Big Brother is Watching You! More on FBI Cell Phone Tapping/Surviellance/Technology!

What I didn't realize was that the FBI is tapping cell phones REMOTELY, they send the tapping software to the users phone without knowledge of it! Those shady Suits!

"If ordered to do so, mobile telephone operators can also tap any calls, but more significantly they can also remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call, giving security services the perfect bugging device. "We have inadvertently started carrying our own trackable ID card in the form of the mobile phone," said Sandra Bell, head of the homeland security department at the Royal United Services Institute." Article

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool - CNET

While they hear your convo's, they might be reading your emails!

Is tech eating away at liberties? - BBC Report

TOP-LEVEL INSIDERS SELLING THEIR STOCK

America's corporate chiefs are unloading their own stocks at one of the boldest paces in 20 years.

In cases of the very rich, such as Microsoft's Bill Gates and Google's top brass, the executives are selling a whopping $63 for each $1 of stock they bought, says a report by Bloomberg.

In November alone, leaders of public companies dumped $8.4 billion worth of stock they owned as insiders, most of it awarded as compensation, bonuses or other management incentives.

But the vast majority of the executives put their windfall cash to work elsewhere, with just $133 million being plowed back into purchases of more company stock.

Analysts say a take-the-money-and-run flight from their own companies signals a growing lack of confidence in the economy's future course, as well as fears of a possible global meltdown if the Iraq crisis escalates across borders.

It's also a good time to take profits, with the Dow Jones industrial average up nearly 15 percent this year, the S&P 500 ahead 13 percent, and the Nasdaq 11 percent higher.


Wall Street investors are displaying fresh worries that the Federal Reserve might pull the trigger too quickly on hiking rates again, possibly plunging the U.S. into a recession as the Fed did in 2000.

Just before the worst of the 2000 recession, insider sales were also at a near record.

Leading the latest wave of insider selling is Microsoft, with $594.2 million of stock sold by insiders during November, with Gates unloading $581.1 million.

Gates has been selling shares regularly - including $2.1 billion last year - as he whittles down his once mammoth stake, putting a big chunk of his wealth to work in a not-for-profit foundation that invests in a wide range of securities and other deals.

Billionaire Paul Allen also sold off 28 percent of his stake last month in DreamWorks Animation SKG for $224.2 million, keeping about 21 million shares.

Insiders at Seagate sold $311.8 million in November, while Google insiders unloaded $182.1 million in the four weeks.

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt and its co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have usually led the insider-selling parade with sales of hundreds of millions as the stock rose steadily to break the $500 mark.

article

Last Act Of Congress Preserves Internment Camps

"Notorious internment camps where Japanese-Americans were kept behind barbed wire during World War II, including a camp in Honouliuli Gulch, will be preserved as stark reminders of how the United States turned on some of its citizens in a time of fear."

"The National Park Service already operates facilities at two of the 10 War Relocation Authority camps: Manzanar National Historic Site in California and the Minidoka Internment National Monument in Idaho. The money in the bill the House passed today on a voice vote and sent to Bush would go to them and eight others, to be operated by state and local governments or organizations."

Precise details of exactly what the "restoration" of these camps will entail remain absent from news reports, but suspicions will undoubtedly be cast as to whether making the camps accessible again to process people in whatever form is part of a wider agenda to set up a network of internment camps that will be used to forcibly detain American citizens under emergency provisions.

article

Somalia-Ethiopia fighting reported

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A top Islamic official said Friday that militiamen are fighting Ethiopian troops in a southern Somalia town, and he called on Somalis to defeat "the enemies who have invaded our land."

If confirmed, it will be the first time the Islamic militias that control most of southern Somalia have fought directly with Ethiopian troops.

"New fighting has started in Dinsor. Our forces have been raided by Ethiopian troops, so people get up and fight against the Ethiopians," Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed told a crowd of hundreds after Friday prayers. Islamic militiamen seized Dinsor on Saturday without encountering resistance or firing a shot.

"Stand up and overcome the enemies who have invaded our land," he told the crowd, which had gathered to protest a U.N. resolution allowing an African peacekeeping force into Somalia.

Demonstrations were held in several towns throughout Somalia against Wednesday's U.N. resolution, which eases a 14-year arms embargo on Somalia so an African force can equip itself. The resolution stopped Somalia's neighbors _ Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya _ from contributing troops.

chron

US outlines privacy safeguards – and reveals plans to mine personal data

The US Government signalled some willingness this week to address concerns over citizens' privacy, but also launched a scheme which will analyse secret airline passenger risk profiles and keep them for 40 years.

The US Government released guidelines which it says will protect the privacy of US citizens in an era of increasing data collection and information sharing by and between Government bodies.

Congress had previously mandated greater information sharing within government and law enforcement, but there have been concerns that that process undermines individuals' privacy.

The office of the US intelligence chief John Negroponte has now released a set of guidelines for state agencies to follow in dealing with individuals' data.

The guidelines say that Government bodies must ensure that information is being gathered lawfully and that sharing with other bodies is legal. Information can only be shared if it is to do with homeland security, terrorism or law enforcement, they say.

"Protected information should be shared through the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) only if it is terrorism information, homeland security information, or law enforcement information," said the guidelines. "Each agency shall adopt internal policies and procedures requiring it to ensure that the agency's access to and use of protected information available through the ISE is consistent with the authorized purpose of the ISE."

Meanwhile, however, the US Government began a planned scheme this week which creates risk assessments of airline passengers, assessments that passengers can never see and which are kept on file for 40 years.

A programme has been identified by digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which collects information about individuals, stores it in a database and performs a risk assessment about whether or not the individuals concerned are likely to break US law.

"Personally identifiable information is collected to ensure that people and cargo entering or exiting the United States comply with all applicable US laws," said a privacy impact report on the Automatic Targeting Scheme (ATS). "Relevant data, including personally identifiable information, is necessary for CBP to assess effectively and efficiently the risk and/or threat posed by a person, a conveyance operated by person, or cargo handled by a person, entering or exiting the country."

Information will be gathered and stored on US citizens and foreigners, including EU citizens. A major source of data will be passenger name records (PNR), themselves the subject of data protection controversy in Europe.

The US has agreed a controversial deal with the European Commission to allow airlines to pass 34 pieces of information to US authorities every time an EU citizen flies into the US. The European Parliament opposed the deal, as did privacy activists, in part because US data protection is weaker than that in the EU.

"Generally, data maintained specifically by ATS will be retained for up to forty years," said the ATS privacy report. "Certain data maintained in ATS may be subject to other retention limitations pursuant to applicable arrangements."

European PNS data will not be kept for as long as 40 years, said the report, because of the conditions of its transferral.

The EFF says that the system is invasive and unprecedented. "The government is preparing to give millions of law-abiding citizens 'risk assessment' scores that will follow them throughout their lives," said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. "If that wasn't frightening enough, none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or to challenge it. Homeland Security needs to delay the deployment of this system and allow for an informed public debate on this dangerous proposal."

article

Investigative Reporter Breaks Israeli 9/11 Foreknowledge

Alex Jones was joined on air this week by investigative reporter Ed Haas to discuss an important story he has broken concerning direct evidence of Israeli prior knowledge of and possible complicity in the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

Haas details in his expose how in October 2000, approximately 11 months prior to September 11, 2001, a former Israeli Defense Force member and veteran of the Yom Kippur War overheard a conversation at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery, located in Newark, NJ., concerning the attacks and spoken in Hebrew between three men.

“The Americans will learn what it is to live with terrorists after the planes hit the twins in September.” Hass's contact said he heard one of the men say. After 11 months of desperately attempting to alert the authorities and being systematically ignored all along the line, the contact watched in horror as the attacks unfolded exactly as he had overheard.

Haas revealed on air that he had been asked by a reader to contact the source, who has asked to remain anonymous for fear of his own safety, as he had in depth information about prior knowledge of the attacks and no one would listen to him.

Article + Pictures

Audio Interview

Homeland Security reports massive abuse by government employees

A semi-annual report filed this week by Homeland Security Inspector General Richard L. Skinner showed a marked increase in arrests of department and other government employees, but contained no recommendations for security improvements, RAW STORY has learned.

Media spokeswoman Tamara Faulkner of the Inspector General's office told RAW STORY that many of the arrests associated with the report, "were due to oversight associated with the inter-departmental oversight involved with the recovery process of Hurricane Katrina."

Indeed, there was fraud discovered in connection with Katrina and the FEMA division of Homeland Security, but more alarming are the many arrests made of employees working for the government.

raw story

Take out the batteries !

the FBI can listen in on your conversation from the microphone embedded in your Mobile PHONE... Even if its turned off.

Dems set to roll over for Qaeda architect Gates

Robert Gates was an integral part of the gun-running, drug-running, and death squad murders lumped under the heading of the Iran-Contra scandal. Gates started in Iran-contra as a stooge of William Casey, and continued under Bush the elder.

When Gates was nominated by Reagan to be head of the CIA in 1987, his role in Iran-contra crimes was already so filthy and so blatant that he was forced to drop out of contention under questioning. In doing this, Gates was seeking to defend his new master, George H.W. Bush, who at that time was preparing a presidential bid for 1988. The elder Bush was the czar of all Reagan-Bush covert operations, including Iran-contra. Gates fell on his sword to avoid revelations which would have doomed the candidacy of Bush the elder. Payback for Gates came in June 1991, when he was nominated once again to be head of the CIA, this time by Bush the elder. Sam Nunn and some others posed embarrassing questions, but this time the cover-up of Gates’ Iran-contra role was supervised by Sen. David Boren of the Bush Skull & Bones clique. The Democrats, intimated by the elder Bush’s apparent victory in the first Gulf war, rolled over. If Gates was too dirty to even get to a vote in committee in 1987, how can he be acceptable today? If Democratic Senators like Levin and Biden opposed Gates in 1991, how can they find him acceptable for a much more important post at a time of far greater crisis?

The Bush regime has become infamous for fixing the facts and the intelligence to suit the pre-determined policy of aggression and adventurism. As Pentagon chief, Gates would control the majority of the US intelligence budget. His track record promises nothing but more faked intelligence. In September 1991, Time Magazine cited widespread reports that Gates "cooked the books" while he was at the CIA to support the political demands of the Reagan and Bush regimes. A New York Times editorial of November 4, 1991 concluded that "charges that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence assessments, leaving Congress in the dark and more amenable to administration policy, stand unrefuted." George Shultz reports in his memoirs that he “felt that Gates was giving me an idealized picture of what was an altogether different reality,” and complained to Gates on January 5, 1987, "I don't have any confidence in the intelligence community… I feel you try to manipulate me. So you have a very dissatisfied customer. If this were a business, I'd find myself another supplier." The Senate would be well advised to find itself another supplier today. Will Gates resist the new attacks on Iran, Syria. North Korea, demanded by Cheney and the neocons? His assurances in this regard are worthless.

In the final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Lawrence Walsh left little doubt that he believed Gates had given perjured testimony during that investigation. But Walsh concluded that the matters involved were so complicated that it would be very difficult to prove them before a jury. For this reason and for no other, Gates did not face criminal charges for perjury.

Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA’s Arab Legion which was assembled to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gates is thus part of the infrastructure that produced the patsies of 9/11:

Webster G. Tarpley

Report: Israel and Iran holding secret talks

While Iran continues to deny that Israel has the right to exist, Iranian and Israeli representatives are holding clandestine talks in Europe to settle an old Israeli debt, Ha'aretz reported Wednesday.

Iran is still owed hundreds of millions of dollars for oil it supplied to Israel in the years before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and representatives of the two countries, now sworn enemies, are holding contacts meant to settle the debt, according to the report in Haaretz.

The report was attributed to anonymous Israeli and Swiss officials involved in the negotiations.

Two mediation processes involving different parts of the debt are now ongoing between Iranian and Israeli representatives, the report said, and a third ended recently in a ruling that Israeli fuel companies owe Iran tens of millions of dollars.

AP

Melanie Morgan: Muslims Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Hate-mongering Melanie Morgan, who looks as though she hasn't laughed in at least a year, was back to spread some more of her shrill, mean spirit on Hannity & Colmes last night (12/5/06) in at least the third H&C discussion about the six imams thrown off a US Airways plane a few days before Thanksgiving. Rather than offer any kind of understanding or sympathy for the plight of the imams, who were never charged with any crime, Morgan accused them of insensitivity toward their fellow passengers by acting too publicly Muslim. She said, “Let us not exonerate these six Imams until all of the facts are in.”

Last I checked, Morgan is a talk show host with a checkered past who has no professional training or experience in security or aviation. Nevertheless, nobody questioned her authority when she announced “We need to use proven psychological, racial and ethnic profiling” on airplanes. She grandiosely offered, “I think that if I were a young Muslim male, who had no evil intentions in my heart, I would be grateful for any additional profiling that would take place because that would mean my family and myself would be flying safely.”

newshounds

Surveilled Brits Reduced to the Sum of Their Profiled Parts?

The barrage of invasive police state measures of surveillance have, of course, been ongoing with the pace of technology. Yet, in the UK the eyes and ears piecing together a total 'electronic footprint' has accelerated furiously-- and with a frightening sense of inevitable entrapment.

BRITS NOW STAND COMPLETELY SURROUNDED...

The entire citizenry are now surrounded by nearly omnipresent surveillance by way of 4.2 million+ cameras in the streets of London, some of which now have microphones to eavesdrop on conversations and even speakers to shout back at individuals in an effort embarrass and correct behaviour. Not to mention a phasing in of face-scanning cameras and other monstrous technology. AND THAT IS ONLY THE BEGINNING...

For instance, surveillance also intends to utilize CCTV to detect violent behaviour and even spy on rubbish bins to report improper recycling and waste management!!

article

Blaze kills daughter of 9/11 pilot

"It is suspicious at this point because the cause and origin have not been established," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward De Fazio said.

De Fazio said the fire damaged neighboring apartments. A neighbor reported hearing a commotion coming from Burlingame's apartment just before the fire alarms in the building sounded.

article

A NEW TRAGEDY FOR 9/11 FAMILY

Boyfriend led way to safety, but pilot's daughter didn't escape high-rise blaze

Witnesses reported hearing loud noises coming from the apartment prior to the fire, according to investigators who said they will examine whether an argument preceded the blaze.

article


sounds like somebody had to get silenced...

Iraq Study Group report: Excerpts

The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating...

If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe...

Our recommended course has shortcomings, but we firmly believe that it includes the best strategies and tactics to positively influence the outcome in Iraq and the region.

Full Article
Full report

*Yawn*

NASA plans a city on the moon

From the Earth to the moon and beyond. NASA announced plans to establish a base on the moon and make it into a permanent city by 2024. Crews of four astronauts are expected to work on the base, a week at a time, beginning around 2020.

To cover the costs, NASA is planning to keep its current budget of $17 billion and use the money saved by scrapping the space shuttle program. The space agency plans to coordinate commercial and international assistance with the program. It consulted 13 space agencies from different countries while formulating the initial plan.

One of the main goals of the project is to establish a stepping-off point for human exploration and colonization of Mars.

An artist's illustration shows one of the first structures landing on the moon.

CNET

Dissenting voices in Iraq gov't rising

Al-Hashemi, the vice president due to visit the White House next month, said he did not see the point of categorizing the violence raging in Iraq _ the U.N. says an average of 100 Iraqis are killed every day at present _ as a civil war.

"But I want to say in all honesty that Iraq is undergoing a very huge calamity," he said in an interview aired Tuesday on Baghdad, the television station of his Iraqi Islamic Party.

"All this suffering has placed Iraq way beyond what happened in Lebanon's civil war," he said.

The analogy between Iraq's violence and Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war was used by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week, who also told the British Broadcasting Corp., that Iraqis may have reason to think their life now is worse than it was under ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

"The situation is difficult. Iraq is going through an unprecedented predicament," said al-Hashemi.

ARTICLE

Blair calls for new nuclear sub fleet

"The risk of giving up something that has been one of the mainstays of our security since the [Second World] War, and moreover doing so when the one certain thing about our world today is its uncertainty, is not a risk I feel we can responsibly take. Our independent nuclear deterrent is the ultimate insurance," Blair told an occasionally skeptical Parliament, which will vote on the program in March.


"Proliferation remains a real problem," he said. "The notion of unstable, usually deeply repressive and anti-democratic states, in some cases profoundly inimical to our way of life, having a nuclear capability, is a distinct and novel reason for Britain not to give up its capacity to deter."

LA times

Millions may resist database, says poll

Overwhelmingly, the public is unwilling to trust Government promises not to misuse personal information and fears the national ID database will contain inaccurate and unreliable information about them.

Although half of those questioned said they still support the idea of national identity cards, this represents a big fall from the 80 per cent backing claimed by ministers a few years ago.

Many still do not associate the card with the national ID database that will accompany it. When pressed, a majority were unhappy that their personal details were to be recorded and worried that inaccurate information could cause them harm, denying access to services or jobs.
Most worrying for the Government is that a large proportion of those interviewed would accept a penalty rather than be registered. Half those opposed to the ID scheme would pay a fine or risk prison by refusing to hand over their details. Fifteen per cent said they would go to prison.

Even if a large proportion of these "refuseniks" eventually fell into line, the potential exists for a huge popular backlash. If just two in every 100 person over 16 refused to sign up, the Goverment would be pursuing one million people.

The ID Card Act deliberately did not make refusal to register a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment because ministers wanted to avoid the creation of "ID martyrs". The main penalties are a £2,500 fine for not registering and a £1,000 fine for failing to inform the authorities of a change of address. However, if people decline to pay their fines, the prospect then arises of going to prison.

London telegraph

Ten Canadians die after taking bird flu vaccine

The product’s prescribing guidelines now indicate that taking the drug can lead to strange behaviours, including hallucinations, delirium and self-injury.
Among those taking the drug who have exhibited dangerous behaviour, there have been 25 reported deaths around the world in the most recent one-year period.

article