American Era Of “Techno-Slavery” Warned Has Begun

A most intriguing report authored by Minister Alina Levitskaya, who heads the Department of State Policy Concerning Youth, Education and the Social Protection of Children of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, warns that the Motherland should not adopt (in any form) the educational polices of the United States as they pertain to computer and digital education of children as new research is showing that young American adults and children are in “grave danger” of becoming “techno-slaves” who will soon be unable to “fully function” in any “normal world” interaction with other human beings.

 

  

 

The greatest danger posed by this rising class of “techno-slaves” in America, this report states, is their having been deliberately cut-off from the knowledge of the ancients contained in our World’s oldest religious manuscripts that warned of a time when “no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark”, that refers to what is commonly called the “Mark of the Beast”.

[Note: The Greek word used for “mark” (as in Mark of the Beast) is “charagma” and was the seal stamped with the name and date of the emperor and attached to commercial documents used by the Roman Empire.] 

So insidious has the indoctrination of these “techno-slaves” become in the United States that for the past 30 years virtually all knowledge of the ancients has been wiped from their memory and the teaching to them of any religious subject has been outlawed, including a US Supreme Court ruling this past month that forbade a mother from reading a Bible verse in her son’s kindergarten class during “show and tell” time.

Important to note is that during the creation of these American “techno-slaves” over these past 30 years the wealth of the United States has shifted from its once admired, and staunchly Christian, middle classes to the top 1% of its elite classes leaving this once great nation on the verge of moral and economic collapse. 

Equally important to note is that while the United States has embarked upon this path of self destruction, the Motherland, after having broken free from the bonds of Communist rule, and in seeing the deliberate annihilation of American children by their elite rulers, has made it mandatory for all Russian students to study the ancient religion and by Presidential decree ordered Orthodox priests to serve in all army units.

This move by Russia to protect its children and young adults from succumbing to the false moral doctrines of the West was (of course) condemned by American rights group who warned that religious minorities might be prosecuted, with the irony being lost upon them that just 30 years ago these same groups were condemning the Soviet Union for not allowing any religion at all to be taught to the masses and have nothing to say at all about the destruction of religious teaching in their country at all. 

The most frightful part of this report, however, is contained in the section headed by the words “Nightmare Scenario” warning that with the Internet giant Google’s announcement this week of their “partnership” with the United States National Security Agency (NSA), and when combined with the coming US police forces new Internet system allowing “backdoor access” to American citizens private data (email, phone calls, websites visited, Internet purchases, etc.), their entire population will soon come under a “white space digital  blanket” so pervasive that nothing these “techno-slaves” can do will escape the notice of their new masters.

[Note: The term “white space” refers to the analog television airwaves the American people were forced by their government to abandon for it to be used to saturate their country with high-speed wireless Internet signals able to penetrate into their most rural regions and which (according to this report) when combined with the World's fastest graphene transistor created by IBM for the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will allow the tagging and monitoring of every single American citizen.] 

To the need of the elite classes in the United States to create these “techno-slaves” is evidenced by their entire national economy nearing its final collapse, and has become so dire that new reports are now showing that aside from the 20 million middle class Americans who have lost their homes, another 18 million are warned are nearing default this year. 

Even worse for these Americans is their also being warned that a complete national bankruptcy is upon them as during this coming year they must finance over $3.5 Trillion of short-term government debt (equal to nearly 30% of their entire Gross Domestic Product) that no other country in the World will buy and leading them to default and causing a catastrophic devaluing of their currency. 

To if the American people can awaken in time to avert their destruction there continues to be no evidence seen as they continue to remain enslaved to their propaganda media sources for information and which has essentially rendered them all incapable of understanding true things.

It was instructional though, for us this past week to read the rants of the US economist and New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who during an interview on the CNBC News Service stated that a “crisis” would be needed to change Russia’s economic system for the long term, and which gives a clear insight into how these Americans deal with complex issues rather than being honest with their peoples and working towards honest solutions….just create a crisis. 

And to the great crisis coming for these Americans they can never say that they weren’t warned, only that they didn’t believe.

Internet Censorship: Major Truth-Providing Websites Blocked By Asia Netcom To New Zealand Users

Clare Swinney
infonews.co.nz
Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Has Chinese-style internet censorship arrived in New Zealand this year?  The question is posed because two major news websites, Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com, both of which are run by documentary maker and radio show host Alex Jones, who is renowned for exposing the truths the mainstream media attempts to conceal,  were found to be have been selectively blocked on Friday evening and were still unavailable at the time of writing. 

Thankfully, this draconian measure does not effect all internet users in New Zealand however.  It appears to be confined to those whose internet server providers, (ISPs), use Asia Netcom for their international internet traffic.  Telstraclear, Vodafone and Worldxchange Communications users are not effected, while Woosh, Orcon, Slingshot, Telecom and Ihug users are.

An avid fan of Infowars.com and a 9/11 truth activist, Jeff Mitchell, reported on Saturday that he contacted his ISP, Orcon,  to establish what was causing the block, and was advised by a computer technician who did a traceroute, that the break in traffic to the two websites was found to be occurring at  Asia Netcom’s router in Sydney.  This technician also advised that as Telstraclear used a different route, their customers were still able to access the two sites.

There have been calls for the Internet to be censored and controlled – and for an Internet 2 by proponents of a one world government, or “New World Order.”  This is because the internet as it is, is impeding the global elites’ ability to push their tyrannical, self-serving agendas through. 

A clear indicator that the internet is regarded as a serious threat to global elite was evident when on March the 18th, 2009 Senator Jay Rockefeller of the Rockefeller dynasty, a family pivotal in the push for a one world government, [1,2] went so far as to suggest that it might have been better if the internet had never been invented and we went back to using pencils and paper, [3]. While it may have seemed like a ridiculous statement to make at the time, it was an indicator of what the global elite are aiming for and a warning. They want to make it increasingly difficult to get to the truth and they want to regain control of all media.

Consequently,  it is of no surprise that Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com appear to have been selectively targeted, as these two sites present a huge threat to the global elites’ operation. They provide access to credible information, from a wide range of contributors, which has been crippling the elites’ agendas.  They have been providing updates on what has been happening around the world, including access to the Alex Jones radio show, which is now the most popular radio show on the internet worldwide.  They expose that 9/11, the bombings of 7/7 and Oklahoma City, and the underwear bomber, were inside jobs and that, in fact, many terror-related events are government-sponsored.  Plus, they have been pivotal in exposing that man-made global warming and the H1N1 pandemic were hoaxes, and that the Federal Reserve bank is taking money from the taxpayers and putting it in the pockets of bankers, and that it should be shut down.  

Hopefully, this block is merely a temporary problem. If not, action may be necessary. In the meantime, you can still pick the radio show up at GCNLive.com by proxy, and read some of the Infowars.com/Prisonplanet.com articles on Alex Jones’ other sites which are still available, including Infowars.net, Propaganda Matrix and JonesReport.com.  Also, you can usewww.ninjaproxy.com to read Infowars and Prisonplanet.com articles. Plus, Prisonplanet.tv is still accessible and you can still access the shop which sells his documentaries via the link here: http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/faofreprofba.html. 

FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

Source: CNet



The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.






FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.



As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.


The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.



Greg Motta, the chief of the FBI’s digital evidence section, said that the bureau was trying to preserve its existing ability to conduct criminal investigations. Federal regulations in place since at least 1986 require phone companies that offer toll service to “retain for a period of 18 months” records including “the name, address, and telephone number of the caller, telephone number called, date, time and length of the call.”



At Thursday’s meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, which was created by Congress and organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Motta stressed that the bureau was not asking that content data, such as the text of e-mail messages, be retained.


“The question at least for the bureau has been about non-content transactional data to be preserved: transmission records, non-content records…addressing, routing, signaling of the communication,” Motta said. Director Mueller recognizes, he added “there’s going to be a balance of what industry can bear…He recommends origin and destination information for non-content data.”


Motta pointed to a 2006 resolution from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which called for the “retention of customer subscriber information, and source and destination information for a minimum specified reasonable period of time so that it will be available to the law enforcement community.”



Recording what Web sites are visited, though, is likely to draw both practical and privacy objections.



“We’re not set up to keep URL information anywhere in the network,” said Drew Arena, Verizon’s vice president and associate general counsel for law enforcement compliance.


And, Arena added, “if you were do to deep packet inspection to see all the URLs, you would arguably violate the Wiretap Act.”



Another industry representative with knowledge of how Internet service providers work was unaware of any company keeping logs of what Web sites its customers visit.



If logs of Web sites visited began to be kept, they would be available only to local, state, and federal police with legal authorization such as a subpoena or search warrant.



What remains unclear are the details of what the FBI is proposing. The possibilities include requiring an Internet provider to log the Internet protocol (IP) address of a Web site visited, or the domain name such as cnet.com, a host name such as news.cnet.com, or the actual URL such as http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html.



While the first three categories could be logged without doing deep packet inspection, the fourth category would require it. That could run up against opposition in Congress, which lambasted the concept in a series of hearings in 2008, causing the demise of a company, NebuAd, which pioneered it inside the United States.



The technical challenges also may be formidable. John Seiver, an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine who represents cable providers, said one of his clients had experience with a law enforcement request that required the logging of outbound URLs.



“Eighteen million hits an hour would have to have been logged,” a staggering amount of data to sort through, Seiver said. The purpose of the FBI’s request was to identify visitors to two URLs, “to try to find out…who’s going to them.”



A Justice Department representative said the department does not have an official position on data retention.

Google Re-establishes Relationship With Government Spies

Search engine company has a history of involvement with intelligence agencies

Steve WatsonInfowars.net
Thursday, Feb 4th, 2010

Google is set to establish a working relationship with the National Security Agency, the government spy force responsible for warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails in the wake of 9/11.

The announcement comes in response to recent cyber attacks on the search engine company, which it says emanated from China.

Anonymous sources tell theWashington Post that “the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information”, adding that the agreement will not allow the NSA access to users’ search details or e-mails.

The sources also said that the NSA, the largest intelligence agency in the country, may also involve the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in the project.

“The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?” said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an organization of current and former intelligence and national security officials that seeks ways to foster greater sharing of information between government and industry.

Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a privacy advocacy group, told the Post that companies have statutory authority to share information with the government to protect their rights and property.

In 2008, Google denied that it had any role in the NSA’s “terrorist” surveillance program, after first refusing to say if they have provided users private data to the federal government under the warrantless wiretapping initiative.

However, it is clear where Google’s interests lie given that the company is supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.

The government supply arm of Google has also reportedly entered into a number of other contracts, details of which it says it cannot share.

Google’s partnership with the intelligence network is not new. As we reported in late 2006, An ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele has claimed sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground

Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated on previous revelations by making it known that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception. Steele named Google’s CIA point man as Dr. Rick Steinheiser, of the Office of Research and Development.

“I think Google took money from the CIA when it was poor and it was starting up and unfortunately our system right now floods money into spying and other illegal and largely unethical activities, and it doesn’t fund what I call the open source world,” said Steele, citing “trusted individuals” as his sources for the claim.

“They’ve been together for quite a while,” added Steele.

Recent disclosures under the Freedom Of Information Act have also revealed that the federal government has several contracts with social media outlets, including Youtube which is owned by Google. The contracts are said to waive rules on monitoring users and permit companies to track visitors to government web sites for advertising purposes.

The NSA’s involvement with Google should be treated as highly suspect, given the agency’s recent track record and its blatant disregard for the Fourth Amendment.

A set of documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in June 2007 showed that US telco AT&T allowed the NSA to set up a ’secret room’ in its offices to monitor internet traffic.

The discovering prompted a lawyer for an AT&T engineer to allege that “within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans” That is BEFORE 9/11, before the nation was embroiled in the freedom stripping exercise commonly known as the “war on terror” had even begun.

In late 2007, reports circulated that the NSA has increasing control over SSL, now called Transport Layer Security, the cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications on the internet for web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers.

In other words the agency is capable of intercepting and reading your emails and instant messages in real time. It is now beyond doubt that the NSA’s “terrorist surveillance program” now extends to this.

In 2008, the ACLU also uncovered details pertaining to a secret Justice Department memo from October 2001 that reveals the Bush administration effectively suspended the Fourth Amendment where domestic counter terrorism operations are concerned.

It is almost certain that the memo was written to provide a legal basis for the NSA to begin its warrantless wiretapping program, which was initiated in the same month.

Two years ago, the US National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell announced that plans were been drawn up for a cyberspace spying program that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park”.

The plan involved giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search. The message is clear – government spies want unfettered access to the web searches and emails of Americans. Any relationship between the government and Google must be considered with this in mind.

After 9/11 the work of 16 different intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the giant National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on international communications, as well as the Energy Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration was centralized under the office of theDirector of National Intelligence.

Over decades we have witnessed the evolution of Government surveillance programs and information databases targeting citizens. We are now witnessing the centralization of this vast control grid Panopticon.

The latest marriage between Google and the intelligence community also comes in the wake of increased calls to introduce a global licensing system to police the Internet in the name of preventing cyber warfare.

Intel Boss Blair: Government Plans to Kill Citizens

Kurt NimmoPrison Planet.com
Thursday, February 4, 2010

Patsies take heed. The U.S. government will kill you. That’s what the Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told a House intelligence committee yesterday. The Department of Defense will “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed” in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens who make the mistake of joining organizations created by the CIA and the Mossad.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.

The CIA created al-Qaeda from scratch in Afghanistan. Hamas was created by Mossad in order to undermine the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Both countries have long and sordid histories of creating terrorist organizations for political purposes.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the groups threatening the homeland include al-Qaeda and Hamas.

“As the United States steps up its campaign against suspected terrorists overseas, it has become more apparent that some extremists may be U.S. citizens,” reports the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post.

“I just don’t want Americans who are watching this to think that we are careless about endangering — in fact, we’re not careless about endangering American lives as we try to carry out the policies to protect most of the country,” said Blair.

One such suspected terrorist is the former imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, who was born in in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is said to now reside in Yemen. According to the government and the corporate media, the accused Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, and the pathetic Christmas day non-bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are closely connected to al-Aulaqi.

Mr. al-Aulaqi is apparently the sort of Muslim favored by intelligence services. Like Mohammed Atta and the supposed 9/11 hijackers who were trained on U.S. military bases, al-Aulaqi has a taste for prostitutes. He was arrested in San Diego in August 1996 and in April 1997 for whore mongering. The FBI insists he had a close relationship with the accused hijackers Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar. Both were recruited by NATO and the U.S. to fight in Bosnia.

It is said al-Aulaqi acts as the senior talent recruiter and motivator “for al-Qaeda and all of its franchises” and the spiritual leader of the supposed 9/11 hijackers. Shortly after 9/11, the FBI suspected that he had connections to the 9/11 plot. They interviewed him repeatedly but were unable to find enough evidence to charge him and they could not deport him because of his U.S. citizenship. The alleged al-Qaeda talent recruiter skipped the country in March of 2002 after the government contemplated jailing him on an obscure law against transporting prostitutes across state lines.

The following October, al-Aulaqi made a surprise return to the United States. He was detained by Custom agents because his name was on a terror watch list. Customs agents notified the FBI, but they were told that his name was taken off the watch list just the day before (one of a long list of coincidences related to 9/11). He was released after only three hours. In addition, al-Aulaqi was the subject of an active Customs investigation into money laundering called Operation Greenquest. He was not arrested for this either. Custom agents would later accuse the FBI of sabotaging Operation Greenquest.

It looks like al-Aulaqi set up another Muslim for a fall. He visited the Fairfax, Virginia, home of Ali al Timimi, the leader of a nearby Islamic center. According to a later court filing, Aulaqi attempted to get al Timimi to discuss the recruitment of young Muslims but al Timimi did not show an interest. The hapless Islamic leader would later be sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. for inciting young Muslims to fight in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 (behavior encouraged and handsomely rewarded by the CIA before “everything changed” on September 11, 2001).

Anwar al-Aulaqi managed to elude the FBI and escape the country. “We don’t know how he got out,” the FBI explained. The FBI later admitted they were “very interested” in al-Aulaqi and yet failed to stop him from leaving the country.

Obviously, the FBI and the CIA considered al-Aulaqi an important asset and that is why he was allowed to enter and exit the country without fear of arrest. His ultimate destiny is to be an expendable patsy who will be taken out by a Predator drone (along with a dozen or so innocent Yemenis).

Blair’s announcement is nothing new. In 2002, the CIA took out American citizen Kamal Derwish in Yemen one day before the election in the United States. A former high-level intelligence officer complained that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted “to take guys out for political effect.” The neocons claimed Derwish was the leader of a group of pathetic “sleeper cell” patsies in Lackawanna, New York.

The same “political effect” is in operation now as Blair and CIA director Leon Panetta hype up the threat of a new wave of manufactured terrorism. The CIA has murdered people in distant lands for more than fifty years, including American citizens, so all of this is nothing new.

Blair’s comments merely inform us that the Obama administration is indistinguishable from the Bush administration and its gaggle of murderous neocons. Nothing has changed except the faces in the rogues’ gallery.

Verichip is now called PositiveID! Roll up your sleeve for the implantable human microchip, it’s now Positive?

Greg Nikolettos 
Op Ed News
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

As sure as the sun rises, so Verichip keeps spawning and shape shifting to gain market acceptance as people from across the globe unite and reject the IBM seed-funded, Raytheon-manufactured Human Implantable microchip company.

To “mark’ a new year, Verichip is now called PositiveID!. If you have followed this company’s progress as we have and cited the damning evidence showcasing a casual link between microchipping and cancer⁴, Verichip is certainly not positive. But in this world of semantics and double speak, no doubt a CEO meeting along with other top execs decided that throwing the word “Positive” in the title would make Alzheimer patients who get microchipped without their consent less hesitant as their sleeve was rolled up in the name of “wander protection’. “Was that a needle?” asks the patient? “No! it was a mosquito bite, you have Alzheimer’s, remember?”

What has changed in 2010?

Well, Verichip/PositiveID has a new marketing and media relations company! Just as all actors in Hollywood require an agent to handle their image as they enter the market, so Verichip/PositiveID has decided to do the same.

The company taking over Verichips/PositiveID media relations and corporate communications is Gibraltar⁵. A company who has close ties with the Clinton administration, expertise in biotech, energy and of course as a company who has excellent inroads into government, Gibraltar even has the mandatory Washington office!⁷

Why this recent appointment?

Verichip/PositiveID has been pummeled on the NASDAQ , having been delisted in March 2009, but staging a comeback to have their stock regain NASDAQ Compliance⁸ in October 2009. Verichip/PositiveID stock has been crushed from a high of just over $10 down to a humiliating low of $0.24 cents.9

Why this backlash? It’s a human implantable microchip and that does not sit well with the Ma and Pa investor. Who in their right mind invests in a company whose product causes tumors? Who in their right mind invests in a company that microchips Alzheimer patients without their consent? As Verichip/PositiveID’s stock price today indicates, not many individuals and certainly not investment companies who are minimizing risk in the current economy.

Regardless of what happens on the stock market, the fact is Verichip is not going away. Why? Because their seed funding originates from the information giant IBM who has over 407,000 employees worldwide. Nothing like having a Big Blue Sugar Daddy watching over you in this financial climate, especially one that writes off a $60 million dollar loan to ensure the human microchipping agenda is in place for “future’ generations. $60 million is chickenfeed to a company who turns over 100 billion US dollars a year. Yes sir, the IBM Hollerith Machine Punch Card system was very profitable in WWII, cleverly “leased” to the Nazi regime to create enabling technologies to identify and catalog non-compliant peoples.

IBM custom-designed and constantly updated the Hollerith Machine using the punch-card system and thus Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the undesirables. But let’s remember Hitlers Mantra “Jews are evil, Negros are despicable, Gypsies simply could not stay put, wandering all over the place and homosexuals, well we all know what filthy acts they get up to!! Hitlers remedy? Zyklon B, the brand name of the cyanide-based pesticide used in the Holocaust gas chambers !⁴

The Zyklon B patents were owned by a little company called IG Farben who was also in bed with John D. Rockefeller’s United States based Standard Oil Co. during the reign of the Third Reich, but that’s another story altogether. ⁵

Agfa, BASF, and Bayer continue today after the buyout of IG Faben Western Assets, showing that you can’t keep a good criminal company down. But let’s remember, we all need to be more forgiving as BASF manufactured excellent magnetic recording cassette tapes in the 80s-90s as acid house music merged and fused into techno.

A crash course in Verichip/PositiveID! Buckle Up!

Verichip/PositiveID is manufactured by Raytheon Microelectronics España/ECLAN from Tomahawk Missile fame thus creating a synergy between the fifth largest defense government contractor and the human implantable microchip.

Full article here

Swiss halt deal with U.S. that IDs Americans with secret UBS bank accounts

David S. Hilzenrath 
Washington Post
Thursday, January 28, 2010

Americans who hid money from the Internal Revenue Service in secret Swiss bank accounts may escape exposure, at least for now.

An agreement between the U.S. and Swiss governments that was supposed to blow the cover on 4,450 accounts at Switzerland’s largest bank is in danger of collapse.

The Swiss government said Wednesday that it has suspended the disclosure of information to the United States under the agreement and may seek to renegotiate the deal.

The announcement came days after a Swiss court ruled that it would be illegal for Switzerland to comply with the August accord. The court essentially declared that long-standing secrecy protections trumped the agreement. The decision came in a test case involving a UBS account holder who was fighting to stay in the shadows.

Full story here.

Home Office spawns new unit to expand internet surveillance

Chris Williams
The Register
Thursday, January 28, 2010

The Home Office has created a new unit to oversee a massive increase in surveillance of the internet, The Register has learned, quashing suggestions the plans are on hold until after the election.

The new Communications Capabilities Directorate (CCD) has been created as a structure to implement the £2bn Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP), sources said.

The CCD is staffed by the same officials who have have been working on IMP since 2007, but it establishes the project on a more formal basis in the Home Office. It is not yet included on the Home Office’s list of directorates.

The intelligence and law enforcement agencies have pushed hard for new laws to force communications providers to store details of who contacts whom, when, where and how via the internet.

However, following a consultation last year, when the Home Office’s plans were heavily criticised by ISPs and mobile companies, it was widely assumed progress on IMP would slow or stop. The CCD has continued meeting with industry to try to allay concerns about the project’s costs, effect on customer privacy and technical feasibility.

“The Home Office has long been working with communications service providers to take forward legislation providing for the retention of communications data,” a Home Office spokesman said. “That is continuing.”

Full story here.

The Value of Government Surveillance of Citizens

Jacob Hornberger
Campaign For Liberty
Thursday, January 28th, 2010

It’s amusing to watch U.S. officials protest the Chinese government’s surveillance of its own citizens. After all, isn’t it the U.S. government that secretly and illegally conspired with private telecom companies to record telephone conversations of private American citizens? And isn’t it the U.S. government that secured both civil and criminal immunity for the telecoms’ decision to sell out the privacy of their customers to the feds?

One of the aspects of the federal government’s telecom surveillance scheme that is rarely mentioned by the mainstream press goes to the heart of why government surveillance of its citizens is so valuable — to provide a means to keep the citizenry subdued and subservient through an subtle form of blackmail.

Prior to the NSA-telecom scandal, Americans had a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to their telephone conversations. They would feel free to talk about things with friends and relatives that they would never expect the authorities or the public to find out.

Some of the things discussed might be illegal in nature but other things might just be things that would be embarrassing if the public were to find out.

For example, conversations about the use or purchase of illicit drugs. Or married people having adulterous affairs. Or business people engaged in unethical conduct at work. Or hurtful gossip about friends and acquaintances.

The range of private communications that people would not want to be made public are endless — conversations that most everyone figured were private at the time they were taking place.

But little did everyone know, that wasn’t necessarily the case. As it turns out, the U.S. government, operating through the NSA in cooperation with U.S. telecoms, was secretly recording countless telephone conversations of countless Americans for an extended period of time. The recordings of those conversations are now in the permanent databases of the NSA and possibly other government agencies.

What better way to keep an entire populace subdued, subservient, and obedient? People who are now tempted to, say, join a Tea Party protest movement now have to factor in their deliberations the fact that the government potentially has some very incriminating or embarrassing information that it could use against them in retaliation.

How could the government use that type of information against someone? Simple — by simply leaking it to a favored journalist, who proceeds to share the gossip with others until it begins to percolate within society, in much the same way that U.S. officials ensured that people found out that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.

Would U.S. officials do something that dastardly?

Well, sure they would. After all, don’t forget that when Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio refused to go along with the illegal telecom surveillance scheme, the feds retaliated with an insider-trading prosecution against him. Why wouldn’t they retaliate against someone who wasn’t playing ball by simply leaking embarrassing information about him?

Let’s not forget what the feds did to Martin Luther King when he began shaking up the establishment. They secretly recorded his telephone conversations and then attempted to blackmail him into ceasing his civil-rights activities by threatening to release information about extramarital affairs that he was purportedly having.

Why did they believe that King was having such affairs? Their secret recordings of his telephone conversations provided them that information.

To his credit, King refused to succumb to the federal blackmail. But he paid a big price for it. The feds leaked the evidence they had acquired in their secret surveillance to some favored journalist stooges who then made the information public.

Would Americans who have had their private telephone conversations secretly and illegally recorded by the NSA respond like King did? Some would. But by the same token, there undoubtedly is a certain number of Americans who would say, “Not me. Count me out. I’m keeping my head down. I can’t afford to have my telephone conversations disclosed to my family, my company, or the public.”

Police fight cellphone recordings

Daniel Rowinski

Boston Globe
Wednesday , January 13th, 2010

Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.

Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.

“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,’’ Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.’’

The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.

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