Does Uncle Sam Have a God Complex?

By Norman Solomon

July 15, 2014 "ICH" - As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the U.S. government now has the kind of surveillance powers formerly attributed only to a supreme being.

Top "national security" officials in Washington now have the determination and tech prowess to keep tabs on billions of people. No one elected Uncle Sam to play God. But a dire shortage of democratic constraints has enabled the U.S. surveillance state to keep expanding with steely resolve.

By the time Edward Snowden used NSA documents to expose -- beyond any doubt -- a global surveillance dragnet, the situation had deteriorated so badly because the Bush and Obama administrations were able to dismiss earlier warnings to the public as little more than heresy.

Eight years ago, in the book "State of War," New York Times reporter James Risen devoted a chapter to the huge expansion of surveillance. A secret decision by President Bush "has opened up America's domestic telecommunications network to the NSA in unprecedented and deeply troubling new ways, and represents a radical shift in the accepted policies and practices of the modern U.S. intelligence community," Risen wrote.

Risen added: "The NSA is now tapping into the heart of the nation's telephone network through direct access to key telecommunications switches that carry many of America's daily phone calls and e-mail messages."

Complete story at - Does Uncle Sam Have a God Complex?

Article: What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine? | OpEdNews

By Robert Parry

In the heat of the U.S. media's latest war hysteria -- rushing to pin blame for the crash of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on Russia's President Vladimir Putin -- there is the same absence of professional skepticism that has marked similar stampedes on Iraq, Syria and elsewhere -- with key questions not being asked or answered.

The dog-not-barking question on the catastrophe over Ukraine is: what did the U.S. surveillance satellite imagery show? It's hard to believe that -- with the attention that U.S. intelligence has concentrated on eastern Ukraine for the past half year that the alleged trucking of several large Buk anti-aircraft missile systems from Russia to Ukraine and then back to Russia didn't show up somewhere.

Yes, there are limitations to what U.S. spy satellites can see. But the Buk missiles are about 16 feet long and they are usually mounted on trucks or tanks. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 also went down during the afternoon, not at night, meaning the missile battery was not concealed by darkness.
So why hasn't this question of U.S. spy-in-the-sky photos -- and what they reveal -- been pressed by the major U.S. news media? How can the Washington Post run front-page stories, such as the one on Sunday with the definitive title "U.S. official: Russia gave systems," without demanding from these U.S. officials details about what the U.S. satellite images disclose?

Complete story at - Article: What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine? | OpEdNews

Meet the company that wants to scan your license plate for the police | Motoramic - Yahoo Autos

License-plate readers that scan passing cars and instantly match them to criminal databases have moved quickly from sci-fi concept to daily reality, even in small towns. And just as quickly, privacy advocates have raised concerns about the systems, asking who has access, how long the data gets stored and what other kind of limits law enforcement should face for their use.

But one private firm that's building its own database of license plate snapshots has started pushing back against such concerns, lobbying against bills that would limit its business and successfully rolling back some limits after arguing it had a First Amendment right to photograph cars.

Earlier this week, Vigilant Solutions released a poll of California residents it had commissioned backing its efforts to stop a bill in the state legislature which would limit license-plate readers. Company founder and chief executive Shawn Smith called the technology "a critical tool that has helped law enforcement solve thousands of violent crimes and enabled insurance and financial services companies to repossess stolen and delinquent vehicles."

Most law enforcement agenices would agree. Most police departments have automatic plate readers mounted on patrol vehicles, while many used fixed versions that look like speed cameras which can record and read thousands of plates a minute. Earlier this month, Kansas City police arrested a man suspected of shooting at some 13 vehicles on local freeways, with several injuries but no deaths. The big break in the case came in part from license-plate reader data; after a woman reported the license plate of a mysterious car, police were able to establish the suspect's home, movements and see where his car had been in the past.

But some studies, including one by the American Civil Liberties Union, have found that such cases are rare, with the scanning only resulting in some kind of charge 0.3 percent of the time; most of those are for traffic infractions like driving with a suspended license. The ACLU says without strict guidelines on how long and how much data is stored, the system can be abused; it found one case where a county sheriff's department tracked everyone who went to "a rave party and a concert at a country-western bar."

Complete story at - Meet the company that wants to scan your license plate for the police | Motoramic - Yahoo Autos



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Introducing AISight: The slightly scary CCTV network completely run by AI | ITProPortal.com

Imagine a major city completely covered by a video surveillance system designed to monitor the every move of its citizens. Now imagine that the system is run by a fast-learning machine intelligence, that's designed to spot crimes before they even happen. No, this isn't the dystopian dream of a cyber-punk science fiction author, or the writers of TV show "Person of Interest". This is Boston, on the US East Coast, and it could soon be many more cities around the world.

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombings in April of last year, as law enforcement and the world's media struggled to make sense of the tragedy, the Boston Police Department contacted a company well-known for developing innovative and cutting-edge surveillance technology based on advanced artificial intelligence.

Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc. (BRS Labs) is a software development company based out of a nondescript office block in Houston Texas, with the motto: "New World. New security."

Headed by former Secret Service special agent John Frazzini, the company brings a crack team of security gurus to bear on its ambitious artificial intelligence projects. With the heavy traffic of Houston's West Loop South Freeway churning out fumes and noise just outside, BRS Labs has developed one of the most advanced, and perhaps most sinister, surveillance platforms known to man.

Complete story at - Introducing AISight: The slightly scary CCTV network completely run by AI | ITProPortal.com



Source is cdn.itproportal.com Subject is Surveillance.

Beware the surveillance reform Trojan horse: what's not in the new NSA laws?

This week was undoubtedly a turning point in the NSA debate. Edward Snowden said it himself on Monday, as some of the NSA's most ardent defenders, including the House Intelligence Committee and the White House, suddenly released similar proposals endorsing the end of the NSA's bulk collection of phone records as we know it.

Stopping the government from holding onto of all Americans' phone metadata would undoubtedly be a good thing for American privacy, but if you read between the legislative lines, the government might not be curtailing mass surveillance so much as permanently entrenching it in American law.

Rep Justin Amash, one of the NSA's leading critics in the House, said of the Intelligence Committee bill: "It doesn't end bulk collection but actually puts more Americans in danger of having their constitutionally protected rights violated." While the Obama plan is undoubtedly more promising, with court requests and much more, Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union has several important questions about the proposal that need to be answered before anyone will really be able to judge. And the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez detailed why neither of these proposals are as good as the USA Freedom Act, which may now be getting boxed out.

To be sure, neither of the two new proposals would actually "end mass surveillance", as this National Journal headline proclaimed, or even "end bulk collection" entirely, as most of the other reports suggest. Even the authors know it: the title of the House Intelligence bill was the "End Bulk Collection Act" for just one day before it was changed, perhaps because, as Techdirt's Mike Masnick wrote, "[Rep Mike] Rogers and his staff realized that … was so bogus that they couldn't go forward."

Complete story at - Beware the surveillance reform Trojan horse: what's not in the new NSA laws? | Trevor Timm | Comment is free | theguardian.com