insanegoodreviews.com

“When the government fears the people, you have Liberty. When the
people fear the government you have Tyranny.”
- Thomas Jefferson

In this issue:

* If you thought feds wanted to track you before, check this out now
* Scary Stuff – TSA, DHS plan massive rollout of mobile surveillance
vans with long-distance X-ray capability, eye movement tracking
and more
* Expat Tips
* Good News? Number One? 20 Not So Good Categories That The United
States Leads The World In
* Did you know? Gold And Why It’s Important In A Recession
* Bad [sad] News – Neighbor vs. neighbor as homeowner fights get ugly
* Police Arrest Orlando Activists For Feeding Hungry Children
* Food for thought – Rampant Unemployment = The Death Of The Middle Class
* Horror Stories – Why Do the Police Have Tanks? The Strange and
Dangerous Militarization of the US Police Force
* The District of Criminals – Justice Department Obstructing ‘Fast
and Furious’ Gun Probe, ATF Director Says
* ‘Facebook fatigue’ blamed for drop in users Social network with
600m users has been rocked by privacy scares
* Police State – Normalizing the police state (and how it ends with
taser-firing drones)
* Hot Tips – E-mail users warned over spy network
* Red Hot Product!
* Advisory
* New Documents Reveal Behind-the-Scenes FBI Role in Controversial
Secure Communities Deportation Program
* Dumbing Down – Gov’t. Hackers – Draconian “Cybersecurity”
* Dumb signs – Supreme Court to Decide Constitutionality of
Warrantless GPS Monitoring
* Dumb facts – New Bill Introduced in House Asks Citizens to
Voluntarily Pay Down National Debt
* Dumb criminal acts – Michigan Woman Faces 93 Days in Jail for
Planting a Vegetable Garden
* Dumbing Down Award of the month – This issues AWARD GOES TO…..
* Unbelievable Dumbing Down – Microsoft reveals cloud data may be
accessed by US law enforcement
* Cannon Fodder – How anything you’ve EVER said on the internet
could be seen by employers as Feds approve firm that dishes dirt
on applicants
* Bug Bites: Microsoft Could Integrate Eavesdropping in Skype
* More Bugs – Suit Charges AOL Worked Around Privacy Controls to
Stalk Consumers
* Who Prints the Money?
* Feds target frequent sales of semi-auto rifles on Mexico border
* Shamrock’s Missive
* Tid Bits – Doctors: Parents should lose custody of obese children
* Just in case! For sale: U.S. infrastructure?
* Quotes
* Tid Bits – NSA Whistleblower to Plead Guilty to Misdemeanor
* More Tid Bits – Watchdog hits out at Yahoo! for ‘spying’ on
customer emails to sell targeted advertising
* Bits n bobs – Mom Arrested After Refusing TSA Molestation of Daughter
* More Bits N bobs – New Port Richey couple says TSA search went too far
* Background checking in the palm of the hand
* Disturbing facts – Outcasts: Tonight Tens Of Thousands Of
Formerly Middle Class Americans Will Be Sleeping In Their Cars,
In Tent Cities Or On The Streets
* Hints & Tips – US court test for rights not to hand over encryption keys
* Letters to the Editor
* Quote of the month!
* PT Shamrock’s Exclusive Member’s Site!

*** If you thought feds wanted to track you before, check this out now
- USJF.net

The federal government is arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court
that police investigators and other authorities should be allowed to
track American citizens in the U.S. to develop the “probable cause”
needed for search warrants and other investigative tools.

But a team of civil-rights experts says such permission would pose
a grave danger to freedom-loving citizens who may become the targets
of the political influences that hold power at any given moment.

The Supreme Court announced yesterday it will weigh in on the
controversy of police attaching GPS tracking devices to citizens’
vehicles to obtain information that may lead to the “probable cause”
necessary for search warrants and arrests.

“The court of appeals’ decision, which will require law enforcement
officers to obtain a warrant before placing a GPS device on a
vehicle if the device will be used for a ‘prolonged’ time period,
has created uncertainty surrounding the use of an important
law enforcement tool,” said the government’s brief in the case,
U.S.A. v. Antoine Jones.

“Although in some investigations the government could establish
probable cause and obtain a warrant before using a GPS device,
federal law enforcement agencies frequently use tracking devices
early in investigations, before suspicions have ripened into probable
cause. The court of appeals’ decision prevents law enforcement
officers from using GPS devices in an effort to gather information
to establish probable cause.”
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Scary Stuff

TSA, DHS plan massive rollout of mobile surveillance vans with
long-distance X-ray capability, eye movement tracking and more
- NaturalNews

Newly-released documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC) reveal that the US Depart of Homeland
Security has been working on plans to roll out a new wave of
mobile surveillance technologies at train stations, stadiums and
streets. These new technologies will track your eye movements,
capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition
processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and
even image your naked body using whole-body infrared images that
were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the
camera owners to take “nude” videos of people at the beach.

Most importantly, many of these technologies are designed to be
completely hidden, allowing the government to implement “covert
inspection of moving subjects.” You could be walking down a hallway
at a sports stadium, in other words, never knowing that you’re
being bathed in X-rays from the Department of Homeland Security,
whose operators are covertly looking under your clothes to see if
you’re carrying any weapons.

Roving vans to “track eye movements”

According to a Forbes.com article
(http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…), one project pursued by
DHS using technology from Siemens would “mount backscatter x-ray
scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras
on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians,
assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements.”

Another project involved developing “a system of long range x-ray
scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have
on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.”

We already know that the U.S. government has purchased 500 vans
using covert backscatter technology to covertly scan people on the
streets (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…). They’re called
“Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs.”

This is all part of the U.S. government’s new wave of police state
surveillance that aims to track and irradiate innocent civilians
who have committed no crime. Under the new Janet Napolitano regime,
all Americans are now considered potential terrorists, and anyone
can be subjected to government-sanctioned radiation scanning at
any time, without their knowledge or approval.

And don’t think these efforts will be limited merely to backscatter
technology: The TSA is now testing full-power, deep-penetrating X-ray
machines (like the ones that deliver chest X-rays in hospitals) in
order to check people for bombs they may have swallowed. Yes, Janet
Napolitano now wants to look inside your colon! And they’re willing
to X-ray everyone — without their consent — in order to do that.

Read the documents yourself If you have trouble believing the
U.S. government is unleashing a new wave of police state covert
scanning vans on to the streets of America, you can read the
documents yourself — all 173 pages. They’re available on the EPIC
website at: http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanne...

EPIC calls these vans “mobile strip search devices” because they give
the federal government technology to look under your clothes without
your permission or consent. It’s also being done without probable
cause, so it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections that
are guaranteed to Americans under the Bill of Rights.

“It’s a clear violation of the fourth amendment that’s very invasive,
not necessarily effective, and poses all the same radiation risks
as the airport scans,” said EPIC attorney Ginger McCall, in the
Forbes article (above).

Huge health risks to the population It’s not just the privacy
issues that raise red flags here, of course: It’s also the fact
that the U.S. government has no respect whatsoever for the health
of its citizens who are being subjected to these radiation emitting
devices. Even while the TSA refuses to release testing results
from its own naked body scanners, DHS keeps buying more machines
(and more powerful machines) that will only subject travelers to
yet more radiation.

But the U.S. government doesn’t seem to care what happens to your
health. Their position is that their “right” to know what you’re
carrying under your clothes or inside your body overrides your
right to privacy or personal health. All they have to do is float
a couple of fabricated terrorism scare stories every few months,
and then use those “threats” as justification for violating the
Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens are very turn.

The real question in all this, of course, is how far will this
go? The TSA is already reaching down your pants and feeling up
peoples’ genitals as part of the “security” measures. Will DHS
soon just start subjecting people to body cavity searches as a
necessary security requirement before entering a football stadium,
for example? Will Americans now be X-rayed with cancer-causing
ionizing radiation — without their awareness or consent — merely
because they are walking down the street or boarding a train?

That seems to be the case. And as you can readily tell from all
this, it’s getting harder and harder for the fast-dwindling group
of deniers to claim America isn’t already a police state. The USA
is fast becoming a high-tech version of the very worst police state
tyrannies witnessed throughout human history. The only difference
is that now they have “science” on their side with the coolest new
technology that can violate your rights and irradiate your body in
a hundred different ways, with high-resolution images and digital
storage devices.

I suppose if all this were being done to really stop international
terrorists, that might be one thing. But what has become
increasingly clear in observing the government’s behavior in this
realm is that the U.S. government now considers Americans to be
the enemy — especially those who have the gall to defend their
Constitutionally-protected freedoms or question the unjustified
centralization of power taking place right now in Washington.

The DHS is America’s new secret police. And their cameras are
pointing inward, into the everyday lives of Americans; not outward,
aimed at international terrorists.

When the price of security becomes forfeiting your liberty, the
source of the “terror” is no longer the terrorists but your own
government. Isn’t this the lesson that history has taught us well?
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*** Expat Tips

Find American Expats

Connect with local Expats Follow Expat groups and bloggs
http://www.forexpatsbyexpats.com/
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Good News ?

Number One? 20 Not So Good Categories That The United States Leads
The World In
- the economic collapse

Is the United States “number one”? Many Americans take deep pride
in their nation and the truth is that the U.S. has a lot going for
it. The United States has the largest economy in the world. The
United States also has the most powerful military on the entire
planet. The United States has produced most of the greatest movies
that the world has ever seen. But the United States is also
number one in a lot of categories that are not go great. If we
ever want to turn this country around, we need to be very honest
with ourselves. We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror
and realize that it is not a good thing that we are number one in
divorce, drug addiction, debt, obesity, car thefts, murders and
total crimes. We have become a slothful, greedy, decadent nation
that is exhibiting signs of advanced decay. Until we understand
just how bad our problems really are, we won’t be able to come up
with the solutions that we need.

A lot of people that write articles like this have a deep hatred
for America. But that is not the case with me. I love the United
States. I love the American people. America is like an aging,
bloated rock star that has become addicted to a dozen different
drugs. America is a shadow of its former self and it desperately
needs to wake up before it plunges into oblivion.

If you do not believe that America is in bad shape, just read the
list below. The following are 20 not so good categories that the
United States leads the world in….

#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the
world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.

#2 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest
percentage of obese people in the world.

#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by
a wide margin.

#4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of
television watched per person each week.

#5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on
the entire planet.

#6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than
anywhere else in the world by far.

#7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year
than anywhere else in the world.

#8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year
than anywhere else in the world.

#9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than
anywhere else in the world.

#10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere
else in the world.

#11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage
of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.

#12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than
any other country on the planet.

#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is
higher than in any other country in the world.

#14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in
the world.

#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere
else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only
11 percent is made in the rest of the world.

#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world
every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the
United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars
with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade
balance every single year since 1976.

#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any
other nation on the planet does.  In fact, U.S. military spending is
greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India,
and the rest of NATO combined.

#18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any
other country does.

#19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the
entire world.

#20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the
world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now,
U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.

So are you convinced that we are in trouble yet?

The truth is that America has changed. Most of us don’t even say
hello to our neighbors anymore.

In fact, we have become so self-involved that many of us don’t even
notice when someone around us dies.

Just consider the following two examples.

*USA Today recently reported on the body of a dead woman that was
not found for approximately a year even though a whole bunch of
people walked right past the car where she died….

Bank contractors, inspectors and even the new owner of a foreclosed
home walked past the silver Chevy Nova in the garage numerous times
before discovering the former homeowner – dead on the front seat.

*In an even more shocking case, the CBS affiliate in Boston recently
reported that a dead woman was lying on the bottom of a public pool
for two days while large numbers of people swam right over her.
How in the world could something like this possibly happen?….

It’s a mystery as murky as the water at Veteran’s Memorial swimming
pool in Fall River public pool: how did swimmers, lifeguards, or
inspectors not notice a woman’s body at the bottom of the pool for
a few days?

Marie Joseph, 36, was last seen at the pool on Sunday. The pool was
open to the public Monday and Tuesday with six lifeguards on duty,
and no one noticed the body under 12 feet of water.

Most Americans have become so self-involved that they barely even
notice anyone other than their family and close friends.

The love of most Americans is growing cold and when the collapse
of the U.S. economy happens it is just going to make things
worse. Instead of working as a community, most Americans will only
be concerned with making sure that their own needs are taken care of.

The United States was once the most blessed nation on the face of
the earth, but now we are literally falling to pieces.

Does anyone have any ideas about why this could be happening?
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*** Did you know?

Gold And Why It’s Important In A Recession

Recession, what is it? Why gold and why in a recession? Well,
recession is when we have smaller inflation and investment in
economics, so that people suffer. Unemployment is very common in
recession. Large sectors of economics become unstable, many people
lose their jobs. Bad things can happen during recession, especially
if the whole world suffers from it.

What can we do about that? Many things we can do to prevent ourselves
of bankrupt – people have discovered many solutions in order to
save the economics. In time, there were some very bad periods -
WWII, recession in the 80′s, and last in 2008 and 2009. So there
is a way, we say.

Now you would say: “That is not hard, I understand what recession
is, but I do not understand what has gold to do with it?”

And what could be said about gold? Gold is an expensive metal, very
rare. Hard for people to find, gold becomes one very good exchange
coin. It is used from more than three thousand years ago for trade
and exchange. In the Wild West in America, people killed each other
for a peace of gold – no one saw who found it, and the men got their
guns out. That is a poor example what people have done for gold in
a recession. Do not take that personally if you are from Texas, .

Gold is a metal. But it is a rare metal with very good quality. Hard
to be found, gold is expensive. It has been used by people to make
coins, some beautiful jewelry and in other aspects like churches
and mosques – for the cupola. It is enough to say that people kill
for gold – a very common event in the Wild West. So there you have
it – expensive metal, hard to be found, rare, good quality – good
for exchange and trading.

There you go – trading is the answer. Nowadays money is used for
trading. But what have we explained about gold in a recession -
gold is rare and expensive, and exhaustible. But money isn’t – paper
is practically inexhaustible. So in some moment money devalues -
they have no real value for people. Here gold comes in for help -
for gold in a recession you can make a conclusion, or not. Well,
if you haven’t, we’ll help you a bit more.

You can get your gold in a bank or in some secured institution,
whatever works for you. It is very easy and common. Many people trade
gold and earn money that way – they are very good at trading. You
must know that trading and exchanging is difficult and very hard
to get some profit from it. People get success. Some luck is in
need to. But the skills are the most important.

Well, even if you don’t want to trade, you can make some savings. Ask
yourself about the jewelry – gold means stability. Bracelets,
necklaces, rings – all of them are beautiful and expensive
goodies. Even some watches are made from gold. Be careful – the gold
is expensive for you; it is expensive for people too. You decide
for yourself and if you want some assurance – you can buy some gold
in a recession, either way think before doing something. Just make
a choice that would not affect your family.
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Bad [sad] News

Neighbor vs. neighbor as homeowner fights get ugly Michelle Conlin,
Tamara Lush

In a June 15, 2011 photo, there is a near empty parking lot… an
empty park bench and rusting pipe sit near the swimming pool at
the Inlet House, in Fort Pierce, Fla. The complex was an affordable
place that the 55-and-older set aspired to. But now the Homeowner’s
association has levied a $6,000 assessment on every homeowner and
then foreclosed on seniors who did not owe the bank a dime but
could not afford the association bill.

A plumbing company’s banner hangs on the fence at the Inlet House,
in Fort Pierce, Fla. The complex was an affordable place that the
55-and-older set aspired to. But now the Homeowner’s association has
levied a $6,000 assessment on every homeowner and then foreclosed
on seniors who did not owe the bank a dime but could not afford
the association bill. The board is $178,000 in bills for fixing
the plumbing and covering the nonpayers, had no choice but to raise
dues another $50 per month.

The Inlet House condo complex in Fort Pierce, Fla., was once the
kind of place the 55-and-older set aspired to. It was affordable. The
pool and clubhouse were tidy, the lawns freshly snipped. Residents,
push-carts in tow, walked to the beach, the bank, the beauty parlor,
the cinema and the supermarket. In post-crash America, this was a
dreamy little spot. Especially on a fixed income.

But that was Inlet House before the rats started chewing through
the toilet seats in vacant units and sewage started seeping from the
ceiling. Before condos that were worth $79,000 four years ago sold
for as little as $3,000. And before the homeowners’ association
levied $6,000 assessments on everyone – and then foreclosed on
seniors who couldn’t pay the association bill, even if they didn’t
owe the bank a dime.

Normally, it’s the bankers who go after delinquent homeowners. But
in communities governed by the mighty homeowners’ association,
as the sour economy leaves more people unable to pay their fees,
it’s neighbor versus neighbor.

“What the board is doing is trying to foreclose on people to force
people out the door,” says Mike Silvestri, 75, who stopped paying
his dues at Inlet House in protest over what he considers unnecessary
and unaffordable assessments.

He and others say there were cheaper ways to deal with the rat
infestation and leaky sewage that led the board to order up a
costly plumbing overhaul. “They are bamboozling old people. I’m old,
but I’m not senile,” he says.

In the past, housing associations have gained infamy for dictating
everything from the weight of your dog (one mandated a diet for a
hound) to whether you can kiss in your driveway (not if you don’t
want a fine). Homeowners’ associations have served as the behavior
police, banning lemonade stands, solar panels and hanging out in the
garage. One ordered a war hero to take down his flag because of a
“nonconforming” pole. Another demanded that residents with brown
spots on their lawns dye their grass green.

Now, past the faux regal gates, beyond the clubhouses, many property
owners in associations owe more than their homes are worth. Some
are struggling to pay their bills after they lose a job. Others have
had their pay cut. So they’ve stopped paying their association dues.

To combat the rise in delinquencies, boards are switching off
utilities, garnishing income and axing cable. They are yanking pool
passes and banning the billiard room. And, in the most extreme cases,
they are foreclosing.

“The treacherous part is that homeowners’ associations are acting
like a local government without restraints, and they have this
extraordinary power,” says Marjorie Murray, a lawyer and founder
of the Center for California Homeowner Association Law.

Today, one in five U.S. homeowners is subject to the will of
the homeowners’ association, whose boards oversee 24.4 million
homes. More than 80 percent of newly constructed homes in the U.S
are in association communities.

And of the nation’s 300,000 homeowners’ associations, more than
50 percent now face “serious financial problems,” according to
a September survey by the Community Association Institute. An
October survey found that 65 percent of homeowners’ associations
have delinquency rates higher than 5 percent, up from 19 percent
of associations in 2005.

Associations set rules for their communities. They levy monthly dues,
typically between $200 and $500, and cover the costs of services
that a municipal government usually takes care of: road repair,
streetlights, sewage systems. If an association’s budget is strained
or major repairs need to be done, the board can levy a “special
assessment” on top of those dues. And when one homeowner doesn’t
pay those fees, all the other homeowners have to pick up the cost.

Read the rest of the story at
<http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Neighbor-vs-neighbor-as-homeowner-fights-get-ugly-1456592.php#page-2>
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*** Police Arrest Orlando Activists For Feeding Hungry Children
- YouTube

Six activists were arrested in Orlando for Sharing food with the
hungry. Two young children are being served as close to 20 police
officers swarm in and arrest the food servers. This brings to total
number of arrest for this horrendous crime up to 21 people in the
last two weeks.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWeOSxiiRq8&feature=related>
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Food for thought

Rampant Unemployment = The Death Of The Middle Class – 40 Facts
That Prove The Working Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out
- The Economic Collapse

Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the
United States is going to shrivel up and die. Right now, rampant
unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America.

Hopelessness and poverty are exploding and many are now wondering if
we are actually witnessing the slow death of the middle class. There
simply are not nearly enough “good jobs” to go around anymore,
and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a
“long-term structural problem” with the economy. The only thing
that most working class Americans have to offer in the marketplace
is their labor. If nobody will hire them they do not have any other
ways to provide for their families. Well, there is a problem. Today
wealth has become incredibly centralized. The big corporations and
the big banks dominate everything. Thanks to incredible advances in
technology and thanks to the globalization of our economic system,
the people with all the money don’t have to hire as many ordinary
Americans anymore. They can hire all the labor they want on the
other side of the globe for a fraction of the cost. So the rich
don’t really have that much use for the working class in America
anymore. The only thing of value that the working class had to
offer has now been tremendously devalued. The wealthy don’t have
to pay a lot for physical labor anymore. Thousands of our factories
and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they aren’t
coming back. The big corporations are thriving while tens of millions
of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering.

Almost all of the wealth being produced by our economy is going
to a very centralized group of people at the very top of the food
chain. The rich are getting richer and the working class is being
systematically wiped out.

So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems
to go away should not be a surprise to anyone. Today, the “official”
unemployment rate went up to 9.2 percent even though a whopping
272,000 Americans “dropped out of the labor force” in June. The
government unemployment figure that includes “discouraged workers”
went up from 15.8% to 16.2%. The mainstream media is proclaiming
that this was “a horrific report” because most economists were
expecting much better news.

Well, guess what?

Things are going to get a whole lot worse.

More job cuts are coming. One recently released report found that
the number of job cuts being planned by U.S. employers increased
by 11.6% in June.

It is also being projected that state and local governments across
the U.S. will slash nearly half a million more jobs by the end of
next year.

Needless to say, things don’t look good.

Most people that still have jobs are desperately trying to hold on
to them.

Employers know that most workers are easily replaceable these days,
so wages are not moving up even though the cost of living is.

We are right in the middle of the worst employment downturn since
World War 2. Jay-Z recently summed up the situation this way….

“Numbers don’t lie. Unemployment is pretty high.” Jay-Z certainly
has a way with words, eh?

If something is not done about the rampant unemployment in this
nation, the death of the middle class will accelerate.

Most Americans just assume that the United States will always have
a large middle class, but there is no guarantee that is going to
happen. In fact, there is a whole lot of evidence that the middle
class in America is rapidly shrinking.

Take a few moments to read over the facts compiled below. Taken
together, they provide compelling evidence that the working class
is being systematically wiped out….

#1 Right now, the U.S. government says that 14.1 million Americans
are unemployed.

#2 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than
there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million people
to the population since then.

#3 The number of Americans that are “not in the labor force” is at
an all-time high.

#4 The United States has never had an employment downturn this deep
and this prolonged since World War 2 ended.

#5 There are officially 6.3 million Americans that have been
unemployed for more than 6 months.  That number has risen by more
than 3.5 million in just the past two years.

#6 It now takes the average unemployed worker in America about 40
weeks to find a new job.
#7 There are now about 7.25 million fewer jobs in America than when
the recession began back in 2007.

#8 Back in 2000, the employment to population ratio was over 64
percent. Today, it is sitting at just 58.2%.

#9 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the
lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

#10 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the
United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to
gross domestic product in over 50 years.

#11 The number of “low income jobs” in the U.S. has risen steadily
over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all
jobs in the United States.

#12 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#13 According to a report released in February from the National
Employment Law Project, higher wage industries are accounting for
40 percent of the job losses in America but only 14 percent of
the job growth.  Lower wage industries are accounting for just 23
percent of the job losses but 49 percent of the job growth.

#14 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its
manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#15 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the
manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing
jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing
jobs in Michigan were lost.

#16 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were
manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United
States are manufacturing jobs.

#17 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant
manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe? Well, in 2010
the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of
$110 billion.

#18 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles,
trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.

#19 The United States now spends more than 4 dollars on goods and
services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods
and services from the United States.

#20 Since China entered the WTO in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit
with China has grown by an average of 18% per year.

#21 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger
than it was back in 1990.

#22 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing
jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization
in 2001.

#23 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced
technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In
2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

#24 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was
actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#25 Since 2001, over 42,000 manufacturing facilities in the United
States have been closed.

#26 There were more manufacturing jobs in the United States in 1950
than there are today.

#27 Since the year 2000, we have lost approximately 10% of our
middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million
middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only
about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population has
gotten significantly larger.

#28 When you adjust wages for inflation, middle class workers in
the United States make less money today than they did back in 1971.

#29 One recent survey found that 9 out of 10 U.S. workers do not
expect their wages to keep up with soaring food prices and soaring
gas prices over the next 12 months.

#30 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough
additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

#31 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the
federal poverty line.

#32 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all
children in the United States were living below the poverty line
in 2010.

#33 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on
Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#34 As 2007 began, there were 26 million Americans on food
stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food
stamps, which is an all-time record.

#35 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#36 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal
government in one form or another.

#37 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and
soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

#38 In the United States today, the richest one percent of all
Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent
combined.

#39 According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of all
households in the United States now account for approximately 37%
of all consumer spending.

#40 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5%
of all the wealth in the United States.

The cold, hard reality of the matter is that the United States is
experiencing a long-term economic decline.

Every single day, more American families fall out of the middle
class and into poverty. There are millions of American families out
there tonight that are just barely hanging on by their fingernails.

More Americans than ever are constantly borrowing more money just to
stay afloat.  Even as rampant unemployment plagues this nation and
even as wages remain stagnant, middle class Americans are increasing
their use of credit.

A CNBC article noted the increase in consumer borrowing that we
have seen recently….

The Federal Reserve says consumer borrowing rose $5.1 billion
following a revised gain of $5.7 billion in April. Borrowing in
the category that covers credit cards increased, as did borrowing
in the category for auto and student loans.

It is very hard to live “the American Dream” without going into
huge amounts of debt these days.

But for an increasing number of Americans, “the American Dream”
is just a distant memory.

Tonight, there are large numbers of people living in the tunnels
under the city of Las Vegas. As the wealthy live the high life in
the casinos and hotels above them, an increasing number of desperate
“tunnel people” are attempting to carve out an existence in the 200
mile long labyrinth of tunnels that stretches beneath Vegas. It is
a nightmarish environment, but it is all those people have left.

Don’t look down on them, because you never know who might be next.

If you lost your current job, how long would you be able to survive?

Unfortunately, as bad as things are now, the reality is that this
is just the beginning.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Do what you can to make sure that you and your family are not
totally wiped out by the next wave of the economic collapse.
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Horror Stories

Why Do the Police Have Tanks? The Strange and Dangerous
Militarization of the US Police Force
- AlterNet

The federal government has supplied local police departments with
military uniforms, weaponry, vehicles, and training.

Just after midnight on May 16, 2010, a SWAT team threw a
flash-bang grenade through the window of a 25-year-old man while
his 7-year-old daughter slept on the couch as her grandmother
watched television. The grenade landed so close to the child that
it burned her blanket. The SWAT team leader then burst into the
house and fired a single shot which struck the child in the throat,
killing her. The police were there to apprehend a man suspected
of murdering a teenage boy days earlier. The man they were after
lived in the unit above the girl’s family.

The shooting death of Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones sounds like it
happened in a war zone. But the tragic SWAT team raid took place
in Detroit.

Shockingly, paramilitary raids that mirror the tactics of US soldiers
in combat are not uncommon in America. According to an investigation
carried out by the Huffington Post’s Radley Balko, America has seen
a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the
last 30 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use
of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the
most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants,
usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

Some 40,000 of these raids take place every year, and are needlessly
subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders and wrongly targeted
civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re
sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units
dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. And as demonstrated
by the case of Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley-Jones, these raids have resulted
in dozens of needless deaths and injuries.

How did we allow our law enforcement apparatus to descend into
militaristic chaos? Traditionally, the role of civilian police
has been to maintain the peace and safety of the community while
upholding the civil liberties of residents in their respective
jurisdiction. In stark contrast, the military soldier is an agent
of war, trained to kill the enemy.

Clearly, the mission of the police officer is incompatible with
that of a soldier, so why is it that local police departments are
looking more and more like paramilitary units in a combat zone? The
line between military and civilian law enforcement has been drawn
for good reason, but following the drug war and more recently,
the war on terror, that line is inconspicuously eroding, a trend
that appears to be worsening by the decade.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 is a civil war-era law that prohibits
the use of the military for civilian policing. For a long time, Posse
Comitatus was considered the law of the land, forcing militarization
advocates to come up with creative ways to get around it. In addition
to assigning various law enforcement duties to the military, such as
immigration control, over the years Congress has instituted policies
that encourage law enforcement to emulate combat soldiers. Hence,
the establishment of the SWAT team in the 1960s.

Originally called the Special Weapons Attack Team, the Special
Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units were inspired by an incident in
1966, when an armed man climbed to the top of the 32-story clock
tower at the University of Texas in Austin and fired randomly for
90 minutes, shooting 46 people and killing 15, until two police
officers got to the top of the tower and killed him. This episode is
said to have “shattered the last myth of safety Americans enjoyed
[and] was the final impetus the chiefs of police needed” to form
their own SWAT teams. Soon after, the Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD) formed the country’s first SWAT team, which acquired national
prestige when used against the Black Panthers in 1969.

Use of these paramilitary units gradually increased throughout the
1970s, mostly in urban settings. The introduction of paramilitary
units in America laid the foundation for the erosion of the barrier
between police and military, a trend which accelerated in the 1980s
under President Reagan, when the drug war was used as a pretext to
make exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act.

In 1981, Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law
Enforcement Act, which amended Posse Comitatus by directing the
military to give local, state and federal law enforcement access
to military equipment, research and training for use in the drug
war. Following the authorization of domestic police and military
cooperation, the 1980s saw a series of additional congressional
and presidential maneuvers that blurred the line between soldier
and police officer, ultimately culminating in a memorandum of
understanding in 1994 between the US Department of Justice and
Department of Defense. The agreement authorized the transfer of
federal military technology to local police forces, essentially
flooding civilian law enforcement with surplus military gear
previously reserved for use during wartime.

Between 1995 and 1997 the Department of Defense gave 1.2 million
pieces of military hardware, including 3,800 M-16s, 2,185 M-14s,
73 grenade launchers and 112 armored personnel carriers to civilian
police agencies across the country. But this was only the beginning.

In 1997, Congress, not yet satisfied with the flow of military
hardware to local police, passed the National Defense Authorization
Security Act which created the Law Enforcement Support Program, an
agency tasked with accelerating the transfer of military equipment to
civilian police departments. Between January 1997 and October 1999,
the new agency facilitated the distribution of 3.4 million orders
of Pentagon equipment to over 11,000 domestic police agencies in
all 50 states.

By December 2005, that number increased to 17,000, with a purchase
value of more than $727 million of equipment. Among the hand-me-downs
were 253 aircraft (including six- and seven-passenger airplanes,
and UH-60 Blackhawk and UH-1 Huey helicopters), 7,856 M-16 rifles,
181 grenade launchers, 8,131 bulletproof helmets, and 1,161 pairs
of night-vision goggles.

The military surplus program and paramilitary units feed off one
another in a cyclical loop that has caused an explosive growth in
militarized crime control techniques.  With all the new high-tech
military toys the federal government has been funneling into local
police departments, SWAT teams have inevitably multiplied and spread
across American cities and towns in both volume and deployment
frequency. Criminologist Peter Kraska found that the frequency
of SWAT operations soared from just 3,000 annual deployments in
the early 1980s to an astonishing 40,000 raids per year by 2001,
75-80 percent of which were used to deliver search warrants.

In 1997, Kraska observed that close to 90 percent of cities with
populations exceeding 50,000 and at least 100 sworn officers
had at least one paramilitary unit, twice as many as in the mid
1980s. Radley Basko correctly points out that the trends giving
rise to SWAT proliferation in the 1990s have not disappeared, so
it’s safe to assume these numbers have continued to rise and are
significantly higher today.

Then there are the effects of the war on terror, which sparked
the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the
introduction of DHS grants to local police departments. These
grants are used to purchase policing equipment, although law
enforcement is investing in more than just bullet-proof vests and
walkie talkies. DHS grants have led to a booming law enforcement
industry that specifically markets military-style weaponry to local
police departments. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is
law enforcement’s version of the military-industrial-complex.

By instituting public policies that encouraged the collaboration
of military and domestic policing, the US government handed a
massive and highly profitable clientele to private suppliers of
paramilitary gear. Following the breakdown of Posse Comitatus in the
1980s and ’90s, Peter Cassidy writes in Covert Action Quarterly that
“gun companies, perceiving a profitable trend, began aggressively
marketing automatic weapons to local police departments, holding
seminars, and sending out color brochures redolent with ninja-style
imagery.”

Private suppliers of military equipment advertise a glorified version
of military-style policing attire to local police departments
and SWAT teams. One such defense manufacturing company, Heckler
and Koch, epitomized this aggressive marketing tactic with its
slogan for the MP5 submachine gun, “From the Gulf War to the Drug
War-Battle Proven.”

Today’s latest in paramilitary fashion sweeping through local police
departments is the armored tank, which is making appearances all over
the country at an increasingly alarming rate. The police department
in Roanoke, Virginia paid Armet Armored Vehicles, a private company
that specializes in military vehicles, $218,000 to assemble a
20,000-pound bulletproof tank with a $245,000 federal grant.

Not to feel left out, the Special Emergency Response Team (SERT)
in Lancaster, Penn., was recently seen sporting the Lenco BearCat,
a camouflage colored Humvee-styled tank that can knock down a wall,
pull down a fence, withstand small-arms fire and deliver a dozen
heavily armed police officers to a tense emergency scene. The BearCat
was purchased a year and a half ago with a $226,224 grant from DHS,
yet it has spent nearly two years sitting in a garage at the county’s
Public Safety Training Center.

The most widely used justification for the purchase of heavily
armored war machines is that violence against police officers has
increased exponentially, necessitating the tank for protection of
the men and women who serve our communities. But examination of
the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, a database that tracks the
number of law enforcement officers killed and assaulted each year,
reveals that this is simply not true. According to the UCR, since
2000 an average yearly toll of about 50 police officers have been
feloniously killed, the highest reaching 70 in 2001. So the notion
that militarization is a necessary reaction to a growth in violence
against police officers is absurd, considering that violent crime
is trending downward.

Others argue these tanks are needed in case of a terrorist attack
or a natural disaster. But on September 11, 2001, I do not recall
the NYPD complaining that a lack of armored tanks was impeding its
policing efforts. And during the catastrophic tornado that tore
through Joplin, Missouri earlier this year, heavily armored vehicles
weren’t present nor were they needed to assist in the aftermath.

The majority of paramilitary drug raid proponents maintain that
military-style law enforcement is required to reduce the risk of
potential violence, injury and death to both police officers and
innocents. The reality is that SWAT team raids actually escalate
provocation, usually resulting in senseless violence in what would
otherwise be a routine, nonviolent police procedure.

Just consider your reaction in the event of a SWAT team breaking
down your door in the middle of night, possibly even blowing off the
hinges with explosives, while you and your family are asleep. Imagine
the terror of waking up to find complete strangers forcing their
way into your home and detonating a flash-bang grenade, meant to
disorient you. Assuming nobody is hurt, what thoughts might be
raging in your mind while the police forcefully incapacitate you
and your loved ones, most likely at gunpoint, while carrying out a
search warrant of your home. Assuming you were able to contain the
mix of fear and rage going through your body, consider how helpless
you would feel to know that any perceived noncompliance would most
certainly be met with lethal force.

Training and technology-sharing between the defense and civilian law
enforcement seems responsible for the pervasive culture of militarism
plaguing domestic law enforcement. In fact, an estimated 46 percent
of paramilitary units were trained by “active-duty military experts
in special operations.”  Lawrence Korb, a former official in the
Reagan administration, famously said that soldiers are “trained to
vaporize, not Mirandize.” As police officers continue to emulate
soldiers in their weaponry, language, tactics, uniform, and mindset,
it won’t be long before they vaporize instead of Mirandize as well.

We have created circumstances under which the American people are
no longer individuals protected by the Bill of Rights, but rather
“enemy combatants.” The consequences of such a mindset have proven
time and again to be lethal, as we now rely on military ideology and
practice to respond to crime and justice. For some insight into the
implications, one needn’t look any further than minority communities,
which have long been the victims of paramilitary forces posing as
police officers. Black and Latino communities in the inner-cities
of Washington DC, Detroit and Chicago have witnessed first-hand the
deadly consequences of militarization on American soil. Military
culture now permeates all aspects of our society. Does anyone really
believe that heavily armed soldiers trained to kill are capable of
maintaining an atmosphere of nonviolence?

It’s important to remember that police officers are not responsible
for instituting these policies. Over the last three decades local
police departments supplied with military uniforms, weaponry,
vehicles, and training, were told they were fighting a war on drugs,
crime and terror. The politicians who instituted these policies
are responsible for the militarization creeping into civilian law
enforcement. What might the end result be if the distinction between
police and military ceases to exist? The answer is a police state –
and certain segments of our society are already living in one.
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*** The District of Criminals

Justice Department Obstructing ‘Fast and Furious’ Gun Probe, ATF Director Says
- MyFox Houston

The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation
of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on
major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to
the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives.

Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, lobbed the accusation
when he sneaked in for an interview with congressional investigators
on July 4, two days ahead of his scheduled interview with the
inspector general about the operation known as “Fast and Furious,”
Fox News has learned.

“If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have
been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and
buried its head in the sand,” Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the
Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday
to Attorney General Eric Holder. “That approach distorted the truth
and obstructed our investigation.”

The Justice Department is reportedly looking to oust Melson, who
has been acting ATF director since April 2009, as the agency deals
with its biggest scandal in nearly two decades. Andrew Traver, who
was tapped in November by President Obama to become the permanent
ATF director, could be named as acting director until the Senate
acts on his nomination, sources have said.

In a separate development, congressional sources have learned that
not only was U.S. taxpayer money being used to buy guns that were
later sent to Mexico, but the main target of the investigation
was actually a FBI informant and former drug dealer who had been
deported years ago.

“Fast and Furious” has been at the center of an investigation by
Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. The operation began in
the fall of 2009 as an effort to trace and stop the trafficking of
illegal guns on the Southwest border, but instead allowed thousands
of guns to get into the hands of Mexican cartel members.

The two say they learned about the program after Border Patrol
Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. At the crime scene
were two guns linked to the “Fast and Furious” operation.

At an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month,
three federal firearms investigators testified that they wanted
to “intervene and interdict” loads of guns, but were repeatedly
ordered to step aside to allow suspected smugglers to carry the
weapons over the border.

Issa and Grassley have urged Holder to cooperate and turn over
subpoenaed records that would reveal the scope of the government
coverup.

The alleged coverup involves three law enforcement agencies: the ATF,
FBI and the DEA, or Drug Enforcement Administration.

According to sources, unbeknown to the ATF, the target of their
operation was a FBI confidential informant, a fact that only became
known to them in April of this year after an 18-month investigation
that cost millions of dollars of tax dollars.

“They were going after someone they could never have,” a source
in Washington told Fox News. “The Mr. Big they wanted was using
government money to buy guns that went to the cartels. The FBI knew
it and didn’t tell them.”

The confidential informant is a former high-level drug dealer who
had been deported by the DEA. The FBI, however, recruited him as
a counter-terrorism informant, providing information on potential
dirty bombs or Al Qaeda suspects moving through the border region.

The FBI informant was picked up on a DEA wiretap, and forwarded to
the ATF.
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*** ‘Facebook fatigue’ blamed for drop in users Social network with
600m users has been rocked by privacy scares

Tired of social networking? Logging off Facebook? You’re probably
not the only one. Fearing for their privacy or perhaps just
bored with using the site, six million Americans are said to have
deactivated their accounts last month. And Facebook fatigue seems
to be catching. One hundred thousand logged off for good in the
U.S. too, figures show.

Logging off for good: Computer users concerned for their privacy
are choosing to shut down the Facebook accounts. (Pictured posed by
model) Worldwide, the rate of growth has slowed for a second month
in a row – and as it aims to reach its goal of one billion active
users, Facebook is having to rely on developing countries to boost
its numbers.

The figures suggest that there could be a ‘natural limit’ for
Facebook’s saturation.

There is even speculation on blogs that, as is feared for its failing
rival MySpace, the website could one day ‘sputter into oblivion’.

In the U.S, user numbers dropped from 155.2 million to 149.4
million throughout May. Earlier this year, executives announced
that the number of Facebook accounts held in the UK had reached 30
million, accounting for about half the population. The milestone
was an increase of four million from last July and represented the
highest saturation of any country in Europe. But times change – and
last month more than 100,000 in the UK stopped using the website,
figures show. In Canada there was also a fall, of about 1.5million
users, while in Russia and Norway numbers also fell by more than
100,000 users.

Worldwide reach: The map displays links between Facebook friends
as lights on a deep blue background It’s not all bad news for
the site. Worldwide, Facebook is still expanding and has around
600million users, thanks to strong growth in countries such as
Mexico and Brazil.

According to Eric Eldon, of the website Inside Facebook, which
obtained the figures through analysis of the company’s advertising
tools, there is a point at which the site can no longer grow, once it
has established itself in a country. â~By the time Facebook reaches
around 50 per cent of the total population in a given country, growth
generally slows to a halt,’ he explained. Internet psychologist
Graham Jones predicted that Facebook users would suffer the same
kind of ‘fatigue’ that comes whenever men and women get bored with
trying anything that is new. He said: “People get terribly excited
about something new and after a while the novelty wears off.”

The 52nd richest man on Earth: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
has a personal fortune of $8.2 billion. Even if it is a new TV series
everybody thinks it is fantastic at the beginning and things tail
off. ‘In all aspects of our lives we are addicted to novelty, so
Facebook should be the same. ‘The reason it is so compelling is
that it is the first big website that allows two-way communication
between people. Humans are social beings and up until about five
years ago we did not have a website for direct communication in
this way.’ Facebook has been beset by concerns over its privacy,
the most recent of which was over its facial recognition technology
which commentators have described as sinister. The site has come a
long way since it was started in 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, in his
bedroom at Harvard University.

It has become the largest social networking site in the world and
made him the world’s 52nd richest man with a personal fortune of
$13.4 billion – at just 27. In 2008 it had approximately 100 million
users. It has grown to 600 million in just three years.

Privacy fears: Features like ‘tag suggestions’, where facial
recognition algorithms automatically scan photos to suggest who
is in them, have spooked users A spokesman for Facebook said:
“From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in
some regions. “Some of these reports use data extracted from our
advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of
Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the
overall growth of Facebook. “We are very pleased with our growth
and with the way people are engaged with Facebook. “More than 50
per cent of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.’
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*** Police State

Normalizing the police state (and how it ends with taser-firing
drones)
- Allison Kilkenny

Bob Herbert recently wrote about the overzealous enforcement of
“peace officers” assigned to New York City schools. The officers
are accused of detaining, searching, handcuffing, and arresting
students for silly things like drawing on desks, or handling -
not using, but handling – cell phones in school.

In one case, a safety officer kicked in the door of a stall in the
boys’ bathroom, wounding a student’s head. The officer’s response
to questioning about the matter was: “That’s life. It will stop
bleeding.”

Another student, this time a 5-year-old, was shipped off to a
hospital psychiatric ward for throwing a tantrum.

These absurd reactions to normal childhood behavior is all part of
“Zero Tolerance.”  Six-year-old Zachary Christie faced disciplinary
action after bringing a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife,
fork, and spoon to school. Apparently, the state of Delaware is
terrified of children shanking each other, and after all, it’s the
era of Zero Tolerance.

Treating children as suspects is the new normal in American
culture. There is something innately wrong with children. If they’re
too chatty, they need to be medicated. If they’re too angry, they
need to be suppressed by a “peace officer.” They are not to be
trusted, and must be monitored at all times.

A school in Pennsylvania is accused of covertly activating webcams
in school-issued laptops to spy on students. The accusations have
generated a lot of outrage, but this is the logical conclusion of
the country’s general movement toward a police state. If the NSA can
wiretap citizens’ phones, the FBI can infiltrate protest groups,
and the police can generally dominate and suppress any kind of
protest, why shouldn’t schools be able to monitor student activity?

Americans have already accepted forms of police brutality (macing,
sound cannons, tasering) as the inevitable punishments for exercising
their First Amendment rights. They have already submitted to the
bureaucratic requirements of permits (permits to gather, permits
to use a bullhorn,) and the ridiculous spectacle of caged protests
where activists are literally penned behind gates and cannot move
from their designated locations as they “exercise” their “freedom
of speech.”

When the protest spills past the acceptable parameters of activism,
the police state shocks the citizenry back into submission. They
taser, and mace, and deafen people until they stop fighting.

There hasn’t been too much fuss about this kind of oppression. Some
guy got tasered when he asked John Kerry a question, but his fellow
citizens mostly laughed about that. Jay Leno had a lot of fun with
the “Don’t taze me, bro” stuff. Good times had by all.

Kathryn Winkfein, a 72-year-old great-grandmother, was tasered
(twice) by an officer for getting shouty after she was pulled over
for a traffic offense. Youtube commenters – ever the empathetic
bunch – said Winkfein was “asking to be tasered.” Another said
Winkfein clearly has to take some “responsibility” for being tasered.

Worse than the police state itself are the people who can’t rush
to defend the oppressors quickly enough. That student was asking
for it. Grandma shoulda kept her mouth shut.

Digby calls this the “normalizing of torture.” Not only are
people unsurprised by tasering these days, but they watch it for
entertainment on Youtube. This normalizing goes beyond tasering,
however. It’s now normal for the state to monitor citizens, and
for any kind of mass protest to be immediately restricted by the
government.

The terrifying conclusion to this normalization of the police state
is featured in the latest issue of Harper’s. (h/t Digby)

Taser’s distributor has announced plans for a flying drone that
fires stun darts at criminal suspects or rioters.

Oh, goody. It’s like if a thousand tasers rained down from the
heavens. Other nifty inventions include

a “Shockwave Area-Denial System,” which blankets the area in
question with electrified darts, and a wireless Taser projectile
with a 100-meter range, helpful for picking off “ringleaders”
in unruly crowds.

It all sounds like science fiction. Sane individuals read stuff
about the taser-firing drones and think, “That’ll never happen!” But
consider that thirty years ago, people would have laughed at the
idea that police would one day be permitted to electrocute citizens
for getting mouthy.

And considering what else the Pentagon has worked on in the past,
I wouldn’t put anything past these people:

Pentagon interest in “advanced riot-control agents” has long been
an open secret, but just how close we are to seeing these agents
in action was revealed in 2002, when the Sunshine Project, an
arms-control group based in Austin, Texas, posted on the Internet
a trove of Pentagon documents uncovered through the Freedom of
Information Act. Among these was a fifty-page study titled “The
Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal
Technique,” conducted by Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory,
home of the JNLWD-sponsored Institute for Non-Lethal Defense
Technologies.

Penn State’s College of Medicine researchers agreed, contrary to
accepted principles of medical ethics, that “the development and use
of non-lethal calmative techniques is both achievable and desirable,”
and identified a large number of promising drug candidates,
including benzodiazepines like Valium, serotonin-reuptake inhibitors
like Prozac, and opiate derivatives like morphine, fentanyl, and
carfentanyl, the last commonly used by veterinarians to sedate large
animals. The only problems they saw were in developing effective
delivery vehicles and regulating dosages, but these problems could
be solved readily, they recommended, through strategic partnerships
with the pharmaceutical industry.

Little more was heard about the Pentagon’s “advanced riot-control
agent” program until July 2008, when the Army announced that
production was scheduled for its XM1063 “non-lethal personal
suppression projectile,” an artillery shell that bursts in midair
over its target, scattering 152 canisters over a 100,000-square-foot
area, each dispersing a chemical agent as it parachutes down. There
are many indications that a calmative, such as fentanyl, is the
intended payload-a literal opiate of the masses.

Here we have the completion of the perfect police state. Citizens are
monitored from cradle to grave. Any signs of anger or rebellion are
swiftly squelched with medication or “peace officers.” The schools
step in when the state cannot act to monitor and regulate every
movement of students’ lives under the banner of “Zero Tolerance.”

When the medicated and monitored children grow into dysfunctional
adults, some of who eventually realize their shitty circumstances
(complete with shitty healthcare, outsourced jobs, limited resources,
poisoned environment, enormous wealth disparity, etc.) and they
think about rebelling, they are immediately lassoed with an anchor
of bureaucracy. Should you want to protest, please fill out form
AYT0754 five months prior to said protest, and pay this fee, and
remain in this pen, and please don’t make too much noiseâ¦

Those few brave souls that break through this wall and do manage to
protest are put down at Stage 2 of the Police State with weaponry:
mace, sound cannons, tasers, and whatever else the Pentagon desires
to test on them. The state will only be too happy to use opiate
weaponry next. What a nice, neat way to stop activism! Spray a
little Happy in the herd’s face and watch them wander off, smiling.

Sinclair Lewis said, “When fascism comes to America it will
be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” I think people
expect the end of America’s free society to look like a violent
apocalyptic scene in some Hollywood film, but that’s not how it
will happen. Government officials figured out that suppressing
riots with bullets is bad PR. They have learned to do it quietly,
and in a way where they can claim they’re being humane about the
whole thing. Look! We don’t shoot people anymore! We taser them!

The end product is the same, though. Rebellion is
suppressed. Activism is thwarted.

It’s no coincidence that in the era when the US government passed the
most progressive, civil rights-oriented legislation, the activist
culture was thriving, and the police had not yet been issued their
“toys” with which they could neatly euthanize dissent.

The activist-police clashes in the sixties were bloody and
violent. They were loud and terrible, and they made the news. Black
protesters were attacked by police dogs. The moment the populace
saw those images, everything changed. “The black community was
instantaneously consolidated behind King,” said David Vann, who
would later become mayor of Birmingham.

Now, imagine if dogs hadn’t been used, but the police instead
utilized “non-lethal personal suppression projectiles.” In this
world, the civil rights protesters in the sixties didn’t scream and
fight. They just got kind of loopy, smiled, and walked home. Yes,
technically the police prevented injuries, but the larger damage
is much more severe. The police prevented political change. That
may be a good thing for the regime of the moment, but it’s a bad
thing for justice and society at large.
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Hot Tips

E-mail users warned over spy network
- BBC News

Echelon eavesdrops on international communications

Computer users across Europe should encrypt all their e-mails, to
avoid being spied on by a UK-US eavesdropping network, say Euro-MPs.
The tentacles of the Echelon network stretch so far that the UK’s
involvement could constitute a breach of human rights, they say.

The Euro-MPs have been studying Echelon for almost a year, after
allegations that it has been used by the US to commit industrial
espionage against European firms.

They conclude that Echelon – whose existence is not officially
acknowledged – is reading millions of e-mails and faxes sent every
day by ordinary people.

The system, which also eavesdrops on telephone calls, was set up
after World War II and was used to glean vital information in the
Cold War.
But the committee says ordinary individuals and companies are now
being spied on, and they should routinely encode their e-mails
and faxes if they want them to remain private.

Sending an unencrypted e-mail, they say, is like posting a letter
without an envelope.

The report says the UK could fall foul of the European Human Rights
Convention, which guarantees privacy to all individuals.

Satellite communications

The European Commission is now expected to study the MEPs’ report, to
decide whether to take action against the UK over the alleged breach.

However, the Echelon investigation did not prove all the claims
made about the spy system.

The network’s scope was rather less extensive than had been claimed,
the MEPs found, as it was limited largely to communications
transmitted by satellite rather than cable.

The committee also failed to prove that the US had used it to damage
European commercial interests.

But the network certainly existed, the MEPs said, and its primary
purpose is to intercept private and commercial communications,
not military intelligence.

Out of the shadows

The US has denied the system even exists, and the UK refuses to
give details, except to say that communications interception is a
vital tool in the fight against “dangers to society”.

The Echelon operation is based at Fort Meade in Maryland, America,
and at the UK’s spy centre, GCHQ in Cheltenham.

It remained a shadowy system until an ex-director of the American
CIA told French newspaper Le Figaro that it was being used to track
electronic messages sent by European companies.

He insisted that the intelligence services’ motivation was to
check for corruption and sanctions-busting, rather than set about
industrial espionage.

Shamrock’s comment: Always best to use pgp. If you need help with
pgp, just email us and place “pgp” in the subject heading and we’ll
email you an easy to follow guide on downloading, setting up and
using pgp.
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Red Hot Product!

Andorra Bank Account.

In the late 1980′s, and spurred on by the high unemployment and
other financial woes that followed the departure of the British, the
Maltese Government set about creating an offshore sector and becoming
more welcoming to external investment by passing the International
Business Activities Act 1988 under which the Andorra International
Business Authority was set up to develop offshore business sectors.

Alongside this initiative, the Andorra Development Corporation began
to offer a range of very attractive investment incentives. Initially
the accent was mostly on employment creation in manufacturing and
shipping rather than the development of a financial services centre;
but this has gradually changed, and there is now a modern legislative
structure for most of the main financial sector activities.

Andorra acceptance into the EU in 2004, was very good news indeed
for international investors. Andorra’s financial services sector
has continued to expand, attracting considerable interest from
international sources for personal and company bank accounts.

The globally difficult economic situation during 2008 did not
affect the sector as much as in most other countries. Andorra was
ranked 34th (out of 134 countries) by the World Economic Forum’s
Competitiveness Index 2008-2009 for financial market sophistication,
while the banking system was reported to be the 10th soundest in
the world.

In 2009, Andorra’s ranking for financial market sophistication had
climbed to 13th.

Over the past decade, Andorra has moved from being an offshore to
an onshore jurisdiction. It has completed a program of reforming
all its finance sector legislation in line with international best
practice and was one of the first six countries in the world to
reach an advanced accord on fiscal matters with the Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

As a result of this agreement Andorra is NOT considered a tax
haven. It is actively involved with OECD, the EU and the Commonwealth
in modeling global regulatory policy.

Andorra’s finance industry has benefited significantly from the
country’s national policy of moving to the mainstream. Financial
services is the fastest growing sector of the Maltese economy and
one of the most important employers of trained professional staff.

Your very own bank account in Andorra!

PT Shamrock can open either a personal or a company bank account
for you in Andorra. The company would be in your chosen name from
Belize, so long as the suffix ends with

Andorra Bank;

Your Andorra personal or company bank account includes easy to
use Internet banking, multi-currencies and an ATM card can be setup
normally within one day from the time this bank receives and verifies
your details.

Customer service is excellent and in English.

No opening deposit required, but at least US$/Euro 5,000 is
recommended to keep your account operating in good standing.

With regard to banking, we will charge US$1,350 for a personal
account in Andorra or any of the banking Jurisdictions below. For
an offshore company and Andorran company bank account the cost is
US$2,950 inclusive of all first year fees. Set up time is fairly
reasonable.

Day to day banking is allowed, but the bank will require that 30%
of your monthly ins and outs be left in your account earning
very good rates of interest.

The Banking facilities that are provided by these specific
institutions include full on-line banking, Debit/ATM cards Visa
MasterCard, with account maturity-credit cards with agreed limits,
anonymous key cards, loadable cards, Iban etc, multicurrency and
up to 100k deposit protection with most banking staff multi-lingual.

PT Shamrock will recommend a certain or selection of Banks
dependant on company business and opening requirements (far too
many differentials to list).

We will then assist to facilitate the opening regarding all paperwork
and due diligence required.

Required is the usual Know Your Client/ID required for corporate
bank account opening. We will assist you with all paperwork to
completion and queries to ease the application process.

When ordering a company account, our source will provide all the
company requirements as far as ID is concerned. For a company
account, you will simply need to comply with the same requirements
as with a personal account.

With regard to a personal account opening, just ignore points
required for company info request in the attached.

In addition, the monetary amount stated is required for opening,
however funds may be drawn upon after clearing.

In the event Andorra does not suit your fancy as a locale, we can
open either a personal or company bank account for you in:

* Belize: US$1000 opening deposit required
* Switzerland: private bank, GBP 3000 opening deposit required
* Cyprus European Union: GBP 2050 opening deposit required
* Dominica: no deposit required
* Seychelles; Barclay’s Bank. no deposit required.

Any questions please do not hesitate to ask.

To reiterate a personal Andorra account is US$1,350 and a company
and company bank account is US$2,950. This is a very special price
for our subscribers only and will be increased once this offer is
placed at our web site on-line shortly.

To ORDER and pay by Bank Wire Transfer, Pecunix, Liberty Reserve,
Perfect Money, Moneybookers, MoneyGram, Global Digital Pay or
Western Union, please proceed to our secure on-line order form at
https://www.ptshamrock.com/order_bwe.html

Please indicate your preferred method of payment at the drop
down menu.

Your order code is “Andorra” personal or company, etc.

If you wish to remit your payment in US$, please use the Royal Bank
of Canada’s exchange rate at
<http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/cgi-bin/travel/fxconvert.pl>
for the current US$ equivalent for Euro.

Once we receive your order, we will immediately e-mail you the
pay-in particulars.

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to service your privacy
requirements.

PT Shamrock                          mailto:ptshamrock@ptshamrock.com

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
- Edmund Burke – 1784
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*** Advisory

If you are an American or US resident, try opening a bank account
overseas these days. In most cases, banks don’t want you, as a US
citizen or resident, as a customer, thanks to arcane reporting
laws and other pressure on compliance requirements from the US
authorities. We heard from one reader that said that although he
was born in American and hasn’t been in the USA since he was twelve
months old, he was turned down by seven different banks because his
passport shows he was born in the USA in his European Union passport.

Fortunately the banks we have on offer are happy to accept US
citizens/residents as a customer. How long that will last remains
to be seen. Even our venerable Hong Kong bank has tighten up on
their KYC (Know Your Client) compliance requirements and as a result
account opening time is taking much longer that previously.

It may be only a matter of a year, perhaps less, that our Hong Kong
bank will require bank references, notarizations, possibly even a
personal visit, etc.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already, it might behoove you
to obtain an offshore company and bank account before it becomes
too late. You can create and open one of our highly rated offshore
companies and bank account without the normal hassles required from
other banks. More important the banks we offer from the countries
listed below do not report to the US or other tax authorities.

In order to get the fully free tax benefit, and get the client
privacy safe;

Therefore we, especially for US nationals, will only work with
international offshore bankers, where their countries either HAVEN’T
SIGNED UP to 1) TIEA and are 2) NOT IN EU COUNTRIES nor 3) their
holding bankers not in 1) and 2) above.

And we also work with international offshore bankers that the
countries have signed up with some countries with TIEA which are
few in counties and which do not affecting you. For example, our
clients coming from USA can open an offshore bank account in Belize
because Belize hasn’t signed up TIEA with USA and so the banker
in Belize will not disclose client identity to USA, nor the banker
having office in USA.

The offshore international bankers we are currently working with
are in:
(Belize), (Dominican Republic), (Mauritius), (Nevis), (Panama),
(Seychelles) and (St. Vincent) that we can arrange to e-mail the
bank application forms direct to you, and you just print out and
sign up the form and post to us for bank application process.

Although creating a company structure for the above accounts are
required, this provided greater privacy for the client. Throw
in nominees and you have a very good level of anonymity.

Email for details by placing “special bank acct” in your subject
heading and let us know which country bank account you are
interested in.

The below article is a pretty good reason to get off your duff and
get one now!

Americans residing overseas are denied bank accounts
- aaro.org

Americans residing overseas are denied access to banking facilities
in the United States, solely because of their foreign address. The
number of such instances has risen sharply since passage of the
Patriot Act. Banks refer to “Know Your Client” rules in this
legislation as the reason for refusing clients with overseas
addresses, even if they are U.S. citizens.

Furthermore, the international reach of U.S. reporting requirements
related to U.S. citizens’ accounts has regularly led foreign banks
and branches and subsidiaries of American banks to refuse American
clients. The Qualified Intermediary rules of the IRS are such that
banks consider the reporting requirements too high, and their legal
and compliance teams do not want to take any risks.

When loyal tax-paying American citizens face prejudice from both
domestic banks and foreign banks, they are placed in a Catch
22 situation. Whereas in the past, a presumption of honesty on
the part of financial parties was implicit in U.S. legislation,
today the current law is biased, with mistrust and presumption of
potential wrongdoing. Effectively, having a foreign address makes
one an outcast, a security risk or potential money launderer. At a
time of ever-increasing globalization and mobility of population,
the damage inflicted on individual American citizens by existing
law is very serious. Congress must remedy the situation.

Fundamental Issue
Reported instances of banks refusing to open bank accounts for
American citizens with a foreign address are no longer just a
few individual cases, but reflect a clear systemic problem. The
fundamental issue is that a category of American citizens is
being discriminated against on the sole basis of their residences,
i.e. their mailing addresses.

Reports being received by associations representing the interests of
Americans overseas often include quite emotional comments along with
testimony. “Why can’t I invest in my own country?” “I was enraged
when the bank refused my opening an account.” These are American
citizens who are paying U.S. taxes and yet are being denied the basic
right to maintain normal commercial relationships with their country.

The OMBD Customer Assistance Group (vk 751858) replied on January 23,
2008 to ACA’s inquiry about possibilities of redress as follows:
“In opening accounts, BSA requires the bank to collect certain
minimum information such as name, date of birth, address, and social
security number. In establishing/continuing banking relationship,
the bank is also able to determine their marketing area. The bank’s
marketing area plays a huge factor in the bank ability to collect
on accounts that may go delinquent. This policy was in practice
prior to the Patriot Act. Once an account holder leaves a bank’s
marketing area, there are no banking regulations that require the
bank to maintain the relationship.”

This reply is walking around the real issue. The fact is that people
who have had U.S. investment accounts with significant assets and
no debts for more than 20 years have been informed, subsequent to
passage of the Patriot Act, that their account will be closed within
30 days. Each time it is the foreign address which is cited as the
reason for this procedure. The law of unintended consequences has
indeed led to unfounded discrimination.

Practical Issues Denied – Opening and maintaining bank accounts
in the U.S. with a foreign address Denied – Possibility to write
a check on a U.S. bank to pay U.S. taxes Denied – Opening and
maintaining bank accounts with overseas banks Denied – Ability to
transfer funds from overseas to American bank accounts Denied -
Ability to establish a credit rating in the U.S. or to borrow from
a U.S. bank Denied – Access to www.AnnualCreditReport.com Denied -
Possibility to invest in securities available to others in country
of residence Denied – Opening and maintaining bank accounts in the
US with a foreign address

Organizations representing Americans overseas, as well as the State
Department, are receiving reports that a significant number of
American citizens residing overseas are denied new accounts with
American banks; in some instances, accounts that have existed for
years are closed by the bank over the objections of the account
holder. Financial institutions mentioned include Ameriprise,
Bank of America; Bank of New Hampshire; Citibank; Citizens Bank;
Edward Jones, St. Louis; E-Trade; Fidelity Investments; INGDirect;
JPMorganChase; Morgan Stanley; National City Bank in Riverview,
Michigan; Provident Bank, Maryland; Smith Barney; T. Rowe Price;
USAA Federal Saving Bank; Vanguard mutual fund; Wachovia; Washington
Mutual; Washington Mutual Investment, Spokane; WellsFargo; Zions
Direct.

As one person reported, “Bank of America informed me that they
would no longer provide services to my accounts and I had 30 days to
transfer my assets to another financial institution or they would
cash out the two accounts – just like that!! This is after being
a good customer of the bank for twenty-four years.”

Another noted, “As executor of my mother’s estate, I was prevented
from overseeing my father’s care in a nursing home because their
bank would not let me manage the estate account from Germany,
where I live.”

And another: “I had a brokerage account with E-trade for many
years. My request to open a new financial account was refused
because of my foreign address. When I heard stories from other
Americans overseas that banks were insisting on closing accounts
or possibly blocking an account, I decided to transfer my assets
from E-Trade to a foreign bank.”

And yet another: “I am named in the wills of several of my family
members who reside in the U.S. I do not want the funds to leave
the U.S., but I cannot open an account there.”

As reported in Inside Higher Education, September 30, 2005,
TIAA-CREF informed close to 100 American colleges overseas that
they can no longer make contributions to employees’ retirement
accounts. Stephanie Cohen-Glass, spokeswoman for TIAA-CREF, stated:
“â¦internal U.S. policies that were designed to combat money
laundering have made it difficult to maintain these relationships. We
are a U.S. based company.”

The surveys have shown that often the only way for Americans residing
abroad to maintain a U.S. bank account is first to open the account
in person in the U.S. and/or to use the address of a member of
the family as the U.S. address. Not everyone can go to the United
States to open up a bank account. On-line brokerage companies by
definition do not have “bank offices” to go to. It is not normal
to require honest adults to use the address of a family member in
the United States for his/her private business.

Denied – Possibility to write a check on a U.S. bank to pay
U.S. taxes There are very practical consequences of not having a bank
account in the U.S. To begin with, Americans overseas do not have a
check book on an American bank for payment to the U.S. Treasury for
taxes due. Without a bank account, they cannot have a U.S. issued
credit card, which in certain instances can facilitate on-line
shopping over the Internet.

Denied – Opening and maintaining bank accounts with overseas banks
Banks overseas, be it foreign banks or subsidiaries of American
banks, are refusing American clients, particularly when brokerage
accounts are involved. Banks cited include Bank of America,
Geneva, ABN, Swissquote, Gland, Switzerland; Merrill Lynch Bank,
Geneva. As noted in the IHT of Wednesday, February 27, 2008, ABN
AMRO, whose consumerbanking arm and asset-management and private
banking operations were acquired by Fortis in 2006, announced on
February 27, 2008 that “it was closing any portfolio investment
accounts held by customers with a U.S. passport within 30 days,
citing “strategic reasons.”â¦The Dutch financial newspaper De
Telegraaf reported that the decision to cancel the accounts was
the result of high costs to comply with U.S. regulatory laws.”

Swissquote, an on-line broker in Switzerland, makes its policy very
clear. Just go to www.swissquote.ch site to open an account. Scroll
down to find nationality and you will find approximately 240
listings, including the Antarctic, the Cook Islands, Pitcairn
Islands, the Vatican and “Wallis and Futuna”. Scroll down to the
bottom and read the last bullet point on the application. “If you
are an American you are barred from using this platform to trade
in U.S. markets, trade in U.S. securities, or own any mutual funds
whatsoever, since they may invest in the U.S.” The reason cited -
U.S. Treasury regulations. In fact, Swissquote refuses to take an
American citizen as a client.

Denied – The ability to transfer funds from overseas to American
bank accounts “I found myself unable to transfer funds to one of
my children attending school in America.”

“When an IRA distribution was sent to my US bank, the bank refused
the deposit, saying that I must provide a utility bill.”

“A U.S. bank, where I have had 529 College Savings Plans accounts
for five years for my two daughters, suddenly in September 2007
refused any further deposits.”

“In spite of the fact that I have had a long standing and multiple
accounts with my bank, I was blocked from making transfers into an
account and some brokerage transactions were also blocked due to
my foreign address.”

Denied – Ability to establish a credit rating in the U.S. or to
borrow from a U.S. bank “It is very difficult for non-residents to
get a mortgage for an investment/future retirement property because
they cannot open an account in the U.S.”

“As a U.S. resident abroad, today I am unable to continue
establishing U.S. credit history or even to request my credit report
in case I want to request a loan from a U.S. bank.”

Denied – Access to www.AnnualCreditReport.com
For individuals who have had financial transactions in the U.S., the
FTC-approved www.annualcreditreport.com allows one to obtain their
free annual credit reports. The 3 major credit reporting companies
(transunion, equifax & experian) all link to this site. It is
very important for any consumer to review their credit report for
errors. If one tries to access this site, the follow message comes
up: “TheAnnualCreditReport.com website is only accessible through
ISPs (internet Service Providers) located within the United States
and its territories.” Once again, US citizens resident abroad are
denied access to full US financial services.

Denied – The possibility to invest in securities available to
citizens of other countries SEC restrictions and regulations
prohibit U.S. citizens to invest in certain securities which have
not been filed with the SEC. Of course, these restrictions apply to
all Americans, not just overseas Americans. But when Americans are
living abroad and have their base currency and investment horizon
beyond the U.S. borders, it is particularly difficult to accept that
U.S. law restricts personal investment decisions of an individual
living overseas, particularly when those laws do not apply to one’s
neighbors. This restriction on U.S. citizens of investing in certain
securities complicates bank account management and is one of the
reasons why foreign banks refuse U.S. clients residing overseas.

Recommendations
The organizations listed below sponsoring Overseas Americans Week
are of the opinion that all U.S. citizens, including those resident
overseas, are entitled to full access to the American banking system
and to American financial institutions and services.

These organizations strongly recommend that Congress, and in
particular the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee in
the Senate and the Financial Services Committee in the House of
Representatives, investigate this issue and introduce legislation to
correct this injustice, i.e. discrimination by American financial
institutions against American citizens on the sole basis of their
overseas address.
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*** New Documents Reveal Behind-the-Scenes FBI Role in Controversial
Secure Communities Deportation Program
- Center for Constitutional Rights

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
litigation by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON),
the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Cardozo Law
School Immigration Justice Clinic show that the controversial Secure
Communities deportation program (S-Comm), designed by Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target people for deportation,
is also a key component of a little-known FBI project to accumulate
a massive store of personal biometric information on citizens and
non-citizens alike.

According to the documents, S-Comm is “only the first of a number of
biometric interoperability systems being brought online by the FBI
‘Next Generation Identification’ (NGI) project.” NGI will expand the
FBI’s existing fingerprint database to add iris scans, palm prints,
and facial recognition information for a wide range of people.

Jessica Karp of NDLON explained: “NGI is the next generation Big
Brother. It’s a backdoor route to a national ID, to be carried not
in a wallet, but within the body itself. The FBI’s biometric-based
project is vulnerable to hackers and national security breaches and
carries serious risks of identity theft. If your biometric identity
is stolen or corrupted in NGI, it will be hard to fix. Unlike an
identity card or pin code, biometrics are forever.”

The misrepresentations ICE used to sell S-Comm to states have been
well documented and are currently the subject of a DHS Office of
the Inspector General investigation. But to date, the FBI’s role in
S-Comm has not been scrutinized, although the FBI has come under
fire recently for adopting new, generalized policies that permit
intrusive, suspicionless surveillance without adequate oversight.

Said Bridget Kessler of the Cardozo Law School Immigration Justice
Clinic: “These documents provide a fascinating glimpse into the FBI’s
role in forcing S-Comm on states and localities. The FBI’s desire to
pave the way for the rest of the NGI project seems to have been a
driving force in the policy decision to make S-Comm mandatory. But
the documents also confirm that, both technologically and legally,
S-Comm could have been voluntary.”

Although the documents obtained raise many more questions than
answers about the FBI’s involvement in S-Comm and S-Comm’s place
in the broader NGI project, they do reveal the following key facts:

The CJIS Advisory Board, which oversees the FBI’s criminal databases,
passed a motion in June 2009 to recommend that the FBI convert S-Comm
from a voluntary to a mandatory program at the local level. At that
time – and as much as one year later – ICE was still representing
S-Comm as voluntary to state and local officials.

The FBI’s decision to support mandatory imposition of S-Comm
was not driven by any legal mandate. In fact, the FBI considered
making S-Comm voluntary, showing that it viewed opting out as both
a technological possibility and a lawful option. The FBI chose the
mandatory route not because of a statutory requirement, but for
“record linking/maintenance purposes.” In focusing on mundane
record-keeping issues, the agency failed to weigh any of the
considerations that have driven states and localities across the
country to withdraw from S-Comm, including the program’s impact on
community policing, its association with an increased risk of racial
profiling, and its failure to comply with its announced purpose of
targeting dangerous criminals.

Both FBI and immigration officials have raised concerns internally
that aspects of S-Comm may interfere with privacy and invade civil
liberties. Notes from one meeting, for example, state that S-Comm
“goes against privacy and civil liberties.” In another series of
emails, FBI officials raised concerns that state and local users
of the FBI databases would be surprised to learn that the FBI was
using their data to perform searches that the users had neither
requested nor authorized.

DHS may be using S-Comm to gather and store data about U.S. citizens,
too. One of the newly obtained documents indicates that US-VISIT,
a component of DHS may have considered storing certain information
about individuals in violation of their own internal requirements
and privacy laws. This may include the retention of data about the
lawful activities of even natural-born U.S. citizens.

Said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez,
“These revelations should disturb us on multiple levels: the lies,
the shadowy role of the FBI, the threats to citizens and non-citizens
alike, and the rampant potential violations of civil liberties. This
goes far beyond the irreparable S-Comm program and opens a window
onto the dystopian future our government has planned. With so much at
stake, this process must at all costs be transparent going forward.”
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Dumbing Down

Gov’t. Hackers – Draconian “Cybersecurity”
<http://endthelie.com/2011/06/21/mission-accomplished-thanks-to-lulzsec-draconian-cybersecurity-gains-support/#axzz1Q4d7xQ3x>
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Dumb signs -

Supreme Court to Decide Constitutionality of Warrantless GPS Monitoring
- Wired News

At the Obama administration’s urging, the Supreme Court agreed
Monday to review whether the government, without a court warrant, may
affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.

The Justice Department told the justices that “a person has no
reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to
another,” and demanded the justices undo a lower court decision that
reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose
vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month without a court warrant.

The petition, which will not be decided until the new term begins
in October, is arguably one of the biggest Fourth Amendment case
in a decade – one weighing the collision of privacy, technology
and the Constitution.

In 2001, the justices said thermal-imaging devices used to detect
marijuana-growing operations inside a house amounted to a search
requiring a court warrant. The justices accepted the government’s
petition to clear conflicting lower-court rulings on when warrants
are required for GPS tracking. The justices asked for briefing on
this question: “Whether the government violated respondent’s Fourth
Amendment rights by installing a GPS tracking device on his vehicle
without a valid warrant and without his consent.”

How Vehicle Tracking Works

Law enforcement secretly installs the tracking device on a target’s
car. Some models are hidden in the engine compartment and wired
to the car battery. Others are slapped to the undercarriage with
industrial-strength magnets.

As the target drives around, the tracking device triangulates its
position from three or four GPS satellites, and digitally transmits
its coordinates continuously by radio.

The law enforcement agency receives the coordinates and displays
the target’s location in real time on a computerized map, keeping
a record of the target’s movement.

The administration, in its petition to the justices, said the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was
“wrong” in August when it reversed the drug dealer’s conviction,
which was based on warrants to search and find drugs in the locations
where defendant Antoine Jones had traveled. That lower court declined
to rehear the case in September, so the government appealed to the
high court.

The government told the justices that GPS devices have become a
common tool in crime fighting. An officer shooting a dart can affix
them to moving vehicles, and recently, a student in California
found a tracking device attached to the underside of his car,
which the FBI later demanded back.

Three other circuit courts of appeal have already said the
authorities do not need a warrant for GPS vehicle tracking.

“Prompt resolution of this conflict is critically important to
law enforcement efforts throughout the United States. The court
of appeals’ decision seriously impedes the government’s use of GPS
devices at the beginning stages of an investigation when officers
are gathering evidence to establish probable cause and provides
no guidance on the circumstances under which officers must obtain
a warrant before placing a GPS device on a vehicle,” the Obama
administration wrote the justices.

Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties
Union, said the outcome was important.

“The Court has the opportunity in this case to safeguard Fourth
Amendment privacy protections in the face of technological
advances. Police surveillance using GPS technology raises significant
privacy concerns,” she said.

The legal flap focuses on a 1983 Supreme Court decision allowing
a tracking beacon affixed to a container of chemicals without a
court warrant. The beacon followed a motorist to a secluded cabin.

The District of Columbia court of appeals, however, ruled that the
28-year-old decision did not apply.

The beacon in the 1983 case tracked a person, “from one place
to another,” whereas the GPS device monitored the drug dealer’s
“movements 24 hours a day for 28 days.”

The District of Columbia circuit ruled that the case “illustrates
how the sequence of a person’s movements may reveal more than the
individual movements of which it is composed.”

The court said that a person “who knows all of another’s travels can
deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular
at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical
treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups
- and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”
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Dumb facts

New Bill Introduced in House Asks Citizens to Voluntarily Pay Down
National Debt
- Kurt Nimmo

Earlier this month, Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Pennsylvania Democrat,
floated the idea of imposing a tax of 1% on every transaction to
pay down the national debt. The pencil-necked geeks in the district
of criminals took one look at this and scoffed. It would need to
be closer to 5-6%, they argued, in order to pay down even a small
part of an astronomical debt.

Of course, the debt is so far out in the stratosphere that no
reasonable amount of taxation – or unreasonable, for that matter -
would even approach paying it down.

Since the United States dumped the gold standard and went to
worthless fiat currency in 1971, the national debt has skyrocketed
to more than $14 trillion dollars. It is now greater than our yearly
GDP thanks to the current economic depression.

However, when added together with the unfunded liabilities from
Medicare and Social Security, the national debt is well over a $100
trillion, a number almost inconceivable.

Now Congress wants you to be a patriotic citizen and volunteer to
pay down the debt.

H.R. 2411, entitled “Reduce America’s Debt Now Act of 2011″ and
introduced on July 6, would “provide for an employee election on
Form W-4 to have amounts deducted and withheld from wages to be
used to reduce the public debt.” The legislation was referred to
the Committee on Ways and Means.

You have to love career politicians. They say the debt piled up
for wars and sweetheart deals for mega-corporations is “public”
and you have to pay it back to the bondholders.

It’s not your debt and you don’t owe a red cent to the bankers.

Last month Ron Paul, practically the only sane politician in
Washington D.C., said the only way to deal with the national debt
would be to default on “obligations” to the Federal Reserve and
the bankers.

So long as the current crop remains in Congress, however, this is
not likely to happen. They will muddle along and take instructions
from the Federal Reserve and the bankers until the United States
ends up like Greece.

Also, there is no guarantee – if this legislation passes and citizens
actually contribute to it – that the politicians will use it to
pay down the debt.

Since Johnson and the “Great Society” of unabashed spending,
politicians have moved money from Social Security into the general
fund government uses to pay for things like wars and socialism for
transnational corporations.

If you trust these guys, you may also be interested in a bridge I
have for sale on the dark side of the moon.
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*** Dumb criminal acts

Michigan Woman Faces 93 Days in Jail for Planting a Vegetable Garden
- Fox News

“The price of organic food is kind of through the roof,” said
Julie Bass.

So, why not grow your own? However, Bass’ garden is a little unique
because it’s in her front yard.

“We thought it’d be really cool to do it so the neighbors could
see. The kids love it. The kids from the neighborhood all come and
help,” she said.

Bass’ cool garden has landed her in hot water with the City of Oak
Park. Code enforcement gave her a warning, then a ticket and now
she’s been charged with a misdemeanor.

“I think it’s sad that the City of Oak Park that’s already strapped
for cash is paying a lot of money to have a prosecutor bothering us,”
Bass told FOX 2′s Alexis Wiley.

“That’s not what we want to see in a front yard,” said Oak Park
City Planner Kevin Rulkowski.

Why? The city is pointing to a code that says a front yard has to
have suitable, live, plant material. The big question is what’s
“suitable?”

We asked Bass whether she thinks she has suitable, live, plant
material in her front yard.

“It’s definitely live. It’s definitely plant. It’s definitely
material. We think it’s suitable,” she said.

So, we asked Rulkowski why it’s not suitable.

“If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster’s
dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look
in any other community, what’s common to a front yard is a nice,
grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers,” he said.

But when you look at front yards that are unsightly and overgrown,
is Bass’ vegetable garden really worth the city’s time and money?

We asked Rulkowski what he would say to those who feel this is
ridiculous.

“I would argue that you won’t find that opinion from most people
in Oak Park,” he responded.

“I have a bunch of little children and we take walks to come by
and see everything growing. I think it’s a very wonderful thing
for our neighborhood,” said neighbor Devorah Gold.

“They don’t have (anything) else to do (if) they’re going to take
her to court for a garden,” said neighbor Ora Goodwin.

We did find one neighbor who wasn’t a fan and thinks it needs to go.

“I know there’s a backyard. Do it in the backyard,” he said.

“They say, ‘Why should you grow things in the front?’ Well, why
shouldn’t I? They’re fine. They’re pretty. They’re well maintained,”
said Bass.

It looks like this critical debate is headed for a jury trial and
neither side is backing down.

“I could sell out and save my own self and just not have them bother
me anymore, but then there’s no telling what they’re going to harass
the next person about,” Bass told us.

There’s another pretrial scheduled for July 26. The next step could
be a jury trial.
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Dumbing Down Award of the month

This issues AWARD GOES TO…..

Fined GBP500k for not flying EU flag: Brussels penalises UK museums,
firms and councils
- UK Daily Mail

Fines for failing to display the EU flag and logos should be
scrapped, a government minister said yesterday.

Brussels has imposed financial penalties of almost GBP500,000 on
councils, museums, universities, travel firms and business groups.

Each had breached rules that require display of EU symbols in return
for grant money – a system Eric Pickles said was unfair.

‘It defies common sense that the EU can hammer public bodies with
huge fines for merely not flying their flag,’ said the communities
and local government secretary.

‘This is a prime example of bureaucracy taking over, with
organisations being hit for the most minor breaches for
over-complicated rules.
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*** Unbelievable Dumbing Down

Microsoft reveals cloud data may be accessed by US law enforcement

Microsoft has revealed that EU users of its upcoming cloud
services may have their personal information intercepted by US
law enforcers. Because of the USA Patriot Act, law enforcement
authorities in the US have the right to access the personal data
which is held by US-based companies.

In a statement, Microsoft explained:

“In a limited number of circumstances, Microsoft may need to
disclose data without your prior consent, including as needed to
satisfy legal requirements, or to protect the rights or property
of Microsoft or others (including the enforcement of agreements or
policies governing the use of the service).”

Cloud services give consumers access to their files anywhere they can
access the internet. This can be hugely useful, but the risk of data
loss and hacking is always a possibility and it seems inevitable that
security will be breached by hackers as well as US law enforcement.
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Cannon Fodder

How anything you’ve EVER said on the internet could be seen by
employers as Feds approve firm that dishes dirt on applicants
- Fiona Roberts

The Federal Trade Commission has approved a controversial firm
which scours social media sites to check on job applicants.

It means anything you’ve ever said in public on sites including
Facebook, Twitter and even Craigslist could be seen by your would-be
employer.

The Washington-based commission has ruled the firm, Social
Intelligence Corporation, complies with the Fair Credit Reporting
Act – even though it keeps the results of its searches on file for
seven years.

[Dishing the dirt: Social Intelligence Corporation performs
background checks by scouring job applicants' social media accounts]

Dishing the dirt: Social Intelligence Corporation performs background
checks by scouring job applicants’ social media accounts

It raises the frightening prospect of any social media posting,
even it’s years old or was meant as a joke, being used in background
checks.

Applicants who use online pseudonyms aren’t safe, either – the
firm uses special software to link those nicknames with real,
offline names known to employers.

One applicant found himself out of the running for a job after
being branded racist because he once joined a Facebook group called
‘I shouldn’t have to press one for English. We are in the United
States. Learn the language.’

Social Intelligence Corp scours everything from social networking
sites, such as Facebook, to video and picture sharing websites as
well as blogs and wikis.

[Controversial: One applicant was turned down for a job after the
firm discovered he had joined a group like this on Facebook and
ruled he had 'racist tendencies]

Controversial: One applicant was turned down for a job after the
firm discovered he had joined a group like this on Facebook and
ruled he had ‘racist tendencies’

The company has defended its policy of keeping the searches on file,
saying it’s for compliance reasons only.

Big Brother Fears: So Where Do They Look?

The firm searches any information which is publicly available
online. It includes:
* Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter;
* Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn;
* Video and photo-sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube;
* Commercial sites such as eBay and Craigslist;
* Blogs and ‘wikis’.

It says the negative findings are not re-used if a new employer
runs a check on an applicant.
Its chief operating officer, Geoffrey Andrews, said: ‘We are
not… building a “database” on individuals that will be evaluated
each time they apply for a job and potentially could be used
adversely even if they have cleaned up their profiles.’

One of the reports, released to Forbes magazine, flagged an applicant
for ‘demonstrating potentially violent behaviour’ because he’d
posted a photograph of him holding a gun on his Facebook account.

Another was flagged for ‘illegal activity’ after putting an advert
on Craigslist searching for the drug Oxycontin.

So far the company says it has found ‘negative’ online postings in
up to 20 per cent of applicants it’s been asked to investigate.

[Background checks: Max Drucker, the firm's CEO, argues the firm
's methods are fairer than if employers simply Google candidates,
which can be discriminatory]

Background checks: Max Drucker, the firm’s CEO, argues the firm
‘s methods are fairer than if employers simply Google candidates,
which can be discriminatory

Social Intelligence Corp. was founded a year ago, and soon afterwards
the Federal Trade Commission began investigating over fears it
could be in breach of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Dishing The Dirt: So What Do They Find?

According to Social Intelligence Corporation’s chief operating
officer:
* 20 per cent of candidates don’t appear on the internet at all;
* 60 per cent have a neutral or positive online ‘footprint’;
* Up to 20 per cent of candidates have something ‘negative’ about
them on the internet, especially when the pool is younger;
* That figure falls to around five per cent for younger
candidates. But the government has now dropped its inquiry, ruling
the company is within the rules as long as it lets applicants know
whether they failed to get a job as a result of the report.

It also changed the wording on it permission form – which all
applicants must sign before the checks are carried out – to make sure
they know exactly what will be checked during the review. Social
Intelligence Corp says its reports are fairer than if employers
simply Google candidates. The reports only take into account
‘job-threatening’ characteristics – such as criminal activity -
and does not include personal information, such as sexuality or
religion, which an employee legally cannot see.

Applicants can also dispute the report’s findings, and the offending
record will be deleted if it is found to be incorrect.

Mr Andrews told Forbes: ‘I like to think we are providing a service
not just by screening for employers, but in helping to protect job
applicants by creating a standard process for online background
checks and a service that presents them with reports on negative
material.’
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Bug Bites:

Microsoft Could Integrate Eavesdropping in Skype
- Douglas Perry

Microsoft has filed a patent that describes a “legal intercept”
of VoIP communications.

Filed in December 2009, the document was created when Microsoft may
have had no intentions of acquiring Skype, but the company makes
clear statements that it applies to Skype and similar services.

According to the patent – and it is just an application at this
point – Microsoft envisions a variety of possibilities to use
“recording agents” as a way to intercept, monitor, record and store
recorded calls. The agent could be placed in a router, call server,
or within the network of an organization. The agent can also be
a software module that is placed between the call server or the
network. Microsoft does not mention the recording agent to be hidden
part of the client software. However, since Microsoft now owns the
Skype infrastructure, that may not be a problem anymore.

The good news, depending on your view, is that the technology
is only targeted to become a tool that can be requested by law
enforcement. The downside, also depending on your view, is that
those Skype calls may not be as anonymous as you think and your
private information may actually be easily accessible by government
organizations. Microsoft did not say if it already uses eavesdropping
technology in Skype or other VoIP applications.
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More Bugs

Suit Charges AOL Worked Around Privacy Controls to Stalk Consumers
Says companies repurposed Adobe Flash when consumers disabled cookies
- James R. Hood

A federal class action demands that AOL stop intruding on millions
of people’s privacy by tracking their Web browsing and selling the
information to third-party advertisers. Co-defendants ScanScout
and Brightcove also are accused of overriding privacy controls on
private citizens’ computers to stalk them as they browse the Web.

In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, Sandra Person
Burns, of Hinds County, Mississippi, says that she and other Internet
users are fed up with web sites and tracking companies watching
every move they make and then bombarding them with “behaviorally
targeted” ads for mortgage assistance, weight loss products and
political candidates.

Tracking companies observe where consumers click, whether on a
Website or in a commercial e-mail message. They track consumers
from the moment of seeing but not clicking on a product ad to the
consumers’ purchase of the product many days later, Burns charges.

“Many Tracking Companies claim their tracking and profiling is
anonymous when, in fact, they merge consumer profiles with purchased
profile data about the individual consumers’ online Web activities
and offline shopping, as well as details about income, education,
family status and number of children, type of vehicle driven,
and location of residence and work,” she said.

The constant surveillance has created a huge market in consumer
information, the suit notes.

Profiles for sale “Consumer profiles are up for sale, affecting
not only what product advertisement a consumer sees but also her
credit card line for buying it, all based on inferences from where
she browses on the Web or who her social network friends are,”
Burns charges.

Burns was sufficiently upset by all of this that she tried to evade
the trackers by turning off her browser’s ability to take “cookies”
- the small text files used by tracking companies – assuming she
would be able to browse under the radar, so to speak.

But Burns was surprised to find that she was still receiving ads for
products and services that she had examined in her online sessions.

“Defendants wanted to ensure they could track Plaintiff,
regardless of her browser controls, so they simply worked around
them. Defendants commandeered Plaintiff’s computer, repurposing its
software and using her computer storage and her Internet connection
to bypass her browser controls. Defendants created a shadow tracking
system on her computer, effectively decommissioning the browser
cookie controls she had explicitly set,” the suit alleges.

“Defendants did so repeatedly, for years, for a significant part of
Plaintiff’s Web-browsing, and did likewise to millions of consumers,
for years.”

Burns says the defendants worked their magic by repurposing the
Adobe Flash software on her computer: “They used her Flash software
for an unintended purpose-to create back-ups and substitutes for
browser cookies, so they could track her in ways she could neither
see or control.” The suit charges that the companies violated
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Wiretapping Act); the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act; the federal Video Privacy Protection
Act; the Massachusetts Privacy Act; the Massachusetts Consumer
Protection Act; and based on tort claims of Trespass to Chattel;
and equitable claims of Unjust Enrichment.
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*** Who Prints the Money??
- Before Its News

Editor’s Note: WHOA! Time out! The media has always told us
the federal reserve had the printing presses. Now it is the
Treasury? Pardon the sarcasm. Let’s get this straight once and for
all. The Treasury prints the federal reserve’s money. The taxpayer
pays for this to be done. Then the money is given to the federal
reserve who then LENDS it back to the Treasury. Makes perfect sense
in a world gone mad.

Washington – The number of dollar bills rolling off the great
government presses here and in Fort Worth fell to a modern low
last year. Production of $5 bills also dropped to the lowest level
in 30 years. And for the first time in that period, the Treasury
Department did not print any $10 bills.

The meaning seems clear. The future is here. Cash is in decline.

You can’t use it for online purchases, nor on many airplanes to
buy snacks or duty-free goods. Last year, 36 percent of taxi fares
in New York were paid with plastic. At Commerce, a restaurant in
the West Village in Manhattan, the bar menus read, “Credit cards
only. No cash please. Thank you.”

There is no definitive data on all of this. Cash transactions are
notoriously hard to track, in part because people use cash when they
do not want to be tracked. But a simple ratio is illuminating. In
1970, at the dawn of plastic payment, the value of United States
currency in domestic circulation equaled about 5 percent of the
nation’s economic activity. Last year, the value of currency in
domestic circulation equaled about 2.5 percent of economic activity.

“This morning I bought a gallon of milk for $2.50 at a Mobil
station, and I paid with my credit card,” said Tony Zazula,
co-owner of Commerce restaurant, who spoke with a reporter while
traveling in upstate New York. “I do carry a little cash, but only
for gratuities.”

It is easy to look down the slope of this trend and predict the end
of paper currency. Easy, but probably wrong. Most Americans prefer
to use cash at least some of the time, and even those who do not,
like Mr. Zazula, grudgingly concede they cannot live without it.

Currency remains the best available technology for paying baby
sitters and tipping bellhops. Many small businesses – estimates
range from one-third to half – won’t accept plastic. And criminals
prefer cash. Whitey Bulger, the Boston gangster who lived in Santa
Monica for 15 years, paid his rent in cash, and stashed thousands
of dollars in his apartment walls.

Indeed, cash remains so pervasive, and the pace of change so slow,
that Ron Shevlin, an analyst with the Boston research firm Aite
Group, recently calculated that Americans would still be using
paper currency in 200 years.

“Cash works for us,” Mr. Shevlin said.  ”The downward trend is clear,
but change advocates always overestimate how quickly these things
will happen.”

Production of paper currency is declining much more quickly than
actual currency use because the bills are lasting longer. Thanks to
technological advances, the average dollar bill now circulates for
40 months, up from 18 months two decades ago, according to Federal
Reserve estimates.

Banks regularly send stacks of old notes to the Fed, which replaces
the damaged ones. Until recently, notes were simply stacked facedown
and destroyed, as were dog-eared notes, because the Fed’s scanning
equipment could not distinguish between creases and tears. Now
it can. In 1989, the Fed replaced 46 percent of returned dollar
bills. Last year it replaced 21 percent. The rest of the notes were
returned to circulation where they may lead longer lives because
they are being used less often.

The futurists who have long predicted the end of paper money also
underestimated the rise of the $100 bill as one of America’s most
popular exports.

For two decades, since the fall of the Soviet Union, demand has
exploded for the $100 bill, which is hoarded like gold in unstable
places. Last year Treasury printed more $100 bills than dollar bills
for the first time. There are now more than seven billion pictures
of Benjamin Franklin in circulation – and the Federal Reserve’s best
guess is that two-thirds are held by foreigners. American soldiers
searching one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in 2003 found about $650
million in fresh $100 bills.

This is very profitable for the United States. Currency is printed
by the Treasury and issued by the Federal Reserve. The central
bank pays the Treasury for the cost of production – about 10 cents
a note – then exchanges the notes at face value for securities
that pay interest. The more money it issues, the more interest it
earns. And each year the Fed returns to the Treasury a windfall
called a seigniorage payment, which last year exceeded $20 billion.

To meet foreign demand, the Fed has licensed banks to operate
currency distribution warehouses in London, Frankfurt, Singapore
and other financial centers.

In March, largely because of the boom in $100 notes, the value of all
American notes in circulation topped $1 trillion for the first time.

In the United States, research suggests that the spread of electronic
payment technologies is steadily reducing the share of payments
made in cash. Drivers use E-Z Pass at toll plazas for roads and
bridges. Commuters swipe stored-value cards at turnstiles. Christmas
stockings are stuffed with gift cards.

Mr. Zazula, the restaurateur, made his decision in 2009, inspired by
a flight on American Airlines, which had just introduced a no-cash
policy. He said that 85 percent of his customers already paid with
credit cards, and taking cash to and from the bank was a nuisance
and security risk.

Two years later, Mr. Zazula said he had no regrets.

“You still have some people that are outraged that we won’t accept
cash,” he said, “but most of it is a show because they end up having
a credit card.”

But Commerce remains a rarity. Experts on payments cannot name
another no-cash restaurant. Snap, a cafe in the Georgetown
neighborhood of Washington, rejected cash in 2006, then reversed
the policy a few years later.

Businesses are not required to take cash. The famous phrase “legal
tender for all debts” means that lenders – and only lenders -
are required to accept the bills. But most merchants don’t see the
point in frustrating customers.

“It’s a rarity for a retailer of any size to go cash only, and
it’s a rarity to decline to accept cash at all,” said Brian Dodge
of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade group.

Even the financial industry, which has promoted the spread of
electronic payments, has moved away from grand predictions.

“There’s always going to be some people, for good or nefarious
reasons, who want to use cash,” said Doug Johnson, vice president
for risk management policy at the American Bankers Association. “I’m
glad I had it yesterday,” Mr. Johnson said. “I blew out a fan belt
on my car, and it’s nice to be able to give the tow driver a twenty.”
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*** Feds target frequent sales of semi-auto rifles on Mexico border
- Michael Winter, Usa Today

Updated 1m agoHoping to reduce the flow of high-powered weapons
into Mexico, the Justice Department today said it would require gun
shops in four border states to provide data on frequent buyers of
certain semi-automatic rifles.

The reporting requirement covers Arizona, California, New Mexico
and Texas and pertains to “multiple sales” over five days of
semi-automatic rifles larger than .22 caliber that accept removable
ammunition magazines. The weapons “are highly sought after by
dangerous drug trafficking organizations and frequently recovered
at violent crime scenes near the Southwest Border,” Deputy Attorney
General James Cole said in a news release.

The Associated Press notes that the new policy comes amid criticism
of Operation Fast and Furious, which was aimed at dismantling arms
trafficking networks along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Last week, the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives told congressional investigators that
some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted in the gun probe were
paid informants for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration,
the Los Angeles Times reported.
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Shamrock’s Missive:

Civil liberties today clearly are at the lowest levels since the
American Revolution, circa 1776.

If you are unfortunate enough to be an American today, the US
Constitution is rapidly being shredded by the courts, or ignored
by the ‘authorities.’

A warrantless search is presumed unreasonable except in a few
established and well delineated exceptions. Katz v. United States,
389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S. Ct. 507, 19 L. Ed. 2d 576 (1967). The State
bears the burden of proving that a warrantless search falls under
an established exception. State v. Johnson, 128 Wn.2d 431, 451,
909 P.2d 293 (1996). The defendant bears the burden of proving that
a search conducted pursuant to a search warrant was improper. State
v. Mance, 82 Wn. App. 539, 544,
918 P.2d 527 (1996).

Just as not every police-citizen encounter is an arrest or
detention, not every inspection by police of an item of property is
a search. The relevant inquiry for determining when a search has
occurred under Const. art. I, S 7 is whether police unreasonably
intruded into the defendant’s private affairs. The following
“searches” do not implicate a constitutionally protected zone
of privacy:

1. Abandoned Property. Police may retrieve voluntarily abandoned
property without violating the expectation of privacy of the
person who discarded the property. See, e.g., State v. Reynolds,
144 Wn.2d 282, 27 P.3d 200 (2001) (coat discarded by passenger onto
the pavement of the lawfully stopped vehicle was legally searched
by police); State v. Hepton, 113 Wn. App. 673, 54 P.3d 233 (2002)
(refuse placed in a neighbor’s garbage can); State v. Young, 86
Wn. App. 194, 935 P.2d 1372 (1997) (drugs thrown into the bushes
by defendant before the defendant was actually seized by police
were lawfully searched without a warrant); State v. Nettles, 70
Wn. App. 706, 855 P.2d 699 (1993), review denied, 123 Wn.2d 1010
(1994) (drugs dropped by defendant before the defendant was actually
seized by police were lawfully searched without a warrant). However,
property cannot be deemed voluntarily abandoned (and thus subject
to search) if a person abandons it because of unlawful police
conduct. State v. Whitaker, 58 Wn. App. 851, 853, 795 P.2d 182
(1990). In State v. Reichenbach, 153 Wn.2d 126, 101 P.3d 80
(2004), a passenger, riding in a vehicle that was stopped and
searched pursuant to the driver’s valid consent, was deemed to
have involuntarily abandoned a baggy containing methamphetamine
when officers ordered the passenger to raise his or her hands at
gunpoint when the driver brought the vehicle to a stop.
103

2. Department of Licensing Records. A police officers’ search
of Department of Licensing database using a license plate number
obtained from a vehicle without the officer stopping it, did not
violate the driver’s expectation of privacy such that officers were
precluded from searching those records without an individualized
suspicion of a driver’s involvement in criminal activity. State
v. McKinney, 148 Wn.2d 20, 60 P.3d 46 (2002).

3. Private Commercial Records. A customer has no expectation of
privacy in the entry and exit records at a storage unit. See State
v. Duncan, 81 Wn. App. 70, 912 P.2d 1090, review denied, 130 Wn.2d
1001 (1996). A customer has no expectation of privacy in receipts
kept at a store, at least as to transactions that the customer
discloses to a third party, such as an insurance company. See State
v. Farmer, 80 Wn. App. 795, 911 P.2d 1030 (1996). A guest has no
expectation of privacy in the motel guest registry. State v. Jorden,
___ Wn. App. ___, 107 P.3d 130 (2005).

4. Telephones and Pagers. An individual has no expectation of privacy
in the incoming calls to the pager of a third person. See State
v. Wojtyna, 70 Wn. App. 689, 855 P.2d 315 (1993), review denied,
123 Wn.2d 1007 (1994). An individual has no expectation of privacy
in the incoming telephone calls, and police who are lawfully in a
residence pursuant to a search warrant may lawfully answer such
calls. See, e.g., State v. Goucher, 124 Wn.2d 778, 881 P.2d 210
(1994); State v. Gonzales, 78 Wn. App. 976, 900 P.2d 564 (1995).
5. Letters and Mail. Senders and receivers of United States mail have
only a minimal expectation of privacy as to the information on the
outside of the mail and no reasonable expectation of privacy that
the air immediately around the mail in transit will not be sniffed
by specially trained canines. State v. Stanphill, 53 Wn. App. 623,
769 P.2d 861 (1989).

6. Pharmacy Records. Patients who purchase prescription
narcotics from pharmacists have a limited expectation of privacy
in the information compiled by pharmacists regarding their
prescriptions. Because patients know or should know that their
purchase of such drugs will be subject to government regulation
and scrutiny, and because dispensers of prescription drugs have
kept similar records open to government scrutiny throughout this
state’s history, prescription records maintained by pharmacies may
be accessed by the pharmacy board without a warrant. Murphy v. State,
115 Wn. App. 297, 62 P.3d 533 (2003).

The above is only a small part taken from “CONFESSIONS, SEARCH,
SEIZURE, AND ARREST A GUIDE FOR POLICE OFFICERS AND PROSECUTORS.”

For the full PDF format copy of this scary ‘guide’ email us and place
“GUIDE FOR POLICE OFFICERS AND PROSECUTORS” in your subject heading.

See you next issue

Shamrock

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
- Edmund Burke, 1784
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Tid Bits

Doctors: Parents should lose custody of obese children
- Fox 25

A local Boston doctor is raising eyebrows. He’s proposing that some
children who are extremely obese should be taken from their parents
and put into foster care.

Obesity poses long-term, and in some cases immediate threat to the
health of children, but is it enough of a concern to remove them
from their homes?

Some experts say yes.

An opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association
today argues there are some cases so extreme, that is the duty
of the government to provide help to children whose parents can’t
provide it.

Children’s Hospital-Boston obesity specialist Dr. David Ludwig says
the goal is to support the whole family to reunion.

Ludwig co-authored the piece with Harvard School of Public Health
researcher Lindsey Murtagh, who is also a lawyer. They say in some
cases state intervention is more ethical than subjecting young
people to weight loss surgery.

Opponents say there are many things that affect a child’s weight,
including advertising, bullying and peer pressure and that it’s
unfair to place the full burden of blame on parents.
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*** Just in case!

For sale: U.S. infrastructure? Like Greece, we may be forced to
privatize large segments of our transportation system soon because
of the debt crisis.
- Lisa Schweitzer

We could well be privatizing large segments of our own transportation
system soon because of the U.S. debt crisis.

Greece is having a fire sale of its publicly-owned transportation
system, with planes, trains and roads all being sold off as the
country attempts to dig out of its debt crisis. Americans should
watch and learn: We could well be privatizing large segments of
our own transportation system soon because of the U.S. debt crisis.

Last week, Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.,), chairman of the House
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, introduced a bill
that would slash transportation spending, limiting it to the amount
brought in by federal gas tax revenues and other existing highway
fees. That roughly translates into federal spending of $215 billion
to $230 billion over six years for highway and transit projects -
about half of what the Obama administration sought last year.

You can’t cut that The draconian spending proposal, dubbed “the
Republican road to ruin” by critics, comes at a time when groups
such as the American Society of Civil Engineers are saying that
the U.S. needs to invest an additional $1 trillion beyond current
levels over the next decade just to maintain and repair existing
infrastructure.

We are facing a road infrastructure crisis, and it is of our own
making. The federal gas tax has been unchanged, at 18 cents, since
1993, even as vehicles have gotten more fuel efficient. Adjusted
for inflation, it amounts to a measly 12 cents today. But Americans,
according to surveys, don’t want to raise the tax.

For politicians like Mica, this opens doors to privatization
projects. Last month, he introduced a bill that would put private
companies in charge of Amtrak’s operations in the Northeast
Corridor. Taking that step, he contended, would be the fastest way
to get high-speed rail up and running in the U.S. because it’s
clear that President Obama’s federally sponsored rail plan has
little support in Congress.

Maybe Mica is right. But rushing to privatize state-owned assets can
lead to terrible infrastructure deals that let private companies
walk away with prime assets and leave taxpayers with no guarantee
of better services or lower fees.

Unlike the Greeks, who must sell to receive bailout funds, we
still have a say in our infrastructure future. But the time for
planning ahead and striking strong deals is dwindling, along with
our infrastructure funds.

Many European countries and cities have privatized infrastructure
and city services. You want to use the highway – you pay. You want
to stroll through a “public” garden – you pay. You can avoid higher
taxes, but if you want the services, you pay the private company
that holds the franchise. It is a system that works fine for those
with cash to spend.

Scaling down public ownership of transportation networks also means
carefully selecting which parts of the system to sell or lease
out. Private companies usually desire assets associated with the
most demand for services, such as the Northeast Corridor. But if we
sell off or lease these assets to get private companies to build a
high-speed rail system there, we may also be giving up the only part
of a high-speed rail network likely to generate enough cash in the
long term to keep a national system running without taxpayer help.

So far, privately run transportation projects show mixed
outcomes. For every successful privatization story of service
improvement and mounting profits – Britain’s airport privatization,
say – there’s a disaster story of poor service and taxpayers left
holding the bailout bag: think the Chunnel or Chicago’s privatized
parking woes. Privatized transportation projects carry risks for
both sides.

So long as Americans refuse to even index gas taxes to inflation,
let alone raise the tax outright, we won’t be spending enough to
maintain our transportation infrastructure, which means that its
value will continue to fall. That will make it difficult to attract
private investment or get a fair price for state-owned assets if
the government opts to privatize its transportation assets. Too many
more years of disinvestment and we will have to make gun-to-the-head
decisions like Greece’s, shock ourselves with big tax increases
later, or both.

Without new revenue sources, the long-term problems for
U.S. infrastructure finance are going to continue even if Congress
manages a debt-ceiling deal. By contrast, if the U.S. defaults
on its debt, our bond ratings will tumble. The higher costs of
bond financing would then raise infrastructure costs through the
roof. And those financing costs would put government negotiators
at even more of a disadvantage in privatization deals.

Averting default would give U.S. leaders wiggle room to find
public-private partnerships that really do serve the public
interest. To do so, they must choose to maintain both America’s
credibility and its existing assets.
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Quotes

“The dead thing flows with the river, but only the living thing
can swim against it.”
- anonymous
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Memorable Quotes

“It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.”
- anonymous
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And other Quotes:

“Coexistence on this tightly knit earth should be viewed as an
existence not only without wars⦠but also without [the government]
telling us how to live, what to say, what to think, what to know,
and what not to know.”
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from a speech given September 11, 1973
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*** A thought provoking quote

“A free and democratic” government that cannot stand the light of
day has much to hide.”
- Paul Craig Roberts
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Even More Quotes

“A society where the citizen must have a lawyers education just to
live and still is unable to see the logic in the language used by
the “authorities” is doomed.”
- Dr. Charles Freeman, author of the best selling report, “How To
Legally Obtain A Second Passport,” and offshore consulting guru.
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Thought provoking quotes:

“Any US person contemplating wealth preservation and international
diversification must understand two U.S. government concepts:
income tax and reportable assets. If you hold assets offshore, some
are reportable to the government and some are not. And if you make
income while overseas, it is all reportable, although some of it is
exempt (the first $87,600 a year plus a $14,000 housing allowance).
- Dr. Charles Freeman, offshore consulting guru and author of the
best selling report, “How To Legally Obtain A Second Passport”.
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*** Tid Bits

NSA Whistleblower to Plead Guilty to Misdemeanor
- Kim Zetter

Days before he was set to go on trial on charges that he illegally
retained classified documents, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake has
agreed to plead guilty to a lesser misdemeanor count of exceeding
authorized access to a computer.

Drake had been charged under the Espionage Act after he allegedly
provided information about waste and mismanagement at the NSA to
a Baltimore Sun reporter in 2006 and 2007.

The former NSA linguist, who was set to go to trial next Monday,
rejected two pleas offered by the government on Wednesday before
finally agreeing to a third proposal, according to the Washington
Post. He turned down an offer to plead guilty to the charge that
he retained classified documents without authorization.

Drake, who left the NSA in 2008 and has been reduced to working at
an Apple Store outside Washington, D.C. while he awaited trial, was
facing a possible sentence of 35 years if convicted of the charges
he was facing. He has long maintained that he never provided the
Sun with classified information and also disputed that any documents
investigators found at his home contained classified material.

Experts told the Post that the misdemeanor plea indicates the
government’s case against him was weak. The government likely harmed
its case, they said, after prosecutors told a U.S. District judge
this week that they would withhold documents they had planned to
introduce as evidence, because out of fear that they would reveal
sensitive technology information.

The government’s decision to prosecute Drake and the resulting
media attention has already led to more public disclosures about the
NSA’s illegal surveillance program than the government likely wanted.

Last month, a New Yorker article about the Drake case provided
new insight into the program, including how top officials at the
intelligence agency viewed it.

Drake was a linguist and military crypto expert who had been an
NSA contractor when he began a new staff job with the agency on the
morning of September 11, 2001, in the agency’s Signals Intelligence
Directorate.

As a contractor, Drake had become familiar with a data-mining
program codenamed ThinThread, that had been tested within the NSA
and could be deployed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other regions
where terrorism was prevalent. It was designed to trap, map and
mine vast amounts of data in real time to pick out relevant and
suspicious communications, rather than requiring the data to be
stored and sifted later.

The program was “nearly perfect” except that it swooped up the
data of Americans as well as foreigners and continued to intercept
foreign communications as they traversed U.S.-based switches and
networks. This violated U.S. law, which forbids the collection of
domestic communication without a probable-cause warrant.

To solve this problem, the designer of the program added privacy
controls and an “anonymizing feature” to encrypt all American
communications that ThinThread processed. The system would flag
patterns that looked suspicious, which authorities could then use
to obtain a warrant and decrypt the information.

ThinThread was ready to deploy in early 2001, but the NSA’s lawyers
determined it violated Americans’ privacy, and NSA director Michael
Hayden scrapped it. In its place, Hayden focused funding on a
different program, codenamed Trailblazer, which the NSA contracted
with outside defense companies, like SAIC, to produce.

That system ran into numerous problems and cost overruns, yet
continued with Hayden’s support. Hayden’s deputy director and his
chief of signals-intelligence programs worked at various times for
SAIC, which received several Trailblazer contracts worth hundreds
of millions of dollars. In 2006, after eating up some $1.2 billion,
Trailblazer was finally deemed a flop and killed.

Drake’s revelations to the Baltimore Sun exposed the government’s
waste and mismanagement of the programs.

Last year the government had dropped a criminal investigation of
another whistle blower who helped expose the Bush administration’s
warrantless wiretapping program to the New York Times in 2004.

Thomas Tamm had held a Top Secret/SCI clearance at the Justice
Department’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review when he
discovered the illegal NSA program and tipped off the Times.
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*** More Tid Bits

Watchdog hits out at Yahoo! for ‘spying’ on customer emails to sell
targeted advertising
- Daily Mail

Yahoo! has been accused of changing its terms and conditions to
allow it to read its customers’ private emails.

The world’s biggest email provider says that by signing up to its
service, users are giving their consent for both their outgoing
and incoming mail to be analysed for information to sell targeted
advertising.

The responsibility for telling non-Yahoo! customers that their
emails and messaging content are being read is placed on the user.

Yahoo! has been accused of changing its terms and conditions to
allow it to read its customers’ private emails

An extract from Section C of Yahoo! Mail’s Additional Terms Of
Service reads: ‘If you consent to this ATOS and communicate with
non-Yahoo! users using the Services, you are responsible for
notifying those users about this feature.’

The move has angered privacy campaigners.

Georgina Nelson, a spokeswoman for consumer watchdog Which?, said:
‘This is a gross violation of internet users’ privacy.

‘Most consumers would be horrified to learn that their email can
be read in order to open the door to targeted advertisers.’

She added: ‘The obligation to notify those who email you that their
message will be scanned is nonsensical and unrealistic. When exactly
are you supposed to do this?

‘Our advice to anyone who has a Yahoo! email and messaging account
and who objects is to this is to switch to a different email
provider.’

A spokesman for Yahoo! said that it is scanning and analysing
content in order to ‘provide personally relevant product features
and content, to match and serve targeted advertising’, and to provide
customers with spam and malware detection and abuse protection.

He added that before using Yahoo! Mail Beta, users would receive
a pop-up notice of the new terms of service and privacy policy.

But he added: ‘In time, we will also serve relevant ads. It’s worth
adding that machine scanning of mail is already used by our major
competitors.’
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*** Bits n bobs

Mom Arrested After Refusing TSA Molestation of Daughter
- Kurt Nimmo

Andrea Fornella Abbott of Clarksville, Tennessee, was arrested
by Nashville airport authorities after she refused to let the TSA
fondle her daughter.

Abbott said she did not want her daughter to be “touched
inappropriately” or have her “crotch grabbed,” according to a
police report.

Her outrage at the “security procedure” landed her in jail. She was
charged with disorderly conduct and released on bond, according to
The Tennessean.

“(She) told me in a very stern voice with quite a bit of attitude
that they were not going through that X-ray,” Sabrina Birge, an
airport security officer, told police.

Abbott was told by the woman that naked body porno scanners are
“10,000 times safer than your cell phone and uses the same type of
radio waves as a sonogram.”

Earlier this month, it was revealed that the TSA, under the guidance
of the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, deliberately
misled the public on the health risks associated with the naked
body scanners.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center published documents
released under a Freedom of Information Act request that show the
TSA has been caught covering up a growing number of cases of cancer
among TSA airport body scanner operators who conduct the screenings
in close proximity to the radiation-emitting devices.

Despite the baseless assurance that the device is safe, Abbott
told Birge she did not want her daughter’s naked body revealed by
the scanner.

She attempted to take cell phone video of the incident but was
prevented from doing so.

In April, the TSA defended its serial molestation procedures after
a video surfaced showing agents fondling a six year old girl at
the New Orleans airport.

The TSA has admitted that fondling children is government policy.

“Some folks are asking if the proper procedures were
followed. Yes. TSA has reviewed the incident and the security officer
in the video followed the current standard operating procedures,”
a TSA spokesman explained on the agency’s official blog.
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More Bits N bobs

New Port Richey couple says TSA search went too far
- WTSP.com

New Port Richey, Florida – Airport security is a part of traveling
these days, from walking through X-Ray machines to being patted
down. But one New Port Richey couple contacted 10 News to say the
search they received went too far.

“It was extremely thorough, almost a violation, “says Jason Steitler
as he describes how a TSA official searched him at the Greater
Rochester International Airport July 6th. Steitler’s disability
requires he uses a wheelchair.

“They did the hair then did the neck. Then they had me do a pushup in
my chair, then got down into my inner thigh around my back side. It’s
the most thorough search [I've] had done in my life,” says Steitler.

Steitler and his wife, Jennifer, were heading home to New Port
Richey that morning. She too is in a wheel chair and was searched
by a TSA official.

“She’s been using the phrase ‘search raped’ because it was that
thorough. She says it was nearly to her crotch,” says Steitler. “I
feel the chair should have option of either scanner or searches,
but automatically we’re being thrown to being patted down.”

Steitler says they’ve complained to the TSA about their experience
at Rochester International Airport, but all they’ve received back
is a standard form letter.

“Just the standard reply to everything: ‘In order to fly you have
to be searched,’” says Steitler.

In an email to the Steitlers, a TSA official writes, “We apologize
for any insensitivity or inappropriate treatment you experienced
during the screening process.”

In another email, a TSA official says, “We believe these security
measures are necessary and appropriate for ensuring the security
and confidence of all air travelers.”

The Steitlers say they are not opposed to the searches, just the way
the disabled are treated when it’s done. Steitler says, “Generally,
be fair about it. Don’t hold the disabled up to more scrutiny just
because they are in chairs.”

Noah Lebowitz, the director of communications for Monroe County and
spokesperson for Greater Rochester International Airport, tells 10
News in a written statement, “The Greater Rochester International
Airport always strives to provide outstanding customer service to our
passengers and ensure that they enjoy a convenient and safe travel
experience.  The security screening protocols in question are the
jurisdiction of the federal government through the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA).  If any passenger believes that
our airport could have provided them with an enhanced customer
experience, we encourage them to contact us.”

Steitler says he plans to become an advocate for the disabled until
he feels the security protocol is fair and equal for all.
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*** Background checking in the palm of the hand

That hot babe in finance? Did 5 years in jail. Men’s jail
- Bill Ray

The properly paranoid can now relax, BeenVerified is available for
Android and iPhone platforms: so you can check out the history of
anyone you meet instantly – if they’re American, anyway.

The service has been around as a website for a while, checking
different publicly available sources of information and compiling
a report on any individual based on their name and State of
residence. Gizmodo notes the mobile release, and interestingly
argues that the app is in no way creepy despite the promotional
video which makes it look pretty disturbing:

BeenVerified is the company behind “Sex Offender Tracker”, which
purports to show a real-time radar giving the location of local
sex offenders, though the reviews suggest the information isn’t
always accurate.

Gizmodo’s point is that we’re all just going to have to get used
to everyone we meet knowing everything there is to know about us,
something explored delightfully in Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True
Love Story, but not necessarily a world in which many of us would
be comfortable.

But unless we adopt Eric Schmidt’s idea of changing identities
every now and then we’ll have to modify that old saying: There’s
no strangers in this world, only people on whom you’ve not yet run
a background check.
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*** Disturbing facts

Outcasts: Tonight Tens Of Thousands Of Formerly Middle Class
Americans Will Be Sleeping In Their Cars, In Tent Cities Or On
The Streets

Economic despair is beginning to spread rapidly in America. As
you read this, there are millions of American families that are
just barely hanging on by their fingernails. For a growing number
of Americans, it has become an all-out battle just to be able
to afford to sleep under a roof and put a little bit of food on
the table. Sadly, there are more people than ever that are losing
that battle. Tonight, tens of thousands of formerly middle class
Americans will be sleeping in their cars, even though that is
illegal in many U.S. cities. Tens of thousands of others will be
sleeping in tent cities or on the streets. Meanwhile, communities
all over America are passing measures that are meant to push tent
cities and homeless people out of their areas. It turns out that
once you lose your job and your home in this country you become
something of an outcast. Sadly, the number of “outcasts” is going
to continue to grow as the U.S. economy continues to collapse.

Most Americans that end up living in their cars on in tent cities
never thought that it would happen to them.

Can it happen to you?

Read the rest of the story at
<http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/outcasts-tonight-tens-of-thousands-of-formerly-middle-class-americans-will-be-sleeping-in-their-cars-in-tent-cities-or-on-the-streets>
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Hints & Tips

US court test for rights not to hand over encryption keys
- John Leyden

Civil liberties activists have lent their support to a case that
will test whether a US citizen can refuse to decrypt personal data
on the grounds that it might be self-incriminatory.

The case involves allegedly fraudulent real estate transactions. The
government wants a Colorado court to compel Ramona Fricosu, who is
accused of a mortgage scam, into either turning over the passphrase
or providing a plain text version of the data held on an encrypted
laptop. However, such an order would be in breach of Fifth Amendment
protection against self incrimination, according to papers filed
by the Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) in support of Fricosu.

Lawyers for the digital civil liberties organisation argue that the
prosecution’s demand that Fricosu turn over the passphrase/plain
text version is contrary to the Constitution, because it effectively
forces Fricosu to become a witness against herself.

“Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself,
a testimonial act – revealing control over a computer and the
files on it,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann,
in a statement. “Ordering the defendant to enter an encryption
password puts her in the situation the Fifth Amendment was designed
to prevent: having to choose between incriminating herself, lying
under oath, or risking contempt of court.”

Although prosecutors have made some concessions, they have failed
to provide assurances that any data found on the computer won’t
be used as evidence against Fricosu. Lawyers for the EFF argued in
an amicus brief (16-page/146KB PDF) in defence of Fricosu that the
request would expose a potential treasure trove of personal data.

“Our computers now hold years of email with family and friends,
internet browsing histories, financial and medical information,
and the ability to access our online services like Facebook,”
said EFF Staff Attorney Hanni Fakhoury. “People are right to use
passwords and encryption to safeguard this data, and they deserve
the law’s full protection against the use of it against them.

“This could be a very important case in applying Americans’ Fifth
Amendment rights in the digital age,” she added.

Supreme Court rulings have previously decided that a subject can
be compelled to turn over a key in their possession that unlocks
a safe containing potentially incriminating evidence, but not the
combination to a safe in much the same scenario.

We’ve asked the EFF whether or not the outcome of the case will
have an effect on laptop border searches and the like, and will
update this story as and when we hear more.

In the UK, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act gives
police the powers to force suspects to decrypt files or hand
over pass-phrases. Non-compliance is an offence all on its own,
punishable on conviction by a two-year jail sentence – or a maximum
of five years in cases where national security is involved.

Investigations into suspected possession of child abuse images
and related offences is the “main reason” such section 49 notices
have been served, but the power has been applied in a range of
cases including counter-terrorism, insider dealing, theft and even
aggravated burglary. Ministers argued in Parliament that the powers
were needed to investigate terrorism and other serious crime.

However, as first reported in The Register back in 2009, the first
person jailed for failing to hand over encryption keys to authorities
was a schizophrenic software developer initially charged with
explosives offences that were later dropped during a police inquiry.
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*** Letters to the Editor:

Keep them postcards and letters coming’ folks, ’cause we done mailed
the rosebushes!

Dear Shamrock:

My offshore bank account of 9 years, was just closed with only
15 days notice, because I’m an American. I have steam coming out
my ears, not at the bank, but because of my governments arcane
actions. What can I do?

Pissed off

Dear P.O.

Your anger and frustration is fully understood. We had one reader
write us that he was turned down at a bank in Switzerland because
he was born in the USA, although he is not an American, does not
now nor never had held an American passport and has not been in
the US since he was a one year old infant.

A good associate of ours just had their ten year old bank closed
with 30 days notice, without any reason in spite of their not being
an American, nor living their or in Europe. Go figure?

To say the banking situation today is getting worse, especially
for Americans, is an understatement.

After the 2008 financial crisis, many governments started working
together with the following financial matters:

1. They signed up to Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEA). Such
agreements (to prevent tax evasion purpose) confirm that their
bankers and company registration departments do exchange their
clients identity records between countries. For Example if you
come from UK, and you open a bank account in Belize, the bank in
Belize will send client identity records to the UK Tax authority
(even if the client had used trust arrangements).

2. New EU directives have passed a new Act that the bankers in EU
Member States will share their clients identities AUTOMATICALLY. This
action is also supported by other large countries such as USA and UK.

3. The bankers, which are in such large influence countries such as
USA, their countries with the TIEA duties and in EU Member States,
have instructed their subsidiary bankers which are not in TIEA
countries and which are not in EU Member States to fulfill the acts
of TIEA and new EU directives of automatic exchange of information.

4. See the public notice from Patel Law Offices in USA – “HSBC
Expected to Disclose Account Holders Names”. From their notice,
it read “The IRS has petitioned for a federal court authorization
to enable it to obtain information on HSBC Bank’s American account
holders using their foreign accounts to evade taxes…. HSBC may be
willing to “throw their clients under a bus” to avoid prosecution. We
expect that HSBC will disclose its customer list, which will become
a target list for the IRS. HSBC customers are strongly recommended
to seek legal counsel immediately and consider entering the IRS’
new offshore amnesty program.”

5. In Dec 2010, our source’s firm in Hong Kong received an enquiry
letter from the United States Department of Treasure enforcing
them to disclose client identities under 326 of U.S Patriot
Act. Certainly, as they are independent non US firm, they need not
and did not comply with such requests per the Act and kept clients
information confidential.

However, how about the banks? Do they act independently? You need
to find or have a bank that is:
1) Not in TIEA Countries 2) Not in EU Member States 3) Where the
bankers not in 1) and 2) and their Holdings Bankers are not in 1)
and 2)

In order to get the fully free tax benefit, and get the client
privacy safe;

Therefore we, especially for US nationals, will only work with
international offshore bankers, where their countries either HAVEN’T
SIGNED UP to 1) TIEA and 2) are NOT IN EU COUNTRIES nor 3) their
holdings bankers are not in 1) and 2) above.

We also work with international offshore bankers that the
countries have signed up with some countries with TIEA which
are few in counties and which do not affect you. For example,
our clients coming from USA can open an offshore bank account in
Belize because Belize hasn’t signed up TIEA with the USA and so
the banker in Belize will not disclose clients identity to USA,
nor the banker having an office in USA.

The offshore international bankers we are currently working with
are in:
(Belize), (Dominican Republic), (Mauritius), (Nevis), (Panama),
(Seychelles) and (St. Vincent) that we can arrange to e-mail the
bank application forms direct to you, and you just print out and
sign up the form and post to us for bank application process.

Hope the above helps

Shamrock
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Quote of the month!

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of
its victims may be the most oppressive.”
- C.S. Lewis
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*** “PT Shamrock’s Exclusive Member’s Site!”

Each month we offer exclusive information, free privacy programs,
access to our newsletter archives and other insider information
for members only.

Our member’s site is accessed by user name and password only. This
is available to our newsletter subscribers ONLY!

Each month the password will change and you will have to e-mail us
from your subscribers e-mail address to request the NEW password
in order to gain access.

As a subscriber to our newsletter you automatically qualify
for this exclusive service. Just send an e-mail to <mailto:
ptshamrock@ptshamrock.com> and place “Members” in the subject
heading. We will forward to you full details for signing up and
gaining access to our Members Site, reserved for you.

Enjoy.
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Dear Friend:

If you like our newsletter please tell your friends and associates
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We never spam our subscribers, never rent or give our subscribers
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advertisements; And of course, our PT Buzz Newsletter is absolutely
free, just packed full of interesting privacy news and information
with a tad of humor thrown in for good measure.

We’re probably the oldest privacy newsletter on the Internet!

Thank you for your patronage and help in spreading the word.

Shamrock

“The right to privacy is a part of our basic freedoms. Privacy
is fundamental to close family ties, competitive free enterprise,
the ownership of property, and the exchange of ideas.”

PT Shamrock – issue one; 1994
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Don’t forget to check out our Special Offers at <www.ptshamrock.com>

See you next issue!

“Mehr sein, als scheinen” (German Proverb)
Be more, seem less!

PT Shamrock
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