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WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The FBI is operating a small air force to spy on Americans Associated Press Jack Gillum, Eileen Sullivan and Eric Tucker, Associated Press Jun. 2, 2015, WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned. The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency...

Americans have watched for years as Washington has steadily drained the states and the people of their autonomy, but the NSA surveillance scandal, such as it is, has proven to be one power grab too many for some. As such, according to Watchdog.org, some state governments are implementing an example that Congress can (and should) follow with regards to limiting electronic surveillance.

Aviation buff John Zimmerman was at a weekly gathering of neighbors Friday night when he noticed something peculiar: a small plane circling a route overhead that didnÂ’t make sense to him. It was dark, so a sightseeing flight didnÂ’t make sense, and when Zimmerman pulled up more information on an aviation phone app he routinely checks, he had immediate concerns. The planeÂ’s flight path, recorded by the website flightradar24.com, would eventually show that it circled downtown Minneapolis, the Mall of America and Southdale Center at low altitude for hours starting at 10:30 p.m., slipping off radar just after 3 a.m....

  Ten pages of Google search returns for “children turned in their parents” show no historical awareness today of the phenomenon, common in the Nazi and Communist eras.  Yet history as prophecy gives a complete picture of what will happen, when a radical ideology takes complete control of education, away from the parents, their first teachers in the family.  Time to start exercising self-censorship, so your young people don’t end up orphans under the state control of "the new family".

Rand is still standing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the libertarian firebrand and GOP presidential hopeful, isn’t showing any sign he’ll relent and allow speedier votes in the Senate on controversial government surveillance programs, as weary and recess-hungry senators trudged through a rare Friday session with a packed to-do list. Paul said Friday that he hasn’t yet agreed to accelerate procedural votes — currently set for Saturday — on dueling proposals to renew expiring provisions in the PATRIOT Act. He had signaled that he might relent if he secured votes on privacy amendments, but shortly before 10 p.m. he said...

Reflexively distrustful, eager to make powerful enemies, the young journalist whose Mercedes exploded in Los Angeles one night couldn’t possibly have died accidentally, could he? A t the end of his life, Michael Hastings, like many of the progressive journalists he counted among his friends, felt besieged by an overreaching government. Hastings was living in Los Angeles, and at a Beverly Hills theater in April, he took part in a panel discussion about the documentary War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State. Interviewed in May on The Young Turks, a talk show on Current TV, Hastings railed...

“Here in front of Independence Hall, I call for the president to obey the law,” Paul said when he took the microphone, as hundreds of his supporters shouted “President Paul! President Paul! President Paul!” outside Independence Hall after a separate event inside the Constitution Center across the street. The crowd went wild. “The court said last week that it is illegal to collect all of your phone records all of the time without a warrant with your name on it,” Paul said. “I call on the president today to immediately end the bulk collection of our phone records.”

On Thursday a federal appeals court ruled that the NSA’s wholesale collection of Americans’ phone and Internet communications actually is not authorized by the controversial USA Patriot Act, as current and prior administrations have argued. As reported by The Wall Street Journal: The ruling greatly increases the pressure on Congress to make significant changes—or end outright—the surveillance program. The judges not only ruled against the phone program, but sharply criticized many of the legal theories upon which the U.S. government has built out its surveillance capabilities since the 2001 terror attacks.The Obama and Bush White Houses have used the Patriot...

One of the most glaring myths propagated by Washington — especially the two parties’ media loyalists — is that bipartisanship is basically impossible, that the two parties agree on so little, that they are constantly at each other’s throats over everything. As is so often the case for Washington partisan propaganda, the reality is exactly the opposite: from trade deals to Wall Street bailouts to a massive National Security and Penal State, the two parties are in full agreement on the bulk of the most significant D.C. policies (which is why the leading candidates of the two parties (from America’s...

Here is a short pop quiz. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress earlier this month about the parameters of the secret negotiations between the United States and Iran over nuclear weapons and economic sanctions, how did he know what the negotiators were considering? Israel is not a party to those negotiations, yet the prime minister presented them in detail. When Hillary Clinton learned that a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives had subpoenaed her emails as secretary of state and she promptly destroyed half of them -- about 33,000 -- how did she know she could get...

In a revelation that is bound to further erode an already tense relationship between the US and Israel, Israel has reportedly been spying on nuclear talks with Iran — and then using the inside info to lobby members of Congress to kill the deal. Officials told The Wall Street Journal that the spying began last year after the US and other interested parties entered negotiations on slowing down Iran's nuclear program. This news comes after a tumultuous few weeks following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress. In that address on March 3, Netanyahu passionately...

Not only did Israel spy on the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran, but it angered Obama administration officials by using the information gleaned from its espionage efforts to drum up opposition to a nuclear deal among US lawmakers, The Wall Street Journal is reporting on Tuesday. The administration's discussions with Iran appear to be nearing an agreement, with Israeli officials resigned to the fact that the sides are about to strike what they call "a bad deal." According to the Journal, Israel spied on the talks as part of the Netanyahu administration's campaign to publicly build a case against the...

The superintendent of the Watchung Hills Regional High School District in New Jersey has confirmed that she sent an email to fellow superintendents Tuesday about her concern that education publishing giant Pearson is “monitoring” children’s social media accounts for possible leaks about the Common Core-aligned PARCC tests.

” Pearson, the multinational testing and publishing company, is spying on the social media posts of students–including those from New Jersey–while the children are taking their PARCC, statewide tests, this site has learned exclusively.

(TNS) -- Pick another issue -- maybe any other issue -- and they'd be at each other's throats. But on Monday, the Minnesota Tea Party Alliance shared a stage with Occupy Minnesota, with the American Civil Liberties Union and an anti-Affordable Care Act advocacy group, with liberal DFLers and conservative Republicans. These unnatural allies agreed on one thing: limiting the ability of government to access electronic data. "There won't be many opportunities for you to see a group this ideologically diverse and bipartisan," said state Sen. Branden Petersen, R-Andover. Petersen, a Republican with libertarian leanings, wants to amend Minnesota's constitution...

I really feel like slamming some of the chickens**t American Jews who regularly comment - both on this blog and on Twitter and Facebook - that Jonathan Pollard should rot in jail because what he did was so terrible they're afraid of being accused of having 'dual loyalties' if they actually question Pollard's life sentence. Much of the infamous Cap Weinberger memo (that Pollard's lawyers were never allowed to see) has been declassified, and it shows that much of the US government argument for keeping Pollard imprisoned is based on lies and mischaracterizes what Weinberger (an anti-Semite in his...

Geneva - Islamic State militants are selling abducted Iraqi children at markets as sex slaves, and killing other youth, including by crucifixion or burying them alive, a United Nations watchdog said on Wednesday. Iraqi boys aged under 18 are increasingly being used by the militant group as suicide bombers, bomb makers, informants or human shields to protect facilities against US-led air strikes, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said. "We are really deeply concerned at torture and murder of those children, especially those belonging to minorities, but not only from minorities," committee expert Renate Winter told a...

That’s the revelation made by California Congressman Devin Nunes, who sits on the House Ways And Means Committee on Hugh Hewitt’s Show Wednesday night. Here’s the key part of that transcript: HH: The idea that this might be a Geithner-Axelrod plan, and by that, the sort of intimation, Henry II style, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest, will no one rid me of these turbulent Tea Parties, that might have just been a hint, a shift of an eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice. That’s going to take a long time to get to. I...

At a conference of the Annual Strategic Data Project (SDP) last year, Common Core "architect" and current president of the “non-profit” College Board, David Coleman, praised the collection of student data via the Common Core State Standards initiative.  Furthermore, he welcomed to that effort members of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign who, Coleman said, would be reaching out, as they did for the campaign, to the “low-hanging fruit,” or low-income and Latino students.In the video below, recorded last May by the Harvard Center for Education Policy Research CEPR, Coleman gave his audience several important pieces of information. First, Coleman admitted, as former...