"Silicon Valley firms are building surveillance and profiling tools to help government agents make sense of the massive amount of information available on social media and in publicly accessible data sets. Are they using cutting-edge technologies to keep Americans safe, or laying the groundwork for a police state?"
"Devices capable of accessing calls, photos and text messages on cell phones were installed on two Texas National Guard surveillance aircraft. The project was funded by over $300,000 from drug-related asset forfeitures. The cell site simulators, known as 'dirt boxes' (after the company’s acronym, DRT), are designed to mimic cell phone towers and trick every smartphone within one-third of a mile into connecting with it. This enables operators to intercept sensitive information including the user’s location, phone numbers dialed, text messages and photos. The devices can also be used to record or listen to phone calls ‒ all of it without users or service providers knowing about it."
"It’s important to keep in mind that all of this was kept secret from the American people from 1963 to the 1990s. Military personnel who participated in the autopsy were required by superior officers to sign written secrecy oaths, in which they promised never to reveal what they had seen during the autopsy. If it hadn’t been for Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, everything surrounding the autopsy would have remained secret, most likely forever."
"With military-grade equipment available for the cost of pick-up, police forces have been stocking up. While some of that equipment appears actually to have been used in post-hurricane relief work, most of it is better suited for SWAT raids, intimidating protesters, and killing people."
"In George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, if you are an ordinary citizen found guilty of capital murder, the mandatory sentence is either life in prison or the death penalty. If, however, you are a former president of the United States responsible for initiating two illegal wars of aggression, which killed 7,000 U.S. servicemen and at least 210,000 civilians, displaced more than 10 million people from their homes, condoned torture, initiated a global drone assassination campaign, and imprisoned people for years without substantive evidence or trial in Guantanamo Bay, the punishment evidently is to be given the Thayer Award at West Point."
" U.S. efforts, primarily focused on training allies and proxies, are flawed, often ineffective, and can have destabilizing effects on countries that military operations are meant to strengthen, according to experts. Cast as benign training operations, they can lead to unforeseen consequences and dangerous blowback."
"The evidence for a conspiracy organized at the deepest levels of the intelligence apparatus is overwhelming. James Douglass presents it in such depth and so logically that only one hardened to the truth would not be deeply moved and affected by his book."
"That planned modernization would increase the total costs of maintaining the current number of nuclear weapons and delivery system by 50 percent over normal operating costs, according to the CBO. The trillion-dollar question on everybody’s mind is: How exactly will the US government foot the bill for such a massive program?"
"The 2,800 papers included in the new document dump confirm some salacious details of America's decades-long quest to kill or depose Fidel Castro — including a fairly shocking plan by the CIA to sow terror in Miami."
"Facebook plans to use these people -- and their ability to receive government information about potential threats -- to search more proactively for questionable social media campaigns ahead of elections, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is sensitive. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment. Job candidates like this are often former government and intelligence officials or contractors."