Tuesday, April 1, 2014

[MAP] States Update Laws, Protect Electronic Data from Government

[MAP] States Update Laws, Protect Electronic Data from Government

States passing laws to pull the shades on high-tech police snooping on mobile phones, devices
States passing laws to pull the shades on high-tech police snooping on mobile phones, devices
*Promoted from the diaries. – Aaron*
In January, we wrote how police agencies in 33 states are using different methods to obtain private citizens’ cellphone location information in massive quantities. Recall that:
The main problem is that there are few restrictions or reporting requirements on government efforts to obtain access to cell phone and electronic data. In most states, law enforcement agencies can obtain cell phone records and data without a court-approved warrant. Furthermore, the laws governing electronic surveillance are woefully outdated. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the principal federal law providing rules for police to access electronic data, was written in 1986, years before cell phones were commonplace and the Internet was widespread.
Since we wrote that article in January, we now know there are 15 states, if not more, that are considering legislation to require a warrant for such searches.
Today, Mark Flatten of the Washington Examiner published a map that shows people are worried about their privacy—and which states are taking action to protect cellphone geolocation information.
With new revelations about government’s ability to collect electronic data, state legislators will feel compelled to act in the absence of federal action. John Pezold, a state representative in Georgia, has said “[Citizens are] becoming increasingly wary that their lives are going to be no longer their own…We have got to protect that.”
To protect that value known as privacy, it’s important for legislators across the country to deliberate to find the appropriate balance between the important values of ensuring citizens’ privacy and protecting public safety.
John Stephenson is Director of the Task Force on Communications and Technology at the American Legislative Exchange Council. Follow him on twitter at @stephenj05

Slideshow: Hundreds Clash with Riot Police as they Protest the Recent Police Shootings in Albuquerque

Slideshow: Hundreds Clash with Riot Police as they Protest the Recent Police Shootings in Albuquerque

Hundreds if not thousands of peaceful protesters took to the streets Saturday in Albuquerque, to decry the recent murders by APD.
According to the AP, the Albuquerque mayor said late Sunday that a more than 10-hour protest over recent police shootings has turned from peaceful into “mayhem,” as officers in riot gear clashed with protesters who blocked traffic, tried to get on freeways and shouted anti-police slogans.
The protesters repeatedly marched the 2 miles from downtown Albuquerque to the University of New Mexico, holding signs protesting recent police shootings and often snarling traffic. Motorists honked, and supporters took photos with smartphones. Activists called on various city officials to resign, yelling late Sunday for the police chief to resign.
Justin Elder, 24, followed the protest as a passenger in a car and held a sign that read, “APD: Dressed To Kill.”
“That’s what this police force is about,” Elder said.
Albuquerque police in riot gear and New Mexico State Police followed the marchers, and protesters were seen shouting epithets at officers.
According to Mayor Berry, the protest was peaceful until people “not connected with the original protest” showed up and began wreaking havoc. At this point police declared the protest illegal and began dispersing the the crowd with more force and tear gas.

Pakistan court denies Musharraf's request to go abroad for medical treatment COME GET OBAMA AND GANG MAKE WE THE PEOPLE HAPPY THAT THESE TERRPRIST WORKING IN OUR WORLD GOVERNMENTS ALL QUILTY OF HIGH CRIMES AND TREASONS

Pakistan court denies Musharraf's request to go abroad for medical treatment

[JURIST] A Pakistani court on Friday rejected a request by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf [BBC profile] to lift his travel ban and allow him to go abroad for medical treatment. Instead the court issued [AP report] an arrest warrant for the former leader, although the warrant is "bailable," meaning that Musharraf can avoid jail by paying a bail sum of 2.5 million rupees (about $20,000). The court claimed [AFP report] in its decision that it did not have the authority to remove Musharraf's name from the exit control list. Musharraf has faced numerous legal troubles since his return to the nation in 2013, but it is considered an open question whether he will ever end up in court. The most serious of the cases against Musharraf is his trial for high treason, though he has failed to appear for a single court hearing thus far. On January 2 while on his way to court, he was taken to a hospital complaining of chest pains, with many speculating the move was calculated to allow him to go abroad for medical treatment.
On Thursday the Pakistan Supreme Court rejected [JURIST report] a petition by Musharraf to review its 2009 ruling [JURIST report] that his declaration of a state of emergency in 2007 was unconstitutional, the basis for the charges of treason against him. On January 9 the Islamabad Special Court demanded [JURIST report] that Musharraf attend his January 16 hearing, after having demanded [JURIST report] a medical report on January 6 and concluding that he was fit to appear. On December 23, 2013 the court rejected [JURIST report] Musharraf's contention that the treason proceedings were illegitimate and ruled that the trial would proceed as scheduled. The trial for treason is just a portion of Musharraf's legal troubles; in November, 2013 he was granted [JURIST report] bail in his trial for the "Red Mosque" killings, an operation ordered by him in 2007 that resulted in at least 100 deaths. He was arrested [JURIST report] on charges relating to those killings in October. In August 2013 Musharraf was formally charged [JURIST report] in connection with the 2007 assassination of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto [BBC obituary].

Pervez Musharraf Formally Indicted for Treason OBAMA YOURLL NEXT YOU AND CONGRESS SENATE EVERY ONE OF YOU LOW LIFES

Pervez Musharraf Formally Indicted for Treason

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Former Pakistani President and Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf has officially been charged with treason by a court in Pakistan – he is the first former army chief of Pakistan to face the charge. The news that Musharraf would be tried for treason emerged in November 2013 when current Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government announced an intention to take action against him for his unconstitutional behavior during his tenure as President of Pakistan. Since then, Musharraf’s trial and formal indictment have been delayed due to health problems on his part and other setbacks.
Musharraf plead not guilty to all five treason charges during what was his second appearance in court. ”I prefer death to surrender,” he allegedly told the court in Islamabad. According to The Guardian, most experts see Musharraf’s legal defense as an uphill battle – he will not have an easy time defending himself. If he is found guilty, Musharraf could be sentenced to death. Should Pakistan actually sentence Musharraf to death, the result could be destabilizing – the military in particular continues to have several in its ranks who were close to Musharraf and continue to support him.
“I am being called a traitor, I have been chief of army staff for nine years and I have served this army for 45 years,” Musharraf exclaimed. “I have fought two wars and it is treason?” Musharraf’s charges do not relate to his coup or anything related to Pakistan’s use of the military in conflict – the charge is based on his actions towards the end of his tenure when he declared emergency rule and removed Pakistani judges. Musharraf insists he acted within the confines of the constitution.
Ever since the intention to pursue a treason charge against Musharraf was announced, observers have expected the case to become a landmark step in realigning the relationship between Pakistan’s civilian government and its military. Nawaz Sharif’s ascension to power in 2013 marked the first time Pakistan has seen the transfer of power from one civilian government to another. Pakistan’s traditionally powerful military has generally allowed civilian governments to operate within a carefully prescribed circle, but the progress of the Musharraf case demonstrates a change in that traditional state of affairs. Musharraf continues to have several supporters within the Pakistani military establishment (which has changed ever since General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani left in November 2013). Musharraf’s case also marks the first time Pakistan’s civilian government has put a top military leader on trial.
Underlying the case are personal tensions between Musharraf and Sharif. Musharraf overthrew Sharif’s democratically elected government in 1999 in a bloodless coup and the treason charge is partly motivated by a desire for revenge by Sharif and his supporters.

CIA Station Chief confirms no protests before Benghazi attack

CIA Station Chief confirms no protests before Benghazi attack

Rick Moran
Why did the CIA ignore their own station chief in Libya when developing its talking points for the administration?
That's a question that is likely to be answered on Wednesday at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.
Washington Times:
Before the Obama administration gave an inaccurate narrative on national television that the Benghazi attacks grew from an anti-American protest, the CIA’s station chief in Libya pointedly told his superiors in Washington that no such demonstration occurred, documents and interviews with current and former intelligence officials show.
The attack was “not an escalation of protests,” the station chief wrote to then-Deputy CIA Director Michael J. Morell in an email dated Sept. 15, 2012 — a full day before the White House sent Susan E. Rice to several Sunday talk shows to disseminate talking points claiming that the Benghazi attack began as a protest over an anti-Islam video.
That the talking points used by Mrs. Rice, who was then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, were written by a CIA that ignored the assessment by its own station chief inside Libya, has emerged as one of the major bones of contention in the more than two years of political fireworks and congressional investigations into the Benghazi attack.
What has never been made public is whether Mr. Morell and others at the CIA explicitly shared the station chief’s assessment with the White House or State Department.
Two former intelligence officials have told The Washington Times that this question likely will be answered at a Wednesday hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during which Mr. Morell is scheduled to give his public testimony.
Mr. Morell, who has since left the CIA, declined to comment on the matter Monday. He now works at Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington insider strategic communications firm.
One former intelligence official close to Mr. Morell told The Times on the condition of anonymity that “the whole question of communication with the station chief will be addressed in his testimony.”
“We’re confident that it will clarify the situation in the minds of many who are asking,” the former official said.
Another former intelligence official told The Times that Mr. Morell did tell the White House and the State Department that the CIA station chief in Libya had concluded that there was no protest but senior Obama administration and CIA officials in Washington ignored the assessment.
Why they ignored it remains a topic of heated debate within the wider intelligence community.
If the White House was told prior to Rice's appearances on TV, how could they think that they could maintain the fiction about the video? Did they believe they could keep a lid on the whole thing and keep the truth from emerging?
I don't think they believed they could keep what actually happened from the public forever. They only needed to keep it secret for two months - until the election was out olf the way and Obama safely re-elected. After that, it was simply a matter of doing what they're doing now; stonewalling Congress.
Then there's this:
A third source told The Times on Monday that Mr. Morell and other CIA officials in Washington were weighing several pieces of “conflicting information” streaming in about the Benghazi attack as the talking points were being crafted.
“That’s why they ultimately came up with the analysis that they did,” the source said. “The piece that was coming out of Tripoli was important, but it was one piece amid several streams of information.”
One of the former intelligence officials said the Libya station chief’s assessment was being weighed against media reports from the ground in Benghazi that quoted witnesses as saying there had been a protest. Analysts at the CIA, the source said, also were weighing it against reporting by other intelligence divisions, including the National Security Agency.
“The chief of station in Tripoli who was 600 or 700 miles away from the attacks wouldn’t necessarily have the only view of what actually went on in Benghazi,” that former official said.
The station chief may have been hundreds of miles away but he was also in direct contact with the CIA annex. How logical is it to give as much or more weight to "media reports" than your own station chief on the ground?
More questions that aren't likely to be answered anytime soon.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

The “Cowardly” Senate Leaders Employ Another Budget Gimmick

The “Cowardly” Senate Leaders Employ Another Budget Gimmick

Here is exhibit A of why we don’t trust current Senate leadership to do the right thing if they were to win back the majority; they refuse to block new spending when in the minority.
Last week, House leadership decided to pass the “doc fix” bill (H.R. 4302) by voice vote.  This bill reimburses healthcare providers for the scheduled 24 percent cut in payments for services rendered to Medicare patients.  The bill extends the payments through next March.  It also continues some new programs created under Obamacare.
They used a hodgepodge of tenuous offsets spread out mainly over the next 5-10 years to compensate for an immediate expense that will undoubtedly reoccur every year under the 10-year budget frame.  Hence, once again, Republicans have agreed to increase spending without any structural reforms or concessions from Democrats on other policies (the original House bill paid for the extension by repealing the individual mandate).
Yesterday, Senator Harry Reid brought the bill to the Senate floor, but Senator Jeff Sessions raised a budget point of order.  As Ranking Member of the Budget Committee, Sessions has been a stalwart at challenging new spending bills for violating Senate PAYGO rules.  This is one of the few tools at the disposal of the minority party used to block bad legislation since the majority party needs 60 votes to overrule the point of order.
In this case, the $15.8 billion cost would be incurred immediately and the offsets include some budget gimmicks to ensure that CBO would score it as deficit neutral by the year 2024.  One would expect the party leadership to rally behind their point man on budget issues in order to stop the majority from increasing spending.  Yet, Senators McConnell and Cornyn led 14 other Republicans in opposing Sessions, thereby giving Reid the 60 votes needed to send the bill to the President’s desk.
Senator Tom Coburn was right to call this a “cowardly” vote, suggesting that this is the reason he is leaving the Senate:
“If you vote for this bill that’s on the floor today, you’re part of the problem. You’re not part of the solution,” Coburn said. “It’s a sham, it’s a lie. The pay-fors aren’t true. It’s nothing but gimmicks. It’s corruptible. There’s no integrity in what we’re getting ready to vote on.”
Coburn said the “doc fix” is just the latest in a series of decisions Congress has made to avoid short-term pain. He and other fiscal conservatives railed against a fix this year to rising flood insurance rates — a law that’s celebrated by senators from coastal states.
“Just like we did on the flood insurance bill. It got a little hot in the kitchen, instead of actually cooking the omelet, we threw the eggs in the trash can and ran out of the room. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen here,” he said.
Once again, we must ask the salient question: will our predicament improve if we allow the same cowards to lead the GOP majority?

CIA Station Chief confirms no protests before Benghazi attack

CIA Station Chief confirms no protests before Benghazi attack

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Rick Moran
americanthinker.com
April 1, 2014
Why did the CIA ignore their own station chief in Libya when developing its talking points for the administration?
That’s a question that is likely to be answered on Wednesday at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.
Washington Times:
Before the Obama administration gave an inaccurate narrative on national television that the Benghazi attacks grew from an anti-American protest, the CIA’s station chief in Libya pointedly told his superiors in Washington that no such demonstration occurred, documents and interviews with current and former intelligence officials show.
The attack was “not an escalation of protests,” the station chief wrote to then-Deputy CIA Director Michael J. Morell in an email dated Sept. 15, 2012 — a full day before the White House sent Susan E. Rice to several Sunday talk shows to disseminate talking points claiming that the Benghazi attack began as a protest over an anti-Islam video.
Read more
This article was posted: Tuesday, April 1, 2014 at 8:48 am

Document Examiner Releases New Evidence That Obama’s Birth Certificate IS 100% FAKE

Document Examiner Releases New Evidence That Obama’s Birth Certificate IS 100% FAKE

Cyrus Massoumi

We here at Mr. Conservative wouldn’t presume to say that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States or that his father isn’t Barack Obama, Sr. We merely point out anomalies in the information he has produced about his youth, and we report on documentary challenges to Obama’s autobiography. Lately, these challenges have been coming on thick and fast.  (As an aside, it’s also been strange that Obama has been erased from his classmates’ memory at Columbia.)
Most recently, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse concluded that both Obama’s long-form birth certificate (prominently displayed at the White House website) and his selective service card are forgeries. This conclusion has been met with surprising silence from the Left. Perhaps they simply don’t know how to respond to the thousands of hours of investigation, the quality of the investigators, or the detailed challenges to the document Obama has produced (electronically only) with the claim that it’s the real deal.
PP Simmons has just published a fascinating new piece of information that may go a long way to explaining the deafening silence from the Obama team. Mike Zullo, who is the lead investigator for the Cold Case Posse, filed a detailed affidavit with the Alabama Supreme Court, giving chapter and verse on the problems with Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate. In that document, he cited to Reed Hayes, a Certified Document Examiner in Honolulu, Hawaii. Zullo says that Hayes produced a 40-page, currently still-confidential, opinion spelling out the problems with the birth certificate.
(Read MoreBritish National Archives Confirm Obama Sr. Had A Child in 1961 Kenya.)
Because of his prominent role in challenging the birth certificate, Hayes should be a prime target for the Obama-ites. It turns out, though, that there’s a big problem with targeting him and the problem starts with Obama’s own defense team. Perkins-Coie is a law firm that has been working for Barack Obama for five years defending him against challenges to his birth certificate and his citizenship. (Being a “natural born American” is, of course, a prerequisite for being President of the United States.)

U.N. summit may usher in more Internet regulations

U.N. summit may usher in more Internet regulations

Next week's Dubai summit could lead to more control by national governments, speakers at a Stanford University event say, unless Internet users take action to protect their rights.
Stanford law school panelists warn of dangers of U.N. summit. From left: Larry Irving, David Gross, Patrick Ryan, Larry Downes
Panelists at a Stanford Law School forum warn of dangers at the upcoming U.N. summit. From left: Larry Irving, David Gross, Patrick Ryan, and Larry Downes. Declan McCullagh/CNET
PALO ALTO, Calif.--A United Nations summit next week could imperil Internet freedom and lead to a deluge of intrusive new national regulations, Google and a member of the U.S. delegation warned.
"We want to maintain a platform of a free and open Internet as a platform for free expression," Patrick Ryan, an attorney at Google, said at a forum organized by Stanford Law School here yesterday afternoon. Google has organized a new campaign to draw attention to the summit, saying some governments "are trying to use a closed-door meeting in December to regulate the Internet."
Ryan's remarks echo broader concerns about the Dubai summit, including criticism from the European Parliament, the Internet Society, and international civil liberties groups. In a sharply partisan U.S. election year, this was a rare point of bipartisan accord: the House of Representatives unanimously approved a resolution endorsing a "global Internet free from government control."
Even a topic like reducing e-mail spam, which might seem unobjectionable, can become highly politicized through this process, said David Gross, a former U.S. ambassador and member of the current delegation. "One person's spam is another person's political speech," he said. "Who gets to decide? There's a whole series of things that on the surface may not seem politically sensitive but when you peel it back it is."
U.N. meetings -- this one is being convened by an agency called the International Telecommunication Union -- often result in more rhetoric than substance. During a U.N. conference in Tunisia in 2005, for instance, Iran and African governments proclaimed that the Internet permits too much free speech, with Cuba's delegate announcing that Fidel Castro believed it was time to create a new organization "which administers this network of networks."
The difference next week is that the ITU is meeting to rewrite the International Telecommunications Regulations (PDF), a multilateral treaty that governs international communications traffic. The treaty was established in 1988, when home computers used dial-up modems, the Internet was primarily a university network, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a mere 4 years old.
One example of where some countries stand: last fall, China, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan submitted a proposal to the U.N. asking for the creation of an "International Code of Conduct for Information Security." It called for international cooperation in controlling "dissemination of information" that "undermines other countries' political, economic, and social stability" -- which appears to mean censoring political speech appearing on Web pages, social network posts, and so on.
Recently leaked documents show that Russia hasn't moderated its position much since. As CNET contributor Larry Downes, who also moderated yesterday's Stanford panel, reported last week , Russia proposed that the U.N. take over the responsibilities of the Internet Society and ICANN, which manages domain names and addresses. (A subsequent draft a few days later backtracked a bit .)
At the same time, a trade association representing many European network operators have advanced their own ITU proposal that would establish the principle of sender-party-pays for Internet traffic. Not-so-coincidentally, a lot of Internet traffic is sent to Europe from the United States.
"If you have a speaker of any kind who wants to speak on the Internet...if they suddenly have to pay a toll to be able to do that, that's really going to quell speech," Ryan, the Google attorney, said.
Other proposals likely to emerge as flashpoints include ones dealing with cybersecurity, surveillance, censorship, online crime, and protecting national security.
For their part, ITU officials have attempted to downplay criticism, saying that whatever is decided next week at the World Conference on International Telecommunications, or WCIT, is up to the member countries that are sending delegations to Dubai. Hamadoun I. Touré, the ITU's secretary general, wrote in an opinion article in Wired this month:
Governments are looking for more effective frameworks to combat fraud and other crimes. Some commentators have suggested such frameworks could also legitimize censorship. However, Member States already have the right, as stated in Article 34 of the Constitution of ITU, to block any private telecommunications that appear "dangerous to the security of the State or contrary to its laws, to public order or to decency."
An ITU spokesman, Paul Conneally, wrote a blog post last week that defended the organization against allegations of secrecy. A Wikileaks-like site, WCITLeaks.org, has been posting some of the confidential proposals from various countries, but it only has acquired a small fraction of the total, and the ITU has refused to release the rest.
"At ITU, transparency is achieved at the national level, through national consultations in national languages," Conneally wrote. "A process we believe more inclusive than simply posting an English language text online."
Another WCITLeaks-posted document (PDF) from a staff retreat in Geneva in September shows the ITU is highly sensitive to public criticism and the perception it's engaged in a power grab. The internal document says: "Negative media coverage in the U.S. continues, and is now starting to appear in developing countries, and the Secretariat continues its effort to counter this."

Global Governance Begins on December 14

Global Governance Begins on December 14

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an imprint of the UN, is holding its World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) from December 3-14, 2012. The stated purpose of the WCIT is to update the UN's "global treaty" on telecommunications to deal more directly and comprehensively with the internet. Knowing who controls the UN, it is not hard to see that a primary aim of the updated "treaty" will be to give credence to the regulation and monitoring of online activity in ways that are desirable to the (authoritarian) majority of member states.
Here is a portion of the ITU's official explanation of the need for a new regulatory regime, in its Resolution 146:
[T]he International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) were last amended in Melbourne in 1988.
[T]he international telecommunications environment has significantly evolved, both from the technical and policy perspectives, and... it continues to evolve rapidly.
[A]dvances in technology have resulted in an increased use of IP-enabled infrastructure and relevant applications presenting both opportunities and challenges for ITU Member States and Sector Members.
[I]n order for ITU to maintain its pre-eminent role in global telecommunications, it must continue to demonstrate its capacity to respond adequately to the rapidly changing telecommunication environment.
[I]t is important to ensure that the ITRs [International Telecommunications Regulations] are reviewed and, if deemed appropriate, revised and updated in a timely manner in order to facilitate cooperation and coordination among Member States and to reflect accurately the relations between Member States, Sector Members, administrations and recognized operating agencies.
In case you missed a few classes of Regulatory Bureaucracy Speak 101, please allow me to translate:
Since we last updated our global telecommunications regulations, the internet, operating in a relatively unregulated environment, has grown by leaps and bounds, as human productive endeavors when left unregulated have an annoying tendency to do. Therefore, in order to keep this wildly successful communications network from getting any farther ahead of our regulatory apparatus, it is time to develop a strong, binding framework to limit internet growth, use, and activity in ways deemed necessary by those UN member states, such as China, Russia, and Iran, that are opposed on principle to unrestricted international communication, on the grounds that it tends to foster an informed and rebellious population.
In sum, authoritarian regimes with a vested interest in limiting public access to the outside world, or monitoring and censoring communications for "sensitive" content, are beginning to question whether the ITU is a sufficient guarantor of their control over their inmates with regard to global communication. If we do not act now to "demonstrate our capacity to respond adequately," our "pre-eminent role in global telecommunications" -- i.e., our role as facilitator of the statist status quo -- will be challenged. In other words, if Vladimir thinks we are not serving his interests anymore, he will get angry, and no one wants to see Vladimir angry.
Is this translation of mine all just a lot of conservative fear-mongering about an innocent UN agency going about its daily business of fostering "supportive, transparent, pro-competitive, and predictable policies," as Resolution 146 says?
Well, one easy way to check on that would be to read through the WCIT meeting's official agenda. Unfortunately, that agenda, though linked on the ITU website, is password-protected to restrict access to members of the global bureaucracy. Specifically, the agenda may officially be read only by those government administrators, relevant apparatchiks, and contributing academics who are members of the Telecommunication Information Exchange Service. Yes, that is TIES -- you could not invent a more suitable acronym for the "information service" of a global regulatory agency.
Internet users and providers, including even some, such as Google, that have a spotty history of resisting government encroachments into their industry, are expressing grave concerns about the ITU's intentions. However, the ITU's secretary-general, Hamadoun I. Touré, seeks to reassure us that this meeting of the UN's telecommunications regulatory agency has nothing to do with regulating communication. Asked on Al-Jazeera why, given the extraordinary success of the internet as an unregulated domain, the ITU is choosing to write regulations now, he said:
The ITRs that is going to take place in Dubai is not about that. The ITRs is not about internet regulation. I'm very much surprised that all the debate is about this. The ITRs is revising the 1988 treaty that set the stage for the information society we are in today. But at the time, in 1988, it was only telephone communications, mainly, and back then, the settlement between operators was based on time, distance, and location. Today, we have a very significant growth of voice, video, and data, and therefore there is a need to fine tune the business model so that there is more investment in the infrastructure, to cope with the exponential growth in voice, video, and data traffic.... It's not about internet freedom. Nobody today would dare to go against the freedom of the internet.
Lesson One on how to recognize a liar: if absolutely everything a man says is provably untrue, he is probably lying. (Merely ignorant people speak the truth occasionally, just by accident.)
"The ITRs" -- that is, the International Communications Regulations -- are "not about regulation." So when we read, as in Resolution 146 above, that the International Telecommunications Regulations must be "revised and updated in a timely manner," this revision and updating (of "Regulations") is somehow unrelated to regulation. Well, that's comforting.
The purpose of this conference -- which the chief regulator, cutting to the chase, does not refer to by its actual name (WCIT), but by its primary objective, the ITRs that will be produced there -- is to revise "the 1988 treaty that set the stage for the information society we are in today." What a perfect self-revelation of the power-mad soul of a globalist regulator. The UN treaty on telecommunications, Touré claims, "set the stage" for the internet revolution in mass communications. Brilliant researchers, technological whiz kids, and adventurous entrepreneurs did not make it happen; UN bureaucrats did.
And we must put this absurd self-aggrandizement in the context of Touré's very next sentence: "But at the time, in 1988, it was only telephone communications, mainly." So the 1988 UN regulations "set the stage" for the internet boom, even though they had nothing to do with the internet. To be fair, this statement is undoubtedly true, though not in a way that Touré would ever concede: it was indeed the lack of UN regulations regarding the internet that made its exponential growth possible.
And this unfettered growth, of course -- the sense that the internet is expanding "out of control" -- is precisely the "challenge" that the new ITRs will be designed to address. Note, as well, how reminiscent Touré's words are of another famous anti-freedom globalist, who, in his well-known "You didn't build that" remarks, offered the following:
The internet didn't get created on its own; government research created the internet, so that all the companies could make money off the internet.
By "on its own," in that sentence, President Obama means "by individuals." His point, like the ITU secretary-general's, is that coercive regulatory authorities are ultimately responsible for the existence and success of the internet, as they are responsible for the existence and success of everything. This makes government the ultimate proprietor of all things, thus authorizing government to insert itself into these things at its own discretion.
Another Obamaesque point from Touré: the development of new communications technology creates "a need to fine tune the business model so that there is more investment in the infrastructure." Market forces, you see, could never develop "infrastructure" to meet the needs of business expansion -- rather, government, observing current conditions, must determine what people need, and make or arrange the appropriate "investments" to provide it. Again, this reinforces the notion of government as sole proprietor of the underlying conditions of commerce -- that is, of the market itself. Government creates the terms and conditions, and then "allows" people to carry out their business on its well-regulated turf. The "free market," the roads, the internet -- all of these are, in the authoritarian's view, "infrastructure," and we all know that "infrastructure" is in the public domain. The need for "infrastructure" is now the left's euphemistic argument for government regulation of everything.
The best part of Touré's lying clinic, however, is saved for last: "Nobody today would dare to go against the freedom of the internet." If a sixth grade naïf said such a thing, a responsible adult would smile kindly, and then gently explain that there are, sadly, many people in the world who do not believe men should be free. If the chief regulator of the UN's telecommunications agency says it, you should feel like the humans in the movie Mars Attacks as the aliens recite their memorized English sentence -- "Don't run, we are your friends" -- while zapping everyone in sight.
The UN agenda is dominated by national governments that certainly would, and do, dare to "go against the freedom of the internet." (Ask a Chinese exchange student if she has a Facebook account, and see what response you get. Actually, don't ask -- those kids don't need any added fear in their lives.) Of course Touré knows this. His explicit denial of the obvious proves him a (bad) liar. "Freedom of the internet," as defined by the UN, has precisely the same validity and purpose as the word "Democratic" in the name Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
So what is this all about? It is often said that the first task in a modern military occupation is to take control of the means of mass communication, thereby to control the dissemination of information. The internet, by virtue of its having spread throughout the world so quickly, and of its being largely immune to national boundaries, creates a special problem for authoritarian governments which are, in effect, occupying forces in their own nations.
Certain governments have taken many steps to curtail internet activity within their own borders, of course. The problem is that the very free nature of the internet itself tends to shine a bright spotlight on the oppressiveness of such national policies. Far preferable for such suppressors of speech, then, would be an "international treaty" reached by "global consensus" that creates a system of loopholes for the suppression of speech on grounds of "national security" and the "prevention of foreign interference in a sovereign nation's political process."
In short, suppression of undesirable political speech, both within and between nations, would be much easier and less subject to scrutiny if it could be undertaken with the imprimatur of a UN treaty full of deliberately vague language about "protecting the integrity of a nation's self-determination," for example. Furthermore, once such a treaty -- i.e., set of regulations -- becomes the agreed upon standard for all or most nations, its euphemisms will begin to sound more palatable and reasonable to an inattentive public. ("After all, it isn't right that foreigners should be stirring up civil discord and anti-government sentiment, is it?") Before you know it, today's critics of the ITU's agenda will be echoing John Boehner's post-election capitulations on ObamaCare -- "it's the law of the land."
No surprise, then, that the main impetus behind the implementation of new regulations, and the granting of greater authority to the ITU itself, comes from Russia and China. (See Declan McCullagh's observations on this threat here, and L. Gordon Crovitz' Wall Street Journal piece here.) Online fraud, spam, and issues of protecting public morals will all be used as convenient cover for creating international authority for national authoritarianism.
It seems likely that the new ITRs -- ushered in under the guise of modernizing "infrastructure" -- will have as their main purpose and effect the whitewashing of despotic suppression of free speech, monitoring of users, and restriction of users' access to information not approved for dissemination by the state. These methods are already used by some governments without (official) UN approval. The formal go-ahead from UN headquarters, however, will make the job of crushing internet age resistance movements (think of Iran's Green Revolution) much easier, by allowing the oppressive regime to file formal grievances against groups or governments that it deems to be violating its national sovereignty or undermining its political system.
This quiet UN takeover of the internet is the important first step in a new kind of occupation. The globalists, with the help of the re-elected Obama administration, are going to move forward quickly with their plans for what Al Gore and Herman van Rompuy call "global governance." A key part of this process is the reduction of the world's last defense against authoritarianism -- the United States of America -- to the status of just another mild-mannered vote at the UN. Enter Barack Obama, with his hyper-conciliation to the Muslim Brotherhood, his promise to Vladimir Putin to finish dismantling America's defenses after his re-election, and his remaking of a prosperous constitutional republic as an economically doomed leftist regulatory state.
Just as hyper-regulation within a nation subverts representative government, by creating a panoply of bureaucratic directives that supervene upon changing electoral tides, so international hyper-regulation will have the effect of nullifying any transnational voice of unified dissent -- specifically, any voice speaking on behalf of the free exchange of ideas.
The range of speech, both with regard to content and dissemination, will be curtailed by the ITU's proposed regulations. That will be the point of these regulations. They will help authoritarians preserve their power, prevent the oppressed from organizing from a distance, and restrict the much needed influx of moral support from abroad.
Now, Mr. Obama, if you will just sign one more executive order, Agenda 21 in its entirety will become "the law of the land," and the forced migration may proceed -- gently at first, as we don't want to startle anyone. But don't worry, if the objections get too boisterous, we can always assert the national security provisions of the International Telecommunications Regulations to tamp things down a little. Those ITRs are proving very effective for normalizing conditions in China, Russia, and Iran. And your Department of Homeland Security has already anticipated this eventuality by introducing into its guidelines on domestic terrorism language identifying people who revere liberty as potential security threats.
In any case, as November 6 proved, at least 140 million American adults can be effectively subdued by repeatedly chanting, "Don't run, we are your friends."

Why does the FBI Orchestrate Fake Terror Plots?

Why does the FBI Orchestrate Fake Terror Plots?

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Why does the FBI Orchestrate Fake Terror Plots?
The latest one snared Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American teenager in Portland, Oregon. The Associated Press report by William Mall and Nedra Pickler (11-27-10) is headlined in Yahoo News: “Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Oregon.”
This is a misleading headline as the report makes it clear that it was a plot orchestrated by federal agents. Two sentences into the news report we have this: “The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the [FBI] agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.”
The teenager was supplied with a fake bomb and a fake detonator.
Three sentences later the reporters contradict the quoted authorities with a quote from Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon: “The threat was very real.”
The reporters then contradict Balizan: “White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Saturday that president Barack Obama was aware of the FBI operation before Friday’s arrest. Shapiro said Obama was assured that the FBI was in full control of the operation and that the public was not in danger.”
Then Shapiro contradicts himself by declaring: “The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad.”
The story arrives at its Kafka highpoint when President Obama thanks the FBI for its diligence in saving us from the fake plot the FBI had fabricated.
After vacillating between whether they are reporting a real plot or a orchestrated one, the reporters finally come down on the side of orchestration. Documents released by US Attorney Dwight Holton “show the sting operation began in June.” Obviously, the targeted Portland teenager was not hot to trot. The FBI had to work on him for six months. The reporters compare “the Portland sting” to the recent arrest in Virginia of Faroque Ahmed who was ensnared in a “bombing plot that was a ruse conducted over the past six months by federal officials.”
Think about this. The FBI did a year’s work in order to convince two people to participate in fake plots.
If you are not too bright and some tough looking guys accost you and tell you that they are Al Qaeda and expect your help in a terrorist operation, you might be afraid to say no, or you might be thrilled to be part of a blowback against an American population that is indifferent to their government’s slaughter of people of your ethnicity in your country of origin. Whichever way it falls, it is unlikely the ensnared person would ever have done anything beyond talk had the FBI not organized them into action. In other cases the FBI entices people with money to participate in its fake plots.
Since 9/11, the only domestic “terrorist plot” that I recall that was not obviously organized by the FBI is the “Times Square plot” to which Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to trying to set off a car bomb in Manhattan. This plot, too, is suspicious. One would think that a real terrorist would have a real bomb, not a smoke bomb.
In his May 19, 2009 article (reprinted Nov. 27, 2010), Joe Quinn of online site, Sott.net, collects some of the fake plots, some of which were validated by torture confessions and others by ignorant and fearful juries. The US government comes up with a plot, an accused, and tortures him until he confesses, or the government fabricates a case and takes it to jurors who know that they cannot face their neighbors if they let off a media-declared “terrorist.”
Perhaps the most obvious of these cases is “the Miami seven,” a hapless group of Christian-Zionist-Muslims that called themselves the “Sea of David” and were quietly living in a Florida warehouse awaiting biblical end times. Along came the FBI posing as Al Qaeda and offered them $50,000 and an Al Qaeda swearing-in ceremony.
The FBI told them that they needed to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and various government buildings. An honest reporter at Knight Ridder revealed: “The Justice (sic) Department unveiled the arrests with an orchestrated series of news conferences in two cities, but the severity of the charges compared with the seemingly amateurish nature of the group raised concerns among civil libertarians,” who noted that the group had “no weapons, no explosives.”
The Justice (sic) Department and tamed media made a big show out of the “militaristic boots” worn by the hapless “plotters,” but the FBI had bought the boots for them.
The biggest piece of evidence against the hapless group was that they had taken photos of “targets” in Florida, but the US government had equipped them with cameras.
The US government even rented cars for its dupes to drive to take the pictures.
It turns out that the group only wanted the $50,000, but an American jury convicted them anyhow.
When the US government has to go to such lengths to create “terrorists” out of hapless people, an undeclared agenda is being served. What could this agenda be?
The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the US government itself. One way to avoid war crimes charges is to create acts of terrorism that justify the naked aggressions against “terrorist countries.”
Another agenda is to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for the benefit of the superrich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional civil liberties.
Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created a market for security. Dual Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, former head of US Homeland Security, is the lobbyist who represents Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the full body porno-scanners that, following the “underwear bomber” event, are now filling up US airports. Homeland Security has announced that they are going to purchase the porno-scanners for trains, buses, subways, court houses, and sports events. How can shopping malls and roads escape? Recently on Interstate 20 west of Atlanta, trucks had to drive through a similar device. Everyone has forgotten that the underwear bomber lacked required documents and was escorted aboard the airliner by an official.
© Unknown Snakes in suits: ex-Homeland Security chief Chertoff and ex-AG Gonzalez The “war on terror” provides an opportunity for a few well-connected people to become very rich. If they leave Americans with a third world police state, they will be living it up in Gstaad.
This despite the fact that everyone on the planet knows that it is not lactating mothers, children, elderly people in walkers and wheelchairs, members of Congress, members of the military, nuns, and so on, who are members of Al Qaeda plotting to bring aboard a bomb in their underwear, their shoes, their shampoo and face creams.
Indeed, bombs aboard airliners are a rare event.
What is it really all about? Could it be that the US government needs terrorist events in order to completely destroy the US Constitution? On November 24, National Public Radio broadcast a report by Dina Temple-Raston: “Administration officials are looking at the possibility of codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.” Of course, the legislation will not come out of Congress. It will be written by Homeland Security and the Justice (sic) Department. The impotent Congress will merely rubber-stamp it.
The obliteration of habeas corpus, the most necessary and important protection of liberty ever institutionalized in law and governing constitution, has become necessary for the US government, because a jury might acquit an alleged or mock “terrorist” or framed person whom the US government has declared prior to the trial will be held forever in indefinite detention even if acquitted in a US court of law. The attorney general of the United States has declared that any “terrorist” that he puts on trial who is acquitted by a jury will remain in detention regardless of the verdict. Such an event would reveal the total lawlessness of American “justice.”
The United States of America, “the city upon the hill,” “the light unto the world,” has become Nazi Germany. It was the practice of the Gestapo to ignore court verdicts and to execute or hold indefinitely the cleared defendant in the camps. The Obama regime is in the process of completing Dick Cheney’s dream by legislating the legality of indefinite detention. American law has collapsed to the dungeons of the Dark Ages.
This Nazi Gestapo policy is now the declared policy of the US Department of Justice (sic).
Anyone who thinks the United States is a free society where people have liberty, “freedom and democracy” is uninformed.

Chicago Cabbie Khan Pleads Guilty to One Count of Supporting Al-Qaeda Ally

Chicago Cabbie Khan Pleads Guilty to One Count of Supporting Al-Qaeda Ally

Raja Lahrasib Khan, a Chicago cab driver accused of trying to send money to an al-Qaeda ally, pleaded guilty to providing material support to a terrorist group.
Khan entered his plea today to one of two such counts in a 2010 indictment before U.S. District Judge James Zagel in Chicago.
“Mr. Khan, what do you plead?” Zagel asked in court after Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Veatch read a summary of facts the government would have presented at a trial.
“Guilty,” Khan replied.
A naturalized U.S. citizen, Khan, 58, was arrested in March 2010 after his son was apprehended at a London airport carrying $700 of $1,000 in marked $100 bills that a U.S. undercover agent had given the cab driver for delivery to Ilyas Kashmiri.
Kashmiri was allegedly an ally of the al-Qaeda terror network and a fighter in the movement to expel Indian forces from Kashmir, the disputed territory between Pakistan and India and where Khan was born. He was reportedly killed in a U.S. missile strike last year.

Meeting

Khan today admitted meeting Kashmiri twice in Pakistan.
“Khan knew or had reason to believe that Kashmiri was working with al-Qaeda, in addition to leading attacks against the Indian government in the Kashmir region,” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago said in a statement today.
Khan faced as long as 30 years imprisonment if convicted at a trial of two material-support counts, defense lawyer Thomas Durkin told reporters after the hearing. That would have been tantamount to a life sentence for Khan, he said.
Khan’s plea agreement calls for a sentence of five to eight years, Zagel said in court.
“Any time you’re looking at 30 years to life and you walk away with just 5-8 years, you did pretty good,” Durkin said. “He will at least have a life.”
On a visit to Pakistan in the early to mid-2000s, Khan was solicited for cash donations to the movement to separate Kashmir from India, Veatch said in court. Khan was also introduced to Kashmiri, the prosecutor said.
In 2008, Khan again met with Kashmiri, who allegedly told him that al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was alive and giving orders, Veatch said. Kahn gave the militant a sum equal to about $250, Veatch said. A year later, Khan wired an additional $950 to Pakistan with instructions that about $300 be given to Kashmiri, he said.
“Is what he said the truth?” Zagel asked Khan.
“Yes,” Khan said.
Durkin told reporters that his client supported Kashmir’s independence and that the money Khan sent was intended to support that movement, not al-Qaeda.
The case is U.S. v. Khan, 10-cr-00240, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

Russia Celebrates Victory Day with Military Parade

Russia Celebrates Victory Day with Military Parade

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On Wednesday, Russia commemorated the 67th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, with a massive military parade in Moscow. The hour long ceremony was akin to the old May Day and Victory Day rallies held by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

During the 1990s the Yeltsin government did not regularly hold the celebrations, preferring to demonstrate a softer image to the World. The ceremonies were permanently reinstated by Russian President Putin in 2005 — the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s World War II victory. The 2005 Victory Day parade was the largest public military display by Russia since the apparent collapse of the Soviet Union.

Soviet emblems, including hammer and sickles and a giant replica of the Soviet Order of Victory, which bears the letters CCCP — the Cyrillic abbreviation for USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), adorned the Kremlin and surrounding buildings as roughly 11,000 Russian troops and armored vehicles paraded down Red Square.

In addition to troops from all branches of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, troops from other former Soviet republics marched along with their Russian comrades.

“For the last 20 years former USSR countries have developed [their] own traditions and holidays, but there is still this day — May 9 — which unifies all of them. This is a unique holiday for Russia, as it is the day when Russia discovered own national identity. After the war the people closed the ranks as a single nation,” said Russian ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov.

Putin, who was inaugurated for a third term this past Monday, sent his regards to his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, praising his leadership and relations between both states.

“I am convinced that a long tradition of friendship, good neighborliness and mutual support, focus on the development of closer integration ties within the CIS will continue to strengthen the Belarusian-Russian alliance, effective solution to the socio-economic problems based on democratic principles, human rights and freedoms,” Putin said.

Putin sent additional congratulatory messages to the heads of states of other former Soviet republics. “The allied relations and partnership between Armenia and Russia is characterized by old traditions of friendship and trust, close brotherly ties and deep respect for the veterans. The current generation is making a worthy contribution to the reinforcement of effective inter-state cooperation,” Putin said.

Putin inaugurated the nationwide Victory Day festivities on Tuesday, when he a laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, located by the Kremlin. Parade rehearsals were conducted over night, between the laying of the wreath and the parade at 10am Moscow time on Wednesday.

That morning the ceremony commenced with the traditional goosestep of eight soldiers in dark blue and red dress uniforms. One soldier carried the flag of the Russian Federation while another carried the Victory Banner — the red Soviet flag with a grey hammer and sickle that was raised over the German Reichstag building.

The Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov rode down in motorcade and was officially saluted by a Russian general. Serdyukov and the general drove along the row of troops and formally addressed the various branches of the Russian armed forces.

Serdyukov officially handed over the ceremony to Putin, who then gave a speech stating that Russia will stand up for itself and defend its position in international affairs.

“Russia consistently conducts its policy for strengthening security in the world, and we have the great moral right to fundamentally and insistently stand up for our position,” Putin said. “Your courage and ability to love and defend your homeland will never recede into the past and will remain the hallmark of morals, patriotism and sense of civic duty in the eyes of the younger generation.”

Present at the ceremonies were an array of Soviet veterans and former world leaders including former Soviet General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Following Putin’s speech, the parade commenced with the playing of the Russian national anthem, which uses the same music as the anthem of the Soviet Union.

Units marching included: Russian Ground Forces, Russian Air Force, Russian Navy, Russian Naval Infantry, Russian Airborne Troops, Strategic Missile Troops (for a second year in a row), Russian Aerospace Defense Forces, the Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly the KGB), Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and units from the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

All the marching troops saluted in the direction of Putin, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Serdyukov, and Russian military brass.

The parade echoed images of the Cold War, as Russian T-90 tanks, MSTA-S howitzer SP mounts, armored reconnaissance “Tiger” GAZ-233 014 vehicles, Buk-2M2 self-propelled missile systems, S-400 surface-to-air missile system transporters, and Topol-M ground missile complex launchers mounted with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) followed the marching troops down Red Square.

The parading vehicles could be seen with red stars along their side. Mi-8 helicopters carrying suspended military flags also flew overhead at the close of the parade. A full video of the Victory Day parade can be see here.
Photo: Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system transporters roll down the Red Square, in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2012, during the Victory Day Parade, which commemorates the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany: AP Images