get their visas from the same consulate.

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has admitted that in her time at the FBI she saw proof that the US had maintained a “very intimate relationship” with Bin Laden all the way though the 1990s up to September 11th.

The Guardian reported that Osama had travelled to the American Hospital in Dubai for kidney dialysis treatment in June 2001. While there, he was visited by the local CIA station chief. When the CIA official later boasted about having met Osama Bin Laden, he was promptly recalled to Washington.

In a July 2005 article in the Guardian, Robin Cook, the former speaker of the House of Commons, asserted that the name Al Qaeda itself actually referred to the database containing CIA assets from the Afghan mujahedeen struggle.

Even Osama’s alleged responsibility for the 9/11 events has been repeatedly called into question.

In the weeks after the attack, the Taliban offered to hand Bin Laden over if the US provided proof that he was connected to 9/11. Bush turned the offer down. After the invasion of Afghanistan began in October, the Taliban again tried to hand him over, this time dropping the request for proof of Bin Laden’s guilt. Bush again refused.

After video of what the Pentagon alleged was Osama Bin Laden confessing to the 9/11 attacks emerged in December 2001, a German national news program conducted its own investigation into the tape. According to its own, independent translators, every single point in the video that the Pentagon alleges indicate Osama’s foreknowledge or complicity in the 9/11 attack has been mistranslated, and the video does not in fact provide any proof of confession.

Famously, FBI spokesman Rex Tomb told investigative journalist Ed Haas that the FBI did not include 9/11 on Bin Laden’s “most wanted” profile because there was no hard evidence connecting him to the crime.

And yet within the first minute of TV coverage of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11, Osama Bin Laden was named as the likely perpetrator of the event. This idea solidified into a near certainty within hours, and the 24/7 news coverage shifted almost immediately to the question of when the US would invade Afghanistan.

In an interview the day after 9/11, confronted with this tendency of the press to jump to conclusions about Osama Bin Laden, ex-CIA station chief Milt Bearden made some unexpected statements about the supposed terrorist mastermind.

And now, in May of 2011, after Osama Bin Laden has been allegedly tracked down and allegedly shot by a Navy Seal team, after a trillion dollars and two wars have been waged in the name of fighting his shadowy, non-existent terror organization, as the very fabric of our society itself has been torn asunder in the neverending hunt for the terrorist boogeyman under our collective bed, perhaps it is time to ask once again what Osama Bin Laden means to us, after all.

If one were to base their understanding of Osama Bin Laden solely on mainstream media coverage of him over the last 10 years, a very different picture would emerge to the one that you have just been presented.

This media-constructed image would be one of a radical Muslim who appeared out of nowhere in the 1990s to begin a string of increasingly devastating terror attacks on American targets. After masterminding the 9/11 attacks in some undefined manner from a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, he supposedly outwitted and outmanoeuvred the combined might of the most powerful military and the most technologically sophisticated intelligence dragnet in the history of the world for an entire decade, all the while releasing videos and audiotapes from his secret compound to taunt his would-be captors. Finally, we are told, he was tracked down and shot in a special forces raid during which live video transmissions were inexplicably unavailable and then buried at sea before his death could be confirmed by any independent third party.

What emerges from the official Osama Bin Laden story is not a person but a comic book villain, a faceless, mysterious, motivationless embodiment of “terrorism” with all the reality of a Lex Luther or Cobra Commander. His is a powerful myth, made all the more powerful because it has been constructed and promoted by the very politicians and string-pullers who claim to be opposing him. Like Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein, his face can be put before the public from time to time to produce the Two Minute Hate, a cathartic projection of anger upon an empty image. We know to hiss when his picture is dangled before us and cheer when we are told he is dead. But always, always, it is stressed that he is fearsome, that he is ruthless, and that the only way to stop him is to surrender our rights and freedoms. Even in death, we are told, he and the mythical army of devotees he supposedly ruled over, are a clear and present danger to our society necessitating the continuation of the neverending wars against abstract nouns, TSA agents groping children at the airports and extra-judicial no-fly lists that are turning in to no-ride lists and no-buy lists.

The only thing we can say for certain is that the Osama Bin Laden character has now been disposed of in a far-fetched burial story only fitting of his cartoonish myth. And now the public is already being prepared for his replacement myths, a gaggle of similarly cartoonish characters no less connected to the Western intelligence establishment than Osama himself.

But after finally waking from the 10 year nightmare of the Osama Bin Laden fable, are the public willing to go straight back to sleep? Or are they going to start questioning the official narratives that are cemented into place in the wake of every large-scale event, narratives that always support more government intrusion in our lives, expanded wars of aggression around the globe and an ever-expanding police state?

It’s an important question, and one that must be answered quickly, while the public is still wary and skeptical of a government that has lied to them time and time again and then refuses to provide that public with a single credible shred of proof that the largest manhunt in the history of America has ended with the disposal of this intelligence asset, Osama Bin Laden.

For if the public does choose to go back to sleep and dismiss the copious documentary evidence that the entire war on terror is a fraud being perpetrated by the same people who claim to be fighting the terrorists, we may never be able to awake from whatever nightmare they have planned for us next. For The Corbett Report in western Japan, I am James Corbett.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: EXCLUSIVE: New Documents Claim Intelligence on Bin Laden, al-Qaeda Targets Withheld From Congress' 9/11 Probe :o

Salem bin Laden

The Bush Family Saga

KHOBAR Towers After Attack

Has Someone Been Sitting On The FBI? 6.11.01

Investigation of Bin Laden Family Members Is Opened; Then Closed

Bin Laden Family weighed staying in US

Diplomatic Passports Help Stifle FBI Investigation into Bin Laden Family

Dark Heart Of The American Dream

Heady Times For Carlyle In The Wake Of Chaos

Bin Laden Family Members, Saudi Royals Quietly Leave US

Phantom Flight From Florida

Case 1:04-cv-01643-RWR

Binladin family disowned Osama bin Laden

Bin Laden Family Financial Connection With Osama Continues Until At Least This Year

Relative Offers Look At Bin Laden Life

Osama's Road to Riches and Terror

Tracking Osama's Kin Around the World

French Intelligence Report Indicates Connections Between Osama and Bin Laden Family

Operation Cyclone

Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK)

Reagan Possibly Views Afghan Video Made by Bin Laden Brothers

Salem Bin Laden Asks Pentagon to Supply Missiles to Arab Afghans, Receives No Reply

Interview 131 – J. Michael Springmann

GAO Report

Sibel Edmonds 'Bombshell' - Bin Laden Worked for U.S. Until 9/11

CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July

The Struggle Against Terrorism Cannot Be Won By Military Means

Taliban 'Will Try Bin Laden If US Provides Evidence'

Taliban: We Need Proof of Bin Laden's Guilt

New offer on Bin Laden

Bush Rejects Taliban Offer To Hand Bin Laden Over

Mistranslated Osama bin Laden Video - The German Press Investigates

No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11

CBS TV Report 13 September 2001

Osama Bin Laden Pronounced Dead…For the Ninth Time

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says - TIs Heads Up!

By Spencer Ackerman, Wired News - Posting #148

You think you understand how the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its citizens. Sen. Ron Wyden says it’s worse than you know.

Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation — an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called “business-records provision,” which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.

“It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming,” Wyden says. “I know a fair amount about how it’s interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it.”

That’s why Wyden and his colleague Sen. Mark Udall offered an amendment on Tuesday to the Patriot Act reauthorization.

The amendment, first reported by Marcy Wheeler, blasts the administration for “secretly reinterpret[ing] public laws and statutes.” It would compel the Attorney General to “publicly disclose the United States Government’s official interpretation of the USA Patriot Act.” And, intriguingly, it refers to “intelligence-collection authorities” embedded in the Patriot Act that the administration briefed the Senate about in February.

Wyden says he “can’t answer” any specific questions about how the government thinks it can use the Patriot Act. That would risk revealing classified information — something Wyden considers an abuse of government secrecy. He believes the techniques themselves should stay secret, but the rationale for using their legal use under Patriot ought to be disclosed.

“I draw a sharp line between the secret interpretation of the law, which I believe is a growing problem, and protecting operations and methods in the intelligence area, which have to be protected,” he says.

Surveillance under the business-records provisions has recently spiked. The Justice Department’s official disclosure on its use of the Patriot Act, delivered to Congress in April, reported that the government asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to collect business records 96 times in 2010 — up from just 21 requests the year before. The court didn’t reject a single request. But it “modified” those requests 43 times, indicating to some Patriot-watchers that a broadening of the provision is underway.

“The FISA Court is a pretty permissive body, so that suggests something novel or particularly aggressive, not just in volume, but in the nature of the request,” says Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s resident Patriot Act lobbyist. “No one has tipped their hand on this in the slightest. But we’ve come to the conclusion that this is some kind of bulk collection. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if it’s some kind of internet or communication-records dragnet.” (Full disclosure: My fiancée works for the ACLU.)

The FBI deferred comment on any secret interpretation of the Patriot Act to the Justice Department. The Justice Department said it wouldn’t have any comment beyond a bit of March congressional testimony from its top national security official, Todd Hinnen, who presented the type of material collected as far more individualized and specific: “driver’s license records, hotel records, car-rental records, apartment-leasing records, credit card records, and the like.”

But that’s not what Udall sees. He warned in a Tuesday statement about the government’s “unfettered” access to bulk citizen data, like “a cellphone company’s phone records.” In a Senate floor speech on Tuesday, Udall urged Congress to restrict the Patriot Act’s business-records seizures to “terrorism investigations” — something the ostensible counterterrorism measure has never required in its nearly 10-year existence.

Indeed, Hinnen allowed himself an out in his March testimony, saying that the business-record provision “also” enabled “important and highly sensitive intelligence-collection operations” to take place. Wheeler speculates those operations include “using geolocation data from cellphones to collect information on the whereabouts of Americans” — something our sister blog Threat Level has reported on extensively.

It’s worth noting that Wyden is pushing a bill providing greater privacy protections for geolocation info.

For now, Wyden’s considering his options ahead of the Patriot Act vote on Thursday. He wants to compel as much disclosure as he can on the secret interpretation, arguing that a shadow broadening of the Patriot Act sets a dangerous precedent.

“I’m talking about instances where the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are,” Wyden says, “and the reliance on secret interpretations of the law is growing.”

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Update 06.13.2011: F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway To Push Privacy Bounds - LOL

House Extends Key Patriot Act Provisions

House Fails to Extend Patriot Act Spy Powers

Lawmakers Punt Again on Patriot Act Reform

You Can Take the 9/11 Security State From My Cold, Dead, Top

FBI Cops to Illegal Spying

Stop All Military Aid To Israel Now!

by Tom Hastings, Truthout - Posting #147

Israel is now dictating conditions to the United States and upbraiding President Obama for having the nerve to suggest final­ly following UN Resolution 242, which has long called for a return to the 1967 borders of Israel. Obama says the border from that era should now be the border between Israel and Palestine. It is long past time to end all military aid to Israel.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, Israel was seen in my Min­nesota community as a brave outpost of kibbutzim egalitarianism amidst a harsh Arab environment of hatred and bloodlust. Jews had traded European persecution for Arab persecution. The cold war exacerbated this situation, as the hatred for Jews in Russia and throughout the Soviet Union in general led to USSR spon­sorship of Arab arms pointed at the head and body of the tiny Jewish state. It was the right thing to do, to support Israel.

It was not until many years later that the story of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians came to light in much of the United States. The assumption had been - and this was buttressed by the ongoing image of Israel as a social experiment in justice and equality - that Israel was founded upon the most modern princi­ples that were meant to produce justice for all. Even Nazis who went on trial there for slaughtering countless innocent Jews in Europe were let free if the cases did not meet good judicial stan­dards of evidentiary robustness.

The late 1960s produced big cracks in that image, as the antiwar movement in the United States generally aligned itself with Pales­tinian aspirations, but the development of the peace wing of the antiwar movement questioned the left/right acceptance of viol­ence and the cold war frame around the struggle. This ambival­ence continued until the fall of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The violence of the left and the violence of the right were alienating to peace people. Most of us put our energies into disarmament and into struggles in which one side could be identified as a nonviolent party. Asymmetry of violence is still violence.

Certainly it has been the general position of the peace movement to cut off military aid to everyone, including Israel. That is still the case. But the talking points in favor are now stronger and have more political cache. It is time to press the point, to stop the horrific enabling of apartheid in Israel and the subjugation and oc­cupation of Palestine. It is long past time to let Israel survive with some humility, to take its place as a nation-state that was founded on someone else's land during a period of extreme duress. The sight of an arrogant Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu proclaiming derisively that Obama is out of touch with reality and marching into the Oval Office to dictate to the United States should help Americans realize it's time to pull the military plug on Israel.

From Pakistan to Israel, and moving around the world from there, the US taxpayer continues to hemorrhage vast amounts of money on governments that despise us. This practice alienates people from us and impoverishes the US taxpayer even as it erodes the US infrastructure. The only ones who gain in the Uni­ted States are the war profiteers.

End this now. As the Republicans are so fond of saying whenever a social safety net is discussed, "No. We're broke." The reason we are broke is the war system, and we should begin our conversion now. Save many billions of dollars right away by ceasing all milita­ry aid to Israel and all our other clients.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References:

Israel Lobby Dominates Congress, Media Covers it Up

Netanyahu’s Border War

What Obama Could Not Possibly Say

Boiling Frogs Podcast Interview With Pepe Escobar

Obama’s New Middle East Policy: “Ambitious Fiction & Monarchial Bastards”

$6.64 Billion Damages Sought over Israeli Government/AIPAC Use of Stolen Classified US Data

NSA/SAIC: The Trailblazer Cover-Up, 9/11, And Iraq War PLAN(S)

PBS: EXPOSE: American’s Investigative Reports:

CHAPTER I | CHAPTER II | CHAPTER III | Posting #145

Vanity Fair pulls back the curtain on SAIC, the largest government contractor you’ve never heard of. Science Applications International Corporation has a workforce of 44,000, annual revenues that reached $8 billion in 2006, and a list of current and former board members that reads like a who’s who of political and military heavyweights. How is it that even though “several of SAIC’s biggest projects have turned out to be colossal failures,” the company always manages to get paid?

Moreover, the company always stays "under the radar" from public scrutiny. For emphasis, let's not forget that the offices at SAIC located at Chantilly, VA right beside the Dulles International Airport for Science Applications International Corporation was empty on the morning of the 11th of September 2001.

THE COMPANY AS A WHOLE KNEW IN ADVANCE THAT THE ATTACKS WHERE COMING!

=FOREKNOWLEDGE

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: TOPs Original Reports - 03.July.2007 - Library Archive

Obama Administration Claims Right To Censor ‘Unclassified’ Materials - LOL

Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden - MO Anyone?

NSA Managers Modified or Supressed Studies on ThinThread and Trailblazer - MO Anyone?

The Espionage Act: Why Tom Drake Was Indicted - PsyOps 101

NSA/SAIC: The Trailblazer Cover-Up, 9/11, And Iraq War PLAN(S)

PBS: EXPOSE: American’s Investigative Reports:

CHAPTER I | CHAPTER II | CHAPTER III | Posting #145

Vanity Fair pulls back the curtain on SAIC, the largest government contractor you’ve never heard of. Science Applications International Corporation has a workforce of 44,000, annual revenues that reached $8 billion in 2006, and a list of current and former board members that reads like a who’s who of political and military heavyweights. How is it that even though “several of SAIC’s biggest projects have turned out to be colossal failures,” the company always manages to get paid?

Moreover, the company always stays "under the radar" from public scrutiny. For emphasis, let's not forget that the offices at SAIC located at Chantilly, VA right beside the Dulles International Airport for Science Applications International Corporation was empty on the morning of the 11th of September 2001.

THE COMPANY AS A WHOLE KNEW IN ADVANCE THAT THE ATTACKS WHERE COMING!

=FOREKNOWLEDGE

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: TOPs Original Reports - 03.July.2007 - Library Archive

Obama Administration Claims Right To Censor ‘Unclassified’ Materials - LOL

Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden - MO Anyone?

NSA Managers Modified or Supressed Studies on ThinThread and Trailblazer - MO Anyone?

The Espionage Act: Why Tom Drake Was Indicted - PsyOps 101

National Security Whistleblowers Pensions Are Under Attack

by Sibel Edmonds - Posting #144

Tell Your Senators to Oppose Pension-Stripping Bill

The following Action Alert was issued by National Whistleblowers Center today. Every time when I think things couldn’t possibly get any worse, I’m proven wrong and they actually do get worse, and here is a good example: our so called representatives are planning to increase the federal government’s unchecked powers by giving them the right to strip national security whistleblowers of their pensions. In other words, they are bending over backwards to make it easier for federal agencies to punish, penalize and persecute whistleblowers for doing the right thing. Please help our whistleblowers by calling your senators and disseminating the following alert. We need your support and thank you for all you do.

Sibel Edmonds

Dear Whistleblower Supporters:

National security whistleblowers are under attack and need your help now! The Senate Intelligence Committee has approved an anti-whistleblower bill. The committee voted to give the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the heads of other agencies the power to strip whistleblowers of their pensions.

Section 403 of the Intelligence Authorization Act authorizes these officials to strip whistleblowers of their hard-earned federal pensions, simply by being accused, not convicted, of leaking classified information. Every whistleblower will be at risk because ALL most likely will be accused of making improper disclosures. We urge you to join us in opposing S.719 until Section 403 is cut.

TAKE ACTION! Protect whistleblowers’ pensions!

Here’s how Section 403 works. The head of an employee’s agency can simply accuse a whistleblower of leaking classified information and that whistleblower can automatically be stripped of their federal pension, even after they retire.

The whistleblowers who lose their pensions will not be able to take their case to court. Instead, they will be forced to use the DNI’s administrative procedures to try to defend themselves. In other words, the DNI will be the prosecutor, the judge and the jury to strip pensions from public servants.

TAKE ACTION! Time is of the Essence!

Stripping pensions based on accusations of classified leaks will be yet another way that the government can legally retaliate against whistleblowers. This is an incredible threat and will have a massive chilling effect on the willingness of employees to expose waste, fraud, and abuse.

TAKE ACTION! Tell your senators to support the Wyden hold!

We are not alone in opposing this unprecedented retaliatory law. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has placed a public hold on S.719 until the anti-whistleblower provision is cut. He made a powerful statement before the Senate explaining why Section 403 is so dangerous.

For more information, tune into Boiling Frogs where Stephen M. Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center, is interviewed by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and WBRU Radio Host Peter B. Collins on the pension-stripping provision.

PASS THIS ALERT TO A FRIEND! Please take action and pass this alert on to at least one co-worker, friend, or family member.

Sincerely,

Jane Turner - Former FBI Special Agent, 25-Year Veteran
Director of FBI Oversight, National Whistleblowers Center

Sibel Edmonds - Former FBI translator
Founder National Security Whistleblowers Coalition

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

The DOJ's Creeping War On Whistle-Blowers - TIs Heads Up!

By Glenn Greenwald - Posting #143

Last April, the DOJ served a subpoena on New York Times reporter James Risen, demanding to know his source for a story he published in his 2006 book regarding a "reckless" and horribly botched CIA effort to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program. That subpoena had originally been served but was then abandoned by the Bush DOJ, but its revitalization by the Obama administration was but one of many steps taken to dramatically expand the war on whistleblowers being waged by the current President, who ran on a platform of "protecting whistleblowers":

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.

Those pretty words have given way to the most aggressive crusade to expose, punish and silence "courageous and patriotic" whistleblowers by any President in decades. As the Federation of American Scientists' Steven Aftergood put it, "They’re going after this at every opportunity and with unmatched vigor." And last May, The New York Times described how "the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks." This war has entailed multiple indictments and prosecutions of Bush-era leaks which exposed various degrees of corruption, ineptitude and illegality. And, of course, the Obama administration's preoccupation with destroying WikiLeaks -- which has led it to boast of efforts to prosecute the group for publishing classified information (which other media outlets do every day), target WikiLeaks supporters with invasive harassment, and even subpoena the Twitter accounts of several WikiLeaks associates, including a sitting member of the Icelandic Parliament -- has been well-documented.

But it's the DOJ's increasing willingness to target journalists as part of this crusade that has now escalated its seriousness. Last month, the DOJ claimed it had found and arrested Risen's source: Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent who left the agency in 2002 (he now works in the health insurance industry). As part of Sterling's criminal proceedings, it was revealed yesterday that federal investigators had secretly obtained Risen's bank records, information about his phone and travel activities, and even credit reports to unearth his source:

Federal investigators trying to find out who leaked information about a CIA attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program obtained a New York Times reporter’s three private credit reports, examined his personal bank records and obtained information about his phone calls and travel, according to a new court filing.

The scope and intrusiveness of the government’s efforts to uncover reporter James Risen’s sources surfaced Thursday in the criminal case of James Sterling, a former CIA officer facing federal criminal charges for allegedly disclosing classified information. . . . The revelation alarmed First Amendment advocates, particularly in light of Justice Department rules requiring the attorney general to sign off on subpoenas directed to members of the media and on requests for their phone records.

First Amendment advocates said the Justice Department’s use of business records to find out about Risen’s sources was troubling. Those records, they argue, could potentially expose a wide array of Risen's sources and confidential contacts -- information that might fall beyond the initial investigation that led to Sterling’s indictment . . .

"To me, in many ways, it’s worse than a direct subpoena," said Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota law professor and former director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "Third-party subpoenas are really, really invidious. . . . Even if it is targeted, even if they’re trying to just look at the relevant stuff, they’re inevitably going to get material that exposes other things."

Kirtley also said journalists often aren't notified when the government asks telecom companies, banks or other service providers for their records.

Covertly obtaining and then digging through the phone, banking, and travel records of journalists is about as extreme a step as can be taken in trying to detect and punish whistleblowers. By itself, the chilling effect on a free press is substantial and obvious -- what whistleblowers would speak to reporters if they know their most private records can be so easily invaded by the Government? -- and the invasion of privacy which a journalist has to endure for doing his job is immense.

But what makes this conduct particularly indefensible is how the Obama DOJ is venturing back into the past to dredge up these forgotten episodes. Sterling hasn't worked for the Government or had a security clearance in more than 8 years. The alleged leak took place in Bush's first term. Disclosure resulted in substantial embarrassment for the U.S. but -- given the utter failure of the operation -- no identifiable national security harm.

For a President who insists that we must "Look Forward, Not Backward" -- when it comes to investigating war crimes by high-level Bush officials -- this anti-whistleblower assault reflects not only an obsession on preserving and bolstering the National Security State's secrecy regime, but also an intense fixation on the past. And increasingly extremist weapons -- now including trolling through reporters' banking and phone records -- are being wielded to achieve it. As Thomas Jefferson warned long ago: "Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Update 06.29.2011: Obama Administration Fires ATF Whistleblower

Update 06.13.2011: F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway To Push Privacy Bounds - LOL

The Secret Sharer

U.S. Subpoenas Times Reporter Over Book on C.I.A.

War On Whistle-Blowers Intensifies

The Obama-Biden Plan

Just-US Dept. Cracks Down On Leaks

Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press

Wikileaks Volunteer Detained

DOJ Subpoenas Twitter Records of Several WikiLeaks Volunteers

Ex-CIA Agent Jeffrey Sterling Arrested, Accused of Leaking to Reporter as Revenge

Feds Spy on Reporter In Leak Probe

The Cultural Contradictions of the American Media

The WikiLeaks Grand Jury And The Escalating War on Whistleblowing

Battle Brews Over FBI’s Warrantless GPS Tracking - TIs Heads Up!

By Kim Zetter - Posting #142

Kathy Thomas knew she was under surveillance. The animal rights and environmental activist had been trailed daily by cops over several months, and had even been stopped on occasion by police and FBI agents.

But when the surveillance seemed to halt suddenly in mid-2005 after she confronted one of the agents, she thought it was all over. Months went by without a peep from the FBI surveillance teams that had been tracking her in undercover vehicles and helicopters. That’s when it occurred to her to check her car.

Rumors had been swirling among activists that the FBI might be using GPS to track them — two activists in Colorado discovered mysterious devices attached to their car bumpers in 2003 — so Thomas (a pseudonym) went out to the vehicle in a frenzy and ran her hands beneath the rear bumper. She was only half-surprised to find a small electronic device and foot-long battery wand secured to her metal fender with industrial-strength magnets.

“I think I must have found it right after they put it on, because there was no grime on it at all,” she told Wired.com recently.

The use of GPS tracking devices is poised to become one of the most contentious privacy issues before the Supreme Court, should the high court agree to hear an appeal filed by the Obama administration last month. The administration is seeking to overturn a ruling by a lower court that law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before using a tracker.

The constitutional matter until now has been left to district courts around the country to decide, resulting in a patchwork of conflicting rulings about the need for warrants. Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit filed in March by an Arab-American college student named Yasir Afifi alleges that the FBI violated his privacy rights when the agency placed a GPS device on his car without a warrant, and that the bureau targeted him simply because of his ethnic background.

In the midst of this legal controversy, Threat Level decided to take a look inside one of the devices — which are generally custom-made for law enforcement. Working with the teardown artists at iFixit, we examined the device Thomas found on her car nearly six years ago, which you can see in the photos and video accompanying this story.

When Thomas found the device on her vehicle back in 2005, she ripped it from the underside of her fender, but quickly grew fearful the FBI would raid her house if agents suspected she’d removed it. So she carried it in a duffel bag in her trunk for a week, while she and her boyfriend considered what to do.

When her lawyer called a local U.S. attorney to inquire about the device, the prosecutor acknowledged it belonged to the feds and said they wanted it back. But Thomas refused to hand it over, and the FBI seemed to drop the matter. Her attorney told Threat Level the government “basically abandoned it.”

She provided it to Wired.com recently, after reading a story about Afifi discovering a tracker on his car. She said she wanted to raise more awareness about how the technology is being used for stealth surveillance.

GPS vehicle trackers, based on technology first used by the military for navigation, have become a popular law-enforcement tool for tracking people. Cruder than other forms of surveillance — they report only where a suspect’s car goes, not who is in the car or what occupants do when they arrive at a location — they’re nonetheless frequently used for supplementary surveillance. That’s because in most jurisdictions, investigators don’t need court approval to slap a tracking device on a driver’s car, and because the devices provide a stealthier and more cost-effective approach to surveillance than a team of cops trailing a suspect around the clock.

The devices, however, have become one of the most divisive Fourth Amendment issues facing courts around the country. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled last year that using a GPS tracker was no different than physically trailing a suspect in public, and that such surveillance was not protected by the Fourth Amendment, even if agents placed the device on a suspect’s car while it was parked in his driveway.

But Judge Alex Kosinski, in the dissenting opinion, called the use of GPS trackers without a court order “straight out of George Orwell’s novel 1984” and said they give government “the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives.”

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., agreed with him when it ruled in a different case last year that collecting data from a GPS device planted on the Jeep of drug suspect Antoine Jones amounted to a search, and therefore required a warrant. Prosecutors argued that the device only collected the same information anyone on a public street could glean from following the suspect. But Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in his ruling that the persistent, nonstop surveillance afforded by a GPS tracker was much different from physically tracking a suspect on a single trip.

“Unlike one’s movements during a single journey, the whole of one’s movement over the course of a month is not actually exposed to the public because the likelihood anyone will observe all those movements is effectively nil,” he wrote. What’s more, the bulk of data gleaned by such a device over time could help deduce a lot about a person, such as whether he associated with political groups, was a heavy drinker or weekly churchgoer, was an unfaithful husband or an outpatient receiving regular medical treatment.

The Obama administration called the ruling “vague and unworkable,” and filed a writ in April asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. A decision on whether the high court will hear the case is pending.

It’s not known how many people are tracked with GPS devices every year, but the devices don’t always go undetected. An elderly Arab-American in the San Francisco Bay Area reportedly discovered a vehicle tracker on his car in 2009, while he attended a free auto-repair workshop and let the instructor demonstrate an oil change on his vehicle.

Then last year, Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old Arab-American college student in California discovered a device attached to his car when he took the vehicle into an auto shop for an oil change. After a friend posted photos of it on Reddit.com, and readers identified it as a GPS tracker, the FBI showed up at Afifi’s apartment demanding he return the device. He’s since filed a lawsuit (.pdf) over the tracking.

Although the Justice Department has said the devices are used by investigators “with great frequency,” neither the department nor local law enforcement agencies are required to compile or disclose statistics about their use in the way the Justice Department is required to report annually to Congress on the use of national security letters issued to ISPs and other businesses for customer records.

Kathy Thomas doesn’t know if the FBI obtained a warrant to place the tracker on her car. But she said authorities never charged her with any crime. Threat Level could find no federal case filed against her.

Her FBI file, which she obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, makes it clear the surveillance was part of a nationwide investigation of activists connected to Earth First, the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front — groups the FBI considered “left-wing anarchists” whose members sometimes advocated criminal activity to further their aims.

Thomas, who provided Threat Level with only a handful of the 800 redacted pages she received in her request, says she organized activities with Earth First and participated in animal rights activities, but never belonged to the two other groups. Instead, she was a member of Food Not Bombs.

The FBI reports indicate agents likely turned to the GPS tracking device after it became increasingly difficult to tail her physically.

Thomas had begun engaging in countersurveillance maneuvers, FBI agents claimed in the documents, including speeding, running red lights, making unsafe lane changes and weaving through congested traffic to evade them. A July 2004 report describes how she drove one day into the cul-de-sac where she lived and sped around to confront and photograph cars she believed were tailing her. The report says Thomas was becoming “extremely surveillance-conscious,” and that agents “were made [recognized as agents] on two separate occasions.”

Thomas says the surveillance was a daily occurrence for months. Then in April 2005 she confronted an agent who was following her on the freeway. She took an exit ramp and stopped, and when he pulled up behind her, she got out of her car to yell at him, shaking a glass Perrier bottle in her hand. She says the agent laughed at her, and after that the surveillance stopped. Or so she thought.

She found the GPS tracker on her car a few months later.

"And Ye Shall Know The Truth And The Truth Shall Set You Free"

WAKE UP AMERICA....ITs OUR COUNTRY!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: Update 06.13.2011: F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway To Push Privacy Bounds - LOL

Electronic Surveillance: America's Secret Domestic Spying Apparatus

EFF Demands Answers About Secret Surveillance Law Memo

2010 FISA Orders Up 19%, No Surveillance Request Turned Down

Tracking Device Teardown

Best iFixit teardown ever: FBI tracking bug

Video: The Dissection of an FBI Bumper Beeper

How to Check Your Car for a GPS Tracker

FBI Vehicle-Tracking Device: The Teardown

Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back

Another Agency May Have Lied to Court in a FOIA Case

New Department of Justice Documents Fail to Justify Expanding CALEA

FBI Chastised by Court for Lying About Existence of Surveillance Records

New FBI Documents Provide Details on Government’s Surveillance Spyware