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"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
“ We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. ”— Sign the Petition
Welcome to Missouri, where legislating against legislating is what one House member thinks will keep gun owners safe from the real criminals: people who think there ought to be any more regulation of dangerous firearms.
Rep. Mike Leara, a Republican who represents part of St. Louis County, wants to make it a Class D felony for any member of the general assembly to even propose legislation that would *further* restrict an individual’s right to bear arms.
In the earlier March hearing, US government lawyers had confirmed that, yes, the NDAA does give the president the power to lock up people like journalist Chris Hedges and peaceful activists like myself and other plaintiffs. Government attorneys stated on record that even war correspondents could be locked up indefinitely under the NDAA.
Judge Forrest had ruled for a temporary injunction against an unconstitutional provision in this law, after government attorneys refused to provide assurances to the court that plaintiffs and others would not be indefinitely detained for engaging in first amendment activities. At that time, twice the government has refused to define what it means to be an "associated force", and it claimed the right to refrain from offering any clear definition of this term, or clear boundaries of power under this law.
This past week's hearing was even more terrifying. Government attorneys again, in this hearing, presented no evidence to support their position and brought forth no witnesses. Most incredibly, Obama's attorneys refused to assure the court, when questioned, that the NDAA's section 1021 – the provision that permits reporters and others who have not committed crimes to be detained without trial – has not been applied by the US government anywhere in the world after Judge Forrest's injunction. In other words, they were telling a US federal judge that they could not, or would not, state whether Obama's government had complied with the legal injunction that she had laid down before them.
To this, Judge Forrest responded that if the provision had indeed been applied, the United States government would be in contempt of court.
"Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology—and have installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.
Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community.
The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented. The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing."
So: those spooky new "circular" dark globe cameras installed in your neighborhood park, town, or city—they aren't just passively monitoring. They're plugged into Trapwire and they are potentially monitoring every single person via facial recognition.
In related news, the Obama administration is fighting in federal court this week for the ability to imprison American citizens under NDAA's indefinite detention provisions—and anyone else—without charge or trial, on suspicion alone.
So we have a widespread network of surveillance cameras across America monitoring us and reporting suspicious activity back to a centralized analysis center, mixed in with the ability to imprison people via military force on the basis of suspicious activity alone. I don't see how that could possibly go wrong. Nope, not at all. We all know the government, and algorithmic computer programs, never make mistakes.
“ The NSA, which dwarfs the CIA, is so powerful that those with oversight are too intimidated to check its incursions on liberty ”— How the National Security Agency has gone rogue | Amy Goodman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
“ National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander’s assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens. This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 1, 2, and 4. [includes rush transcript] ”— Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails
“ "A direct assault on Internet users" is what the ACLU is calling it. Yesterday a U.S. House committee approved HR 1981, a broad new Internet snooping bill. They want to force Internet service providers to keep track of and retain their customers' information -- including your name, address, phone number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses. ”— URGENT: Congress Pushing Broad New Internet Snooping Bill | Demand Progress
“ The hubbub about scans and searches has mostly died down. But TSA continues to humiliate people as they go through airport security. A woman, Jean Weber, filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security, alleging that her 95-year-old mother was asked to remove her soiled adult diaper as security officials completed their pat-down. Weber’s mother was flying to Michigan to be with her family during the last stages of leukemia, and was traveling through the airport in a wheelchair because she could not walk. She was detained and searched extensively, but during the search, officials say that “they felt something suspicious on (her mother’s) leg and they couldn’t determine what it was.” They then asked the mother and daughter to leave, remove the mother’s adult diaper, and return to complete the search. ”— TSA Forces 95-Year-Old Cancer Patient to Remove Adult Diaper | Care2 Causes
"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
"Basically the price of a night on the town!"
"I'd love to help kickstart continued development! And 0 EUR/month really does make fiscal sense too... maybe I'll even get a shirt?" (there will be limited edition shirts for two and other goodies for each supporter as soon as we sold the 200)