Archive
Kill Switch Beta: Government Blocks 84,000 Websites
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 16, 2011
Under the banner of fighting child pornography, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice knocked out 84,000 websites last week. The websites did not host or link to child pornography as the government claims.
“As part of ‘Operation Save Our Children‘ ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center has again seized several domain names, but not without making a huge error. Last Friday, thousands of site owners were surprised by a rather worrying banner that was placed on their domain,” reports TorrentFreak, a tech site.
Senator Joe Lieberman peddles his kill switch legislation under the rubric of the phony war on terror.
“Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,” was the message visitors to the sites were Read more…
All children to be registered in national biometric records
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
Below the radar of public opinion, Mexico has started to assemble the type of biometric national identity database that could be used to document names for a North American Trusted Traveler border pass card, a plan already being developed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for Mexican citizens.
It apparently would be similar to the program that has become commonplace in the European Union to allow free transit for EU citizens to move, live and work wherever they choose within the EU, disregarding nation-of-origin and national border restrictions.
On Jan. 19, 2011, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon signed an executive order requiring within the next five years all Mexicans 17 years old and younger have a biometric national identity card that would include a facial photograph, all 10 fingerprints, and an iris scan.
To carry out the presidential executive order, the Mexican Directorate General of the National Population Register plans to go to all Read more…
FBI can obtain phone records without oversight, Justice Dept memo claims
Without court oversight, the nation’s top law enforcement agency can obtain domestic records of telephone conversations made to international receivers, the Justice Department claimed recently.
“[The Office of Legal Counsel] agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances (word or words redacted) allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency,” the Justice Department’s inspector general said in a recent report by McClatchy Newspapers.
The claim put forth in the document released to McClatchy seemed to indicate that the Obama administration has continued the previous administration’s policies.
The Bush administration maintained that the FBI needed such policing powers in order to stop possible terrorism. Critics of the FBI’s surveillance program stated that the tactic was frequently applied in abusive manners.
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told McClatchy that the OLC’s disclosure that Read more…
Chinese Develop Gait-Biometrics Surveillance
Another way to be under surveillance.
A confidential United States embassy dispatch released by Wikileaks provides details about a new technology developed by the Chinese Academy of Science to identify people by their gait.
The technology is designed to be deployed beneath existent flooring. From there it measures pedestrian pace and walking pressure to create a unique biometrics profile which can be used to identify and track the movements of individuals without their knowledge…
According to the dispatch, when questioned about the technology’s potential applications, scientists “stated the device was being used by ‘secret’ customers and was not available on the commercial market.” Officials went on to note the technology was involved with “Program 863.”
Program 863, or the State High Tech Development Plan, is a civil-military program created in 1986, according to Lev Navrozov – a former dissident Soviet writer – for the purpose of developing a “post-nuclear superweapon” possibly incorporating nanotechnology.
ACLU slams Chicago’s pervasive surveillance system
CHICAGO — A vast network of high-tech surveillance cameras that allows Chicago police to zoom in on a crime in progress and track suspects across the city is raising privacy concerns.
Chicago’s path to becoming the most-watched US city began in 2003 when police began installing cameras with flashing blue lights at high-crime intersections.
The city has now linked more than 10,000 public and privately owned surveillance cameras in a system dubbed Operation Virtual Shield, according to a report published Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
At least 1,250 of them are powerful enough to zoom in and read the text of a book.
The sophisticated system is also capable of automatically tracking people and vehicles out of the range of one camera and into another and searching for images of interest like an unattended package or a particular license plate.
“Given Chicago’s history of unlawful political surveillance, including the notorious ‘Red Squad,’ it is critical that appropriate controls be put in place to rein in these powerful and pervasive surveillance cameras now available to law enforcement throughout the City,” said Harvey Grossman, legal director of the ACLU of Illinois.
The Chicago police “Red Squad” program from the 1920s through the 1970s spied on Read more…
China police stop spread of Egypt news: activist
BEIJING — Police in southwest China have barred activists from distributing leaflets about anti-government protests in Egypt and Tunisia, deeming the news too sensitive, one dissident said Wednesday.
Activists in Guizhou province tried to hand out information about the demonstrations over the weekend, but police told them this was an “unusual period” and gave them 3,000 yuan ($450) to stop, Chen Xi told AFP.
The police paid the money to compensate for losses incurred from the printing costs, and when the activists tried to distribute more information in Guiyang city on Monday, police again barred them from doing so, Chen said.
“We do this (hand out leaflets) all the time but the Read more…
Germany deploys contactless national ID
Germany began issuing the new contactless national ID to citizens in November. The program is one of the first contactless-only electronic ID programs. It also employs a unique privacy scheme to protect cardholders.
National ID cards aren’t new in the European Union and many countries use smart card technology to power the credentials. But the contactless German ID is a bit of a departure from what other countries have done and thus necessitated a slightly different take on existing contactless smart cards.
The country expects to issue 60 million cards over the next 10 years to replace existing paper documents, says Rudy Stroh, executive vice president of the ID business and country manager for Germany at NXP Semiconductors. NXP is providing the chip–its 128-kilobyte SmartMX secure contactless microcontroller–for the German e-ID.
“The contactless technology used in the e-ID enables strong privacy protection,” Stroh says.
The first difference between the German ID card and other contactless smart cards is that is can only be read from four centimeters, whereas most other cards can be read from Read more…
Technology of the New World
Are You Living In A “Perfect Prison”?
Justice Department seeks to have all web surfing tracked
Mandatory data retention ‘raises serious privacy and free speech concerns’
WASHINGTON — The US Justice Department wants Internet service providers and cell phone companies to be required to hold on to records for longer to help with criminal prosecutions.
“Data retention is fundamental to the department’s work in investigating and prosecuting almost every type of crime,” US deputy assistant attorney general Jason Weinstein told a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday.
“Some records are kept for weeks or months; others are stored very briefly before being purged,” Weinstein said in remarks prepared for delivery to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
He said Internet records are often “the only available evidence that allows us to investigate who committed crimes on the Internet.”
Internet and phone records can be “crucial evidence” in a wide array of cases, including child exploitation, violent crime, fraud, terrorism, public corruption, drug trafficking, online piracy and computer hacking, Weinstein said, but only if the data still exists when law enforcement needs it.
“In some ways, the problem of investigations being stymied by a lack of data retention is growing worse,” he told lawmakers.
Weinstein noted inconsistencies in data retention, with one mid-sized cell phone company not keeping records, a cable Internet provider not tracking the Internet protocol addresses it assigns to customers and another only keeping them for seven days. Read more…
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
crisisboom
CRISISBOOM 
You must be logged in to post a comment.