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increase 1776
Joined: 07 Oct 2000
Posts: 3097
Location: Bizzaro World |
 Sun Sep 19, 2004 2:20 am
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"It is...time for Americans to get used to a lessening of our freedoms..."
- Congresswoman Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), April 1995 What gulag did this poor excuse for a woman get raised in,oh yeah Texas. This is war.
_________________
"The police are not here to create disorder.
The police are here to preserve disorder." Mayor Richard Daley |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Mon Oct 11, 2004 3:41 am
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Just MORE reduction of your constitutional Freedoms. Remember...ALL AMERICANS caan be considerded "terrorists" now. Sacrificing LIBERTY for so-called SECURITY on;y guarantees TYRANNY..NEVER "security".
****
Man Finds Police Tracking Device Inside His Car
WBAL TV | Oct 10 2004
EDGEWATER, Md. -- An investigation of a suspected drug dealer has left Harford County sheriffs with a lot of explaining to do.
Their case against an Edgewater man was derailed last month when the man discovered he was being tracked by authorities.
WBAL-TV 11 News reporter Noel Tucker said the man under investigation hired an attorney who finally returned the tracking device that the sheriff's department had placed on his client. But the process did not go well and after several twists and turns, the attorney has now hired himself an attorney.
After being pulled over last month near his Edgewater home, Thomas Head said two men in masks drove off in his mother's Lexus -- right in front of the cops. Tucker said the men were undercover police officers.
When the Harford County sheriff's department returned the Lexus, Head discovered a $3,000 tracking device under the hood. The sheriff's department had a warrant to put the tracking device in the car, but Head refused to return the device.
Almost two weeks later, Head's attorney James Rhodes said he finally reached an agreement with a sheriff to return the device. But the sheriff showed up at his Baltimore law office with a search warrant that accuses Rhodes of stealing.
Tucker reported that Rhodes has retained his own attorney -- Tim Dixon -- who said the sheriff's department misled the courts to get their search warrants.
The sheriff's department has its device back and so far, no one is facing any charges.
Last edited by Mech on Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:49 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:11 am
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Justified Paranoia: Someone Is Watching
ABC News | November 15 2004
There was a time when if you got the strange feeling someone was watching you, you could usually write it off to paranoia.
Those days are long gone.
Maybe you've gotten used to the idea that your every move will be recorded as you try to decide which snacks you want to buy in a convenience store or while you pump your gas, but in a growing number of towns and cities, the scrutiny you are under is becoming more intense.
Civil liberties groups estimate there are as many as 3 million surveillance cameras currently in operation in the United States, making it seem that the "surveillance society" civil libertarians warn about is already here. Was George Orwell just 20 years off?
"The case against the cameras is hard to make quickly, because it's more about the long-term effect of a surveillance society," said Jeffrey Rosen, a professor at George Washington University School of Law and author of "The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age."
"It is quite feasible and easy to imagine a system of ubiquitous surveillance of anyone at any time," he said.
In New York City, a couple of groups have been trying to do something to help people avoid the attention and to try to bring greater attention to the issue.
The New York Bill of Rights Defense Campaign has begun a project to map surveillance cameras that are pointed at public spaces around the city. The project will initially map all the cameras in Manhattan and selected neighborhoods in the other boroughs, but the eventual goal is to cover the entire city, NYBORDC project director Udi Ofer said.
The Institute for Applied Autonomy, a technological research and development group that says it is "dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination," has created software that can be downloaded from its Web site that it says allows a user to plot a video surveillance-free path between any two points in Manhattan. The information on the location of the cameras was provided by the New York Civil Liberties Union, according to the Web site.
Ofer said the concern in New York is mostly about private surveillance cameras, but in other cities law enforcement itself is stepping up the use of surveillance technology.
Cameras Able to Alert Police to Suspicious Behavior
The Los Angeles Police Department recently announced it is installing surveillance cameras on Hollywood Boulevard, what Capt. Michael Downing described as an effort to "raise the ethical stature of the area."
If the cameras on Hollywood Boulevard help them make more arrests of drug dealers, vandals, thieves and muggers, the LAPD will install them on some of the city's other well-known thoroughfares, such as Santa Monica and Sunset boulevards and Western Avenue.
Chicago has announced a project to install 250 new surveillance cameras, to add to the 2,000 already in place throughout the city. The new cameras, though, will be equipped with computer programs that will alert police if someone behaves in what might be a suspicious manner around locations considered potential targets for terrorists.
The system was designed based on the surveillance system in use in London, as well as those used in many Las Vegas casinos and some used in the military.
Civil liberties groups in Chicago raised concerns when the project was announced by Mayor Richard Daley and Office of Emergency Management and Communications Director Ron Huberman, but the mayor said all the cameras will be directed at public spaces.
"You could photograph me walking down the street. They do it every day. I don't object," he said. "You do it every day. You have that right."
But civil liberties groups and some scholars who study privacy issues say there might be a very real difference, and question whether the risks of becoming a "surveillance society" are worth the purported benefits of being watched so closely.
"It may be right to think it is one thing to have your neighbor watch you was you walk down the street, and quite another to have the government plant a camera on your back and follow your every move as you go about your day," Rosen said.
Rosen cited a report done by the United Kingdom's Home Office on the value of closed circuit TV cameras as crime prevention tools, which found mixed results in its examination of studies done in Great Britain and the United States.
"It was found that CCTV had no effect on violent crimes (five studies), but had a significant desirable effect on vehicular crimes," the Home Office report said.
'Playing on the Public's Fears of Terrorism'
"The four evaluations of CCTV in public transportation systems present conflicting evidence of effectiveness: two found a desirable effect, one found no effect, and one found an undesirable effect on crime," the report said. "For the two effective studies, the use of other interventions make it difficult to say with certainty that CCTV produced the observed crime reductions."
Yet, Rosen and Ofer say, the installation of such systems in the United States is popular with many people because of the widely held impression that it is an effective crime-fighting tool, and because of concerns about terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"The government is playing on the public's fears of terrorism," Rosen said.
A study this year by the European Commission of the effect of the 200,000 surveillance cameras in operation in London found that crime has risen 10 percent since 2002.
American law enforcement officials say, though, that even if questions about the effectiveness of CCTV systems as crime prevention tools have not yet been answered, their effectiveness as evidence-gathering tools is not in doubt, said Beau Thurnauer, the Coventry, Conn., police chief and head of the crime prevention panel of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
The case of Carlie Brucia, the Florida girl whose abduction near a car wash was caught on a surveillance camera, brought that into focus for Americans who saw the tape played over and over on cable TV news.
More recently, on Nov. 7, surveillance cameras in a Corona, Calif., shopping mall parking lot filmed the apparent abduction of a woman, who fled frantically from people in a black Toyota Camry Solara as several people stood by and watched. The film of the woman being grabbed, dragged to the car and put in the trunk was blurry, but police said they hoped to be able to enhance the images to help with their investigation.
What concerns Ofer, Rosen and others is what they say is a lack of regulation concerning surveillance cameras, and their great potential for abuse, both by overzealous police and by those who might turn surveillance into voyeurism.
They say the notion that the only people who have anything to fear from increased surveillance are criminals or political activists are mistaken.
Another British study, done at Hull University, found that one in 10 surveillance cameras was at one time or another used to follow women for voyeuristic ends, and in New York City, a surveillance tape from a public housing project that recorded a black man committing suicide was posted on a racist Web site, allegedly by one of the police officers who was supposed to be monitoring the cameras.
Lack of Regulation
Ofer said that one CCTV camera he noticed earlier this fall on top of a building in midtown Manhattan that may have been intended for some kind of security purpose appeared to be being used for another goal. At various times when he returned to monitor the camera -- which he said was very high tech, able to swivel in all directions and outfitted with a powerful zoom lens -- was pointing directly at windows in the hotel and apartment buildings across the street.
Videos of unsuspecting people -- women changing in store dressing rooms, couples fighting or having sex -- that were caught by the British surveillance cameras have wound up for sale on the Internet.
When it comes to use by police, there are problems because as technology has advanced, regulations on the use of that technology have not kept pace, Ofer said. While police must get a warrant to carry out audio surveillance -- requiring that they show probable cause for why the target of their investigation should come under the closer scrutiny -- there are no such requirements for video surveillance.
"We are a country based on limiting the powers of government and allowing government to engage in any kind of intrusiveness only if it can justify that intrusiveness," Ofer said. "The question is whether that level of intrusiveness is justified by a legitimate aim. That question hasn't even been asked yet."
The lack of regulation and rapidly advancing technology concerns Rosen as well, because he said that it could create an erosion of the meaning of "reasonable expectation of privacy," the legal standard used to determine what is and what is not intrusive.
"It's entirely circular -- as technology develops, expectation of privacy diminishes," he said.
Canada and some European countries have avoided this problem by framing the question differently -- asking instead how much privacy should citizens in a civilized country be expected to be able to demand, he said.
That is the question that Ofer said the NYBORDC project will get more Americans asking.
Last edited by Mech on Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:49 am; edited 4 times in total |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Wed Dec 15, 2004 3:16 am
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What the FDA Won’t Tell You about the VeriChip
CBN News | December 10, 2004
A little electronic capsule, smaller than a dime, could be one of the biggest technological advances in how we share and store private medical records. It may also be one of the most controversial.
Known as the VeriChip, it is a microchip that is implanted under a person's skin, and then scanned with a special reader device to reveal important medical data about that person.
Applied Digital, the Florida-based company that makes the VeriChip, hopes the implant will revolutionize how doctors obtain medical information, particularly in emergency situations. Theoretically, if a person can't speak, medics could scan that person and quickly be linked to a database that would provide crucial information like the patient's identity, blood type and drug allergies.
Dr. Csaba Magassi, a plastic surgeon in Northern Virginia, is among a nationwide network of doctors who are ready and waiting to implant the VeriChip into willing patients. His office receives calls daily from people inquiring about the chip.
Dr. Magassi said, "If you are in an auto accident, [and] you are unconscious, they could scan you, know exactly who you are; your medical history can easily be printed out onto the hospital record."
Dr. Magassi added, "If a patient comes in requesting the VeriChip, I usually tell them it takes between two and five minutes to place the device in place. A needle which contains the VeriChip is inserted. The needle pushes the device through, and it is implanted permanently. Put a bandaid on and you are done."
Dr. Magassi demonstrated the procedure for CBN News on an apple. Once the microchip was inserted, the hand-held scanner read the number on the chip using radio frequency waves. Think of it as a human barcode.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the VeriChip implant for medical use in humans in October, a huge victory for Applied Digital.
In an effort to jumpstart interest, the company launched the "Get Chipped" campaign. It is offering a discount to the first few hundred people who get the implant, and also plans to donate hundreds of scanners to the nation's trauma units to promote use of the VeriChip.
But in a letter obtained by CBN News from the FDA to the VeriChip makers, the microchip is not completely safe. In fact, the letter lists a whole host of health risks associated with the device, including "adverse tissue reaction," "electrical hazards" and "MRI incompatibility."
Applied Digital and the Food and Drug Administration refused our requests for an interview to discuss these risks.
Consumer privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht said, "There are millions of people that have read the press reports about all the positives of this technology, but really have no idea about its dangers."
Albrecht strongly opposes the VeriChip for the physical risks it poses, as well as the privacy risks. She has been called "the Erin Brokovich of RFID chips."
On her Web site, www.spychips.com, Albrecht reveals the potential dangers of the VeriChip and other radio frequency identification methods.
Albrecht said, "There's a very serious concern that, already, engineers and people who think along those lines are already thinking like hackers and criminals -- they're already starting to say, how can this system be compromised, how can it be abused? When you are dealing with a radio frequency device, by design, it is transmitting info using invisible radio waves at a distance. In this case, that distance is only a couple of inches or a couple of feet so it’s not a huge distance, but it means that anyone who can get within a couple of inches or a few feet of you, even with a reader device they have hidden in a backpack or a purse, would be able to scan that number, obtain that info and potentially duplicate it."
And it is not just private medical information at stake. The microchip implant technology has been around for several years now, and has been used for a variety of different applications.
Thousands of chips have been implanted in pets by veterinarians for identification purposes. Livestock is now chipped to track things like mad-cow disease. Manufacturers are putting chips in products like clothing and shoes for marketing research.
In Mexico, the attorney general and his top aides were chipped for security purposes. And, in Spain at the Baja Beach Club, patrons can get a microchip with their financial information implanted, so they can pay for their cocktails with a swipe of the arm. As these pictures seem to suggest, getting chipped is fun and painless.
Applied Digital also launched a brand new application for the chip last year called the "VeriPay." This implant would hold all of a person's financial information. Rather than swipe a card or pay cash, consumers would scan their wrists for purchases. And, if a swipe of the wrist becomes too troublesome, there are already prototypes made of doorway portals that can simply scan a person and their purchases as they walk through the door.
Allbrecht said, "I think there is a very real concern that, down the road, such a chip would become mandatory. And not necessarily initially, but it would be voluntary, in the same way let’s say as credit cards or a drivers license is voluntary. No one forces you to have a driver’s license or to have a cell phone, but yet the vast majority of people do, because it is very difficult to function in a normal society without it."
For now, though, a microchip implant is voluntary. Only a few thousand chips have been sold and only a fraction of those have been implanted in humans.
For someone who wants an implant for medical purposes, Dr. Magassi and others are standing by. Magassi says, "If they want it, God love ‘em. I'll put it in. It's as simple as that."
The VeriChip just recently made its debut in a Miami, Florida nightclub, where patrons had the opportunity to "Get Chipped," much like the Baja Beach club patrons in Spain. |
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mark sky
Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 3616
Location: SW coast of Oregon |
| HARRPy Nude YeAr "ciTizEn"
Fri Dec 31, 2004 9:05 pm
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Cash aids battle against illegal guns (ALBANY OFFERS CASH TO PEOPLE TO TURN IN OTHER PEOPLE)
Posted on 12/30/2004 7:09:57 AM PST by 1Old Pro
Cash aids battle against illegal guns Albany to offer rewards for those who turn in people for possessing unlawful firearms
By CAROL DeMARE, Staff writer
First published: Thursday, December 30, 2004
ALBANY -- Albany police will begin providing rewards for information leading to the arrests of suspects with illegal guns.
Earlier this month, the Albany County Legislature approved a $180,837 state grant that includes $10,000 for the reward program in the city of Albany. The project will be run under Operation Impact, a state crime-fighting endeavor.
"Any individual who has information that another person has an illegal handgun, if they contact the Albany Police Department and give them the information the police will follow up, and if they get a gun, (the informant) will get a reward," District Attorney Paul A. Clyne said Wednesday.
Rewards could run between $100 and $200 once the firearm is seized and the suspect convicted, he said. Police will decide the amount. The program starts immediately, he said.
"We will have to see what kind of a response there is," Clyne said. "If the response is great, then the money will go quickly."
Operation Impact is a strategy involving crime-mapping and targeting resources, he said.
"One of the objectives is to reduce gun violence and that means getting guns off the street, and people in neighborhoods may have information as to who is carrying guns, and we are willing to pay for that information," the district attorney said.
Targeting illegal handguns was the hallmark of Clyne's four-year administration, which ends Friday. He campaigned on the issue of getting guns off the streets and sharply prosecuted those convicted of gun possession. (YET ALBANY'S CRIME RATE GOES UP, NOT DOWN-MY COMMENT)
In 2003, only one county outside of New York City sent more people to prison for straight felony gun possession with no other charge involved than did Albany County, Clyne said. That was significantly larger Erie County, which locked up 33 felons. Albany sent 30 to prison.
Incoming District Attorney David Soares also has pledged to make illegal guns one of his targets. ( SOARES WON WITH THE HELP OF A LARGE, ILLEGAL CONTRIBUTION FROM GEORGE SOROS- MY COMMENT)
The district attorney's office secured the grant, and "the lion's share of the money will be spent on police overtime," Clyne said. Some funds will be used to purchase a water tank for police to test-fire illegal guns, he said.
SOURCE URL: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/storyprint.asp?StoryID=318659 |
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mark sky
Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 3616
Location: SW coast of Oregon |
| CarNivorE CaR'z
Fri Dec 31, 2004 9:08 pm
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Is your car spying on you?
By Eric C. Evarts
Source: Christian Science Monitor
It was only a matter of time. For several years, electronic devices in cars have monitored acceleration and braking to save fuel and improve safety. Now, they're saving some of that data to give automakers and police a better idea of how you drive.
So far most of the devices record the last five seconds of readings before a crash, for example, a little like flight-data recorders in airplanes. The information has proven extremely useful to auto designers and accident investigators. It's also being used to prosecute drivers.
"The problem is most people don't realize these devices are in their vehicle," says Eric Skrum, spokesman for the National Motorists Association in Madison, Wis. "That information can be used against you, and there's no sort of regulation about who owns that information."
Already, drivers have had data from their own cars used to convict them. Last month, Danny Hopkins of New York was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison for killing Lindsay Kyle after the black box in his Cadillac CTS indicated the car was going 106 miles per hour five seconds before the crash. Investigators originally thought the car was going only 65 to 70 miles per hour. In St. Louis, Clifton McIntire of Phippsburg, Me., pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month after the black box in his GMC pickup revealed that he was going 85 miles an hour before he slammed into the back of a Toyota.
Today an estimated 30 million cars contain these "black boxes" - they're actually silver - known as event data recorders (EDRs). Most record simple data such as whether airbags deployed or if passengers wore seatbelts. But most cars from General Motors and Ford, as well as some Toyotas and Hondas, track even more information, including vehicle and engine speed, and whether the driver was accelerating or braking.
Automakers say they want this information to help improve safety equipment. "The main purpose of the EDR is to get data after a crash to help us understand how the airbags worked," says Alan Adler, manager of product-safety communications at General Motors in Warren, Mich. "The privacy of our customers is very important to us, but [the device] doesn't record anything that isn't true." Crash investigations
Without EDRs, investigators frequently don't have enough data to pinpoint the cause of an accident, says Joe Osterman, director of the Office of Highway Safety at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington. That was the case when an elderly man killed 20 people when his Buick plowed into a farmers market in Santa Monica, Calif. in 2000. The driver said he was braking. Witnesses and investigators said he was accelerating.
While what exactly happened in the moments before the tragedy remains a mystery, the NTSB went on record afterward saying EDRs should be mandatory in all cars sold in the United States.
The NTSB, however, doesn't have the authority to mandate black boxes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does. It proposes that the recorders become standard equipment starting in 2009 models, retain the last eight seconds of data before a crash, and include added data from electronic stability control and antilock braking systems.
Civil libertarians worry that such data will be used more broadly in the future.
"This is another example of where technology has outstripped the law and certain assumptions of how the world works," says Jay Stanley, director of communications for the Technology and Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.
Some safety experts also worry about the wrong people using the data. While Mr. Osterman of the NTSB favors police investigators using black-box data in criminal investigations, he worries that private experts hired in civil litigation may have biases and could take the data at face value instead of cross-checking it.
"The data can be misleading if you're not a seasoned accident reconstructionist," adds Bob Kreeb, an engineer at Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington who chaired a committee of the Society of Automotive Engineers to set standards for the data gathered from black boxes. "So it needs to be interpreted and validated."
Installing black boxes with five seconds worth of memory was as simple as adding a memory chip to existing computer systems in cars. Increasing the memory to several months' worth of data would not be difficult at all, Mr. Stanley says. "If GM decided tomorrow to track three months of data instead of five seconds, there's nothing that would make them have to tell anybody," he adds. Tracking the teens
In fact, Davis Instruments of Hayward, Calif., sells a black box called CarChip that will record throttle position and engine parameters for up to 300 hours of driving. Parents can use it to monitor their teenagers' driving habits, for example.
Progressive, an auto-insurance company, is running a pilot program with 5,000 drivers in Minnesota using a device similar to CarChip. It records up to six months of driving data, including vehicle mileage, time of day, and speed. The program, called TripSense, lets drivers choose whether to hand over data from their recorders to the insurer. Based on their habits behind the wheel, they can get discounts on their premiums of 5 to 25 percent.
But once any data is collected, some worry that it might be subpoenaed. If a police officer pulls you over while you're not speeding, "will your EDR tell him that five miles or five days earlier you were?" asked AutoWeek magazine's Bob Gritzinger in a November article.
Recorder data may also present problems for drivers with automobile warranties. Some wonder if vehicle manufacturers are using safety data to void warranties. Some people in Internet chat rooms have alleged Mitsubishi is doing just that to those who drive its racy Evolution VIII in amateur weekend races.
Even if not true, the existence of such stories shows people's concerns about this kind of technology, says Stanley. "If it's not controlled, it allows powerful institutions to increase their control over ordinary individuals," he says.
For example: When AutoWeek conducted handling tests on a mundane Chevy Malibu Maxx hatchback earlier this year, the recorder automatically alerted GM OnStar officials, who called the car to make sure the driver was OK after a particularly severe cornering maneuver. The driver was, but later said he resented the intrusion. |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Thu Jan 27, 2005 2:40 am
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Prepare for life in a police state: Court allows drug dogs in all traffic stops
Jan/26/2005
By Sarah Ryley
Voice Editor
The U. S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that narcotics-detecting dogs can be used for all routine traffic stops — and you can bet that we, as students with varying degrees of other “incriminating” visual factors, are going to be the targets.
The case involved John Caballes, an Illinois man who was stopped for doing only six miles over the speed limit, but narcotics-detecting dogs ended up finding $250,000 worth of marijuana while sniffing around his trunk. The fact that he was stopped for doing only six over is a sign that this ruling is going to open the door for more frivolous traffic stops with the officers hoping to find drugs.
In a 6-2 ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens issued a statement stating that Caballes had no legal right to privacy concerning illegal narcotics, and since narcotics dogs are only trained to detect illegal drugs — not money or any other lawful possessions — constitutional search and seizure protections were not violated.
Not only do narcotics-detecting dogs often make mistakes resulting in the unlawful rummaging through one’s personal possessions, but it’s commonly because they detect money with drug residue on it — between 70 and 96 percent of bills are estimated to have residue from some illegal narcotic.
According to the NPR report, another man was stopped by police using narcotics dogs and sent to jail because he had a large sum of money on him that dogs detected because of drug residue — but they found no actual drugs. The man still had to post bail and pay for a lawyer in his court case.
In the Supreme Court’s dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Ginsburg said that allowing narcotics-detecting dogs for routine traffic stops opens the door for using the dogs to survey parked cars, much like some schools do for students’ lockers, and having the dogs on street corners. She also made the point that the dogs are intimidating and will fundamentally change the police-driver encounter while also elongating it.
Police are well known to profile drivers who they think might possess drugs based on visual factors such as race, age, piercings, dreadlocks, tattoos, the type of car being driven and the bumper stickers on it.
Students on college campuses and low-income minorities are especially harassed because the officer figures that he or she can find other reasons to issue tickets if the apparent infraction is too minor, such as lack of registration, insurance or a license; drunk driving; or the jackpot infractions — possession and drug trafficking. The Supreme Court decision is only giving the officers further incentive to make these harassing and predatory stops.
Even if the victim doesn’t have any actual drugs on him, he can still be forced to go through the process of going to jail, posting bail and paying crippling lawyer fees if he has a large amount of money containing drug residue on him, or if a friend left trace marijuana in his car. Imagine driving home from work and being pulled over for going only six miles over the speed limit, and then being carted off to jail because the $300 in tips you made bartending happened to have some cocaine on it. This can very easily start being commonplace around inner cities and college campuses.
“Innocent” bystanders aside, police applaud this ruling as a major step toward combating the war on drugs, and one can only imagine the zeal with which they will put it into practice. But this ruling really targets the recreational pot smoker since they are the most common, and we need to stop clogging up the courts and jails with small-time drug users.
This is a waste of our tax dollars and a waste of our youth. Sending young people to jail and then forcing them to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees for possessing a small amount of marijuana — a “mistake” many successful adults, such as our last two presidents, will have to admit to — is really just unfair and unproductive.
It’s not likely that the ruling will be overturned, at least in the next four years, so prepare yourself for life in a police state.
Send all comments to this story to sryley@southend.wayne.edu |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Mon Feb 07, 2005 8:10 pm
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BIG BROTHER'S FOLLOWING YOU
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/40203.html
Michigan Technological University is patenting a way to track the position of a cellphone user (WO2004/105356). A vehicle-mounted transmitter drives around the area under investigation and prompts phones in the area to respond with their identity numbers. When the receiver detects a signal from the phone in question, it uses a directional antenna to work out which direction the phone is in. By sending out a brief clock signal and checking the time it takes to get a response, it can tell how far away the phone is, so pinpointing its position.
CHORD CONTROL
Disney has a neat idea for making electronic toys move in time with music while avoiding the need for an expensive Bluetooth-based control system (US2004/0081078).
The trick is to hide the control signals for, say, a toy bear in a musical soundtrack. The signal is broken down into several data ... |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Feb 19, 2005 4:16 am
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Forced National ID Gateway to Forced Implanted Bio Chips
Paul Walter | February 18 2005
Last week the House of Representatives passed an unconstitutional piece of legislation which will force all Americans to accept a national ID/driver's license. Those who refuse to accept this card will not be able to fly, take the train and one day you will be unable to travel the roads and streets without "your papers, please!" According to Congressman Ron Paul, "The bill establishes a huge, centrally database of highly personal information about American citizens: at a minimum their name, date of birth, place of residence, social security number and other sensitive data. [Read: National ID Bill Masquerading as Immigration Reform]
The bill even provides for this sensitive information to be shared with Canada and Mexico! Imagine a corrupt Mexican official selling thousands of identify files, including social security numbers to criminals."
Congressman Paul goes on to say, "Supporters claim the national ID scheme is voluntary. However, any state that opts out will automatically make non-persons out of its citizens. The citizens of that state will be unable to have any dealings with the federal government because their ID will not be accepted. They will not be able to fly or to take a train. In essence, in the eyes of the federal government they will cease to exist. It is absurd to call this voluntary, and the proponents of the national ID know that every state will have no choice but to comply."
Of course, this is unconstitutional and not just because the federal government has issued a direct threat to the sovereign states of the Union and their citizens. The driver's license and state identification cards are and always have been the domain of the states under the Tenth Amendment. Congress is trying to crush the independence of the states and the people should rise up and tell their U.S. Senators that while the House has passed this draconian piece of Nazi-style legislation, that you will refuse to accept these documents. Enormous heat must be put on the Senate to kill this legislation.
Only someone with their head in the sand can't see what's coming. Because these IDs will become like gold on the black market, counterfeiting will become so massive as we have already seen with theft identity, the next logical step is forced biometric implantable chips - into your right wrist. Congress is consistent at creating a mess and then destroying your rights to "fix it." Nothing could be further from the truth as we have seen over and over and over with all these broken government systems.
How can anyone deny this? Being forced to have a bio chip implanted under their skin isn't the Mark of the Beast as foretold in the Bible where you will be unable to do any business, commerce or travel without it? Now is the time to demand the Oregon State Legislature refuse to allow the federal machine to come into our state and force such draconian, Nazi-style intrusions into our lives. Speak up now or in a few years you'll be sporting the Mark of the Beast.
Is our government using the fear and threat of terrorism to enslave us all? You bet they are.
Note: National drivers license is the precursor for the bio-chip implant. You see, if they demand bio chip implant right of the bat, people won't accept it. So, the stage has to be set first. Once the people accept the national drivers license, it will be a cinch to sell the sheep the bio chip implant, guaranteed, all in the name of security. And the 501-c-3 corporate church leadership will help them. |
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increase 1776
Joined: 07 Oct 2000
Posts: 3097
Location: Bizzaro World |
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Sun Mar 20, 2005 9:49 pm
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They have some of those in a suburb of Portland,Or. The manufacurer of the camera system gets a percentage of every ticket collected.So you get some pretty quick changing lights.One of the major defense contractors is the one pushing the ticket system.And of course the Bush Mafia owns the corp.or a part of it.The newer item they're 'pushing' is a camera system set up in a plain van,near school zones or other neighborhoods.You get a ticket in the mail a month or so later.Nice.
_________________
"The police are not here to create disorder.
The police are here to preserve disorder." Mayor Richard Daley
Last edited by increase 1776 on Mon Mar 21, 2005 12:17 am; edited 1 time in total |
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CDsNuTz
Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 950
Location: Down the hill a bit |
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Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:07 pm
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Denver has those neat little vans.We dont have the red light runner tickets unless its by an actual cop ,Althought there are cameras at nearly every intersection. |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Apr 09, 2005 4:12 am
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Japanese town gets a real robocop
Mail & Guardian | April 7, 2005
The safety of a Japanese neighbourhood was on Wednesday put in the hands -- briefly -- of a robot, which became police chief for the day in a campaign to promote safe driving.
T63 Artemis, named after the Greek moon goddess Artemis, helped its subordinate human officers distribute fliers on traffic safety at the train station after its appointment as head of Hakata station and surrounding neighbourhood in the southern city of Fukuoka.
The 157-centimeter (five-foot, two-inch) tall Artemis, which has two arms and weighs 100 kilograms, can go on patrol with the help of a battery, police said.
Locally developed Artemis will enter the record books as the first robot police chief in Japan, where robots are being put to growing use for security.
The World Exposition, a six-month showcase of technology in central Aichi prefecture, has eight security robots on patrol day and night.[b]
A Hakata police spokesperson said the robot chief "sought to attract people's attention," particularly because "robots have been a centrepiece in the World Exposition in Aichi".
Fortunately, the robot was not police chief on March 20, when the Fukuoka area was rattled by an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale which killed one person and injured hundreds more.
Last edited by Mech on Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:47 am
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Secret cell phone surveillance
p2p news / p2pnet:- Before the US government is allowed to secretly track people via their cell phones, it should have good reason to believe a crime has been, or is about to be, committed, says the EFF.
"Allowing the government to turn anyone's cell phone into a tracking device without probable cause will enable a surveillance society that would make Big Brother jealous," says EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) staff lawyer Kevin Bankston.
Last month, the court denied a Department of Justice request to monitor a cell phone's location.
“The ruling revealed that the DOJ has routinely been securing court orders for real-time cell phone tracking without probable cause and without any law authorizing the surveillance,” says the EFF.
“Many cell phone users aren't aware that their phones can be used to track their location in real-time, even when they aren't using them.”
The foundation has filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing a DOJ motion asking the court to reconsider its pro-privacy decision.
“EFF argues that the Fourth Amendment requires a search warrant for such invasive surveillance, issued under the same strict standards as warrants that authorize phone and Internet wiretaps,” it says.
“The government has tried to justify this gross expansion of its authority by combining two surveillance statutes, neither of which authorize cell phone tracking on their own.”
But there’s no support anywhere for this argument, “ not in the statutes' language, nor in legislative history, case law, or academic commentary,” the EFF states.
“Indeed, it contradicts the government's own electronic evidence manual and, "It's as if the government wants the court to believe that zero plus zero somehow equals one," says Bankston.
The DOJ is expected to appeal to the district court if magistrate judge Orenstein denies its motion to reconsider, says the EFF, adding that the court hasn’t said when it intends to rule.
In the meanwhile, new Federal Communications Commission regulations slated for 2007 will make it easier for US enforcement agencies to run online ‘wiretaps’. |
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