FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling

Editor's Note:  FBI seems to have trouble with the order of events.

Wall Street Journal
Julia Angwin

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a “sea change” inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann.

Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called “Big Brother in the 21st Century” on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use.

These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law.

After the ruling, the FBI had a problem collecting the devices that it had turned off, Mr. Weissmann said. In some cases, he said, the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them.

Mr. Weissmann said that the FBI is now working to develop new guidelines for the use of GPS devices. He said the agency is also working on guidelines to cover the broader implications of the court decision beyond GPS devices.

For instance, he said, agency is now “wrestling” with the legality of whether agents can lift up the lid of a trash can without committing trespass. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Jones held that the agents had trespassed when placing the GPS device on a car without warrant.

He said the agency is also considering the implications of the concurring justices – whose arguments were largely based on the idea that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of their movements, even if those movements are in public.

“From a law enforcement perspective, even though its not technically holding, we have to anticipate how it’s going to go down the road,” Mr. Weissmann said.

Wyoming House advances doomsday bill

Star Tribune
Jeremy Pelzer

CHEYENNE — State representatives on Friday advanced legislation to launch a study into what Wyoming should do in the event of a complete economic or political collapse in the United States.

House Bill 85 passed on first reading by a voice vote. It would create a state-run government continuity task force, which would study and prepare Wyoming for potential catastrophes, from disruptions in food and energy supplies to a complete meltdown of the federal government.

The task force would look at the feasibility ofWyoming issuing its own alternative currency, if needed. And House members approved an amendment Friday by state Rep. Kermit Brown, R-Laramie, to have the task force also examine conditions under which Wyoming would need to implement its own military draft, raise a standing army, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, has said he doesn’t anticipate any major crises hitting America anytime soon. But with the national debt exceeding $15 trillion and protest movements growing around the country, Miller said Wyoming — which has a comparatively good economy and sound state finances — needs to make sure it’s protected should any unexpected emergency hit the U.S.

Several House members spoke in favor of the legislation, saying there was no harm in preparing for the worst.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room today what would come up here and say that this country is in good shape, that the world is stable and in good shape — because that is clearly not the case,” state Rep. Lorraine Quarberg, R-Thermopolis, said. “To put your head in the sand and think that nothing bad’s going to happen, and that we have no obligation to the citizens of the state of Wyoming to at least have the discussion, is not healthy.”

Wyoming’s Department of Homeland Security already has a statewide crisis management plan, but it doesn’t cover what the state should do in the event of an extreme nationwide political or economic collapse. In recent years, lawmakers in at least six states have introduced legislation to create a state currency, all unsuccessfully.

The task force would include state lawmakers, the director of the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security, the Wyoming attorney general and the Wyoming National Guard’s adjutant general, among others.

The bill must pass two more House votes before it would head to the Senate for consideration. The original bill appropriated $32,000 for the task force, though the Joint Appropriations Committee slashed that number in half earlier this week.

University of Wyoming political science professor Jim King said the potential for a complete unraveling of the U.S. government and economy is “astronomically remote” in the foreseeable future.
But King noted that the federal government set up a Continuity of Government Commission in 2002, of which former U.S. Sen. Al Simpson, R-Wyo., was co-chairman. However, King said he didn’t know of any states that had established a similar board.

Contact capital bureau reporter Jeremy Pelzer at 307-632-1244 or jeremy.pelzer@trib,com

MIT prof: “there won’t be much warming due to CO2”

Common Sense and Wonder
Don Surber

Dr. Richard Lindzen

Richard Siegmund Lindzen, 72, an atmospheric physicist at MIT, contributed to the IPCC reports of 1995 and 2001 and this week went to Parliament in Britain to address a seminar arranged by the Campaign To Repeal the Climate Change Act. James Delingpole of the Telegraph was delighted and praised the professor’s speech, which can be read in whole here.

From James Delingpole: “Dick Lindzen does not need to raise his voice. He does not use hyperbole. In a tone somewhere between weariness and withering disdain, he lets the facts speak for themselves. And the facts, as he understands them, are devastating.”

Delingpole highlighted this from the speech:

Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

I thought his conclusion of his speech (which was punctuated with charts and scientific formulations that I do not understand):

Our recent work on the early faint sun may prove particularly important. 2.5 billion years ago, when the sun was 20% less bright (compared to the 2% change in the radiative budget associated with doubling CO2), evidence suggests that the oceans were unfrozen and the temperature was not very different from today’s. No greenhouse gas solution has worked, but a negative cloud feedback does. You now have some idea of why I think that there won’t be much warming due to CO2, and without significant global warming, it is impossible to tie catastrophes to such warming. Even with significant warming it would have been extremely difficult to make this connection.

Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating. In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age.

Now then, here is one man who has studied global warming alongside all these super duper experts and he has come up to the same conclusion that 1973 Nobel Physics laureate Ivar Giaever: The science is not there to support this theory.

So why are we allowing our politicians to bully us into wholesale changes in our economy? Barack Obama is using this silliness as a cover to give $35 billion in loan guarantees to “green” companies such as Solyndra, which not only went belly up but left behind a bunch of barrels of unknown goo.

This nation has never had as many college graduates — or as many intellectual sheep.

CNN's Piers Morgan in textbook example of how Zionists and Globalists exploit mythology, Jews, the Holocaust, 9/11 to legitimize fascist aggression

Too Big To Jail

Slate
Simon Johnson

Why did the Obama administration agree to a "robo-signing" settlement that barely punishes the huge banks behind the foreclosure crisis?

The government reached a settlement with five major banks regarding mortgage-servicing abuses during the foreclosure criss

Earlier this month, the federal government and most states agreed to  a $25 billion settlement with Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial for carrying out fraudulent foreclosures on mortgages. The settlement will direct $20 billion toward mortgage relief for borrowers and $5 billion to the government. As Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets has argued, this deal is a complete sell-out to the financial industry.

First, there was no serious criminal prosecution, meaning that no one will be charged with a felony and no one will go to jail. In terms of affecting executives’ incentives, this is the only thing that matters.

Even the terminology used to frame the discussion is wrong. Kelleher, an attorney with extensive experience in private practice and the public sector, tells it like it is: “ ‘Robo-signing’ is massive, systematic, fraudulent, criminal conduct.” Alternatively, as he points out, we could just call it “lying, cheating, and stealing.”

Second, the civil penalties in this settlement—a form of fine—are minuscule relative to the size of the companies involved. As Shahien Nasiripour, one of the best reporters on this issue, dryly put it: “None of the five lenders have said they expect to incur a material charge due to the settlement.” In other words, from a corporate perspective, the penalty is a trifling affair.

Third, such fines are, in any case, paid by the companies’ shareholders, not by their executives or board members (all of whom carry insurance). In the rare cases in which fines have been levied on individuals, either their insurance policies picked up most of the bill, or the penalties were trivial relative to the cash compensation that they received while committing their crimes—or both.

As if all of this weren’t bad enough, the banks reportedly will be able to use government money to write down the value of mortgages, which amounts to subsidizing them to pay their own meaningless fines.

The Obama administration and its allies have worked hard to sell its settlement with the banks as one that will have a meaningful impact on the housing market. But nothing could be further from the truth. As Kelleher points out, the United States has “more than 10 million homes under water” (the outstanding mortgage exceeds the house’s value). “Twenty billion dollars doesn’t make a dent in that: one million homes at $20,000 loan forgiveness is it.”

In fact, the Obama administration’s settlement with the mortgage lenders is consistent with its track record on all of its policies related to the financial sector, which has been abysmal. But it is also puzzling. Why would the administration continue to bend over backward to be lenient toward top bankers under these circumstances?

I honestly do not believe that the administration’s stance reflects any form of corruption—payments made to individuals or even to political campaigns. And, in this case, it does not even appear to reflect the lobbying power of big financial players. That power certainly explains why the Dodd-Frank financial reforms enacted in 2010 were not stronger, and why there is now so much opposition to effective implementation of that legislation (for example, there is currently a huge fight around the “Volcker rule,” which would limit proprietary trading by megabanks). But mortgage lenders’ criminal activities are another matter.

Habib el-Adly Attempts to Blame Deaths of Arab Spring Demonstrators on Hamas

Ahram Online

Ex-Interior Minister Habib el-Adly is currently being tried
for killing demonstrators in Egypt.  He is also implicated
in the Coptic Church Bombing in Alexandria on New Years Eve, 2010.

Ismail Haniya denies claims by Egypt's former interior minister Habib El-Adly that Hamas members killed protesters during January 25 Revolution

The leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, has denied allegations by Egypt's former interior minister Habib El-Adly that Hamas members entered Egypt during the January 25 Revolution to sow chaos in the country and killed protesters.

El-Adly made the claims – without providing evidence – on the final day of his trial for allegedly ordering the killing of protesters during Egypt's revolution.

Hosni Mubarak, his two sons Gamal and Alaa, and six of El-Adly's aides are also on trial. The judge is due to deliver his verdict on 2 June.

Haniya spoke to journalists on Thursday after meeting Saad El-Katatni, speaker of the People’s Assembly.

“Hamas has never interfered in Egyptian issues, before or after the revolution,” said Haniya.  "During the revolution the Egyptian people presented a model that should be followed throughout the world."
Haniya congratulated Egypt on the success of the revolution and its new democratic system. He described his visit to Egypt's parliament as "historic."

The People’s Assembly is the "assembly of the Egyptian revolution," he added.
Haniya is visiting Egypt with a Hamas delegation to participate in talks with Fatah as part of the Palestinian reconciliation agreement supported by Egypt.

The Mayan 'Decline' and Small Horses ... More Climate Change Propaganda?

Daily Bell
Anthony Wile

Here we go again. Global warming is suddenly back in the news and I think I know why. But before I discuss that, let's take a look at the latest grim findings.

Once more we're reading about the terrible toll that global warming can take. In this case, we're being led to understand that it may have resulted in the demise of a great, ancient civilization and also the reduction in size of various noble mammals.

Civilization first. According to hundreds of articles now clogging the Internet, scientists in Britain believe that a lack of rainfall may have doomed the great Mayan civilization.

This "speculation" is based on the idea that rainfall in areas of Mayan habitat declined for as long as a decade at a time. The scientists published their findings in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Science.

FoxNews/LiveScience quotes the lead researcher himself. "'Our results show rather modest rainfall reductions between times when the Classic Maya civilization flourished and its collapse between 800 to 950,' said Eelco Rohling, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Southampton in England.

"These reductions amount to only 25 to 40 percent in annual rainfall, but they were large enough for evaporation to become dominant over rainfall, and open water availability was rapidly reduced. The data suggest that the main cause was a decrease in summer storm activity."

According to Rholing, even modest reductions in rainfall may have toppled the Mayans if the rainfall occurred in the summer when the Mayans planted and harvested.

What does the article conclude? "The collapse of the ancient Mayan civilization may have been linked to relatively modest dry spells, researchers now say."

According to the story, "Scientists have long drawn connections between the slow decline of the ancient Maya, which took about two centuries, 'to climate change, and especially to drought,' said researcher Martín Medina-Elizalde at the Yucatan Center for Scientific Research in Mexico."

OK, so climate change (global warming) caused the end of a wonderful civilization. But worse is to come. Climate change apparently shrinks mammals, including humans.

According to another spate of articles hitting the Internet, humans may miniaturize as a result of global warming.

Here's something from the Christian Science Monitor on the syndrome: "It's been long known that the Earth's rising surface temperatures portend mass extinction, prolonged droughts, extreme weather, and rising seas. Now we can add a new worry: Humanity could be transformed into a race of hobbits."

3-minute video: CIA Director admits manipulating US news; CBS confirms

The Examiner
Carl Herman

This “emperor has no clothes” conclusion is obvious upon inspection of what the six US mega-media corporations submit as “news” (here, here, here, among hundreds of independent writers’ works).

Historic political and economic oligarchies have three components to transfer wealth from the 99% to themselves while avoiding an “Occupy Movement” to force their surrender:

1. Political control for self-serving laws and enforcement,
   
   
2. Economic and monetary control to literally “make” what is used for money to purchase agents for control,
   
   
3. Media to lie in commission and omission with the purpose of keeping the 99% deceived and their slave class.

Occupy’s purpose today is to educate the 99% as to the objective and independently verifiable facts of the 1%’s crimes centering in war and money (they have not subverted all laws to their Orwellian language... yet). Education will lead to arrests of the criminals; ending their power to harm and lie. The end of criminal US oligarchy opens a future for policy to uplift 100% of Earth’s inhabitants.

Occupy wants this transition to be as smooth as possible.

Please help as you see best.

Millions of people will live or die based on our collective choice. Billions of people will be uplifted or harmed. Trillions of our dollars will find constructive or destructive investment from what we think, say, and do.

Here’s what I have to help for education:
Occupy brief: Common Sense resources to end 1%’s War Crimes, looting, lies

Top Social Media Websites Caught Censoring Controversial Content

Washington's Blog
Global Research

Censorship By Top Social Media Websites

Facebook pays low-wage foreign workers to delete certain content based upon a censorship list. For example, Facebook deletes accounts created by Palestinian resistance groups.

Digg was caught censoring stories which were controversial or too critical of the government. See this and this.

Now, even social media site Reddit – which helped launch the anti-Sopa Internet blackout and publicize GoDaddy’s slimy Sopa support – is doing the same thing.

As just one example, posts from this website are being censored by Reddit. Specifically, a friend of this site who has submitted stories to Reddit has received the following messages of rejection from a Reddit moderator named davidreiss666:

    from davidreiss666 via /r/worldnews/

        WashingtonBlog is not something we consider a good source for r/Worldnews.

    from davidreiss666 via /r/worldnews/

    Please submit that story from an alternate domain. Thank you.

And another moderator named Maxion:

    from Maxion via /r/worldnews/

    I am sorry but this submission is not appropriate for this subreddit.

There are certainly also more open-minded moderators at Reddit. But a couple of censors can squash discussion on entire topics.

Why are they censoring?

Well, censorship is rampant in America ... and social media has grown so big that it has become a target as well.

In addition, as I pointed out last year [for ease of reading, we'll skip indentation]:

Wired reported on Friday:

    The Pentagon is looking to build a tool to sniff out social media propaganda campaigns and spit some counter-spin right back at it.

    On Thursday, Defense Department extreme technology arm Darpa unveiled its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program. It’s an attempt to get better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media. SMISC has two goals. First, the program needs to help the military better understand what’s going on in social media in real time — particularly in areas where troops are deployed. Second, Darpa wants SMISC to help the military play the social media propaganda game itself.

    This is more than just checking the trending topics on Twitter. The Defense Department wants to deeply grok social media dynamics. So SMISC algorithms will be aimed at discovering and tracking the “formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes)” on social media, according to Darpa’s announcement.

US spy agencies see no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons program (VIDEO)

Global Post

US intelligence analysts believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reported Saturday. 

US intelligence analysts believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The report comes a day after the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said that Iran had accelerated its nuclear program, with the country having increased its production of higher-grade enriched uranium over the past few months.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's director-general Yukiya Amano wrote in the report issued Friday that Iran had also refused to answer key questions about its nuclear development program.

"As Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation … the agency is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities," Amano stated, the LA Times reported.

Citing unnamed officials, the Times said the latest assessments by US spy agencies were broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
The report, while not explicitly stating that the Islamic Republic is pushing ahead with atomic bomb plans, will likely further inflame Israeli fears that is the case, Reuters reported.
"The Agency continues to have serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," the IAEA wrote in its a quarterly report about Iran issued to member states.

In response to the report, the White House said it was clear Iran was violating UN Security Council resolutions with its nuclear enrichment program.

"When combined with its continued stonewalling of international inspectors, Iran's actions demonstrate why Iran has failed to convince the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful," White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

The Times, meantime, wrote that there was no dispute among US, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran had been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power.

However, the CIA and other intelligence agencies believed that Iran had yet to decide whether to design a nuclear warhead.

They believe that program was halted in 2003, the paper noted, adding that their assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America's 16 intelligence agencies.