Occupy not safe from FBI surveillance

One of the main issues many Occupy Wall Street protesters spoke of during the last year was their concern that they were being watched by the police. The American Civil Liberties Union has obtained documents they had to file a lawsuit to get their hands on, and in these paper they've found proof that federal surveillance targeted protesters at Occupy encampments. J D Tuccille, managing director for Reason 24-7 News, joins RT's Kristine Frazao to discuss the matter.

Death of the US Constitution: Can Americans Escape the Deception?

Global Research
Paul Craig Roberts

Hot Air Day is upon us.  On July 4 hot air will spew forth all over the country as dignitaries deliver homilies to our “freedom and democracy” and praise “our brave troops” who are protecting our freedom by “killing them over there before they come over here.”

Not a single one of these speeches will contain one word of truth.  No speaker will lament the death of the US Constitution or urge his audience to action to restore the only document that protects their liberty.  No speaker will acknowledge that in the 21st century the Bush/Obama Regime, with the complicity of the Department of Justice, federal courts, Congress, presstitute media, law schools, bar associations, and an insouciant public have murdered the Constitution in the name of the “war on terror.”

As in medieval times, American citizens can be thrown into dungeons and never accounted for.  No evidence or charges need be presented to a court.  No trial is required, and no conviction.

As in tyrannies, US citizens can be executed at the sole discretion of the despot in the Oval Office, who sits there drawing up lists of people to be murdered. 

Protestors exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association are attacked by armed police, beaten, tasered, tear-gassed, pepper sprayed, and arrested.  

Whistleblowers who report the government’s crimes are prosecuted despite the statute that protects them.

US soldier Bradley Manning, who allegedly gave Wikileaks the documents revealing US war crimes, including the video of US soldiers in a helicopter gunship enjoying themselves murdering civilians walking along the street as if the soldiers were playing a video game, has been arrested and held in conditions of torture while the government tries to invent a case against him.  

According to the US Military Code, US soldiers are required to make war crimes known. However, the law on the books provided no protection to Bradley Manning, and conservative Republicans whom I know are foaming at the mouth for Manning to be executed for letting out the truth.  The truth, what is mere truth compared to the “exceptionalism of the great american people”?  America has carte blanche to do whatever it wishes to the unexceptional peoples. Manning deserves to die, they say, because he took the side of the oppressed and not the side of the amerikan oppressors. 

After the Swedish prosecutorial office dropped the case against Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, ruling that the charges of rape had no foundation, another prosecutor, many believe at the urging of the US government, demanded Assange be extradited from England in order to be questioned.  Normally, extradition only applies to those who have been charged with a crime and for whom a warrant has been issued, which is most certainly not the case with Assange.  But, of course, if Washington wants Assange, Washington will be sure every law is broken or bent until they get him. The Swedish puppet will do the exceptional country’s will and be paid well for its service.

Peace activists in several states had their homes invaded by FBI, computers and personal records taken, and a grand jury was convened in an attempt to indict them for supporting terrorism by their protests of Washington’s illegal wars, wars that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard established by the US government itself.

None of this will be mentioned in July 4 patriotic speeches. The inebriated masses will be wrapped in the flag and return home full of the hubris that despises lesser foreigners, such as Muslims, Arabs, Chinese, and the French.

And no dignitary will mention that those that “we are killing over there” are mainly women,  children, village elders, and aid workers. The US troops seem to specialize in soft targets like weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games, farm houses, and schools.

Recently Washington reduced the “collateral damage” count by declaring every murdered male of military age to have been a Taliban fighter or terrorist.  Obviously, Washington has no way of knowing whether they were or not, but Washington’s declaration is intended as a green light to murder Afghan males of military age.

Currently, Washington has wars underway, or occupations, or is violating the sovereignty of countries with drones and/or troops in seven Muslim countries, and is

arming rebels in Syria.  All of this is being done without the constitutionally-required authorization by Congress, allegedly the people’s representatives.  What a joke!

In short, in “freedom and democracy” america, the people have no voice and no rights and no representatives. 

Obama hails police state methods in Chicago

World Socialist Website
Patrick Martin

President Barack Obama on Monday praised the performance of Chicago city officials and the Chicago Police Department after a week of violence, repression and frame-ups directed against antiwar demonstrators in the city.

Footage of Police Van Running Over Demonstrators



Speaking at the conclusion of the NATO summit, Obama paid tribute to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his political crony and former White House chief of staff, and added, referring to the thousands of police mobilized against protesters, “Chicago’s finest did a great job under significant pressure and a lot of scrutiny.”

What was this “great job?”

• Downtown Chicago was effectively shut down for four days, Friday through Monday, not by the protesters, never more than 5,000 people, but by a huge mobilization of police and paramilitary forces who frequently outnumbered the demonstrators. The entire area around McCormick Place, site of the summit, was under lockdown.

• Police arrested well over 100 demonstrators in the course of the week, including more than 60 Sunday, a day of tense confrontations in which police continually vented their hostility towards the demonstrators, who were opposing the US-NATO war in Afghanistan and other imperialist military interventions.

• The violent dispersal of the protesters late Sunday afternoon was entirely one-sided, as described by the Chicago Sun-Times—a staunchly pro-police tabloid—which headlined its account, “Riot Gear Cops Rain Down Blows on Protesters.” The beatings were so widespread and indiscriminate that one of the newspaper’s own reporters was among those bloodied. At least 25 demonstrators were injured, with a dozen requiring hospital treatment.

• Most ominously, five protesters were arrested in police raids targeting individuals supposedly preparing “terrorist” attacks on the NATO summit. The same two informants fingered all five men, after the undercover cops had circulated widely among the protesters looking for anyone they could instigate or entrap.

FBI: We need wiretap-ready Web sites - now

CNET
Declan McCullagh


CNET learns the FBI is quietly pushing its plan to force surveillance backdoors on social networks, VoIP, and Web e-mail providers, and that the bureau is asking Internet companies not to oppose a law making those backdoors mandatory.

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.

"If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding," an industry representative who has reviewed the FBI's draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second industry representative briefed on it.

The FBI's proposal would amend a 1994 law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, that currently applies only to telecommunications providers, not Web companies. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband networks.

FBI Director Robert Mueller is not asking companies to support the bureau's CALEA expansion, but instead is "asking what can go in it to minimize impacts," one participant in the discussions says. That included a scheduled trip this month to the West Coast -- which was subsequently postponed -- to meet with Internet companies' CEOs and top lawyers.

Hypocrisy, USA: Obama will sanction countries that block Internet for protesters

Russia Today

The dream of dullards (A.K.A. Barack Obama) announced plans
on Monday to impose sanctions on foreign governments that use
modern technology to tackle anti-government protesters.

United States President Barack Obama announced plans on Monday to impose sanctions on foreign governments that use modern technology to tackle anti-government protesters.

Speaking from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the nation’s capital early Monday, President Obama said America would soon be taking measures against foreign governments that rely on the latest advancements of the digital age to fight dissidents. The president made his remarks in response to authoritarian regimes in locales such as Syria and Iran, where those countries’ governments have been accused of implementing modern tools involving the Internet and mobile phone technology to keep track of protesters and block them from advancing their anti-national messages to others through social media.

“These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them,” the president told the press while announcing his initiative. “It’s one more step toward the day that we know will come, the end of the Assad regime that has brutalized the Syrian people.”

Some critics have come after the Obama administration for being hesitant to act against Bashar al-Assad and other foreign rulers alleged to be engaged in human rights violations against their own people. While the president addressed that the latest sanctions are only a small step in penalizing those regimes, they are a step nonetheless in the right direction, many feel. By forcing foreign governments to abort operations made possible through modern technology that would otherwise prevent protest movements, Obama essentially is strengthening a chokehold against regimes relying on the latest advancements to thwart demonstrations.

In other words, however, it’s a classic case of “Do as I say; not as I do.”

While the president’s announcement is indeed positive news for pro-democracy demonstrators across the globe that are threatened by governmental intervention, Obama is at the same time encouraging other countries to abort the same practices that the United States has been documented doing themselves as of late.

The White House has previously linked the Syrian government with working out a deal with telecom company Syriatel, the details of which would force the privately owned cell phone service provider to nix network coverage in areas where the government planned anti-rebel attacks. Syriatel is also believed to have recorded mobile phone conversations on behalf of the Assad government, claims the White House.