Three million Americans are being forced to answer intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of home visits and fines by the government in the guise of The American Community Survey.
The survey, which is sent to 3 million random homes each year, is in addition to the census but demands far more invasive information from citizens, such as how many times they have been married, if they have a toilet that flushes, and how much is left outstanding on their mortgage.
According to one North Texas resident, “The questionnaire also wants answers about where she works, how much money she makes, and what time she leaves for work each day – the hour and minute! “I thought it was intrusive. I don’t have a high regard for the federal government collecting this information anyway,” the woman told CBS 11 News. “You don’t know what they’re going to do with it.”
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“Why do they need to know this? They don’t, in my opinion,” the woman said, before further stating that she thinks the personal questions are un-American. “Do they really need to know if we have a mortgage and whether this house is free and clear? That’s intrusive.”
The U.S. Census Bureau claims the survey helps them “determine where to locate services and allocate resources.”
If the person refuses to respond to the the survey or merely skips one question, then the Census Bureau promises that they will be fined and harassed until they do, a process that includes telephone calls and home visits.
However, it’s all hot air as no one has ever been charged with a crime for refusing to answer the ACS survey, and indeed several members of Congress have denounced the invasive questions as a violation of the Right to Financial Privacy Act.
On its very face, this is also a flagrant violation of the 5th amendment. Any census form that goes beyond asking how many people live in the residence is a violation of the 5th amendment, and court cases have established this, yet the census becomes more and more invasive each time.
Despite the fact that refusal to respond to the survey carries no ultimate penalty, the vast majority of the millions who receive it will doubtless comply in the face of threats of harassment and fines.
Objections to the invasive information being demanded by the government in the form of the survey arrive on the back of similar concerns about the 2010 census itself, particularly how census workers are using GPS to electronically tag every home in America.
In February, the Obama administration moved control of the census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House, a tactic slammed as a trick by Democrats to keep their majorities in Congress.
One of the largest cable TV companies in the United States is training its employees to look for suspicious behavior and report it to police under the guise of a neighborhood watch initiative. Since according to law enforcement and Homeland Security guidelines, suspicious behavior includes owning guns, being politically active, and having bumper stickers on your car, the cable guy’s next visit to your house may turn out to have more interesting consequences than you originally anticipated.
“Operation Bright Eyes is designed to maximize the eyes and ears of Bright House Networks field service representatives and other employees to easily identify suspicious behavior and to quickly report criminal activities to police,” according to a Fox 35 report.
All current and new Bright House employees will receive training to help them use the ‘resources at their disposal’ to “become familiar with residents and activities in neighborhoods” and report anything they deem unusual to the authorities in order to “keep our neighborhoods safe”.
Since when was it the job of the cable guy to run around pretending to be an undercover cop? This program is ripe for abuse and another advancement in the tattle-tale stasi society being created in order to make the sheeple self-police their behavior, constantly aware that they are being watched by secret police and living in fear that big brother will catch any minor indiscretion.
The legacy of training Americans to spy on each other in the name of “safety” has its origins in Operation TIPS, which was supposedly nixed by Congress, a DOJ, FBI, DHS and FEMA coordinated program that would have recruited one in twenty-four Americans as domestic informants, a higher percentage than was used by the Stasi in Communist East Germany.
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Government funding was cut after an outcry but private funding continues and the same program was introduced under a number of sub-divisions including AmeriCorps, SecureCorps and the Highway Watch program.
More recently, ABC News reported that “The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort…..to aid with criminal investigations.”
In July last year we reported on how hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
Also last year, a New York Times feature article heartily celebrated the fact that an increasing number of Americans are becoming informants and turning in their neighbors and family members to the authorities in return for cash rewards. In a piece about a new program run by Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers, citing gas prices, foreclosure rates and runaway food price inflation, The Times lauds the fact that citizens are reporting on each other, ensuring “a substantial increase in Crime Stopper-related arrests and recovered property, as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren or former boyfriends in exchange for a little cash.”
Forget Orwell’s 1984, this purebred tyranny is about as sophisticated as the wacky dictatorship portrayed in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 movie The Running Man, where citizens are reminded by huge TV screens placed on street corners that they can “earn a double bonus for reporting on a family member!”
Bright House Networks has 2.4 million customers and covers “several large cities including Tampa Bay and Orlando, Florida; Bakersfield, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan; and Birmingham, Alabama; along with several other smaller regions in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.”
Perhaps that 2.4 million figure will begin to dwindle once customers find out that the cable guy is eyeing them up for suspicious activity.
What constitutes suspicious activity isn’t listed, but if it’s in line with law enforcement and Homeland Security guidelines – watch out.
As we have previously documented, people displaying suspicious behavior as defined by law enforcement authorities in documents such as the MAIC report, along with Homeland Security lexicon files, include Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag.
Homeland Security even equates people who express disagreement with the government with domestic extremists and terrorists. So if the cable guy sees an Alex Jones DVD in your TV cabinet, will that mandate a call to the cops?
There seems little need for President Obama to even create his promised “domestic security force,” and such a move would merely represent a centralization of what is already underway, since a plethora od programs that train Americans to report on each other are already firmly in place across the country.
When Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) asked Wednesday whether citizens have a right to self-defense, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I don’t know.”
Coburn had asked, “As a citizen of this country, do you believe innately in my ability to have self-defense of myself – personal self-defense? Do I have a right to personal self-defense?”
In reply, Sotomayor said that, “I’m trying to think if I remember a case where the Supreme Court has addressed that particular question. Is there a constitutional right to self-defense? And I can’t think of one. I could be wrong, but I can’t think of one.” She then went on to explain that self-defense rights are usually defined by state law.”
India is planning to provide its 1.1 billion-plus citizens with ID cards.
Entrepreneur, Nandan Nilekani has been chosen to lead the ambitious project which will be the second largest citizens’ database in a democracy, with China being the biggest.
The government believes the scheme, which will be finalised over three years, will aid the delivery of vital social services to the poorest people who often lack sufficient identification papers.
It also sees the scheme as a way to tackle increasing amounts of identity fraud and theft and, at a time of increased concern over the threat of militant violence, to boost national security and help police and law officials.
Back in November, after sweeping the election, Obama’s crew removed language from his official website calling for mandatory service for all Americans. “Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year,” the site said before the document was scrubbed in response to criticism.
Obama and the Democrats are wedded to the idea of mandatory service. In December 2007, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd proposed making community service mandatory for all high school students and proposed “encouraging service by adults by offering tax credits to employers who give workers paid time off to volunteer and $1,000 grants for seniors who help out in schools,” MSNBC reported.
In 2006, Rahm Emanuel, now Obama’s chief of staff, published a book entitled “The Plan.” In the book Emanuel argues for universal service for all “Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five [who] will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.”
Democrats love the idea of involuntary servitude. “For America now, service is not just an option, but an obligation of citizenship,” said John Kerry during the 2004 election. In the 110th congress Charles Rangel introduced the Universal National Service Act H.R.393, a bill that would have required all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service for a period of two years.
National service is feel-good code for slavery. It is prohibited by the 13th amendment.
In March, both the House and Senate passed a bill tripling the AmeriCorps program. Called the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, or GIVE Act, the law “encourages” Americans to “give back to their communities,” Fox News reported. Republicans attempted to attach an amendment to the bill prohibiting for-profit political and labor groups that engage in legislative advocacy from receiving “assistance” under the plan, but the amendment was tabled.
We need your service, right now,” Obama declared as he signed the bill. “I’m asking you to stand up and play your part. I’m asking you to help change history’s course… and if you do, I promise you, your life will be richer.”
Obama and Congress will eventually do more than merely ask “you to stand up and play your part” — they will legislate it. In March, H.R. 1444 was introduced in the House by a gaggle of Democrats. The bill will “establish the Congressional Commission on Civic Service to study methods of improving and promoting volunteerism and national service, and for other purposes.”
H.R. 1444 is sponsored by Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington state Democrat, and is assigned to the House Committee on Labor and Education. It reintroduces language calling for universal servitude stripped from H.R. 1388, the so-called GIVE (to government) bill.
In Section 4. of the proposed bill, entitled “Duties,” we find the following: “The effect on the Nation, on those who serve, and on the families of those who serve, if all individuals in the United States were expected to perform national service or were required to perform a certain amount of national service.” (Emphasis added.) A “workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement” is proposed “for all able young people.”
In addition, the Commission will investigate how to rope older Americans into a national servitude program. “Whether current Federal volunteer programs are suited to address the special skills and needs of senior volunteers, and if not, how these programs can be improved such that the Federal government can effectively promote service among the ‘baby boomer’ generation,” the bill states.
The Commission will also explore the creation of a “public service academy, a 4-year institution that offers a federally funded undergraduate education with a focus on training future public sector leaders.” Federal money would go to establish “a training program on college campuses to recruit and educate college students for national service.”
As Obama said during his GIVE signing speech, he wants to create “a generation of activists” to work with “nonprofit organizations” — that is to say, foundation NGOs — to “strengthen the Nation” as determined by the government and the corporations and bankers that own it.
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Our rulers are itching to implement “an era of common sacrifice,” as the Trilateralist David and Bohemian Grove attendee Gergen has called it. “David Gergen is perhaps the most vocal proponent of a new wave of ’social entrepreneurs’ whose businesses are modeled on a ‘more-than-profit’ basis. Most of these groups aim to incorporate a partnership between the public & private sectors (sometimes known as fascism),” writes Aaron Dykes.
Gergen and his one-world buddies consider us little more than a disposable ciphers to be used in their scheme to realize “a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” as Carrol Quigley noted.
In order to usher in the New Feudalism, the youth — and the baby boomers — will not only need to be brainwashed into accepting “an era of common sacrifice,” they will need to be forced by law to sacrifice and become slaves for the ruling elite.
The True Story of the Bilderberg Group
The updated, revised, expanded
North American Union Edition
By Daniel Estulin
It is ironic, as Daniel Estulin points out, that America’s fledgling democracy established the Logan act in 1799 to protect itself from Americans fostering foreign associations to intrude in our affairs. Named after Dr. George Logan, a pro Republican and prescient Quaker from Pennsylvania, it has remained almost unchanged and unfortunately unused since its passage, though it reads with great relevance in the shadows of the New World Order’s operatives . . .
It states, “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
In fact, it is amazing that the Bilderberg Group has met since 1954 with funding from the CIA and is made up of the world’s most powerful people, notably US and world heads of state, made and in the making, numerous international corporate CEOs from business, banking, industry, media, as well as world royalty, plus high-ranking members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Tri-Lateral Commission.
The Bilderberg goal has been to shape policy that deeply concerns the United States and its citizens in regards to innumerable foreign alliances without providing US citizens any awareness of same. And not once has any US member been indicted for their treasonous breaches in these actions.
Even though high-ranking members of the press attend Bilderberg annual meetings, there is little or no press coverage. They are there, as it were, to get with and push the program, albeit disguised. The meetings’ locales are announced only days before the events, always in a small town near a big city — this year’s at the five-star Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Vouliagmeni, Greece, May 14-17.
There are no press reports of discussions, agendas or conclusions released. Yet the matters discussed ranged this year from all facets of the US economy, including the dollar’s future, whether there will be depression or prolonged stagnation, US unemployment; more frighteningly, even to the destruction of the United States as we know it into the North American Union of Canada, the US, and Mexico.
Even though I read and favorably reviewed Estulin’s Bilderberg 2007: Welcome to the Lunatic Fringe, this new edition of the story lends new urgency to what has been happening in the darkness of the political night we live in, both north and south of us, including newly made associations of corporations, plans to usurp US laws to North American Union imperatives, all part of a scheme to hammer America into the pieces of this NAU like broken glass into an unrecognizable mosaic of oppression.
A recent survey from internet security consultancy, Cryptohippie, suggests that the UK is setting the pace in at least one area – though being classified as the West’s most repressive regime when it comes to electronic surveillance might not be a title that this government is entirely happy to wear.
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This result emerges from Cryptohippie’s recently published Electronic Police State 2008 (pdf). This is the first in what are intended to be a series of annual reports that will audit the “State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens”.
The audit focusses on 17 factors, ranging from requirement to produce documents on demand, through to the extent to which states force ISP’s and phone companies to retain data, the blurring of boundaries between police and intelligence work and ultimately the breakdown of the principles of habeas corpus.
A witness to the “struggle” between two Oklahoma Highway Patrol officers and a paramedic in Okfuskee County told News Channel 8 in Tulsa that the cop who throttled the EMP worker needs “anger management.” She is worried “that if one of them ever tries to stop me, I may do something that might make them mad.”
Click icon to read PDF
It does not take much to make cops in America “mad” these days, as numerous videos posted on the web reveal. Not displaying the required degree of deference to police can result in violence and even death.
It is against the law in Oklahoma to interfere with with paramedics in the performance of their duties. But instead of charing the cops — Daniel Martin and Bryan Iker — with breaking the law, the assaulted paramedic may be brought up on charges, according to Assistant District Attorney Maxey Reilly.
“The OHP has turned over details of the incident to the prosecutor in Okfuskee County to determine if charges will be filed in the case,” reports Tulsa World.
Meanwhile, the cops remain on duty, free to assault other citizens.
Creek Nation paramedics at Paden, located east of Prague, in Okfuskee County, have released their accounts of the incident (see PDF linked at right) while the OHP has yet to deliver its version of the encounter, not surprising because a cell phone video of the incident clearly shows the cops are at fault.
Tulsa World reports that the video “is now the No. 2 most-watched video on YouTube.”
In order to go about stomping and throttling — and murdering — citizens (cops often like to call them civilians) without damning video popping up on YouTube, the cops will have to find a way to put an end to video recording.
The feds use “a closely held law enforcement tool: equipment that can jam cellphones and other wireless devices to foil remote-controlled bombs,” the Washington Post reported in February. “It is an increasingly common technology, with federal agencies expanding its use as state and local agencies are pushing for permission to do the same. Police and others say it could stop terrorists from coordinating during an attack, prevent suspects from erasing evidence on wireless devices, simplify arrests and keep inmates from using contraband phones.”
In the not to distant future, cops may be able to flip a switch and shut down cell phones before they assault citizens.
During a speech today on “cybersecurity,” Obama told a whopper. He said the government’s effort to protect us from cyber bad guys “will not include monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans.”
Is it possible Obama has never heard of Mark Klein, the retired AT&T communications technician who said years ago that the company shunted all Internet traffic — including traffic from peering links connecting to other Internet backbone providers — to semantic traffic analyzers, installed in a secret room inside the AT&T central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco? There are similar rooms in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, all sucking up internet data.
Whistleblower Mark Klein
Klein explained that the multinational corporation is doing this at the behest of the NSA. It is “vacuum-cleaner surveillance” approach that grabs everything. “Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of [the Bush] administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA’s charter or with FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act],” said Klein in 2006.
After the NSA showed up in 2002 at AT&T’s Folsom Street facility, Klein began connecting the dots. “You might recall there was a big blowup in the news about the Total Information Awareness [TIA] program, led by Adm. [John] Poindexter, which caused the big upsetness in Congress, because what Poindexter was proposing to do was draw in databases from everywhere — and this was in The New York Times — draw in Internet data, bank records, travel records, everything into one big conglomeration which could be searchable by the government so they could find out everything about what anybody’s doing at any time of day,” Klein told PBS. “And all this would be done without any warrants. This is how it was presented by Poindexter himself in The New York Times, and that caused a great upset, brouhaha, in Congress.”
On January 16, 2003, Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to suspend the activity of the Total Information Awareness program pending a Congressional review of privacy issues involved. In February 2003, Congress passed legislation suspending activities of the IAO (Information Awareness Office) pending a Congressional report of the office’s activities.
Congress acted after William Safire published an article in the New York Times claiming “[TIA] has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans” (see You Are a Suspect, November 14, 2002).
Of course, the program didn’t go away. Legislators included a classified annex to the Defense Appropriations Act that preserved funding for TIA’s component technologies, if they were transferred to other government agencies. TIA projects continued to be funded under classified annexes to Defense and Intelligence appropriation bills.
“Total Information Awareness — the all-seeing terrorist spotting algorithm-meets-the-mother-of-all-databases that was ostensibly de-funded by Congress in 2003, never actually died, and was largely rebuilt in secret by the NSA, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman,” Ryan Singel wrote for Wired on March 10, 2008. “There’s been no real debate in Congress or in the press about whether the government should be allowed to track every Americans phone calls, emails and web browsing.”
Jon Stokes, writing for Ars Technica, notes that TIA technology is nothing new. “TIA-like efforts are still going on” Stokes wrote in 2005, and “the government has been trying to use new technology, like database tech and voice recognition, for domestic surveillance for a long time. And when I say a long time, I mean well before the current administration came into office.” It really got a boost under Clinton in 1995 when the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) was passed. “CALEA mandated that the telcos aid wiretapping by installing remote wiretap ports onto their digital switches so that the switch traffic would be available for snooping by law enforcement.” In other words, Mark Klein had but scratched the surface.
Truman created the NSA in 1952, supposedly to serve as “America’s ears” abroad, but the agency has long served as a secret Stasi-like organization dedicated to snooping on Americans. The NSA, writes Siobhan Gorman for the Wall Street Journal, “and other intelligence agencies were found to be using their spy tools to monitor Americans for political purposes.”
The NSA’s predecessor, the Armed Forces Security Agency, launched Project SHAMROCK in 1945. It obtained copies of all telegraphic information exiting or entering the United States with the full cooperation of RCA, ITT and Western Union. A sister project known as Project MINARET involved the creation of “watch lists,” by each of the intelligence agencies and the FBI, of those accused of “subversive” domestic activities. The watch lists included such notables as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez and Dr. Benjamin Spock, according to Patrick S. Poole, writing for Nexus Magazine in 1999. The FBI, the NSA, and other intelligence agencies were actively involved in creating the watch lists.
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NSA has attempted to keep up on technology as the secretive agency continues to snoop on “subversives” and others the government considers miscreants. In February, trade publications reported the agency is offering “billions” to any firm able to offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic. Skype is particularity troublesome because it utilizes P2P networks, that is to say peer-top-peer (no central server owned and operated by a telecom required). The government and the corporate media may tell you they want to crack down on P2P — for instance, the vastly popular BitTorrent — because of copyright infringement, but a more practical reason is because the government has yet to figure out how to crack the file sharing protocol. Skype and BitTorrent account for a large amount of traffic on the internet.
If you think Obama will roll back the government’s massive and unconstitutional snoop program, think again. On April 3, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s landmark lawsuits against illegal spying by the NSA. The DOJ demanded that the entire lawsuit be dismissed based on both the Bush administration’s claim that a “state secrets” privilege bars any lawsuits against the executive branch for illegal spying, as well as a novel “sovereign immunity” claim that the Patriot Act bars lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance (see the EFF press release, Obama Administration Embraces Bush Position on Warrantless Wiretapping and Secrecy).
In March, Obama’s coordinator for cybersecurity programs, Rod Beckstrom, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, quit because he opposed the role of the NSA in the so-called cybersecurity initiative. Beckstrom said “the threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top level government network security and monitoring are handled by” the NSA.
“Obama’s moves drew praise from key lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who vowed to work with the president to implement new security measures as needed,” CQPolitics reported shortly after his “cybersecurity” speech. “Obama said his cybersecurity adviser — who will be a member of both the National Security Staff and the National Economic Council staff — will head a new office within the White House.”
“We applaud President Obama for highlighting the extraordinarily serious issue of cybersecurity,” Sens. Johns D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.V., and Olympia J. Snowe , R-Maine, said in a joint statement. “No other president in American history has elevated this issue to that level and we think him for his leadership.”
No other president so far has had the power to shut down the internet. The Rockefeller-Snowe bill, S 778, would grant Obama dictatorial power declare a so-called “cyber emergency” and pull the plug, or at least cripple networks deemed a threat. The U.S. government is not seriously worried about Chinese hackers or mischievous kids in Latvia (as Rockefeller cited as a danger) but rather fear free and unfettered speech and activism on the part of its own citizens.
Obama’s promise is merely an effort to string you along with a big fat lie. He has absolutely no respect for you or the Bill of Rights.
Police in the UK are encouraging citizens to report people who drive nice cars or buy expensive items to the authorities in a new campaign entitled, ‘Too Much Bling? Give Us a Ring’.
“The Gloucestershire force is encouraging members of the public to report people wearing too much ‘bling’ during the recession. They are also urging people to shop anyone who drives flash cars or buys expensive items without the apparent means to afford them during the credit crunch,” reports the Daily Mail.
Posters for the campaign indicate that the targets of the stasi-like crackdown are well-dressed people who own expensive cars, boats and smoke cigars. Apparently, police in the UK think that actually being middle class and able to afford a nice lifestyle is a sign of probable criminal behavior.
Gloucestershire’s Chief constable Dr Timothy Brain said, “In the current time of financial uncertainty, those who live a lavish lifestyle with no discernable, legitimate income become even more apparent.”
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Former Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe responded, “Is this a joke? If the police spent half as much time tackling crime and getting out on the beat as they do coming out with this ridiculous stuff, we’d all be better off….How are you meant to judge if someone buying a piece of jewellery can afford it?”
As we have previously covered in-depth, UK police authorities routinely launch expensive PR campaigns encouraging citizens to report on each other for the most mundane activities.
Examples of suspicious behavior and potential terrorist activity worthy of being reported to police includes looking at CCTV cameras, owning a mobile phone, a van, a computer or a camera, living in an apartment, getting a refund on an item bought in a store, throwing away chemical and pharmaceutical products, or taking photographs.
PortalScape 