Warrantless GPS Tracking Case Heads to Supreme Court

Today the Supreme Court announced it will consider whether the government may plant GPS devices on vehicles to track people without judicial supervision. In the case, United States v. Jones, the FBI and Washington, D.C., police attached a GPS device to Antoine Jones’s car and tracked his movements continuously for a month. This case provides an excellent opportunity for the Court to recognize that 24-7 GPS tracking is so intrusive that it should be prohibited under the Bill of Rights except when authorized by a court based on probable cause to believe that criminal activity is afoot.

The Court has the opportunity in this case to safeguard Fourth Amendment privacy protections in the face of technological advances. Police surveillance using GPS technology raises significant privacy concerns.  GPS devices allow the government to monitor and record extremely detailed information about our personal lives.

GPS can reveal sensitive information that people reasonably want to keep private, from where they go to the doctor to which friends they are seeing. Sensitive information about who we are and where we go should not be available to any police officer simply because he is curious about someone. It must be subject to the judicial oversight that has always been a foundation of liberty in America.

As the D.C. Circuit observed when ruling that the government needed a warrant in Jones:

Click to read more...

The global order fractures as American power declines

Harold Macmillan, the prime minister who watched US power rise as the British empire crumbled, used to say that Britain would play ancient Greece to America’s Rome.

These days it looks as if Rome is declining too. The US finds it increasingly hard to drive forward its vision of international trade and economics over the objections of big emerging-market countries.

The Visigoths and the Vandals who sacked Rome and undermined its empire, though far more cultured and sophisticated than their popular reputation, were unable to replicate the Pax Romana order it had established. European territories previously under Roman rule fractured into an unstable array of weak kingdoms and embattled city-states. Similarly, the vacuum created today by the erosion of US hegemony and the turmoil in the eurozone is resulting in stasis rather than a new direction.

Even those trade officials most hermetically sealed in bureaucratic bubbles are finally accepting that the so-called “Doha round” of trade negotiations, which the US pushed to the launch pad 10 years ago, is expiring. New Delhi and Beijing have shown they are perfectly willing to collapse the talks rather than accede to demands from Washington.

China, with covering fire from other governments, has repulsed much of the US’s charge to force Beijing to liberalise its currency. Assuming that Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, takes over the managing directorship of the International Monetary Fund, she will inherit a process of mutual economic assessment at the behest of the G20 to encourage global economic rebalancing. But recent history suggests it will do little to make China hasten the rise of the renminbi.

Click to read more...

EXCLUSIVE: New Documents Claim Intelligence on Bin Laden, al-Qaeda Targets Withheld From Congress' 9/11 Probe

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, just as he has done in years past, a top military intelligence analyst identified by the US government only as "Iron Man" will hunker down in front of his television and watch a particularly gruesome scene of the carnage left behind on that fateful day.

"Although I try to avoid it, I glimpse a film clip, a scene, of people throwing themselves from a burning tower, people who deserved better protection from their country, from me and the men I worked with, and I hear the sounds of the lobby in the [World Trade Center] on tape," said the man, whose alter ego chosen by the government appears to be paying homage to the flawed Marvel Comics superhero. "To me, the sights and sounds, the smoke of that day are not yet history. They are a knot, a silence, a facial tick, a missing friend in Iraq. They are not history yet."

For many Americans, the emotional reaction to President Barack Obama's announcement last month that a Navy Seal team had killed Osama bin Laden during a raid at his compound in Pakistan was celebratory. But for others, like the mysterious Iron Man, who has spent his career lurking in the shadows, the death of the al-Qaeda leader is a painful reminder of how close he and his colleagues in the intelligence community came to capturing Bin Laden before 9/11.

The intelligence failures leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are an issue the media - and lawmakers - put to bed years ago, despite the fact that new information continues to trickle out, undercutting the integrity of the official investigations into who knew what and when.

Click to read more...

Report: Intelligence Unit Told Before 9/11 to Stop Tracking Bin Laden

A great deal of controversy has arisen about what was known about the movements and location of Osama bin Laden in the wake of his killing by US Special Forces on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Questions about what intelligence agencies knew or didn't know about al-Qaeda activities go back some years, most prominently in the controversy over the existence of a joint US Special Forces Command and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) data mining effort known as "Able Danger."

What hasn't been discussed is a September 2008 Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general (IG) report, summarizing an investigation made in response to an accusation by a Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC) whistleblower, which indicated that a senior JFIC commander had halted actions tracking Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. JFIC is tasked with an intelligence mission in support of United States Joint Force Command (USJFCOM).

The report, titled "Review of Joint Forces Intelligence Command Response to 9/11 Commission," was declassified last year, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists.

The whistleblower, who the IG report identified as a former JFIC employee represented only by his codename "IRON MAN," claimed in letters written to both the DoD inspector general in May 2006 and, lacking any apparent action by the IG, to the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ODNI) in October 2007, that JFIC had withheld operational information about al-Qaeda when queried in March 2002 about its activities by the DIA and higher command officials on behalf of the 9/11 Commission.

Click to read more...

David McNeill: Who's telling the truth on the Fukushima meltdown?

A string of autopsies -- political, regulatory and technological -- loom over the corpse of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The media, however, has already begun its self-examination and it’s not a pretty picture.

Newsweek Japan is one of many publications that have criticized “sensationalist” foreign reporters, who “failed to accomplish their mission” during the disaster.

Newsweek says some journalists ran away and many of those who stayed massively overreacted to the threat from the crippled reactors.

Hyperventilating foreign hacks were an easy, and sometimes deserving, target.  Many observers recall CNN’s Jonathan Mann’s purple-veined report that radiation levels had increased to “10 million times” safe levels near the Fukushima plant, then ignoring a correction by operator TEPCO that knocked several zeroes off that estimate.

Missing words

But although Japanese newspapers and TV reporters mostly kept their heads, they also concealed or delayed releasing information about what was going on inside the Fukushima plant.

One of the more striking aspects of the local media coverage of Fukushima was the missing word -- “meltdown.” It seemed reasonable to speculate, from March 11-15, that this is precisely what happened. One reason was the repeated news of cesium dispersed in the atmosphere on March 12.

Read more: David McNeill: Who's telling the truth on the Fukushima meltdown? | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/tokyo/life/tell-me-about-it/david-mcneill-whos-telling-truth-fukushima-448215#ixzz1PLUJrZSr

Mississippi flooding could mean largest Gulf dead zone ever

Each year when the nutrient-rich freshwater from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers pours into the Gulf, it spawns massive algae blooms. In turn, the algae consume the oxygen in the Gulf, creating the low oxygen conditions. Fish, shrimp and many other species must escape the dead zone or face dying.

Federal and university scientists predict this year’s zone will be between 8,500 square miles and about 9,400 square miles. The actual size of the dead zone will be measured over the summer.

The largest recorded dead zone was found in 2002 when 8,400 square miles of the Gulf was found to lack sufficient oxygen for most marine life.

The forecasts of the size of the hypoxic zone are usually close to the mark, although hurricanes have chopped them up in the past.

Eugene Turner, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University, said the dead zone has continued to get larger since it was first noticed and measured in the 1970s. He said the dead zone is getting worse with time.

The biggest contributor is the amount of fertilizer — and the nitrates and phosphates in them — that wind up in the Mississippi River each spring and get flushed out to the Gulf.

Click to read more...

New Egypt? 7,000 civilians jailed since Mubarak fell

Egypt's military rulers told human rights advocates Monday that at least 7,000 civilians have been sentenced to prison terms by military courts since Hosni Mubarak was ousted — an astoundingly high number likely to fuel debate over how much the revolution has changed the country.

Advocates said the military promised to review the cases and vacate any improper guilty verdicts and commute the sentences. But the advocates voiced skepticism and demanded more information about civilians in military custody.

"This is not the first time they've promised," said Mona Seif, a member of a rights group called No Military Trials that met with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, Egypt's ruling body. "We were offered no guarantees whatsoever."

The use of military courts to try people who've been detained in anti-government protests in recent months is highly charged here. One of the complaints against Mubarak's regime was that it silenced dissidents by quickly prosecuting them in military courts. The caretaker government that took over after Mubarak's resignation has done little to alter the practice, however.

Seif said the military council told her group that 7,000 civilians had been tried in military courts since Mubarak resigned Feb. 11 and other cases were pending. But the council offered no details, Seif said. "We asked the council to provide the exact number and the names of any civilian held by military police," she said.

Click to read more...

Survey: U.S. trails in equal legal treatment of citizens

The U.S. lags behind western Europe in access to civil justice and legal assistance, according to an international survey released Monday that also raised questions over whether U.S. police forces treat all citizens equally.

The results of the survey by the World Justice Project, an advocacy group that promotes the rule of law, also signaled that some Middle Eastern countries continue to rank relatively low in certain areas, a key factor in the region's popular protests.

"Without the rule of law, medicines do not reach health facilities due to corruption, women in rural areas remain unaware of their rights, people are killed in criminal violence, and economic growth is stifled," William Neukom, the founder of the group, said in a statement announcing its second annual Rule of Law Index.

Earlier this year, the project polled 66,000 people across 66 countries, asking questions that covered eight areas including corruption, security, and access to the legal system. The researchers also interviewed 2,000 experts around the world to compile what they called a comprehensive picture of whether citizens believe their governments adhere to the rule of law.

A fair legal system provides a critical backbone and infrastructure for countries — ensuring that they run effectively, citizens get a fair shake and companies can operate under predictable rules, the researchers said.

Click to read more...

Justice Department Accused of ‘Reckless Technique’

 In a report issued Tuesday by two powerful Republicans in Congress, the Justice Department was accused of conducting an operation that allowed nearly 1,000 guns to flow illegally into Mexico, including two that were eventually found at the scene of the murder of an American Border Patrol agent.

The report, by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Representative Darrell Issa of California, said the 2009 operation in Arizona by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, called Fast and Furious, was intended to shift the focus of enforcement efforts toward criminal organizations south of the border and away from straw purchasers who knowingly buy guns for others.

The legislators criticized the effort as using what they described as a “reckless investigative technique that street agents call ‘gun-walking.’ ” The technique involved long periods of surveillance in which agents watched loads of legally bought weapons move from straw purchasers to third parties, hoping that the transactions would lead them to bigger criminal targets.

Instead, the legislators said, guns were routinely lost, and fewer than two dozen people were ultimately arrested — all of them accused of being straw purchasers. The legislators say A.T.F. agents were routinely ordered to stand down rather than interdict guns from people they suspected of trafficking weapons.

Click to read more...

CIA to operate drones over Yemen

WASHINGTON POST

The CIA is expected to begin operating armed drone aircraft over Yemen, expanding the hunt for al-Qaeda operatives in a country where counter-terrorism efforts have been disrupted by political chaos, U.S. officials said.

The plan to move CIA-operated Predator and other unmanned aircraft into the region reflects a decision by President Obama that the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen has grown so serious that patrols by U.S. military drones are not enough.

U.S. officials said the CIA would operate alongside, and in close coordination with, the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which has been flying Predators and other remotely piloted planes over Yemen for much of the past year.

Because it operates under different legal authorities than the military, the CIA may have greater latitude to carry out strikes if the political climate shifts in Yemen and cooperation with American forces is diminished or cut off.

The expanded drone campaign will make use of “a mix of U.S. assets,” said a U.S. official familiar with the plan. “It’s not like you’re going to have a change of command ceremony that goes from U.S. military to CIA.”

Click to read more...

Documentary: Cancer Is Serious Business, Watch it free!

Haunted by Homicide: Federal Grand Jury Investigates War Crimes and Torture in Death of 'the Iceman' at Abu Ghraib, Plus Other Alleged CIA Abuses

Former colleague and TIME contributor Adam Zagorin breaks news here on Battleland with exclusive reporting on the latest federal action over the infamous death of "the Iceman" at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2003:

By Adam Zagorin

It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as "the Iceman" — for the bungled attempt to cool his body and make him look less dead — perished in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. But now there are rumbles in Washington that the notorious case, as well as other alleged CIA abuses, could be returning to haunt the agency. TIME has learned that a prosecutor tasked with probing the CIA — John Durham, a respected, Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney from Connecticut — has begun calling witnesses before a secret federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., looking into, among other things, the lurid Nov. 4, 2003, homicide, which was documented by TIME in 2005.

TIME has obtained a copy of a subpoena signed by Durham that points to his grand jury's broader mandate, which could involve charging additional CIA officers and contract employees in other cases. The subpoena says "the grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 243OA) and related federal offenses."

In 2009 — after President Barack Obama replaced President George W. Bush — new U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder tapped Durham to review roughly a dozen cases of alleged abuse against “war on terror” suspects that had gone dormant. Holder's decision to expand the probe occurred shortly before the CIA released a five-year-old IG report detailing a litany of detainee abuse by the agency.

Read more: http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/06/13/haunted-by-homicide-federal-grand-jury-investigates-war-crimes-and-torture-in-death-of-the-ice-man-at-abu-ghraib-and-other-alleged-cia-abuses/#ixzz1PHbeSUZT

Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say

Reporting from Washington—

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.

Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.

For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be "the largest theft of funds in national history."

Click to read more...

LEAKED Pentagon Eugenics Alter DNA breed out Religious impulses via FunVax Vaccinations & Aerosol Spraying!

This is a lecture by an unidentified scientist given to DoD officials inside the Pentagon. It is dated 4-13-05 -- about a year after the "God Gene" was first discovered. The scientist describes a plan to alter the "God Gene" in the Middle Easter Population in order to end the turmoil in that region.

F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds!!!

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

“Claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse,” Mr. German said, pointing to complaints about the bureau’s surveillance of domestic political advocacy groups and mosques and to an inspector general’s findings in 2007 that the F.B.I. had frequently misused “national security letters,” which allow agents to obtain information like phone records without a court order.

Click to read more...

US Is in Even Worse Shape Financially Than Greece: Gross

 When adding in all of the money owed to cover future liabilities in entitlement programs the US is actually in worse financial shape than Greece and other debt-laden European countries, Pimco's Bill Gross told CNBC Monday.

Getty Images

Much of the public focus is on the nation's public debt, which is $14.3 trillion. But that doesn't include money guaranteed for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which comes to close to $50 trillion, according to government figures.

The government also is on the hook for other debts such as the programs related to the bailout of the financial system following the crisis of 2008 and 2009, government figures show.

Taken together, Gross puts the total at "nearly $100 trillion," that while perhaps a bit on the high side, places the country in a highly unenviable fiscal position that he said won't find a solution overnight.

"To think that we can reduce that within the space of a year or two is not a realistic assumption," Gross said in a live interview. "That's much more than Greece, that's much more than almost any other developed country. We've got a problem and we have to get after it quickly."

Click to read more...

FDA Makes Good on Threat to Raid Pro-Biotics Manufacturer

Federal law requires that any statement made with regard to medications or medical products must be investigated and approved by the FDA before being publicly broadcast. This is to protect consumers from unscrupulous companies seeking to make money from promises not proven to be truthful. As well, FDA approval ensures that products available on the American market are safe and will not cause harm to consumers and patients. Any manufacturer making medical statements of fact about certain products will certainly be reprimanded by the FDA followed by a search and seizure of the production facility.

Tuesday morning, the FDA made good on one of these threats as it raided UAS laboratories in search of certain “probiotic” products that had not been evaluated by the FDA. The FDA claims that not only did UAS flout its warnings but it continued to make non-medical statements about its products. The CEO of the corporation assured its consumers that “[its] products are safe and effective and they need not worry about the probiotics they are taking. That is not at issue with the FDA.” “What is at issue with FDA are statements made on our website that FDA believes expand our labeling and make ‘drug-like’ claims for our probiotics. So like nutritional supplements, we cannot make claims beyond describing general health benefits even though the medical and scientific literature may be suggestive of certain more specific health benefits.”

This is not UAS’s first run-in with the FDA over labeling concerns. In 2005, the manufacturer faced FDA scrutiny for placing promises on its label that the probiotics could inhibit ulcers and prevent against e. coli poisoning. It also promised its products could protect women from uncomfortable vaginal and yeast infections.

Click to read more...

Bilderberg: The Uber Powerful Global Elite Meet Behind Closed Doors In St. Moritz

ST. MORITZ - Dominique Strauss-Kahn will not be stepping out of a limousine this year. That much is sure about this year’s Bilderberg conference, which the former IMF chief, awaiting trial for alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid in New York, is said to have attended several times in the past. But little else is known about this secretly organized, unofficial meeting of some 100 powerful figures, slated to take place June 9-12 in a luxury hotel in the Grison station. Indeed, not even the dates of the gathering are confirmed.

The canton is to ensure the tranquility of its guests with the help of the Federal security service. Two of its ministers will take part in some of the discussions. But the canton is not commenting on the measures in place or the cost of the operation.

The Bilderberg group is one of the world’s most famous clubs. It gathers bankers, politicians, industrialists, media movers and shakers, scholars and billionaires in a different location each year, usually in Europe. All the attendees share one condition of membership: discretion.

Created in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of Holland in order to bring together European and American elites, this annual meeting is named after the hotel of the Dutch village Oosterbeek where it took place for the first time. Henry Kissinger, Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder, Daniek Vasella, the heads of Coca-Cola, Shell, Fiat and even the Queen of Holland are among the participants regularly mentioned. What do they do there? What do they want?

Click to read more...

Events of 9/11 to be discussed in Cork

An alternative theory about what happened in New York on September 11th, 2001 will be presented to a Cork audience next week. American Richard Gage is the founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and believes that a series of explosions were actually responsible for the collapse of three World Trade Centre buildings and not jet fuel fires as maintained by the US Government.

A San Francisco-based architect with 23 years experience, Gage’s suspicions began as he watched events unfolding live on television but it was not until four years later - when he heard testimony describing a series of explosions in and around the WTC buildings before, during and after the structures collapsed - that he took a more serious interest. US activist Luke Rudkowski and former MEP Kathy Sinnott will also speak at The Masterplan event.

“People coming along to the Montenotte Hotel will learn about the 1,500 architects and engineers that are demanding a new investigation into the destruction of all three World Trade Centre high-rise buildings,” Mr. Gage explained to the The Cork News this week. “The third tower was World Trade Centre 7 and we realised that we, as professionals, knew nothing about the third worst structural failure in modern history when a 47-story skyscraper dropped cleanly, symmetrically and straight down into its own footprint. 

"Our Government told us the destruction was caused by small, scattered fires but that makes no sense because fire had never brought a skyscraper down before and it’s not what was seen at the base of these buildings. We don’t see a gravitational collapse - 90,000 tonnes of concrete was pulversied in mid air and four tonne perimeter wall units were ejected and landed 600 feet away.

Click to read more...

Richard Gage Live on TV3 - The Masterplan Event