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Woops! Police drone crashes into police…
May 13, 2013
The Montgomery County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office had a big day planned. After becoming the first department in the country with its own aerial drone ($300,000!), they were ready for a nice photo op. And then the drone crashed into a SWAT team.
The Examiner reports a painfully contrived police action-athon:
As the sheriff’s SWAT team suited up with lots of firepower and their armored vehicle known as the “Bearcat,” a prototype drone from Vanguard Defense Industries took off for pictures of all the police action. It was basically a photo opportunity, according to those in attendance.
“Lots of firepower” and a “Bearcat” sure sounds like a good photo op. OK, time to launch the $300,000 drone. Here we go. Launch the drone:
“[The] prototype drone was flying about 18-feet off the ground when it lost contact with the controller’s console on the ground. It’s designed to go into an auto shutdown mode…but when it was coming down the drone crashed into the SWAT team’s armored vehicle.”
Not only did the drone fail, and not only did it crash, it literally crashed into the police. It’s no wonder we’re not able to find a video of this spectacular publicity failure. Luckily, the SWAT boys were safe in their Bearcat.
This would be a fine one-off blooper story if it weren’t for some upsetting implications. This is exactly why we have reason to raise multiple eyebrows at Congress, which wants to allow hundreds of similar drones to fly over US airspace. These drones are still a relatively young technology, relatively unproven, and relatively crash-prone. The odds of being hit by one are low, of course, but should a Texas-style UAV plummet ever happen in, say, a dense urban area, nobody would be laughing. Not all of us are driving around in Bearcats.
Sister Assata - This is what American history looks like
By Alice Walker
I don’t know why, given where we are with dronefare, but I didn’t expect the man making the announcement about Assata Shakur being the first woman “terrorist” to appear on the FBI’s most wanted list to be black. That was a blow. I was reminded of the world of “trackers” we sometimes get glimpses of in history books and old movies on TV. In Australia the tracker who hunts down other aboriginals who have, because of the rape and murder, genocide and enslavement of the indigenous (aboriginal) people, run away into the outback. He shows up again in cowboy and Indian films: jogging along in the hot sun, way ahead of the white men on horseback, bending on his knees to get a better look at a bruised leaf or a bent twig, while they curse and spit and complain about how long he’s taking to come up with a clue. And then there were the “trackers” who helped the pattyrollers during our four hundred years of enslavement. When pattyrollers (or patrols) caught run-away slaves in those days they frequently beat them to death. I’ve often thought of the black men whose expertise at tracking fugitives helped bring these terrors, humiliations and deaths about. When I was younger I would have been in a rage against them; not understanding the reality of invisible coercion, and mind and spirit control, that I do now. Today, only a few years older than Assata Shakur, and marveling at the unenviable state of humanity’s character worldwide, I find I can only pray for all of us. That we should be sinking even below the abysmal standard early “trackers” have set for us: that the US government can now offer two million dollars for the capture of a very small, not young, black woman who was brutally abused, even shot, over three decades ago, as if we don’t need that money to buy people food, clothes, medicine, and decent places to live.
What is most distressing about the times we live in, in my view, is our ever accelerating tolerance for cruelty. Prisoners held indefinitely in orange suits, hooded, chained and on their knees. Like the hunger strikers of Guantanamo, I would certainly prefer death to this. People shot and bombed from planes they never see until it is too late to get up from the table or place the baby under the bed. Poor people terrorized daily, driven insane really, from fear. People on the streets with no food and no place to sleep. People under bridges everywhere you go, holding out their desperate signs: a recent one held by a very young man, perhaps a veteran, under my local bridge: I Want To Live. But nothing seems as cruel to me as this: that our big, muscular, macho country would go after so tiny a woman as Assata who is given sanctuary in a country smaller than many of our states.
The first time I met Assata Shakur we talked for a long time. We were in Havana, where I had gone with a delegation to offer humanitarian aid during Cuba’s “special period” of hunger and despair, and I’d wanted to hear her side of the story from her. She described the incident with the New Jersey Highway Patrol, and assured me she was shot up so badly that even if she’d wanted to, she would not have been able to fire a gun. Though shot in the back (with her arms raised), she managed to live through two years of solitary confinement, in a men’s prison, chained to her bed. Then, in what must surely have been a miraculous coming together of people of courageous compassion, she was helped to escape and to find refuge in Cuba. One of the people who helped Assata escape, a white radical named Marilyn Buck, was kept in prison for thirty years and released only one month before her death from uterine cancer. She was a poet, and I have been reading her book, Inside/Out, Selected Poems, which a friend gave me just last week. There is also a remarkable video of her, shot in prison, that I highly recommend.
This is what solidarity can look like.
The second time I saw Assata, years later, I was in Havana for the Havana Book Fair. Cuba has a very high literacy rate, thanks to the Cuban revolution, and my novel, Meridian, had recently been translated and published there. However, this time we did not talk about the past. We talked about meditation. Seeing her interest, and that of Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, and others, I decided to offer a class. There under a large tree off a quiet street in Havana, I demonstrated my own practice of meditation to some of the most attentive students I have ever encountered. The mantra: Breathing in: “In,” breathing out: “Peace.”
I believe Assata Shakur to be a good and decent, a kind and compassionate person. True revolutionaries often are. Physically she is beautiful, and her spirit is also. She appears to hold the respect, love and friendship of all the people who surround her. Like Marilyn Buck they have risked much for her freedom, and appear to believe her version of the story as I do.
That she did not wish to live as an imprisoned creature and a slave is understood.
What to do? Since we are not, in fact, helpless. Nor are we ever alone.
I call on the Ancestors
by whose blood
and DNA
we exist
to accompany us
as always
through this lengthening
sorrow.
And to bear witness
within us
to all that we are
aware.
The Pentagon’s army of space-age robot warriors is getting a lot more real with the PETMAN robot
April 8, 2013
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has released video footage of a project that’s been long in the works and really starting to now take shape. The Protection Ensemble Test Mannequin — or “PETMAN,” for short — is the subject of the latest clip, and very well could be all it takes to scare off any insurgents once it’s ready for the battlefield.
PETMAN is a bipedal robot that has been displayed during previous tests as having the ability to climb stairs and even do pushups. In the latest video, though, the experimental project is showcased as being more lifelike than ever before.
Scientists at Boston Dynamics have released a video that shows PETMAN, clothed head-to-toe in full-on camouflage, jogging in place on a laboratory platform. But unlike earlier videos in which PETMAN appeared to be nothing more than a pile of wires enclosed in metal, the newest footage shows the science project at its all-time most humanness.
PETMAN isn’t being tasked with running like a human being for simply the sake of being creepy, though. Boston Dynamics have outfitted the robot in high-tech protective camo clothing that is designed to keep soldiers — real, cyborg or other — safe from hazardous chemicals. “PETMAN has sensors embedded in its skin that detect any chemicals leaking through the suit. The skin also maintains a micro-climate inside the clothing by sweating and regulating temperature,” explains Boston Dynamics.
The robot, adds the scientists, can balance itself, move freely, walk and do a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics — all while being exposed to chemical warfare agents. “Natural, agile movement is essential for PETMAN to simulate how a soldier stresses protective clothing under realistic conditions,” adds Boston Dynamics. “The robot will have the shape and size of a standard human, making it the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person.”
And yeah, PETMAN can walk the walk — but he doesn’t stop there either. Scientists have programed the robot to “simulate human physiology,” so that when being exposed to chemical agents, researchers can send signals to the robot that forces it to mimic human sweating and switch its body temperature like a real-life soldier might do while on the field. So with PETMAN being able to do all of that and then some, what does DARPA have planned next? That’s likely top-secret, but critics of the US Defense Department’s science lab say projects like this will lend themselves to changing the face of war from a human one to a robotic one.
“It’s going to be used for chasing people across the desert, I would imagine. I can’t think of many civilian applications - maybe for hunting, or farming, for rounding up sheep,” Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, told the BBC previously in regards to DARPA’s robot creations.
“But of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers,” he said.
Obama administration says President can use lethal force against Americans on US soil
March 5, 2013
Yes, the president does have the authority to use military force against American citizens on US soil—but only in “an extraordinary circumstance,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday.
“The US Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening,” Paul said Tuesday. “It is an affront the constitutional due process rights of all Americans.”
Last month, Paul threatened to filibuster the nomination of John Brennan, Obama’s pick to head the CIA, “until he answers the question of whether or not the president can kill American citizens through the drone strike program on US soil.” Tuesday, Brennan told Paul that “the agency I have been nominated to lead does not conduct lethal operations inside the United States—nor does it have any authority to do so.” Brennan said that the Justice Department would answer Paul’s question about whether Americans could be targeted for lethal strikes on US soil.
Holder’s answer was more detailed, however, stating that under certain circumstances, the president would have the authority to order lethal attacks on American citizens. The two possible examples of such “extraordinary” circumstances were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. An American president order the use of lethal military force inside the United States is “entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront,” Holder wrote. Here’s the bulk of the letter:
As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.
The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
The letter concludes, “were such an emergency to arise, I would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the president of the scope of his authority.”
In a Google+ Hangout last month, President Obama refused to say directly if he had the authority to use lethal force against US citizens. As Mother Jones reported at the time, the reason the president was being so coy is that the answer was likely yes. Now we know that’s exactly what was happening. “Any use of drone strikes or other premeditated lethal force inside the United States would raise grave legal and ethical concerns,” says Raha Wala, an attorney with Human Rights First. “There should be equal concern about using force overseas.”
RIP due process
DHS drones equipped to eavesdrop on Americans
March 4, 2013
The US Department of Homeland Security already has an arsenal of drones to be deployed for whatever the agency deems fit, but the actual capabilities of those vehicles exceed what many Americans may expect.
The unmanned drones being used inside of the United States right now can’t shoot Hellfire missiles like their overseas counterparts. They can, however, conduct surveillance, intercept communications and even determine whether or not a person thousands of feet below the aircraft is armed.
The latest revelation comes courtesy of a DHS document that was recently obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, through a Freedom of Information Act request. After analyzing a partially-redacted drone “performance specification” file received through their FOIA plea, EPIC said that records indicate “the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is operating drones in the United States capable of intercepting electronic communications.”
Of the ten Predator B drones currently maintained by the agency, EPIC adds that the document confirms that those aircraft “have the capacity to recognize and identify a person on the ground.”
“The records obtained by EPIC raise questions about the agency’s compliance with federal privacy laws and the scope of domestic surveillance,” the center writes on their website this week.
Speaking to CNet, EPIC’s Open Government Project director, Ginger McCall, says the discovery shows just how dangerous drones could be to the privacy of the millions of Americans who could have drones overhead right this moment.
“The documents clearly evidence that the Department of Homeland Security is developing drones with signals interception technology and the capability to identify people on the ground,” McCall says. “This allows for invasive surveillance, including potential communications surveillance, that could run afoul of federal privacy laws.”
Since EPIC published their FOID’d documents last week, Cnet has managed to scrounge up an unredacted copy that outlines what the DHS was looking for in drones when the report was written in 2010. Specifically, the performance specifications note that while the DHS is not implementing drones for eavesdropping on America right now, “Further tasks, such as communication relay and interception, although not yet evaluated in the field, are assessed to also be best performed” by the unmanned aerial vehicles.
Additionally, DHS drones must “be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not” and “be capable of marking a target into a retrievable database.” No information is given as to what database that refers to, but a Homeland Security official speaking on condition of anonymity tells DHS that the drones lack — for now, at least — the ability to read a subject’s face to find out who they are.
“The drones are able to identify whether movement on the ground comes from a human or an animal, but that they do not perform facial recognition,” Cnet reporter Declan McCullagh says the DHS source’s claims.
“Any potential deployment of such technology in the future would be implemented in full consideration of civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy interests and in a manner consistent with the law and long standing law enforcement practices,” the source adds.
The Homeland Security department’s drones are currently used to allow federal officials to monitor any criminal activity on America’s borders to the north and south. As RT reported recently, however, a 2012 Supreme Court ruling determined that the government can conduct border patrol operations within 100 miles of an international crossing. By that logic, the approximately 200 million Americans residing within that parameter are subject to Border Patrol searches and, perhaps soon enough, surveillance drones.
So this lobbyist (representing weapons/drones companies) testifying to the House Public Safety Committee explains honestly why his group is putting money into making sure that drones are allowed:
My name is Paul Applewhite; I’m on the board of directors for the Pacific chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicles Systems International…in the Pacific Northwest we represent about 80 companies, 1,400 employees, about 120 million dollars in taxable revenue…the backlash against unmanned vehicles has just caused the city of Seattle to cancel their unmanned systems. Back in May of 2012, you had Ian Stawicki who ran around and killed 5 people. The longer this man was running around the city of Seattle, the more people he was killing…why are we denying ourselves this great technology that is now available?
…
But now every time you pull this out you have to DOCUMENT IT, which to me discourages the use of it. We give every one of our law enforcement officers lethal force on their hip. We’re saying, give them the judgment to be able to pull this thing out and use it, up to and including lethal force. Why is this technology so much different?
So, it’s really come to this already. Lobbyists transparently, openly, unapologetically calling to use drone technology to kill Americans on U.S. soil - not that it is any worse or more significant than killing U.S. citizens who are out-of-the-country, like American citizen Anwar Awlaki and his 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki (neither of whom had a history of violence, at all) both of whom were killed by the U.S. without being charged with any crime and without any form of due-process.
But still, that this sort of discourse is now the status-quo, and is now being aggressively pursued by billion-dollar special interests publicly is terrifyingly.
If you continually bomb another country and kill their civilians, not only the people of that country but the part of the world that identifies with it will increasingly despise the country doing it.
That’s the ultimate irony, the most warped paradox, of US discourse on these issues: the very policies that Americans constantly justify by spouting the Terrorism slogan are exactly what causes anti-American hatred and anti-American Terrorism in the first place. The most basic understanding of human nature renders that self-evident, but this polling data indisputably confirms it.
Glenn Greenwald, “Obama, the US & the Muslim world: The animosity deepens”
A Gallup poll released on Thursday surveyed public opinion of the US in Pakistan where ”more than nine in 10 Pakistanis (92%) disapprove of US leadership and 4% approve, the lowest approval rating Pakistanis have ever given”. Worse, “a majority (55%) say interaction between Muslim and Western societies is ‘more of a threat’ [than a benefit], up significantly from 39% in 2011.”
From Anonymous on tonight’s State of the Union address:
Citizens of the Internet,
Last year we faced our greatest threat from lawmakers. We faced down SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and ACTA.
And we won!
But that victory did not come easily. Nor did it come without a price.
Aaron Swartz was one of the leading voices in the fight against these idiotic and destructive efforts to control the last free space on Earth.
Aaron Swartz was persecuted. Now Aaron Swartz is dead.
Tonight, the President of the United States will appear before a joint session of Congress to deliver the State of the Union Address and tomorrow he plans to sign an executive order for cyber-security as the House Intelligence committee reintroduces the defeated CISPA act which turns private companies into government informants.
He will not be covering the NDAA, an act of outright tyrannical legislation allowing for indefinite detention of citizens completely outside due process and the rule of law. In fact, lawyers for the government have point-blank refused to state whether or not journalists who cover stories or groups the Government disfavors would be subject to this detention.
He will not be covering the extra-judicial and unregulated justifications for targeted killings of citizens by military drones within the borders of America, or the fact that Orwellian newspeak had to be used to make words like “imminent” mean their opposite.
He will not be covering Bradley Manning, 1000 days in detention with no trial for revealing military murders, told that his motive for leaking cannot be taken into consideration, that the Government does not have room for conscience.
He will not be covering the secret interpretations of law that allow for warrant-less wiretapping and surveillance of any US citizen without probably cause of criminal acts, or the use of Catch-22 logic where no-one can complain about being snooped on because the state won’t tell you who they’re snooping on, and if you don’t know you’re being snooped on, you don’t have a right to complain.
We reject the State of the Union. We reject the authority of the President to sign arbitrary orders and bring irresponsible and damaging controls to the Internet.
The President of the United States of America, and the Joint Session of Congress will face an Army tonight.
We will form a virtual blockade between Capitol Hill and the Internet. Armed with nothing more than Lulz, Nyancat and PEW-PEW-PEW! Lazers, we will face down the largest superpower on Earth.
And we will win!
There will be no State of the Union Address on the web tonight.
For freedom, for Aaron Swartz, for the Internet, and of course, for the lulz.
We Are Anonymous,
We Are Legion,
We Do Not forgive,
We Do Not forget,
Expect Us.
(Source: anonrelations.net)
These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise.
White House spokesperson Jay Carney on drone strikes against Americans without due process.
Also, drone strikes against Americans aren’t exactly legal - Obama’s power to kill hasn’t been codified or approved by any other branch of government. As Nixon said, “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.”
As for the ethical nature of drones, the UN is currently investigating the administration’s targeted killing program.
This week, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia became the first city in the US to limit the use of unmanned aerial drones. Drafted by a local civil liberties organization, the law prevents police agencies from utilizing drones outfitted with anti-personnel devices such as lethal weapons, tasers and tear gas. It also bans all evidence collected with spy drones from being introduced as evidence in any criminal trials.
Drone Spotted Hovering Over West Oakland
On February 8th, 2013 at 3:50 pm a drone was sighted hovering above a neighborhood in West Oakland. There didn’t seem to be a focus, it just maintained it’s position above properties. It is not known at this point what agency or individual was operating the craft.
Alameda Sheriff’s recently released their intended policies around the use of drones. You can take a read here
Once introduced into their arsenal, they would be used for a variety of purposes ranging from counter terrorism operations, chases, search and rescue, surveillance, as well as other operations.
Yemenis hold anti-US protest in Sa’ada
February 8, 2013
Yemenis have staged an anti-US demonstration in the northern city of Sa’ada to protest against the interference by Washington and its allies in their country’s domestic affairs.
Chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” scores of Yemenis took to the streets of Sa’ada on Friday to demand an end to US meddling in Yemen and call for national unity.
The protesters further called for the withdrawal of American Marines. They also urged for an end to the US assassination drone attacks, which they blame for the deaths of many civilians.
The protesters accused Washington of preventing the fulfillment of the demands of a popular uprising that took place two years ago, saying that the US is imposing its policies on the country by backing a deal that equally shares power between the opposition and figures loyal to former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. The deal also keeps allies of the deposed ruler in key military posts, the protesters said.
Saleh, who ruled Yemen for 33 years, stepped down in February 2012 after nearly a year of mass street protests against his rule under a US-backed power transfer deal in return for immunity.
But Yemenis say that so far there has been no improvement in the country and their demands have not been met because Saleh loyalists and his family members are in control of power positions in the government, as well as military and security apparatus.
Yemenis have vowed to continue protests until there is a complete regime change in Yemen.
All actions 2002 – January 31 2013 in Yemen:
Total confirmed US operations: 54-64
Total confirmed US drone strikes: 42-52
Possible additional US operations: 135-157
Of which possible additional US drone strikes: 77-93
Total reported killed: 374-1,112
Total civilians killed: 72-178
Children killed: 27-37
John Owen Brennan is chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama; officially his title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President. He supports drones and will not admit that water-boarding is torture. He was nominated to be the new CIA director and has supported water-boarding and drone-terror in his nomination hearing.
Lyrics to Torture Memos above, a song written & sung by Jonathan Mann in 2009 - lyrics were taken directly from official memos on torture. It was the 109th song in his song-a-day project, which is still on-going:
the detainee is lying on a gurney
that’s inclined at an angle: 10 to 15 degrees
a cloth is placed over the detainee’s face
cold water is poured on the cloth
the wet cloth creates
a barrier through which
it is difficult or in some cases not possible
for the detainee to breathe
if the detainee
makes an effort to defeat the technique
by twisting his head to the side and breathing
out the corner of his mouth
the interrogator may cup his hands around
the detainees nose and mouth
in which case it would not be posible for him to breathe!
As we explained
in the Section 2340A Memorandum,
“pain and suffering”
(as used in Section 2340)
is best understood as a single concept,
not distinct concepts
of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering”…
The waterboard,
which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever,
does not, in our view inflict “severe pain or suffering”.
Even if one were to parse the statute more finely
to treat “suffering” as a distinct concept,
the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe sufering.
The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.
![Meet the contractors turning America’s police into a paramilitary forceJanuary 31, 2013
The national security state has an annual budget of around $1 trillion. Of that huge pile of money, large amounts go to private companies the federal government awards contracts to. Some, like Lockheed Martin or Boeing, are household names, but many of the contractors fly just under the public’s radar. What follows are three companies you should know about (because some of them can learn a lot about you with their spy technologies).
L3 Communications
L3 is everywhere. Those night-vision goggles the JSOC team in Zero Dark Thirtyuses? That’s L3. The new machines that are replacing the naked scanners at the airport? That’s L3. Torture at Abu Ghraib? A former subsidiary of L3 was recently ordered to pay $5.28 million to 71 Iraqis who had been held in the awful prison.
Oh, and drones? L3 is on it. Reprieve, a UK-based human rights organization, earlier this month wrote on its Web site:
“L-3 Communications is one of the main subcontractors involved with production of the US’s lethal Predator since the inception of the programme. Predators are used by the CIA to kill ‘suspected militants’ and terrorise entire populations in Pakistan and Yemen. Drone strikes have escalated under the Obama administration and 2013 has already seen six strikes in the two countries.”
Unsurprisingly, L3 Communications is well connected beyond the national security community. Its chief financial officer recently spoke at Goldman Sachs, at what the financial titan hilariously refers to as a “fireside chat.”
L3 also supplies local law enforcement with its night-vision products and makes a license-plate recognition (LPR) device, a machine with disturbing implications. LPR can be mounted on cop cruisers or statically positioned at busy intersections and can run potentially thousands of license plates through law enforcement databases in a matter of hours. In some parts of the country LPR readers can track your location for miles. As the Wall Street Journal noted, surveillance of even “mundane” activities of people not accused of any crime is now “the default rather than the exception.”
L3 Communications embodies the totality of the national security and surveillance state. There is only minimal distinction between its military products and police products. Its night-vision line is sold to both military and law enforcement. Its participation in the drone program is now, as far as we know, limited to countries in the Middle East and North Africa. But in the words of the New York Times editorial board, “[i]t is not a question of whether drones will appear in the skies above the United States but how soon.” The NYT estimates the domestic drone market at $5 billion, likely a conservative estimate, and contractors will vie for that money in the public and private sphere. L3′s venture into airports, the border of where domestic policy meets foreign policy in the name of national security, is therefore significant both symbolically and materially.
In many ways, that is the most important story of the post-9/11 United States: the complete evaporation of the separation of foreign and domestic polices. Whether we’re talking about paramilitarized police, warrantless wiretapping, inhumane prison conditions, or drone surveillance, there exist few differences between a United States perpetually at war and a United States determined to police and imprison its people in unacceptable ways and at unacceptable rates.
Harris Corporation: Stingray “IMSI catcher”
Harris Corp. is a huge provider of national security and communications technology to federal and local law enforcement agencies. Though many people have never heard of it, Harris is a major player in the beltway National Security community. President and CEO William M. Brown was recently appointed to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, and in 2009 theSecret Service offered Harris a contract to train its agents in the use of Harris’ Stingray line. The Secret Service awarded the company additional contracts in 2012.
If you’ve heard of Harris at all, it’s likely been because its controversial Stingray product has been getting attention as an information-gathering tool with major privacy implications. The Stingray allows law enforcement to cast a kilometers’ wide digital net over an area to determine the location of a single cell phone signal – and in the process collect cell data on potentially hundreds of people who aren’t suspected of any crimes. EFF claims the device is a modern version of British soldiers canvassing the pre-Revolutionary colonies, searching people’s homes without probable cause – exactly what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent. EFF describes the process this way:
“A Stingray works by masquerading as a cell phone tower—to which your mobile phone sends signals to every 7 to 15 seconds whether you are on a call or not— and tricks your phone into connecting to it. As a result, the government can figure out who, when and to where you are calling, the precise location of every device within the range, and with some devices, even capture the content of your conversations.”
According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC),the FBI has been using similar technology since 1995. But a recent federal case, United States v. Rigmaiden, has raised Fourth Amendment questions regarding whether law enforcement officials need to obtain a warrant before employing a Stingray. The judge in that case determined that the government hadn’t provided enough information about how the devices work, and ordered that the information collected in Rigmaiden couldn’t be used in court.
What’s especially troubling about Stingrays is that the government either won’t say, or doesn’t understand, how the technology works. The WSJ reported that the US Attorney making the requests “seemed to have trouble explaining the technology.”
And it’s not just the federal government that uses Stingrays. As Slate notes,referencing FOIA documents recently obtained by EPIC, “the feds have procedures in place for loaning electronic surveillance devices (like the Stingray) to state police. This suggests the technology may have been used in cases across the United States, in line with a stellar investigation by LA Weekly last year, which reported that state cops in California, Florida, Texas, and Arizona had obtained Stingrays.”
Harris has been tightlipped about the Rigmaiden case, but expect to be hearing a lot about Stingrays in the future.
BI2 Technologies
BI2 makes a fine pitch. Its iris-scanning technology can be made to sound very appealing. Iris scans are relatively non-invasive, there’s no touching involved so the likelihood of spreading disease is reduced, and as B12 states on its Web site, “there are no lasers, strong lights or any kind of harmful beams.” It also claims that iris scanning is “strictly opt-in,” and that a “user” (who in most cases would be better described as an “arrestee”) “must consciously elect to participate” in the scanning. (When I was arrested by the NYPD while covering a protest, the scan was voluntary — though the NYPD didn’t tell me that, a protester did. But if I refused to submit to it I could have been punished with an extra night in jail.)
Reuters reported that BI2′s iPhone-based iris scanner — called MORIS — is capable of taking an accurate scan from four feet away, “potentially without the person being aware of it.” MORIS has drawn harsh condemnation from the ACLU. The primary concern from privacy advocates is that law enforcement will deploy this technology in an overly broad way. ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley told Reuters that he didn’t want the police “using them routinely on the general public, collecting biometric information on innocent people.”
MORIS isn’t just for irises; it also scans faces. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that the sheriff’s office in Pinellas County, Florida, “uses digital cameras to take pictures of people, download the pictures to laptops, then use facial-recognition technologies to search for matching faces.” New database technology like Trapwire, a data mining system that analyzes “suspicious behavior” in purported attempts to predict terrorist behavior, makes face scanning potentially more worrisome. Trapwire uses at least “CCTV, license-plate readers, and open-source databases” as input sources, and although it doesn’t employ facial-recognition software, the incentives to combine these types of technology is clear.
Beginning in 2014, BI2 will manage a national iris-scan database for the FBI, called Next-Generation Identification (NGI).Lockheed Martin is also involved in building the database.Much of BI2′s iris data comes from inmates in 47 states,and despite BI2′s claims that iris scanning can’t be gamed, that is not the case. Experts showed last summer that the iris can be “reverse-engineered” to fool the scanners, which are generally thought to be more accurate than fingerprinting.
The usual suspects lamented in 2011 that iris scanning isn’t used at airports or borders, but security creep is difficult to combat, especially once “national security” is invoked. Just days ago it was reported that the FBI is teaming with the Department of Homeland Security to ramp up iris scanning at US borders. AlterNet has previously reported that the Department of Defense scans the irises of people arriving at and departing from Afghanistan.
The story of BI2 is important because the initial technology is superficially appealing. The company’s first projects were called the Child Project, designed to help locate missing children; and Senior Safety Net, developed to identify missing seniors suffering from Alzheimer’s. According to B12′s Web site, sheriffs’ departments in 47 states use the BI2 iris-scanning device and database, which makes it easy to mobilize support to facilitate the safe return of children and seniors.
While the desire to find missing children and seniors is perfectly legitimate, the collection of biometric data is a pandora’s box. Once it’s opened, it’s proven difficult if not impossible to limit.
Source](http://24.media.tumblr.com/f8661afd53d43f0dfddb8a1f1404ce97/tumblr_mhi6we3IZH1r6m2leo1_500.jpg)
Meet the contractors turning America’s police into a paramilitary force
January 31, 2013
The national security state has an annual budget of around $1 trillion. Of that huge pile of money, large amounts go to private companies the federal government awards contracts to. Some, like Lockheed Martin or Boeing, are household names, but many of the contractors fly just under the public’s radar. What follows are three companies you should know about (because some of them can learn a lot about you with their spy technologies).
L3 Communications
L3 is everywhere. Those night-vision goggles the JSOC team in Zero Dark Thirtyuses? That’s L3. The new machines that are replacing the naked scanners at the airport? That’s L3. Torture at Abu Ghraib? A former subsidiary of L3 was recently ordered to pay $5.28 million to 71 Iraqis who had been held in the awful prison.
Oh, and drones? L3 is on it. Reprieve, a UK-based human rights organization, earlier this month wrote on its Web site:
“L-3 Communications is one of the main subcontractors involved with production of the US’s lethal Predator since the inception of the programme. Predators are used by the CIA to kill ‘suspected militants’ and terrorise entire populations in Pakistan and Yemen. Drone strikes have escalated under the Obama administration and 2013 has already seen six strikes in the two countries.”
Unsurprisingly, L3 Communications is well connected beyond the national security community. Its chief financial officer recently spoke at Goldman Sachs, at what the financial titan hilariously refers to as a “fireside chat.”
L3 also supplies local law enforcement with its night-vision products and makes a license-plate recognition (LPR) device, a machine with disturbing implications. LPR can be mounted on cop cruisers or statically positioned at busy intersections and can run potentially thousands of license plates through law enforcement databases in a matter of hours. In some parts of the country LPR readers can track your location for miles. As the Wall Street Journal noted, surveillance of even “mundane” activities of people not accused of any crime is now “the default rather than the exception.”
L3 Communications embodies the totality of the national security and surveillance state. There is only minimal distinction between its military products and police products. Its night-vision line is sold to both military and law enforcement. Its participation in the drone program is now, as far as we know, limited to countries in the Middle East and North Africa. But in the words of the New York Times editorial board, “[i]t is not a question of whether drones will appear in the skies above the United States but how soon.” The NYT estimates the domestic drone market at $5 billion, likely a conservative estimate, and contractors will vie for that money in the public and private sphere. L3′s venture into airports, the border of where domestic policy meets foreign policy in the name of national security, is therefore significant both symbolically and materially.
In many ways, that is the most important story of the post-9/11 United States: the complete evaporation of the separation of foreign and domestic polices. Whether we’re talking about paramilitarized police, warrantless wiretapping, inhumane prison conditions, or drone surveillance, there exist few differences between a United States perpetually at war and a United States determined to police and imprison its people in unacceptable ways and at unacceptable rates.
Harris Corporation: Stingray “IMSI catcher”
Harris Corp. is a huge provider of national security and communications technology to federal and local law enforcement agencies. Though many people have never heard of it, Harris is a major player in the beltway National Security community. President and CEO William M. Brown was recently appointed to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, and in 2009 theSecret Service offered Harris a contract to train its agents in the use of Harris’ Stingray line. The Secret Service awarded the company additional contracts in 2012.
If you’ve heard of Harris at all, it’s likely been because its controversial Stingray product has been getting attention as an information-gathering tool with major privacy implications. The Stingray allows law enforcement to cast a kilometers’ wide digital net over an area to determine the location of a single cell phone signal – and in the process collect cell data on potentially hundreds of people who aren’t suspected of any crimes. EFF claims the device is a modern version of British soldiers canvassing the pre-Revolutionary colonies, searching people’s homes without probable cause – exactly what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent. EFF describes the process this way:
“A Stingray works by masquerading as a cell phone tower—to which your mobile phone sends signals to every 7 to 15 seconds whether you are on a call or not— and tricks your phone into connecting to it. As a result, the government can figure out who, when and to where you are calling, the precise location of every device within the range, and with some devices, even capture the content of your conversations.”
According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC),the FBI has been using similar technology since 1995. But a recent federal case, United States v. Rigmaiden, has raised Fourth Amendment questions regarding whether law enforcement officials need to obtain a warrant before employing a Stingray. The judge in that case determined that the government hadn’t provided enough information about how the devices work, and ordered that the information collected in Rigmaiden couldn’t be used in court.
What’s especially troubling about Stingrays is that the government either won’t say, or doesn’t understand, how the technology works. The WSJ reported that the US Attorney making the requests “seemed to have trouble explaining the technology.”
And it’s not just the federal government that uses Stingrays. As Slate notes,referencing FOIA documents recently obtained by EPIC, “the feds have procedures in place for loaning electronic surveillance devices (like the Stingray) to state police. This suggests the technology may have been used in cases across the United States, in line with a stellar investigation by LA Weekly last year, which reported that state cops in California, Florida, Texas, and Arizona had obtained Stingrays.”
Harris has been tightlipped about the Rigmaiden case, but expect to be hearing a lot about Stingrays in the future.
BI2 Technologies
BI2 makes a fine pitch. Its iris-scanning technology can be made to sound very appealing. Iris scans are relatively non-invasive, there’s no touching involved so the likelihood of spreading disease is reduced, and as B12 states on its Web site, “there are no lasers, strong lights or any kind of harmful beams.” It also claims that iris scanning is “strictly opt-in,” and that a “user” (who in most cases would be better described as an “arrestee”) “must consciously elect to participate” in the scanning. (When I was arrested by the NYPD while covering a protest, the scan was voluntary — though the NYPD didn’t tell me that, a protester did. But if I refused to submit to it I could have been punished with an extra night in jail.)
Reuters reported that BI2′s iPhone-based iris scanner — called MORIS — is capable of taking an accurate scan from four feet away, “potentially without the person being aware of it.” MORIS has drawn harsh condemnation from the ACLU. The primary concern from privacy advocates is that law enforcement will deploy this technology in an overly broad way. ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley told Reuters that he didn’t want the police “using them routinely on the general public, collecting biometric information on innocent people.”
MORIS isn’t just for irises; it also scans faces. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that the sheriff’s office in Pinellas County, Florida, “uses digital cameras to take pictures of people, download the pictures to laptops, then use facial-recognition technologies to search for matching faces.” New database technology like Trapwire, a data mining system that analyzes “suspicious behavior” in purported attempts to predict terrorist behavior, makes face scanning potentially more worrisome. Trapwire uses at least “CCTV, license-plate readers, and open-source databases” as input sources, and although it doesn’t employ facial-recognition software, the incentives to combine these types of technology is clear.
Beginning in 2014, BI2 will manage a national iris-scan database for the FBI, called Next-Generation Identification (NGI).Lockheed Martin is also involved in building the database.Much of BI2′s iris data comes from inmates in 47 states,and despite BI2′s claims that iris scanning can’t be gamed, that is not the case. Experts showed last summer that the iris can be “reverse-engineered” to fool the scanners, which are generally thought to be more accurate than fingerprinting.
The usual suspects lamented in 2011 that iris scanning isn’t used at airports or borders, but security creep is difficult to combat, especially once “national security” is invoked. Just days ago it was reported that the FBI is teaming with the Department of Homeland Security to ramp up iris scanning at US borders. AlterNet has previously reported that the Department of Defense scans the irises of people arriving at and departing from Afghanistan.
The story of BI2 is important because the initial technology is superficially appealing. The company’s first projects were called the Child Project, designed to help locate missing children; and Senior Safety Net, developed to identify missing seniors suffering from Alzheimer’s. According to B12′s Web site, sheriffs’ departments in 47 states use the BI2 iris-scanning device and database, which makes it easy to mobilize support to facilitate the safe return of children and seniors.
While the desire to find missing children and seniors is perfectly legitimate, the collection of biometric data is a pandora’s box. Once it’s opened, it’s proven difficult if not impossible to limit.
On what grounds do you oppose drone warfare as opposed to manned fighter planes?
Yeah, I don’t. I don’t support war. I don’t support colonialism. I don’t support imperialism. No one who participates in this project does.
Also, we aren’t in ‘a war’ with Somalia or Yemen or Pakistan…not that it would be okay if we were.
To support these ‘wars’ (if that’s what you want to call them; I’d call them acts of terror against populations incapable of retaliating, which is the only reason some feel justified and comfortable with their government & military committing them) out of some fear of terrorism that has been cultivated in you for more than a decade now, is madness.
To support the murder of innocent children AND the murder of political radicals who are justifiably outraged because they are tired (exhausted, really) of their families and communities being slaughtered by the United States and the imperial forces of the world is as strangely, passively, immorally dumb/wrong/disgusting as people who supported the Nazi party and slavery and genocides of the past.
We have to love better than that. We. Just. Have. To.
-Robert
