Homeland Stupidity

Chinese Justice – Or Orwell Circa 2013?

"The Ministry of Public Security is working to set up an annual high-level meeting with US judicial officials in a bid to catch and return more Chinese fugitives. 'We're negotiating with the US Department of Homeland Security and will try to arrange the first summit this year,' said Wang Liqiang, a senior official in the ministry's international cooperation bureau. The meeting is expected to bring together the minister of public security and senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with their US counterparts to discuss cooperation on intelligence, operations, suspect repatriations and the recovery of stolen assets." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingChinese Justice – Or Orwell Circa 2013?

Raytheon secret software tracks social media and ‘predicts’ people’s future behavior

"A video obtained by the Guardian reveals how an 'extreme-scale analytics' system created by Raytheon, the world’s fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. The Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing 'trillions of entities' from cyberspace." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingRaytheon secret software tracks social media and ‘predicts’ people’s future behavior

Homeland Security Watchdog OKs ‘Suspicionless’ Seizure of Electronic Devices Along Border

"The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security. The President George W. Bush administration first announced the suspicionless, electronics search rules in 2008. The President Barack Obama administration followed up with virtually the same rules a year later. Between 2008 and 2010, 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the U.S. border, according to DHS data." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingHomeland Security Watchdog OKs ‘Suspicionless’ Seizure of Electronic Devices Along Border

FEMA Camp Bill Is Resurrected

"It looks as if Representative Alcee Hastings, a Democrat from Florida, has decided to reintroduce his FEMA Camp bill. The latest iteration of this bill has been introduced as House Resolution 390 otherwise known as the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act. This bill would authorize not fewer than 6 military installations as sites for the establishment of national emergency centers to be run by FEMA under the command of the Secretary of Homeland Security." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFEMA Camp Bill Is Resurrected

DHS Raids Gun Collector – Confiscates Nearly 1,500 Guns – No Charges Filed

"On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security, along with a SWAT team and Bernalillo County sheriff’s deputies raided the home of Robert Adams in Albuquerque, New Mexico and, according to a federal search warrant affidavit the raid seized nearly 1,500 firearms from the man’s home and business. While having been watched for years and no charges filed as they seized Adam’s firearms, Federal investigators are saying that they are investigating him for gun smuggling, tax evasion, violating importation laws." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDHS Raids Gun Collector – Confiscates Nearly 1,500 Guns – No Charges Filed

Paul Craig Roberts: It Has Happened Here

"Some Americans claim that we have had police states during other wartimes and that once the war on terror is won, the police state will be dismantled. Others claim that government will be judicious in its use of the power and that if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. These are reassurances from the deluded. The Bush/Obama police state is far more comprehensive than Lincoln’s, Wilson’s, or Roosevelt’s, and the war on terror is open-ended and is already three times longer than World War II. The Police State is acquiring 'squatter’s rights.' Moreover, the government needs the police state in order to protect itself from accountability." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingPaul Craig Roberts: It Has Happened Here

Bob Higgs: The Relentless March of the U.S. Police State

"The question is: how much farther must we travel down this road before people will be compelled to admit that 'the land of the free' is more a reassuring myth than a description of the land in which we actually live—to recognize that the freedoms to go shopping and browse the Web are not enough to make a society genuinely free?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBob Higgs: The Relentless March of the U.S. Police State

Fugitive Chris Dorner against the LAPD: ‘He knows what he’s doing. We trained him’

"Dorner, 33, who was fired from the LAPD in 2008, is accused of killing three people and wounding two others in self-declared 'unconventional and asymmetrical warfare' against his former comrades, a week-long rampage which terrorised police from San Diego to LA and by Friday had shifted to the icy wilderness of Big Bear. An 11,000 word rambling manifesto he posted on Facebook tried to explain his actions – and listed a 40-person hit list. Schools, stores and hotels were in lockdown and officers in helmets and body armour trekked warily through the snow lest the fugitive, a former navy reservist and trained marksman, a cop killer and a killer cop, had left traps." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFugitive Chris Dorner against the LAPD: ‘He knows what he’s doing. We trained him’

Disarm the police, not the citizens

"Every response by law enforcement seems to resemble a wartime situation these days, something one would think that Americans would be concerned about. Yet, for a nation that was born with a suspicion of standing armies and that wouldn’t tolerate the existence of one during peacetime, virtually no one objects to the increasingly aggressive tactics of local, state and federal police, often acting jointly to address routine local crimes. One can already imagine the response by apologists for the all-powerful state. 'If that’s what it takes to keep our children safe, then it’s worth it.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDisarm the police, not the citizens

California Man Taken Down at Gunpoint for Photographing Airplanes

"Larry C. was two weeks into his new job at a software security company in Northern California when he was confronted by six armed police officers pointing guns at him within seconds after entering work Monday. 'They kept calling my name and ordering me to get down on the floor with my hands in the air,' Larry said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime Tuesday morning. 'I was thinking it was some weird training exercise.' But he realized it wasn’t a training exercise after the six Santa Clara police officers handcuffed him, marched him into a room and frisked him." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCalifornia Man Taken Down at Gunpoint for Photographing Airplanes