Has The Patriot Act Metamorphosed into The Freedom Act?

US Spy Architecture Pared Back as Part of Patriot Act Expires, shouts the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times claims a decade-long shift from focus on national security to a shift on civil liberties in the post Snowden era. Yes, the corporate owned mainstream media is doing its very best to hype the expiration of the Patriot Act while extolling the virtues of its replacement, the USA Freedom Act, in the words of the NY Times:

“the strongest demonstration yet of a decade-long shift from a singular focus on national security at the expense of civil liberties to a new balance in the post-Snowden era.”

Not so fast!   The spotlight is on one agency, the NSA and one expiring unconstitutional body of legislation, the Patriot Act. when they have all sorts of other ways to collect the same kind of intelligence laid out in the original Patriot Act, when there are countless other, even more powerful agencies than the NSA.  It's what the profit-seeking "news" media, owned and run by a tiny elite, obscures that leads to truth.

The massive US intelligence apparatus (see above) has already figured out how to get what it needs through other means. Broadcasting the curbing of the NSA Surveillance Program just gives we, the people false hope that's something is being done. In fact, under the Freedom Act, the program of domestic mass surveillance will only intensify. The NSA is only one of the alphabet agencies under the umbrella of the colossal Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). 

It's all a game of smoke and mirrors to mask the ever-growing build-up of the surveillance and security industrial complex. This change they're trumpeting is purely cosmetic. It's basically the transference of responsibility for the retention of cell phone metadata from the NSA to telecommunication companies which now require the NSA to get a FISA stamp of approval before obtaining call records.

What about all of the spy planes equipped with technology capable of tracking and reviewing data from tens of thousands of phones in a single flight and provided to the Department of Justice, including agencies such as the FBI, DEA, ATF, etc.? 

From How you can track the FBI’s spy planes

“The thing is, when you fly planes in the U.S., you have to fill out lots of official forms that become part of the public record. Because the FBI didn’t want to publicly acknowledge it was sending “spy planes” out to circle American cities (and potentially alert its targets), it created front companies for them. It seems the FBI is uncreative when it comes to spy craft; the fake companies tracked down by the AP and by Wiseman mainly had three-letter names, including FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Because flight records in the U.S. are public, and planes are trackable on radar, the AP was able to track down where these planes flew.

Even politicians who speak out against the ever growing surveillance state cannot be trusted. Take Rand Paul who claims victory of the expired Patriot Act "proposed hiring 1,000 new FBI agents to track potential terrorists."

Anyway, what do you need the NSA for when you've got Google and Apple and Amazon and Facebook?

Newsflash: Big corporations and government are in bed together and cozier than ever. They don't even try to hide it anymore, what with Citizens United, huge corporate bailouts,  not to mention corporations actually write the laws that government officials don't even read.   Of course, I could go on forever but that should be enough to make one, at the very least, suspicious.

Links:

Zombie Patriot Act Will Keep U.S. Spying—Even if the Original Dies

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

EPIC is an independent non-profit research center in Washington, DC. EPIC works to protect privacy, freedom of expression, democratic values, and to promote the Public Voice in decisions concerning the future of the Internet.

Also see: http://privacy.org/

Big Brother Inc

Bugged Planet

The body-worn “IMSI catcher” for all your covert phone snooping needs

National Security Analysis Center (NSAC),

NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program

“The top-secret PRISM program allows the U.S. intelligence community to gain access from nine Internet companies to a wide range of digital information, including e-mails and stored data, on foreign targets operating outside the United States. The program is court-approved but does not require individual warrants. Instead, it operates under a broader authorization from federal judges who oversee the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some documents describing the program were first released by The Washington Post on June 6.

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Boston Bombing: A Great Big Diversion?

So, what's going on while everyone is distracted by bombs, explosions, poisoned letters, "martial law", etc?

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which Aaron Swartz called "the Patriot Act of the Internet", a bill that is currently moving through Congress passed the House of Representatives on April 18th. At the last moment, an alteration to protect user's social media passwords from employers was defeated in a Congress vote.

President Obama gutted the Stock Act when he signed S. 716 which basically gutted the stock act which was created to make it harder for the legislature and the executive branch to engage in insider trading.

Israel and John Kerry are escalating the war in Syria, claiming Syria has chemical weapons.

Billionaire, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims that the Constitution must change to give government more power, after the Boston Marathon Bombings to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.

Speaking of diversions:

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When Drills Go Live? Marathons – A Tale of 2 Cities and the Running of a Planned Mass Casualty Event

I don't know. You would think they would've been better prepared considering the extent of preparation: Marathons – A Tale of Two Cities and the Running of a Planned Mass Casualty Event

"At this point there are only two possibilities. Either the Boston bombing was a false-flag, or it was a real act of terror. Personally, I am leaning towards false-flag; we are just waiting to see who (other than Muslims) gets framed for it. But if this was a genuine act of terror, what it tells us is that DHS, TSA, FBI, CIA, the Fusion centers, are all a complete waste of taxpayer money. All the databases, all the warrantless scanning of our emails, social media, phone calls, all the crotch-grabbing, cameras, microphones, GPS tracking, naked scanners, were totally and completely useless. Even the bomb sniffing dogs, on site in Boston supposedly for a training incident, failed to sniff the bombs. From top to bottom, the entire security industrial complex laid a big fat egg on this one. They failed, simply and utterly. And therefore, there is no more justification for the people of the United States to put up with this erosion of our Constitutional rights. Simply on the basis of total incompetence, Boston justifies the firing of the Federal government." -- Mike Rivero

Links:

FBI/DHS DRILL Staged Boston Marathon Bombing? Nevada Governor 2014 David Lory VanDerBeek


URBAN APPLICATIONS OF REMOTE SENSING from December 1972.
Gives you an idea of the kind of technology they had over four decades ago. Imagine what they have now and tell me two kids could even imagine holding a city like Boston hostage.

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1033 Program: Putting Battlefield-Grade Weaponry in the Hands of Cops

If you have any doubt as to whether "our" government views its citizenry as its greatest enemy, or that the U.S. is/will become a “combat zone”, consider - in addition to all the recently created legislation and executive orders designed to target American citizens - the 1033 program. What is that? Well, it  "permits the Secretary of Defense to transfer, without charge, excess U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) personal property (supplies and equipment) to state and local law enforcement agencies (LEAs)." In 2011 alone, the Pentagon gave over $500 million of military gear to LEAs.

Thanks to it, cops in Cobb County, Ga. - one of the wealthiest and most educated counties in the U.S. - now have an amphibious tank. The sheriff of Richland County, S.C., proudly acquired a machine-gun-equipped armored personnel carrier that he nicknamed "The Peacemaker."

This comes on top of grants from the Department of Homeland Security that enable police departments to buy vehicles such as "BearCats" - 16,000-pound bulletproof trucks equipped with battering rams, gun ports, tear-gas dispensers and radiation detectors. To date, more than 500 of these tanklike vehicles have been sold by Lenco, its Massachusetts-based manufacturer, according to a report in the Orlando Sentinel.

So, it's not enough that we have the liberty-crushing Patriot Act, the grandma-and-child-molesting TSA, the gestapo DHS, and bill after bill that practically encourages military action within the borders of our own nation; we also have the Pentagon transforming our "protect and serve" police into intimidating Rambo-like soldiers.

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TSA: Conditioning Americans to Accept the Unlimited Power of Government.

Training the young

The often arbitrary, high-handed manner of the gestapo the TSA is gradually expanding into every area of American life regardless of whether that area falls under their jurisdiction.  Their special brand of sexual assault, and cancer-causing porno scans are branching off to political rallies, train stations, bus depots, public buildings, Disney World, sporting events, street corners, and even  local prom nights.

Even if you prefer or an administrative regime, to a constitutional republic, you have to admit, the claim that groping teenage girls at a highschool prom falls under the jurisdiction of a federal transportation agency is a long-assed stretch.

What is the purpose, here? Well, as part of something called the VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, the TSA has one role, and that is to condition and train Americans to understand and accept that the government has unlimited power.  They can search you, grope you, molest you, terrorize you any damned time they want, all under the pretense of national security. 

So, if these warrant-less, generalized, often violent searches conducted by sociopathic uniformed goons, acting on behalf of government does not set off your  fascism alarm, then maybe the gestapo's TSA's Nazi-like disdain for our more vulnerable citizens, just might.

After listening to Sibel Edmonds, in an interview with Naomi Klein, on The Boiling Frog, tell her airport story of what happened to her mother, who, during the Khomeini regime, was made to disrobe during her menstrual cycle, by the Iranian version of the TSA, who then proceeded to shred  her mother's pad,  before her family could board the plane to leave Iran, there is no doubt that we're not only on the path to becoming a police state, we're there.   I mean, what's the difference between what happened to Sibel's mother during the time of the and the 95-year old woman who had to remove her adult diaper, and the countless other TSA horror stories?

The trappings of Nazi Germany continue to echo, increasingly louder, as we progress through second  decade of the 21st century.  An open society like ours does not shut down overnight. It's a slow process that gradually desensitizes citizens to the point that they don't even notice the water starting to boil.

The four-year renewal of the Patriot Act , hastily signed into law at the same time the nation was cheering the murder of Osama Bin Laden should be enough to scare anyone. However, just in case, here are a few more: the  "See Something Say Something Act", reminiscent of WWII, where the Nazis policed everyone through a network of citizen spies, and everyone lived in fear that they might be turned in by neighbors, friends, and even family;   the indoctrination of children;  the creation of federal goon squads;  the constant use of propaganda;  the Nazi-esque rhetoric such "Homeland Security", "Patriot Act", etc; the continuous growth of the  surveillance state; the repression and intimidation of activists and patriots; the demonization of who knows how many innocent people;  the ongoing destruction of the rule of law and civil liberties;   the loss of the freedom to travel without the fear of assault...and the list goes on...

Fascism: "A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." [Robert O. Paxton, "The Anatomy of Fascism," 2004]

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Destroying our Freedom in Order to Protect/Defend and/or Profit from It?

Okay, the surveillance technology used to track we, the "unwashed masses" is already in use. We know that. Moreover, it should be expected. We've been warned more than once. Some of us (not enough) may be scared that those in power will use this exponentially evolving technology against us. However, at the same time, the shepherds are just as terrified...that we might shear our sheepwear before they've had a chance to lead us all through the valley of the shadow of death; hence, teaching us, our place.

Take Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), a relatively new surveillance technology that is currently in operation that enables your ISP to drill down to the very core of your Internet habits and stalk monitor your every search, email, the websites you frequent, ect.  DPI can also be used to choke off open Internet use, in order that the corporations may profit (see ex. left).  Infonetics anticipates the market for standalone DPI products to grow rapidly in the next few years, and we all know what corporations will do for more profits.   We've seen it all before. 


Which leads to DPI vendors, "Allot and Openet, who recently sold ISPs on a future than involves wireless customers being billed differently for data, depending on whether they're using YouTube or Facebook," are highlighting potential for a very fractured future Internet.  The FCC re-established rules requiring cable and DSL providers not to block websites and services consumers want to use, however, declined to also force wireless carriers to follow the same rules.

We know the Obama administration has no intentions of dismantling Bush's "big brother" surveillance programs. In fact, if anything, he has bolstered and added to it. So, it's anyone's guess as to how many sophisticated electronic communications surveillance projects designed to spy on We, the People, are in the works.

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You Didn't Get Mad.

As far as I know the following came from wall dude posting on the democratic underground. It's well worth the read:

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you saw the Abu Grahib photos.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city drown.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when.. when... wait for it... when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all ok with you but helping other Americans... well fuck that. That about right? You know it is.

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Sam Walton Must Have Unearthed Himself by Now

If Sam Walton is not spinning in his grave right about now then people don't "turn over in graves". Yet, we all know so many of our dearly departed who "turn over" on a regular basis after "seeing" who and what they've left behind to carry on their name. Sam Walton must convulse having to watch the soulless, heartless brain-dead who have assembled to run what he worked so hard to create.

Is this monstrosity, Wal*Mart, the same Wal*Mart Mr. Walton envisioned? I sincerely doubt it, however, let's assume the corporation we call Wal*Mart today was once the abstraction Sam dreamed would become concrete reality. From all appearances, Mr. Walton has a kind face and eyes, and recorded history seems to back that up. Nevertheless, looks can be deceiving, as proven by so many people who have participated in evil acts masked behind a veneer of sweetness and light.

If Mr. Walton, clever enough to thoroughly convince America of his genuineness, could create such a successful entity as Wal*Mart, he most certainly would not allow the name of his company to engage in the cruel mistreatment of an employee who has already has suffered tremendous misfortune, including the loss of her son who died a patriot.
Even if Mr. Walton had no compassion in his heart - which I sincerely doubt - there is no way he lacked the brains, as do the people who run Wal*Mart now, to go after $470,000 in medical expenses from an employee who is now confined to a nursing home; whose husband must work two jobs to support her; whose son died serving our country and she must relive her son's death every day due to loss of short-term memory; who has lived and who is living what most of us couldn't imagine in our worst nightmare.

$470,000 is pocket change considering Wal*Mart supposedly makes over $20,000 (from 2005) per minute in profit around the clock, every day of the week, 52 weeks a year, for a total of $11.2 billion dollars ranking number one as Fortune 500's largest corporation.

What kind of idiot would risk the negative publicity this kind of story can generate over less than 25 minutes of profit? Wal*Mart must have spent much more than that just to create this horror story.

We'll never know, however, I believe, not only would Sam Walton not allow his company to bully an employee who has met with such tragic circumstances, he might even go as far as to provide the funds to take care of her for life, relieving this woman's husband, a modern day Job or maybe I'm getting carried away. He's not Oprah, after all.

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"Terrorism Enhancement"

On January 24, 2002 I was surrounded by 25 federal agents from the FBI and Secret Service Los Angeles Joint Terror Task force while I was at home asleep taking a nap.

The agents were armed with sub-machine guns, shot guns, bullet-proof vests, a battering ram, and a 25 page search and seizure warrant filled with as much "terror rhetoric" as they could think of. While asleep I was unaware that agents were
already positioned around every angle of the house, including right outside my window with loaded weapons ready for a fire fight. I was 18.

Fortunately my sister was home and woke me up to the news that "a bunch of FBI looking people" in suites and vests were all over block and up and down the streets. Every single one of them focused on the house. It had only been 2 years since I started the site Raisethefist.com which was receiving thousands of hits daily from around the world, many of those hits were also coming from the FBI, U.S Department of Defense, NSA, Secret Service, and foreign government law agencies. I
was running the site on a computer network and a residential DSL line from my home.

The news was no surprise.

I got up. Looked at the servers hosting Raisethefist.com. They were off-line.
I approached the door where 2 special agents asked for my name, then grabbed my shoulder and pulled me outside. Agents armed with their loaded sub- machine guns and shot guns emerged from their hiding spots and entered the house. Just as they
walked in, "Its this way!" one of the agents said as he pointed his sub-machine gun and led others to my room where the servers were.

The 2 special agents who greeted me at the door escorted me back inside and said they had a search and seizure warrant because of my web site, Raisethefist.com. I asked them how this was legal and they said it was now legal under the USA Patriot Act.

I wasn't being accused of authoring anything on raisethefist.com. I was being accused of authoring a web site that was created by somebody else. A white kid. A website that contained a page on how to build home-made explosives. Again, a website I didn't author, implement, or create in any way. The FBI insisted I did. They asked me 7 times if I was the author of the site which contained this explosives information. I said "NO".

I had a link to this web site from Raisethefist. com , as I did to many other sites. While my room was being ransacked. The "evidence" which consisted of computers, protest signs, and political literature was loaded into boxes and placed into a big white truck waiting outside.

The FBI tried to ask me questions about raisethefist. com. The FBI told my mother
they had been watching me for a very long time and my political haven't changed. I was asked if I'd like to see the president killed. I was told I had crossed over a line and as long as I got back on the other side of that line everything would be
okay. In other words if I stayed silent and did what I was told there would be no more trouble.

After approximately 6 hours the FBI agents left. We noticed a message on the answering machine from a call that came in the same day but before the raid. It was from an individual I hadn't spoken to in 2 years. He left a message asking if I wanted to "hang out". A few weeks prior he sent me an email about going to an anti-capitalist demonstration together to "smash the state". I later learned the FBI visited this individual, stood over his shoulder, and dictated the very words he sent me in the email. And as for the phone call, this was also a setup. He was
an informant. The FBI forgot to black this out in the 1000+ pages of case discovery.

But that wasn't the only thing they forgot to black out.

The white kid who I mentioned earlier. The one who authored the site on how to build home-made explosives. He was visited by the FBI as well. What did the agents do? Arrest him? No. They confirmed he authored, implemented, and created the website on how to build Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, and other recipes, then they
left. What happened next? The FBI fabricated statements saying I admitted to authoring, implementing, and creating the web site on how to build explosives.

2 weeks later federal prosecutors call my public defender and say the FBI didn't find anything illegal on the computers they seized but didn't want to let me off the hook. Basically they wanted me to sign a plea admitting guilt to something I
didn't do.This only happened after spending 2 weeks in a 24-hour lock-down maximum security federal prison cell where I was only allowed out for legal visits, and my closest neighbors on the cell block being those convicted for the U.S.S Cole bombings and the bombings of the US Embassy in Kenya. I was called "terror boy". Then of course I was released after 2 weeks when prosecutors decided not to indict me on anything until they had gone through all of the computers. A 6 month period of death threats, wire taps, harassment, government threats, being followed and
surveilled by undercover agents, sheriffs and local police continued..

I still continued to organized and refused to remain silent. The feds didn't like that.

"18 U.S.C. 842 (p)(2)(A): distribution of information relating to explosives,
destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction with the intent that such
information be used in furtherance of a federal crime of violence."

This was the statue written and sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein and passed under Clinton's 1997 anti-terror law. It was never before enforced. Not until August 4, 2003 when I was sentenced to a year in federal prison and 3 years "supervised release". I was threatened with over 20 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement. I was never indicted.

What happened to the white kid who actually wrote the explosives information and put it on-line with the intent that it be used at an upcoming protest against the International Monetary Fund in New York? Nothing.

The FBI walked out of the court room with smiles. My mom, family and friends were in tears.

And of course It was only standard routine for the U.S injustice system. Another young black male, railroaded by the system. Convicted and sentenced for a crime he didn't commit.

I went in when I was 20 and got released in 2004 when I was 21. I lived with my mom for the first few months when I got out. 2 undercover agents moved into an apartment complex directly across the street. They kept the blinds on the windows closed 24/7. We later learned they worked at the Westwood Federal Building. That's the same federal building that the FBI on the case worked out of. Sometimes they made the mistake of not taking off their security badges whenever they came and left the apartment. It was a bad job of being undercover...

As was the entire case. A bad messy job. Fabricated evidence filled with contradictions and obvious lies and allegations created by the feds. Yet the obviousness of the truth wasn't enough. The blatant fraud, a blatant setup wasn't
enough to stop the judge from handing down a year prison sentence.

This case had nothing to do with information related to explosives being made available to the public on the internet. If it did then I wouldn't be on the one writing this right now with my pencil and paper as the stipulations of my probation state I still can't touch a computer.

I would say to those who believe this is too far fetched to be true, just go look at the case discovery and see for yourself. The obvious lies are supported by the contradicting articles FBI agents forgot to black out. The truth is right there.

But recently we've learned that the entire case was SEALED by the feds. Not even a lawyer can get access to the case files now. However, a copy of the entire case discovery was obtained before this happened. And that copy hasn't been sealed.

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