Free Republic

There are now 322 million cell phone subscribers in the U.S. and 4 billion worldwide with over 5 million cell towers and antennas scattered across the planet. 20 million Americans currently use wireless laptops, tablets, and routers, and according to the Wireless Association, that number has increased by 50% in just the last two years. Wireless devices emit radio frequency radiation (RFR) that consists of low intensity high frequency radio waves of non-ionizing radiation in the microwave range of approximately 900 MHz to 2.4 GHz. Wireless RFR now permeates most cities and rural areas and is spreading at lightning speed...

A former FBI counterterrorism agent has hinted at a vast and intrusive surveillance network used by the U.S. government to monitor its own citizens. Tim Clemente admitted as much when he appeared on CNN Wednesday night. Discussing the Boston Marathon attack and past telephone conversations of Katherine Russell and her now deceased husband, suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Clemente said that those conversations would be available to investigators. Clemente discussed the issue in this exchange with host Erin Burnett, as recorded by the CNN transcript...

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out. BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible. CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.” >Snip< “All of that...

Where are today’s rebels?  Where is the counterculture? Ear-budded hipsters, with their sheep-like devotion to Apple products and the Obama administration, sit in on the April 20 “Day of Pot” in Denver, content and satisfied with their free birth control and legalized maryjane.  Meanwhile SWAT teams descend on Watertown, Massachusetts, trampling Fourth Amendment rights in search of a “person of interest”– while a Saudi National is quietly sent back to his homeland.These hipsters champion the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado while the war on Big Tobacco rages on.  Since 1997 the FDA inherited control over the $365.5 billion global...

Scientists in the US have created a robot the size of a fly that is able to perform the agile manoeuvres of the ubiquitous insects. This "robo-fly", built from carbon fibre, weighs a fraction of a gram and has super-fast electronic "muscles" to power its wings. Its Harvard University developers say tiny robots like theirs may eventually be used in rescue operations. It could, for example, navigate through tiny spaces in collapsed buildings.

Justice Department agreed to issue "2511 letters" immunizing AT&T and other companies participating in a cybersecurity program from criminal prosecution under the Wiretap Act, according to new documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws. The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has...

It’s natural after an attack such as the Boston Marathon bombings to want to ratchet up security, but Americans are starting on a “slippery slope” when they start allowing more cameras in public places, claims Sen. Rand Paul. … Paul clarified that he has no problem with private businesses putting cameras outside their buildings to protect their property. But government, he argued, has enormous power that can be abused. …

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning, Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) clashed over the former’s calls for police departments to step up their activities in surveilling local Muslim communities, given the alleged Islamic beliefs behind the Boston bombings earlier this month. Rep. King, an outspoken advocate for the domestic “profiling” of Muslims in the ongoing War on Terror, told moderator David Gregory that despite “most Muslims being outstanding people,” it is “critical” for police units to ramp up surveillance of Muslim communities

Appearing on Geraldo Rivera‘s radio show Monday afternoon, conservative columnist Ann Coulter proposed surveillance in every American mosque as a means to giving law enforcement an extra eye in such religious institutions. Agreeing with co-panelist Alan Dershowitz‘s suggestion that “surveillance is a very good thing” and that “we should learn to live with video cameras” because a mosque, church, or synagogue are “not a private place,” Coulter told Rivera: “I have long disagreed with my libertarian friends on this. It’s not difficult to explain: Any place a cop can be, or an undercover cop — standing, watching, and observing —...

Our Internet Surveillance State I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSec hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up. And three: Paula Broadwell, who had an affair...

“[Drones are a] game-changing technology, akin to gunpowder, the steam engine, the atomic bomb—opening up possibilities that were fiction a generation earlier but also opening up perils that were unknown a generation ago.”—Peter Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution America will never be a “no drone zone.” That must be acknowledged from the outset. There is too much money to be made on drones, for one, and too many special interest groups—from the defense sector to law enforcement to the so-called “research” groups that are in it for purely “academic” reasons—who have a vested interest in ensuring that drones...

Big Brother: The government we entrust our medical records to under ObamaCare has its EPA sharing confidential data on farmers with green groups and the IRS reading your email. Smile and wave at the EPA drone. The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged that it released personal information on potentially thousands of farmers and ranchers to environmental groups, violating their privacy rights and acting in collusion with private groups with private political agendas. In Nixonian fashion, the EPA has provided these environmental groups with the dossiers of farmers it has gathered to help them create an enemies list of potential polluters....

The Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. Asked if the Data Center would hold the data of American citizens,  Alexander said, "No...we don't hold data on U.S. citizens," adding that the NSA staff "take protecting your civil liberties and privacy as the most important thing that they do, " Thomas Drake who worked at the NSA says Americans should be concerned about letting the government go too far in the name of security. The only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state....

The FBI has been asked to investigate how Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, obtained a recording of political aides meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell discussing opposition research on Ashley Judd, a source close the McConnell re-election campaign tells CNN.

I am wearing a silver hoodie that stops just below the nipples. Or, if you prefer, a baggy crop-top with a hood. The piece – this is fashion, so it has to be a "piece" – is one of a kind, a prototype. It has wide square shoulders and an overzealous zip that does up right to the tip of my nose. It does not, it's fair to say, make its wearer look especially cool. But that's not really what this hoodie is about. It has been designed to hide me from the thermal imaging systems of unmanned aerial surveillance...

A Justice Department document obtained by the ACLU of Northern California shows that federal investigators were routinely using a sophisticated cell phone tracking tool known as a "stingray," but hiding that fact from federal magistrate judges when asking for permission to do so. Stingrays and similar devices essentially impersonate cell phone towers, allowing them to pinpoint the precise location of targeted cell phones (even inside people's homes) and intercept conversations. They also sweep up the data of innocent people who happen to be nearby. By withholding information about this technology from courts in applications for electronic surveillance orders, the federal...

Mayor Bloomberg admits soon NYPD surveillance cameras will be on nearly every corner and in the air. 'You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they'll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not,' Bloomberg said Friday. 'The argument against using automation is just this craziness that 'Oh, it's Big Brother.' Get used to it!' Big Brother is watching. Now get used to it! Envisioning a future where privacy is a thing of the past, Mayor Bloomberg said Friday it will soon be impossible to escape the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras and even...

I wanted to see if any of you out there have experience or could recommend a home surveillance system. I am looking for a few things (and yes, there is a ton out there I have read up on, I am looking for any of you with first hand experience): Local Storage and how many hours can it store? Motion detection/activation (save on stoarge) Four cameras (wired or wireless, makes no difference to me) Ease of setup Relatively easy to hide cameras, I don't need james bond, but nothing overly noticable. Audio? USB port for backups. Going out on a...

A federal judge this week struck down a controversial set of laws allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek people's records without a court's approval, saying the strict secrecy orders demanded by the laws are not constitutional. Judge Susan Illston, of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said the laws, which underlie a tool known as a "national security letter," violate the First Amendment and the separation of powers principles. In her order, Judge Illston ordered the government to stop issuing national security letters or enforcing their gag orders, although she said enforcement of her judgment...

Less than two weeks ago, Sen. Rand Paul's demanded to know whether the president believed he had a right to kill an American citizen on American soil with a drone, finally getting an answer that had to be dragged out Attorney General Eric Holder. An equally important, but still unasked question is whether the president intends to build a federal, drone-based "public safety" force to police local communities. Somebody had better ask the president about this quickly, because it appears that his administration intends to use drones to actively usurp what were once local police and sheriff's department functions. Put...

Do you want to keep drones out of your backyard? An Oregon company says that it has developed and will soon start selling technology that disables unmanned aircraft. The company, called Domestic Drone Countermeasures, was founded in late February because some of its engineers see unmanned aerial vehicles—which are already being flown by law enforcement in some areas and could see wider commercial integration into American airspace by 2015—as unwanted eyes in the sky. "I was personally concerned and I think there's a lot of other people worried about this," says Timothy Faucett, a lead engineer on the project. "We've...

I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up. And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus,...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A sharply-divided Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out an attempt by U.S. citizens to challenge the expansion of a surveillance law used to monitor conversations of foreign spies and terrorist suspects. With a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that a group of American lawyers, journalists and organizations can't sue to challenge the 2008 expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) because they can't prove that the government will monitor their conversations along with those of potential foreign terrorist and intelligence targets.

American government agencies—state, local, and federal—made a record 13,753 requests to read emails or gather other information sent through Google’s Gmail and other services in 2012, more than half without warrants, according to statistics released by Google. The total number of users about whom government agencies wanted information also set a record at 31,072, up from 23,300 in 2011, the first year Google began reporting the data. The discrepancy comes because government agencies request information on multiple users or accounts at the same time. … Google keep records of all email and other communication sent through its e-mail, telephone, YouTube,...

By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew Crosby in Madrid MADRID -- The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part. As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities--from arranging travel and providing introductions to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money--provide the first detailed look at one...

ARGUS-IS camera....

The chairman of the Australian company behind Chicago's red-light program resigned this week and trading in the company's stock was suspended amid an intensifying investigation into allegations of corruption in its Chicago contract. Redflex Holdings Ltd. announced the extraordinary actions just days after board members were briefed by an outside legal team hired to examine ties between the company's U.S. subsidiary and the city official who oversaw its contract, a relationship first disclosed in October by the Tribune. In a brief statement Thursday to the newspaper, the company also revealed for the first time that it is sharing information with...

A clip from the episode of NOVA entitled "Rise of the Drones." The full episode can be viewed here: http://video.pbs.org/video/2326108547

Two key memos outlining the Justice Department’s views about when Americans can be surreptitiously tracked with GPS technology are being kept secret by the department despite a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU to force their release. The FBI’s general counsel discussed the existence of the two memos publicly last year, yet the Justice Department is refusing to release them without huge redactions. (You can see the heavily censored versions sent to the ACLU here and here, and our original FOIA request here.) The Justice Department’s unfortunate decision leaves Americans with no clear understanding of when we...

The Department of Homeland Security has released their 2011 "Analysts Desktop Binder," detailing how the department has been monitoring activity on the internet and social networks. The binder includes an extensive list of key words and search terms carefully watched by analysts in multiple agencies including the Directorate for National Protection and Programs, Directorate for Science and Technology, Office of Health Affairs, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and others. Many monitored search terms are basic and used on a regular basis by every day American citizens and journalists. DHS is capable of identifying personal...

Orlando Florida Patrolled By Surveillance Drones As Early As This Summer Robert JohnsonJan. 13, 2013, 8:18 AMOctatron shows the camera aboard the SkySeer drone used for surveillance and reconnaissance for law enforcement When Congress passed a bill last February allowing unmanned drones to fly American skies it became only a matter of time before UAVs patrolled U.S. cities for local law enforcement. While most drones in the U.S. are flown along the Mexican border, the Orange County Sheriff's Office wants to put them over metro Orlando within the next few months. The Greater Orlando metropolitan area is home to more...

Neither Congress nor the White House has proved itself capable of reaching a decision on how to begin trimming the $16.5 trillion national debt with which these two institutions have saddled the American taxpayers. They even have been unable to come up with a reasonable measure to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” they themselves constructed months ago. Yet, when it comes to expanding the power of the government to spy on American citizens without warrants, both the House and the Senate last week fairly tripped over themselves in a rush to pass legislation doing just that; with President Obama...

Disconcerting though this statement is, with the help of our elected scoundrels, we are becoming precisely what bin Laden wanted all along...

Benetton is one of the few stores in the world that are using facial recognition in a unique way. The company has installed mannequins that have a camera in the eye sockets that can watch your every move while you shop. Smile, you're on camera. This is a phrase that is becoming the norm in today's tech-centric society. From general surveillance to collecting data through facial recognition, cameras are everywhere. Now Benetton has set up mannequins in its stores that can "see" you. What is "EyeSee"? According to Mashable, Benetton stores have installed $5,000 bionic mannequins from Almax, an Italian...

The unmanned aerial vehicles have become a mainstay of the U.S. military. In combat zones, the pilotless craft perform everything from surveillance to missile strikes against U.S. enemies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, just as our troops are coming home, so is their most advanced technology. And it's bringing with it a cargo of safety, privacy and civil liberty concerns. Benjamin Wittes, a Washington, D.C., national security analyst, has been asking that what-now question and expects to pose it to Minnesota leaders at the second annual Robotics Alley conference in Edina, Thursday, Nov. 15 -- a conference designed to...

Google handed over more user data to the US government in the first six months of this year than to all other countries combined. The US made 7,969 requests for user data, of which Google complied with 90 percent. Next most inquisitive was India, with 2,319 requests, Brazil with 1,566, France with 1,546, Germany with 1,533 and the UK with 1,425. The US figure presumably includes the FBI request that uncovered the contents of emails between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

The ACLU has released documents that show that in the last two years the US Department of Justice has conducted more warrantless electronic surveillance, involving spying on telephones, email and Facebook accounts, than in the preceding decade. The American Civil Liberties and Union (ACLU) reports that the documents handed over after months of litigation include the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports covering use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The documents, according to the ACLU, shows a sharp increase in the use of surveillance tools such as telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The ACLU observed...

For more than two years, the police in San Leandro, Calif., photographed Mike Katz-Lacabe's Toyota Tercel almost weekly. They have shots of it cruising along Estudillo Avenue near the library, parked at his friend's house and near a coffee shop he likes. In one case, they snapped a photo of him and his two daughters getting out of a car in his driveway. Mr. Katz-Lacabe isn't charged with, or suspected of, any crime. Local police are tracking his vehicle automatically, using cameras mounted on a patrol car that record every nearby vehicle—license plate, time and location. "Why are they keeping...

Controlling the drone is intuitive and touch-sensitive to the iPod or iPad controller. Power it on and the four propellers will lift the miniature aircraft up off the ground. Simply press a button and the drone will rise up a meter higher into the air and then sit and wait for your next command. To move the drone around, simply tilt your iPhone or iPad in any direction you desire. The WiFi remote connection from one’s phone only extends 200 feet, which is shorter than it sounds, according to many users in the blogosphere. But to use your phone just...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Midwest ranchers have never been enamored with environmental regulators, but they really began to complain after learning that federal inspectors were flying over their land to look for problems. The Environmental Protection Agency flies over power plants and other facilities nationwide to identify potential air, water and land pollution. It began using aerial surveillance in the Midwest in 2010 to check farms for violations of federal clean water regulations. Ranchers who object to the program said they're not trying to hide anything. It's the quiet approach the EPA took with the program designed to spot...

The U.S. government, understandably, doesn't want its drone technology to fall out of the sky and into other peoples' laps. But being able to hijack a drone and control it? That's even worse. And a team of researchers has done it for 1,000 bucks. The University of Texas at Austin team successfully nabbed the drone on a dare from the Department of Homeland Security. They managed to do it through spoofing, a technique where a signal from hackers pretends to be the same as one sent to the drone's GPS.

The kinds of drones making the headlines daily are the heavily armed CIA and U.S. Army vehicles which routinely strike targets in Pakistan - killing terrorists and innocents alike. But the real high-tech story of surveillance drones is going on at a much smaller level, as tiny remote controlled vehicles based on insects are already likely being deployed. Over recent years a range of miniature drones, or micro air vehicles (MAVs), based on the same physics used by flying insects, have been presented to the public.

National Security: The junior senator from Kentucky seeks to protect the Fourth Amendment from the advance of technology and require that all forms of surveillance by law enforcement require a warrant from a judge. Does the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures include aerial surveillance of your house and property? Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., thinks so. He introduced the Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act, which would require the government to get a warrant before using aerial drones to surveil U.S. citizens. "Like other tools used to...

<p>British authorities on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. — and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation's top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists.</p>

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are divided over whether there is a loophole in current law which would permit government agencies to monitor the communications of American citizens without any kind of warrant or other judicial authorization.The dispute was presented but not resolved in a new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (FAA) Sunsets Extension Act, which would renew the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act through June 2017.“We have concluded… that section 702 [of the Act] currently contains a loophole that could be used to circumvent traditional warrant protections and search for...

The U.S. government’s secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope. Designed for surveillance, the telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed .. They have 2.4-meter (7.9 feet) mirrors, just like the Hubble. They also have an additional feature that the civilian space telescopes lack: A maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more focused images. These telescopes will have 100 times the field of view of the Hubble, according to David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-chair of the National...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats on Thursday urged the New York Police Department to purge its intelligence databases of information gleaned from its clandestine spying on Muslim neighborhoods. They also criticized the Obama administration for offering tepid responses to questions about whether it endorses such tactics.

U.S. Air Force policy permits the incidental collection of domestic imagery by unmanned aerial systems (drones), but ordinarily would not allow targeted surveillance of a U.S. person.  The Air Force policy was restated in a newly reissued instruction on oversight of Air Force intelligence.“Air Force Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, exercise and training missions will not conduct nonconsensual surveillance on specifically identified US persons, unless expressly approved by the Secretary of Defense, consistent with US law and regulations,” the instruction stated.On the other hand, “Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent.”“Collecting information on specific targets...

The Obama Administration is demanding Congress pass legislation granting law enforcement greater access to personal cell phone records. “Right now we have to show probable cause to obtain a warrant for these kinds of records,” complained Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein. “This demands that we must present some evidence that we have reason to believe a crime has been or will be committed before we can get a judge to issue that warrant. This standard is too strict.” Weinstein argued that “a broader, more general authority to scrutinize cell phone activity would help us uncover crimes and other undesirable...

Amid unaddressed concerns, the Portland City Council on Wednesday sent Police Chief Mike Reese back to his bureau to draft stricter policies before allowing police to place surveillance cameras on private property in Old Town and Chinatown. Commissioner Dan Saltzman echoed concerns raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon when he asked for assurances that police wouldn't use the cameras to peep into private residences. Reese, who wants to put up the video surveillance cameras to help officers monitor drug deals, said "These cameras are not focused on anything but public right-of-ways." The chief, though, did acknowledge in...