FYI
Black Ops, Psychotronics, Microwave Weapons & DoD "Shell" Contractors
http://educate-yourself.org/lte/blackoppsychotronics18feb07.shtml
February 17, 2007Subject: Black op
From: Anonymous
Date: Sun, February 18, 2007
To: EditorIt is true that mind control exists in Tinley Park, Ill and Chicago Ill since 2002 and prior thereto under MKULTRA. Senator Durbin says it is domestic law enforcement. The government FBI denies they do anything illegal.
National Security Advisor Robert Keenan lives in Tinley Park. Gary Plundo and his sons, Jonathon and Nick live in Tinley Park. Patrick Harrington and his son live in Tinley Park. Contrail from the Air force are frequent in Tinley Park from Johnny Jumper.
Area Commander Pribble of Homeland Security says that a device pointed at a target with a digitized voice of the target is called black-op. The intellingence agencies do it.
MIND-CONTROL EXPERIMENTATION by Julianne McKinney writes that their desires are programed, their tastes manipulated, their values set with the Black slave was chained to a living master. New black op slave has become a digit, that is expended by an invisible master without heart, mind or soul.
In " From Freedom to Slavery", by Gerry Spence in 1974, Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted discussions on the plight of dissenters in the Soviet Union reported in "Understanding the Solzhenitzyn Affair: Dissent and its Control in the USSR," (CSIS, 1974).
KGB's success depended on the extensive use of informant networks, agent provocateurs; drugs and psychiatrists for manipulation and control. Shadowing, bugging, slandering, blacklisting and other related tactics were also cited as serving KGB purpose. The Church and Rockefeller Committee Hearings purportedly ended these practices. CIA's and FBI's Operations MKULTRA, MHCHAOS and COINTELPRO.
Reactivation of surveillance/harassment/mind-control operations suggest KGB"mentality," which is underlying pragmatic contempt for civil liberties, and the driving force behind MKULTRA, MHCHAOS and COINTELPRO. As a "mentality," the KGB appears to be accomplishing more in "burying this country" from within.Directed-energy technologies in the overt and covert patterns of harassment identified as a result of our investigations, to date. To limit the success of such operations in the future, accord them widespread publicity.
Systematic harassment and experimentation by the U.S. Government, involving technologies require investigation.
June-July 1992 edition of UNCLASSIFIED (Vol.IV, No.3), published by The Association of National Security Alumni, Washington, D.C.]
We are now in touch with approximately a dozen individuals throughout the United States who appear to be targets of harassment and mind-control experimentation involving directed-energy technologies. [By mid-November 1992, the number had increased to 25.] 1991 by the U.S. Global Strategy Council -- a Washington-based organization, under the chairmanship of Ray Cline, former Deputy Director of the CIA, describes the foreign and domestic uses foreseen for laser weapons, isotropic radiators, infrasound, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse generators, and high-powered microwave emitters.. The energy emitted from all of these weapons can kill people when appropriately amplified. At lower levels of amplified, they can cause extreme forms of physical discomfort and debilitation. Mr. Vernon Shisler, manager of the exhibit and the Army's delegate to NATO acknowledged not only that directed-energy weapons are in the Dod's arsenal. U.S. Global Strategy Council's complete project proposal on this subject: (Title: Nonlethality: Development of a National Policy and Employing Nonlethal Means in a New Strategic Era, prepared by Janet Morris). Council's address: 1800 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006, (202) 466-6029.
BIOEFFECTS OF MICROWAVE RADIATION is used by the CIA, DoD, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Energy (DoE).
The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) participated in since Project Pandora. In The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, by Robert O. Becker, M.D., and Gary Selden (Wm. Morrow & Company, NY, 1985): "Such a device has obvious applications in covert operations designed to drive a target crazy with 'voices' or deliver undetected instructions to a programmed assassin."
: Lin, James C., Electromagnetic Interaction With Biological Systems (Plenum Press, NY, 1989). Professor Lin, Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois, Chicago, has books. WRAIR has paper on "MW [microwave] Weapons" at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, in mid-1989.
Executive Order 12333 specifies that government contractors do not need to know that their services support U.S. Intelligence objectives.
In its report of July 8, 1992, the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management addresses the problem of tracking funds granted to government-contracted research and development (R&D) centers. The report notes that the problem is compounded by DoD's creating hard-to-monitor "shell" contractors as disbursement centers for funding programs.
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Entries categorized as 'Big Brother Surveillance Society'
Spy-in-the-sky drone sets sights on Miami
March 27, 2008 · 1 Comment
Enhanced technology contains a threat of further erosion of privacy
By Tom Brown
MIAMI (Reuters) - Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.
A small pilotless drone manufactured by Honeywell International (HON.N), capable of hovering and “staring” using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to make its debut soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades.
If use of the drone wins Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14-pound (6.3 kg) drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting.
“Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes,” said police department spokesman Juan Villalba.
“We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission,” he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with “barricaded subjects.”
Miami-Dade police are not alone, however.
Taking their lead from the U.S. military, which has used drones in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, law enforcement agencies across the country have voiced a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions.
Known in the aerospace industry as UAVs, for unmanned aerial vehicles, drones have been under development for decades in the United States.
The CIA acknowledges that it developed a dragonfly-sized UAV known as the “Insectohopter” for laser-guided spy operations as long ago as the 1970s.
And other advanced work on robotic flyers has clearly been under way for quite some time.
“The FBI is experimenting with a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles,” said Marcus Thomas, an assistant director of the bureau’s Operational Technology Division.
“At this point they have been used mainly for search and rescue missions,” he added. “It certainly is an up-and-coming technology and the FBI is researching additional uses for UAVs.”
SAFETY, PRIVACY CONCERNS
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006 and will soon deploy one in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border as well.
This month, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz Torres said the agency would also begin test flights of a modified version of its large Predator B drones, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, over the Gulf of Mexico.
Citing numerous safety concerns, the FAA — the government agency responsible for regulating civil aviation — has been slow in developing procedures for the use of UAVs by police departments.
“You don’t want one of these coming down on grandma’s windshield when she’s on her way to the grocery store,” said Doug Davis, the FAA’s program manager for unmanned aerial systems.
He acknowledged strong interest from law enforcement agencies in getting UAVs up and running, however, and said the smaller aircraft particularly were likely to have a “huge economic impact” over the next 10 years.
Getting clearance for police and other civilian agencies to fly can’t come soon enough for Billy Robinson, chief executive of Cyber Defense Systems Inc, a small start-up company in St. Petersburg, Florida. His company makes an 8-pound (3.6 kg) kite-sized UAV that was flown for a time by police in Palm Bay, Florida, and in other towns, before the FAA stepped in.
“We’ve had interest from dozens of law enforcement agencies,” said Robinson. “They (the FAA) are preventing a bunch of small companies such as ours from becoming profitable,” he said.
Some privacy advocates, however, say rules and ordinances need to be drafted to protect civil liberties during surveillance operations.
“There’s been controversies all around about putting up surveillance cameras in public areas,” said Howard Simon, Florida director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Technological developments can be used by law enforcement in a way that enhances public safety,” he said. “But every enhanced technology also contains a threat of further erosion of privacy.”
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Police State
Virtual child passes mental milestone
March 19, 2008 · 1 Comment
NewScientist.com | Mar 18, 2008
by Celeste Biever
A virtual child controlled by artificially intelligent software has passed a cognitive test regarded as a major milestone in human development. It could lead to smarter computer games able to predict human players’ state of mind.
Children typically master the “false belief test” at age 4 or 5. It tests their ability to realise that the beliefs of others can differ from their own, and from reality.
The creators of the new character – which they called Eddie – say passing the test shows it can reason about the beliefs of others, using a rudimentary “theory of mind”.
“Today’s [video game] characters have no genuine autonomy or mental picture of who you are,” researcher Selmer Bringsjord of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, told New Scientist.
He aims to change that with future games and virtual worlds populated by genuinely intelligent computer characters able to predict and understand players actions and motives.
Bringsjord’s colleague Andrew Shilliday adds that their work will have applications outside of gaming. For example, search engines able to reason about the beliefs of a user might allow them to better understand their search queries.
False Beliefs
In real life, the “false belief test” is used by psychologists to help diagnose disorders such as autism. The subject is shown a scene in which a child puts an object in a drawer and leaves the room. While out of sight, the child’s mother moves the object somewhere else.
Unable to see the world through the eyes of others, young children – and some people with autism – taking the test predict that the child will look for the object in the place his mother left it. Only at 4 or 5 years old can they understand that the child falsely believes the object is still in the drawer.
Bringsjord’s team set up a similar scenario inside the virtual world Second Life. A video shows their character, Eddie, taking and passing the test (15 MB, .mov format).
Two avatars controlled by humans stand with Eddie next to one red and one green suitcase. One human avatar then leaves and while they are gone the remaining human avatar moves the gun from the red suitcase into the green one.
Eddie is then asked where the character that left would look for the gun. The AI software correctly realises they will look in the red suitcase.
Simple logic
Eddie’s software maintains a database of facts that is constantly updated, for example, the location of the gun. The reasoning engine uses these facts to make sense of situations.
Eddie can pass the test thanks to a simple logical statement added to the reasoning engine: if someone sees something, they know it and if they don’t see it, they don’t. The program can reason correctly that an avatar will not know the gun has moved unless it was there to see it.
An “immature” version of Eddie without the extra piece of logic cannot pass the test.
John Laird, a researcher in computer games and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is not overly impressed. “It’s not that challenging to get an AI system to do theory of mind,” he says.
‘Necessary step’
He points out that last year, Cynthia Breazeal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab programmed that ability into a physical robot called Leonardo. A video shows the robot passing the test.
More impressive demonstration, says Laird, would be a character, initially unable to pass the test, that learned how to do so – just as humans do.
But Bringsjord points out his is the first computer character to achieve theory of mind, something necessary if characters are to become smarter, better opponents and collaborators. His team are now attempting to make characters that can lie, which also requires reasoning about other people’s mental states.
Shilliday presented the work on Sunday 2 March at the first conference on Artificial General Intelligence in Memphis, Tennessee, US.
Categories: AI Robotics · Big Brother Surveillance Society · Virtual Reality
MI5 seeks powers to trawl records in new terror hunt
March 18, 2008 · 1 Comment
Counter-terrorism experts call it a ‘force multiplier’: an attack combining slaughter and electronic chaos. Now Britain’s security services want total access to commuters’ travel records to help them meet the threat
Gaby Hinsliff, political editor
Millions of commuters could have their private movements around cities secretly monitored under new counter-terrorism powers being sought by the security services.
Records of journeys made by people using smart cards that allow 17 million Britons to travel by underground, bus and train with a single swipe at the ticket barrier are among a welter of private information held by the state to which MI5 and police counter-terrorism officers want access in order to help identify patterns of suspicious behaviour.
The request by the security services, described by shadow Home Secretary David Davis last night as ‘extraordinary’, forms part of a fierce Whitehall debate over how much access the state should have to people’s private lives in its efforts to combat terrorism.
It comes as the Cabinet Office finalises Gordon Brown’s new national security strategy, expected to identify a string of new threats to Britain - ranging from future ‘water wars’ between countries left drought-ridden by climate change to cyber-attacks using computer hacking technology to disrupt vital elements of national infrastructure.
The fear of cyber-warfare has climbed Whitehall’s agenda since last year’s attack on the Baltic nation of Estonia, in which Russian hackers swamped state servers with millions of electronic messages until they collapsed. The Estonian defence and foreign ministries and major banks were paralysed, while even its emergency services call system was temporarily knocked out: the attack was seen as a warning that battles once fought by invading armies or aerial bombardment could soon be replaced by virtual, but equally deadly, wars in cyberspace.
While such new threats may grab headlines, the critical question for the new security agenda is how far Britain is prepared to go in tackling them. What are the limits of what we want our security services to know? And could they do more to identify suspects before they strike?
One solution being debated in Whitehall is an unprecedented unlocking of data held by public bodies, such as the Oyster card records maintained by Transport for London and smart cards soon to be introduced in other cities in the UK, for use in the war against terror. The Office of the Information Commissioner, the watchdog governing data privacy, confirmed last night that it had discussed the issue with government but declined to give details, citing issues of national security.
Currently the security services can demand the Oyster records of specific individuals under investigation to establish where they have been, but cannot trawl the whole database. But supporters of calls for more sharing of data argue that apparently trivial snippets - like the journeys an individual makes around the capital - could become important pieces of the jigsaw when fitted into a pattern of other publicly held information on an individual’s movements, habits, education and other personal details. That could lead, they argue, to the unmasking of otherwise undetected suspects.
Critics, however, fear a shift towards US-style ‘data mining’, a controversial technique using powerful computers to sift and scan millions of pieces of data, seeking patterns of behaviour which match the known profiles of terrorist suspects. They argue that it is unfair for millions of innocent people to have their privacy invaded on the off-chance of finding a handful of bad apples.
‘It’s looking for a needle in a haystack, and we all make up the haystack,’ said former Labour minister Michael Meacher, who has a close interest in data sharing. ‘Whether all our details have to be reviewed because there is one needle among us - I don’t think the case is made.’
Jago Russell, policy officer at the campaign group Liberty, said technological advances had made ‘mass computerised fishing expeditions’ easier to undertake, but they offered no easy answers. ‘The problem is what do you do once you identify somebody who has a profile that suggests suspicions,’ he said. ‘Once the security services have identified somebody who fits a pattern, it creates an inevitable pressure to impose restrictions.’
Individuals wrongly identified as suspicious might lose high-security jobs, or have their immigration status brought into doubt, he said. Ministers are also understood to share concerns over civil liberties, following public opposition to ID cards, and the debate is so sensitive that it may not even form part of Brown’s published strategy.
But if there is no consensus yet on the defence, there is an emerging agreement on the mode of attack. The security strategy will argue that in the coming decades Britain faces threats of a new and different order. And its critics argue the government is far from ready.
The cyber-assault on Estonia confirmed that the West now faces a relatively cheap, low-risk means of warfare that can be conducted from anywhere in the world, with the power to plunge developed nations temporarily into the stone age, disabling everything from payroll systems that ensure millions of employees get paid to the sewage treatment processes that make our water safe to drink or the air traffic control systems keeping planes stacked safely above Heathrow.
And it is one of the few weapons which is most effective against more sophisticated western societies, precisely because of their reliance on computers. ‘As we become more advanced, we become more vulnerable,’ says Alex Neill, head of the Asia Security programme at the defence think-tank RUSI, who is an expert on cyber-attack.
The nightmare scenario now emerging is its use by terrorists as a so-called ‘force multiplier’ - combining a cyber-attack to paralyse the emergency services with a simultaneous atrocity such as the London Tube bombings.
Victims would literally have nowhere to turn for help, raising the death toll and sowing immeasurable panic. ‘Instead of using three or four aircraft as in 9/11, you could do one major event and then screw up the communications network behind the emergency services, or attack the Underground control network so you have one bomb but you lock up the whole network,’ says Davis. ‘You take the ramifications of the attack further. The other thing to bear in mind is that we are ultimately vulnerable because London is a financial centre.’
In other words, cyber-warfare does not have to kill to bring a state to its knees: hackers could, for example, wipe electronic records detailing our bank accounts, turning millionaires into apparent paupers overnight.
So how easy would it be? Estonia suffered a relatively crude form of attack known as ‘denial of service’, while paralysing a secure British server would be likely to require more sophisticated ’spy’ software which embeds itself quietly in a computer network and scans for secret passwords or useful information - activating itself later to wreak havoc.
Neill said that would require specialist knowledge to target the weakest link in any system: its human user. ‘You will get an email, say, that looks like it’s from a trusted colleague, but in fact that email has been cloned. There will be an attachment that looks relevant to your work: it’s an interesting document, but embedded in it invisibly is “malware” rogue software which implants itself in the operating systems. From that point, the computer is compromised and can be used as a platform to exploit other networks.’
Only governments and highly sophisticated criminal organisations have such a capability now, he argues, but there are strong signs that al-Qaeda is acquiring it: ‘It is a hallmark of al-Qaeda anyway that they do simultaneous bombings to try to herd victims into another area of attack.’
The West, of course, may not simply be the victim of cyber-wars: the United States is widely believed to be developing an attack capability, with suspicions that Baghdad’s infrastructure was electronically disrupted during the 2003 invasion.
So given its ability to cause as much damage as a traditional bomb, should cyber-attack be treated as an act of war? And what rights under international law does a country have to respond, with military force if necessary? Next month Nato will tackle such questions in a strategy detailing how it would handle a cyber-attack on an alliance member. Suleyman Anil, Nato’s leading expert on cyber-attack, hinted at its contents when he told an e-security conference in London last week that cyber-attacks should be taken as seriously as a missile strike - and warned that a determined attack on western infrastructure would be ‘practically impossible to stop’.
Tensions are likely to increase in a globalised economy, where no country can afford to shut its borders to foreign labour - an issue graphically highlighted for Gordon Brown weeks into his premiership by the alleged terrorist attack on Glasgow airport, when it emerged that the suspects included overseas doctors who entered Britain to work in the NHS.
A review led by Homeland Security Minister Admiral Sir Alan West into issues raised by the Glasgow attack has been grappling with one key question: could more be done to identify rogue elements who are apparently well integrated with their local communities?
Which is where, some within the intelligence community insist, access to personal data already held by public bodies - from the Oyster register to public sector employment records - could come in. The debate is not over yet.
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Police State · Terror Psyops
DNA database plans for children who ‘could become criminals’
March 18, 2008 · 3 Comments
By Simon Johnson
Primary school children should be put on the national DNA database if their behaviour suggests they will become criminals, a senior Scotland Yard expert said yesterday.
Gary Pugh, the director of forensic science and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, called for a debate on the measures required to identify future offenders.
He said: “If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large.
“We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.”
But critics said this was a step towards a police state that would risk stigmatising youngsters who had yet to commit a criminal act.
The details of more than 4.5 million people, including about 150,000 children under the age of 16, are held on the Government’s database, making it the largest system of its kind in the world.
Last week it emerged that the number of 10 to 18-year-olds placed on the database after being arrested will have reached about 1.5 million this time next year.
Police in England and Wales need parental consent to take a DNA sample from children under 10, the age of criminal responsibility.
Children in Scotland can be charged with an offence at eight, but police cannot take DNA if they are younger.
Julia Margo, from the Institute for Public Policy Research who wrote a recent report on the issue, agreed that it was possible to identify risk factors in children aged five to seven. But she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them.
Chris Davis, of the National Primary Headteachers’ Association, said Mr Pugh’s suggestion could be viewed “as a step towards a police state.”
He added: “It is condemning them at a very young age to something they have not yet done. To label children at that stage and put them on a register is going too far.”
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Child Takeover · Police State
Poll: 74% of Americans Believe Gov’t Is Too Secretive — And Spies On The Press
March 18, 2008 · No Comments
Editor & Publisher | Mar 16, 2008
CHICAGO By large margins, Americans believe the federal government has become secretive — and that its agents are probably spying on journalists.
A survey released Sunday by the organizers of Sunshine Week, March 16-22 found that 74% of the 1,000-plus American adults polled in February view the federal government as very or somewhat secretive. That’s an increase from a Sunshine Week survey two years ago that found 62% felt that way.
Three-quarters of American adults view the federal government as secretive, and nearly nine in 10 say it’s important to know presidential and congressional candidates’ positions on open government when deciding who to vote for, according to a Sunshine Week survey by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.
The survey shows a significant increase over the past three years in the percentage of Americans who believe the federal government is very or somewhat secretive, from 62 percent of those surveyed in 2006 to 74 percent in 2008.
Americans clearly see dark implications in government secrecy. A surprisingly high 26% of survey respondents believed it was very or somewhat likely that the federal government had opened their personal mail or monitored their telephone conversations.
And while nearly half don’t feel they’ve been personally spied upon, fully 38% of Americans said it was very likely that the “federal government has opened mail or monitored telephone conversations involving members of the news media. Another 26% thought it was somewhat likely federal authorities had snooped on the press. Just 12% found that notion very unlikely.
“In a democracy whose survival depends on openness, it’s sobering to see that three-fourths of Americans now view their national government as somewhat or very secretive,” said David Westphal, Washington editor for McClatchy Newspapers and co-chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) Freedom of Information Committee. ASNE is the principal organizer of Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative to underscore the importance to all American citizens of open government and freedom of information.
Westphal said he was cheered by another survey result that found 87% of Americans feel knowing a presidential candidate’s position on open government issues was important in determining who they would vote for.
During this election year, Sunshine Week launched the 2008 Sunshine Campaign to encourage or pressure candidates for all levels of office — from village council to the presidency — discuss their positions on open government and FOI issues.
The survey found wide public support for access to public information — even on issues that might be thought to be politically controversial. For isntance, 66% want public access to permits for concealed handguns. By a margin of 82% they want to know who public officials meet with during the day. And 71% want access to police reports about specific crimes in their neighborhoods.
On the other hand, the public is mostly willing to cut the keepers of public records some slack. About 50% think it’s okay for officials to ask people seeking records to identify themselves or explain the reason they want the public information.
That may be because they believe the government they interact with most often is already pretty open.
Survey repondents believe their local government is very open (16%) or somewhat open (40%). Similarly, about half of Americans see their state government as being very open (10%) or somewhat open (40%).
By contrast, just 4% of the surveyed Americans believe the federal government is very open — and 44% believe it is very secretive.
The telephone survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, was conducted under the supervision of Robert Owens, operations manager of the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University.
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Police State
Strip search cameras to be deployed at rail stations and shopping centers
March 10, 2008 · 3 Comments
Likely to increase fears that Britain has become a surveillance society.
Jonathan Leake, Science Edit
A CAMERA that can see through people’s clothing at distances of up to 80ft has been developed to help detect weapons, drugs and explosives.
The camera could be deployed in railway stations, shopping centres and other public spaces.
Although it can see objects under clothes, its designers say the images do not show anatomical details. However, it is likely to increase fears that Britain has become a surveillance society.
The new technology, known as the T5000 system, has attracted interest from police forces, train companies and airport operators as well as government agencies.
It has been developed by ThruVision, an Oxfordshire-based company spun out from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, one of the government’s leading physics research centres.
It was designed for use in spacecraft and astronomy but researchers soon realised that cameras capable of seeing through clouds of cosmic dust could also see through clothing. This week the camera will be displayed at the Home Office scientific development branch’s annual exhibition, Britain’s premier showcase for security equipment, to be held on an RAF airbase in Buckinghamshire.
ThruVision already offers a smaller system designed for office foyers that can scan through clothing at a range of 30ft-40ft.
This has been used at the Canary Wharf complex in east London, which is home to several global banks and is regarded as a target for terrorists. The Dubai Mercantile Exchange has a similar installation.
The system can be linked to a computer so that it can automatically scan anyone passing and alert its human operator to anything suspicious. Clive Beattie, ThruVision’s chief executive, said: “Acts of terrorism have shaken the world in recent years and security precautions have been tightened globally. The T5000 dramatically extends the range over which we can scan people.”
Bill Foster, the president of Thermal Matrix, an American defence contractor specialising in imaging systems for the US military, is one customer. He said: “This could be deployed at major sporting events, concerts and rail stations as well as for military use.”
The technology works by detecting and measuring terahertz waves, or T-waves for short. These are a form of electromagnetic radiation, emitted by all people and objects that lie between the infrared and microwave parts of the spectrum.
The waves from any given material also carry a distinctive signature, offering the potential to distinguish Semtex from modelling clay and cocaine from sugar.
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Police State · Social Engineering
More FBI privacy violations confirmed
March 6, 2008 · No Comments
Associated Press | Mar 5, 2008
By LARA JAKES JORDAN
WASHINGTON - The FBI acknowledged Wednesday it improperly accessed Americans’ telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.
The breach occurred before the FBI enacted broad new reforms in March 2007 to prevent future lapses, FBI Director Robert Mueller said. And it was caused, in part, by banks, telecommunication companies and other private businesses giving the FBI more personal client data than was requested.
Testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mueller raised the issue of the FBI’s controversial use of so-called national security letters in reference to an upcoming report on the topic by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
An audit by the inspector general last year found the FBI demanded personal records without official authorization or otherwise collected more data than allowed in dozens of cases between 2003 and 2005. Additionally, last year’s audit found that the FBI had underreported to Congress how many national security letters were requested by more than 4,600.
The new audit, which examines use of national security letters issued in 2006, “will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March,” Mueller told senators. The privacy abuse “predates the reforms we now have in place,” he said.
“We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people,” Mueller said. He offered no additional details about the upcoming audit.
National security letters, as outlined in the USA Patriot Act, are administrative subpoenas used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records about their customers or subscribers without a judge’s approval.
Last year’s audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, issued March 9, 2007, blamed agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct. Fine’s latest report is expected to be released as early as next week.
Several Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with the upcoming 2006 findings have said privately the new audit will show national security letters were used incorrectly at a similar rate as during the previous three years.
The number of national security letters issued by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law in 2001, according to last year’s report. Fine’s annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration.
In 2005, for example, Fine’s office found more than 1,000 violations within 19,000 FBI requests to obtain 47,000 records. Each letter issued may contain several requests.
In contrast to the strong concerns expressed by Congress and civil liberties groups after last year’s inspector general’s report was issued, Mueller’s disclosure drew no criticism from senators during just over two hours of testimony Wednesday.
Speaking before the FBI chief, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., urged Mueller to be more vigilant in correcting what he called “widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters.”
“Everybody wants to stop terrorists. But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected,” Leahy said. “There has to be a better chain of command for this. You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he’d like to obtain Americans’ records, bank records or anything else and do it just because they want to.”
Following last year’s audit, the Justice Department enacted guidelines that sternly reminded FBI agents to carefully follow the rules governing national security letters. The new rules caution agents to review all data before it is transferred into FBI databases to make sure that only the information specifically requested is used.
Fine’s upcoming report also credits the FBI with putting the additional checks in place to make sure privacy rights aren’t violated, according to a Justice official familiar with its findings.
Critics seized on Mueller’s testimony as proof that a judge should sign off on the national security letters before they are issued.
“The credibility factor shows there needs to be outside oversight,” said former FBI agent Michael German, now a national security adviser for the American Civil Liberties Union. He also cast doubt on the FBI’s reforms.
“There were guidelines before, and there were laws before, and the FBI violated those laws,” German said. “And the idea that new guidelines would make a difference, I think cuts against rationality.”
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Crime & Corruption · Police State
Brainreading device sparks fears of Orwellian Minority Report dystopia
March 6, 2008 · 3 Comments
The research evokes sci-fi film Minority Report, where police in the future read people’s minds and arrest them for “thought crimes”.
Picture this: Scientists could take photos of your memories and dreams
Scientists have developed a mind-reading technique
Scientists have developed a mind-reading technique which could one day allow them to take pictures of memories and dreams.
By comparing brain activity scans, they were able to correctly predict which of 120 pictures someone was focusing on in 90 per cent of cases.
The technique could one day form the basis of a machine to project the imagination on to a screen.
Professor Jack Gallant led the Californian research team.
Writing in the journal Nature, he said: “It may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone.
“Imagine a general brainreading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience at any moment in time.”
Two scientists volunteered to look at 1,750 images while data was recorded from their brains and linked mathematically to the “points” that make up a 3D thought image.
This link between brain activity and image was then used to identify which images were seen by each volunteer from a new set of 120, just by looking at their brain scans.
The research evokes sci-fi film Minority Report, where police in the future read people’s minds and arrest them for “thought crimes”.
But such a situation is a long way off, as the technique currently only works on viewed images, not imagined ones, and it takes hours for the scanners to take the brain images.
Professor Gallant said: “It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications in 30 to 50 years.
“We believe strongly that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent.”
. . .
Related
What’s on your mind? Neuroscientists may one day find out
PARIS (AFP) — Venturing into the preserve of science fiction and stage magicians, scientists in the United States on Wednesday said they had made extraordinary progress towards reading the brain.
The researchers said they had been able to decode signals in a key part of the brain to identify images seen by a volunteer, according to their study, published by the British journal Nature.
The tool used by the University of California at Berkeley neuroscientists is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a non-invasive scanner that detects minute flows of blood within the brain, thus highlighting which cerebral areas are triggered by light, sound and touch.
Their zone of interest was the visual cortex — a frontal part of the brain that reconstitutes images sent by the retina.
Using two of their number as volunteers, the team built a computational model based on telltale blood-flow patterns in three key areas of the visual cortex.
The signatures were derived from 1,750 images of objects, such as horses, trees, buildings and flowers, that were flashed up in front of the subjects.
Using this model, the programme then scanned a new set of 120 brand new pictures to predict what kind of fMRI patterns these would make in the visual cortex.
After that, the volunteers themselves looked at the 120 new pictures while being scanned. The computer then matched the measured brain activity against the predicted brain activity, and picked an image that it believed was the closest match.
They notched up a 92-percent success rate with one volunteer, and accuracy was 72 percent in the other. The probability of this happening on the basis of chance — i.e. the computer picking the right image out of the 120 — is only 0.8 percent.
In an email to AFP, lead author Jack Gallant likened the task to that of a magician who asks a member of the audience to pick a card from a pack, and then figures out which one it was.
“Imagine that we begin with a large set of photographs chosen at random,” Gallant said.
“You secretly select just one of these and look at it while we measure your brain activity. Given the set of possible photographs and the measurements of your brain activity, the decoder attempts to identify which specific photograph you saw.”
The ambitious experiment was taken a stage further, expanding the set of novel images from 120 to up to 1,000. The first volunteer took this test, and accuracy declined, but only slightly, from 92 percent to 82 percent.
“Our estimates suggest that even with a set of one billion images — roughly the number of images indexed by Google on the Internet — the decoder would correctly identify the image about 20 percent of the time,” said Gallant.
The researchers say the device cannot “read minds,” the common term for unscrambling thoughts. It cannot even reconstruct an image, only identify an image that was taken from a known set, they point out.
All the same, the potential is enormous, they believe.
Doctors could use the technique to diagnose brain areas damaged by a stroke or dementia, determine the outcome of drug treatment or stem-cell therapy and fling open a door into the strange world of dreams.
And, according to one futuristic scenario, paraplegic patients, by thinking of a series of images whose fMRI patterns are recognised by computer, may one day be able to operate machines by remote control.
Even so, brain-reading is hedged with potential controversy.
Within 30 or 50 years, advances could raise fears about breach of privacy and authoritarian abuse of the kind that dog biotechnology today, the authors say.
“No-one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading process involuntarily, covertly, or without complete informed consent,” they say.
Although the two subjects were also investigators, there was no risk that the outcome of the test was skewed by suggestion or subliminal cues, co-researcher Kendrick Kay told AFP.
“Decoding performance was evaluated on a dataset that is completely independent of the one used to estimate the computational model,” said Kay.
“There is no plausible way that a subject could somehow make the evaluation dataset easier to decode by our computational algorithms.”
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Mind Control · Police State
Man seeking shoe shine at Boise airport may face six months in jail
January 28, 2008 · No Comments
ASSOCIATED PRESS | Jan 25, 2008
BOISE, Idaho — A California man who breached security Friday at the Boise Airport may pay a lot more than he expected for a shoe shine.
Authorities say the 43-year-old Victorville, Calif., man bypassed a security checkpoint in his quest for a shoe shine, a breach that led to an 80-minute shutdown of the terminal, delayed four flights and required re-screening of at least 400 passengers.
He was cited for failure to be screened before entering a secure area, a misdemeanor, the Boise Police Department said in a statement. The violation is punishable by a maximum six months in jail. He also could face maximum fines of $3,000 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Transportation Safety Administration spokesman Nico Melendez said the man left a secure area of the terminal and was seen by passengers using an exit door to enter the concourse.
After confirming what had happened by checking a video camera, police and airport security began the search and shutdown of the airport.
During the search, a shoe shine employee shared information on a possible identity, Boise police said.
Security then obtained the California man’s cell phone number and called him and asked him to return to the airport. Police said the man was cooperative, acknowledged breaching security to get his shoes shined and was released.
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Police State · Social Engineering
Ten-finger biometric scan required to get into USA
January 28, 2008 · No Comments
Security screening for arriving passengers has been stepped up yet again at American airports, but The Sunday Times has learnt of worrying flaws in new fingerprint-scanning technology.
The Sunday Times | Jan 27, 2008
by Chris Haslam
Last week, Logan airport, in Boston, became the third US airport to install the 10-finger scanners. Dulles airport, which serves Washington, DC, began using the devices in November and Atlanta airport began this month. By the end of the year, the devices will be installed at every international airport in the USA, as well as at seaports and border crossings.
NonUS residents have had two fingers scanned on entry since 2004, but the Department of Homeland Security believes the 10-finger standard will allow easier identification of undesirables, based on full or partial prints left at the scene of a crime or collected from terrorist safe houses or battlefields. Described by Identix, their manufacturer as “slap and roll” technology, the scanners require four scans to capture a full set of prints. These are then compared with more than 3.2m fingerprints held in the FBI and Department of Defense databases.
Identix claims that the scanner can perform its duties in “less than 15 seconds”. It says “you do need to be a trained fingerprint expert” to use the machines, and while operators at Atlanta have reported only “teething troubles” with the new equipment, the system has caused problems in the past.
In 2003, Californian Roger Benson filed a lawsuit after he was stopped by police for a traffic violation and fingerprinted using the same scanner. His prints were incorrectly matched with a convicted felon and he served 43 days in prison.
Miguel Espinoza brought a lawsuit against Identix in 2004 after his prints were wrongly assigned to a convicted murderer. The case was dismissed after the judge ruled that human error, and not the scanner, had caused the mix-up, but human-rights groups say overdependence on technology will continue to put travellers at risk.
Last July, a US government report found that “systems supporting the US-VISIT program have significant information security control weaknesses”, but homeland security chief Michael Chertoff is an enthusiast. “Moving to 10 fingerprints is completely consistent with, and in fact enhances, our ability to protect,” he said.
Categories: Big Brother Surveillance Society · Police State · Social Engineering
