The hallmark of a Surveillance State is that police agencies secretly monitor and keep dossiers on not only those individuals suspected of lawbreaking, but on the society generally, including those individuals about whom there is no suspicion of wrongdoing. For the past year, the Associated Press has systematically exposed how the New York Police Department, often working in conjunction with the CIA, engaged in a sprawling spying campaign aimed at Muslim individuals, students, institutions and mosques in the United States, all without a whiff of any suspected wrongdoing. Yesterday, the four AP investigative reporters who have exposed this program won a well-deserved Polk Award for their “investigation that showed the NYPD had built one of the largest domestic intelligence agencies in the country.” In particular, the “reporters documented how the NYPD assigned ‘rakers’ and ‘mosque crawlers’ to ethnic neighborhoods, infiltrating everything from booksellers and cafes to Muslim places of worship.”

On Monday, AP detailed how the NYPD spied on numerous Muslim students and their campus organizations. In particular, “police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast” and “talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.” The dossiers noted the names of Muslim student leaders and even stored emails sent and received by some of them. All this, even though the “documents mention no wrongdoing by any students.”

Today, AP released a newly obtained report by the NYPD from 2007 about the Muslim community in Newark, New Jersey — both Middle Eastern and African-American in origin — prompting one of the AP reporters, Matt Apuzzo, to ask on Twitter: “If NYPD can write docs like this outside its jurisdiction, where cant they go? Post-9/11, is NYPD a nat’l police force?” As AP reported today about this newly released dossier: “Americans living and working in New Jersey’s largest city were subjected to surveillance as part of the New York Police Department’s effort to build databases of where Muslims work, shop and pray.” The report was produced as part of a surveillance campaign whereby “plainclothes officers from the NYPD’s Demographics Units fanned out across Newark, taking pictures and eavesdropping on conversations inside businesses owned or frequented by Muslims.” Yet again, “the report cited no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior,” but was meant to instead be “a guide to Newark’s Muslims.” AP continued:

Such surveillance has become commonplace in New York City in the decade since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police have built databases showing where Muslims live, where they buy groceries, even what Internet cafes they use and where they watch sports. Dozens of mosques and student groups have been infiltrated and police have built detailed profiles of ethnic communities, from Moroccans to Egyptians to Albanians. . . . The effect of the program was that hundreds of American citizens were cataloged — sometimes by name, sometimes simply by their businesses and their ethnicity — in secret police files that spanned hundreds of pages.

It is really worth looking at this document for a sense of how insidious it is when the government spies on and compiles files about innocent citizens. The report contains numerous maps identifying the locations of all mosques in Newark:

It contains photographs of those mosques and other Islamic groups and even schools, including ones in private homes, accompanied by identifying information and other notes suggesting some sort of nefarious intent (“aggressive counter-surveillance observed,” which presumably means that someone from the mosque was watching police agents spy on them):

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The report even includes maps and active surveillance of halal shops, Middle Eastern groceries, and restaurants where Muslims gather:

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AP details that numerous names of individuals suspected of no wrongdoing are often included in these files; here, for instance, is what was contained the dossier compiled by the NYPD about the Muslim community on Long Island:

The effect of the program was that hundreds of American citizens were cataloged — sometimes by name, sometimes simply by their businesses and their ethnicity — in secret police files that spanned hundreds of pages:

— “A Black Muslim male named Mussa was working in the rear of store,” an NYPD detective wrote after a clandestine visit to a dollar store in Shirley, N.Y., on Long Island.

— “The manager of this restaurant is an Indian Muslim male named Vicky Amin” was the report back from an Indian restaurant in Lindenhurst, N.Y., also on Long Island.

— “Owned and operated by an African Muslim (possibly Sudanese) male named Abdullah Ddita” was the summary from another dollar store in Shirley, N.Y., just off the highway on the way to the Hamptons, the wealthy Long Island getaway.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has long claimed — preposterously — that the NYPD does not target communities for survillence based on their religion, but as AP notes: ”In one section of the report, police wrote that the largest immigrant groups in Newark were from Portugal and Brazil. But they did not photograph businesses or churches for those groups.” That’s because “‘No Muslim component within these communities was identified,’ police wrote.” In the wake of this latest evidence, Bloomberg seemed to abandon that denial, shifting instead to justification: “The police department goes where there are allegations. And they look to see whether those allegations are true,” said the Mayor. “That’s what you’d expect them to do. That’s what you’d want them to do. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight.”

This government spying on the perfectly innocent activities of innocent Americans and other legal residents is just a tiny though illustrative fraction of the dossiers being regularly compiled by government agencies. The Surveillance State compiles a massive amount of data about even the most innocuous activities of Americans – recall that the Washington Post‘s “Top Secret America” 2010 series reported that ”every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications” – and the scope of what it gathers always expands and never constricts. But there are two odious aspects of the Surveillance State specifically highlighted by the NYPD’s program here.

First, Muslims generally — and, increasingly, American Muslims — are branded with virtually official non-person status under the law. On Monday, I wrote about the way in which core tyrannical powers — arbitrary detention, limitless spying, due-process-free assassinations — have become normalized in the U.S., Israel and its Western allies, but it is almost always Muslims who are the target of these abuses. Every serious episode of civil liberties assaults in American history was driven by the full-scale demonization of one specific group. There are still plenty of groups who perform that function, but there is no question that Muslims are the prime target now.

Second, this perfectly illustrates what I have often described as the one-way mirror dynamic of the American Surveillance State: it isn’t merely that the State knows more and more about the private activities of citizens, but worse, that happens at exactly the same time that citizens know less and less about the activities of the State. At exactly the same time that the Surveillance State has exploded into a sprawling, ubiquitous, unaccountable apparatus, the U.S. Government and its various agencies have erected an increasingly impenetrable wall of secrecy behind which it operates. This imbalance grows inexorably. Note how the NYPD report — which collects all sorts of information about Newark Muslims suspected of no wrongdoing — contains these designations and warnings on its cover:

That’s the essential expression of the American Surveillance State: we can and will know everything about what you do, and you will know virtually nothing about what we do. In a healthy society, that formula would be reversed: the citizenry (with rare exceptions) would know most everything about what their government does, while the government would know nothing about what citizens do in the absence of well-grounded suspicion that they have done something wrong. Yet here we have the NYPD wandering outside of its jurisdiction in order to spy on the innocuous activities of a community of a religious minority (not even the Newark Mayor was informed about this), and the most disturbing part of it all is how common it now is.

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Speaking of the one-way mirror of the Surveillance State, a Polk Award was also awarded yesterday to The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer for her excellent article on the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers, which I wrote about here. As the Committee awarding the Polk Awards put it: Mayer “ends her masterful tale with the conclusion that America’s bloated ‘national-surveillance state’ poses a greater threat to civil liberties than ever before.”

The post The NYPD Spy Program and the US Surveillance State appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

In October of 2001 the US Army had about 54 drones in its arsenal, however that would change soon after the attacks of 9/11. Some numbers are noted by the Scientific American:

The U.S. Army’s drone armada alone has expanded from 54 drones in October 2001, when U.S. combat operations began in Afghanistan, to more than 4,000 drones performing surveillance, reconnaissance and attack missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan (pdf).

There are more than 6,000 of them throughout the U.S. military as a whole, and continued developments promise to make these controversial aircraft—blamed for the deaths of militants as well as citizens—far more intelligent and nimble.

From 54 drones in 2001 to the current 6,000 in-stock, within 10 years of 9/11 the US Army saw a net increase of their drone arsenal by 11,000%.

That was then. This is now:

A new law signed by Obama last week, HR 658, is set to increase the amount of drones in the skies over the USA. The Washington Times has this:

The legislation would order the FAA, before the end of the year, to expedite the process through which it authorizes the use of drones by federal, state and local police and other agencies.

Section 332 of the new FAA legislation also orders the agency to develop a system for licensing commercial drone flights as part of the nation’s air traffic control system by 2015.

The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

Business Insider points out important facts to remember:

This new bill follows up the Army’s January directive to use drone fleets in the U.S. for training missions and “domestic operations.”

And both of these initiatives are mandated in the NDAA (section 1097) that calls for six drone test ranges to be operational within six months of that bills signing December 31.

The commercial drone market would be worth hundreds of millions more if the bill passes.

Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and many other ‘Corporate Partners‘ are poised to profit heavily from the legislation. They are the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International or AUVSI, a conglomerate of ‘defense’ companies that essentially lobbied for and drafted HR 658.

Republic Report highlights the fact that AUVSI doubled its lobbying expenses last year:

In addition, major manufacturers like Northrup Grumman spent tens of millions lobbying last year.

These lobbying expenditures covered the FAA drone expansion law, but also encompassed other military related legislative items, making a more comprehensive look at drone lobby spending more difficult to pin down.

In a separate article, Republic Report reports that AUVSI also bragged in a power-point presentation that:

– Page 6: “the only changes made to the UAS section of the House FAA bill were made at the request of AUVSI. Our suggestions were often taken word-for-word.”

What will the drones be doing in the US? Afterall, 30,000 drones in US airspace is still many thousands more drones than is currently employed to fight wars throughout the World.

In late 2011 MSNBC reported that since 9/11, 30,000,000 cameras have been installed throughout the streets of the US.

Rasmussen Reports released stats that show the approval rating for Congress has slipped to a historic low of 5%.

Obama recently signed the NDAA which allows for the detention of US citizens, without due-process.

Could it be that concerns beyond privacy are reasonable?

The post The Growing 9/11 Drone Army appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:

Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.

The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. . . .

From its inception, the law’s increased surveillance powers have been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as infringements on free speech rights and protections against unwarranted searches and seizures.

Some Patriot Act opponents suggest that Osama bin Laden’s demise earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the law, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power. But the act’s supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.

“Now more than ever, we need access to the crucial authorities in the Patriot Act,” Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This will be the second time that the Democratic Congress — with the support of President Obama (who once pretended to favor reforms) — has extended the Patriot Act without any changes.  And note the rationale for why it was done in secret bipartisan meetings:  to ensure “as little debate as possible” and “to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government.”  Indeed, we wouldn’t want to have any messy, unpleasant democratic debates over “the expanded power the law gives to the government.”  Here we find yet again the central myth of our political culture:  that there is too little bipartisanship when the truth is there is little in Washington but that. And here we also find — yet again — that the killing of Osama bin Laden is being exploited to justify a continuation, rather than a reduction, in the powers of the National Security and Surveillance States.

Next we have a new proposal from the Obama White House to drastically expand the scope of “National Security Letters” — the once-controversial and long-abused creation of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to obtain private records about American citizens without the need for a subpoena or any court approval — so that it now includes records of your Internet activities:

White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. . .

Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau’s authority. “It’ll be faster and easier to get the data,” said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. “And for some Internet providers, it’ll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL.” . . .

To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is “incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting,” said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.

The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. “You’re bringing a big category of data — records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information — outside of judicial review,” said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.

So first they conspire with the GOP to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms, then seek to expand its most controversial and invasive provisions to obtain the Internet activities of American citizens without having to bother with a subpoena or judicial approval — “they” being the Democratic White House.

Most critically, the government’s increased ability to learn more and more about the private activities of its citizens is accompanied — as always — by an ever-increasing wall of secrecy it erects around its own actions.  Thus, on the very same day that we have an extension of the Patriot Act and a proposal to increase the government’s Internet snooping powers, we have this:

The Justice Department should publicly release its legal opinion that allows the FBI to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process, a watchdog group asserts.

The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel violated federal open-records laws by refusing to release the memo.

The suit was prompted in part by McClatchy’s reporting that highlighted the existence of the memo and the department’s refusal to release it. Earlier this year, McClatchy also requested a copy and was turned down.

The decision not to release the memo is noteworthy because the Obama administration — in particular the Office of Legal Counsel — has sought to portray itself as more open than the Bush administration was. By turning down the foundation’s request for a copy, the department is ensuring that its legal arguments in support of the FBI’s controversial and discredited efforts to obtain telephone records will be kept secret.

What’s extraordinary about the Obama DOJ’s refusal to release this document is that it does not reveal the eavesdropping activities of the Government but only its legal rationale for why it is ostensibly permitted to engage in those activities.  The Bush DOJ’s refusal to release its legal memos authorizing its surveillance and torture policies was unquestionably one of the acts that provoked the greatest outrage among Democratic lawyers and transparency advocates (see, for instance, Dawn Johnsen’s scathing condemnation of the Bush administration for its refusal to release OLC legal reasoning: “reliance on ‘secret law’ threatens the effective functioning of American democracy” and “the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government.”

The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens.  The National Security State has reversed that dynamic completely, so that the Government (comprised of the consortium of public agencies and their private-sector “partners”) knows virtually everything about what citizens do, but citizens know virtually nothing about what they do (which is why WikiLeaks specifically and whistleblowers generally, as one of the very few remaining instruments for subverting that wall of secrecy, are so threatening to them).  Fortified by always-growing secrecy weapons, everything they do is secret — including even the “laws” they secretly invent to authorize their actions  — while everything you do is open to inspection, surveillance and monitoring.  

This dynamic threatens to entrench irreversible, absolute power for reasons that aren’t difficult to understand.  Knowledge is power, as the cliché teaches.  When powerful factions can gather unlimited information about citizens, they can threaten, punish, and ultimately deter any meaningful form of dissent:  J. Edgar Hoover infamously sought to drive Martin Luther King, Jr. to suicide by threatening to reveal King’s alleged adultery discovered by illicit surveillance; as I described earlier today in my post on New York’s new Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer was destroyed in the middle of challenging Wall Street as the result of a massive federal surveillance scheme that uncovered his prostitution activities.  It is the rare person indeed with nothing to hide, and allowing the National Security State faction unfettered, unregulated intrusive power into the private affairs of citizens — as we have been inexorably doing — is to vest them with truly awesome, unlimited power.

Conversely, allowing government officials to shield their own conduct from transparency and (with the radical Bush/Obama version of the “State Secrets privilege”) even judicial review ensures that National Security State officials (public and private) can do whatever they want without any detection and (therefore) without limit or accountability.  That is what the Surveillance State, at its core, is designed to achieve: the destruction of privacy for individual citizens and an impenetrable wall of secrecy for those with unlimited surveillance power.  And as these three events just from the last 24 hours demonstrate, this system — with fully bipartisan support — is expanding more rapidly than ever.

UPDATE:  I confused the timing of the second incident I mentioned here:  the White House’s proposal to expand NSL’s to include Internet records.  That actually occurred last July.  But I also neglected to include in this list the Obama White House’s September demands that all ISP’s and manufacturers of electronic communication devices (such as Blackberries) provide “backdoors” for government surveillance, so that bolsters the points I made here.

UPDATE II:  So patently illegal is Obama’s war in Libya as of today that media reports are now coming quite close to saying so directly; see, for instance, this unusually clear CNN article today from Dana Bash.  As a result, reporters today bombarded the White House with questions about the war’s legality, and here is what happened, as reported by ABC News‘ Jake Tapper:

Talk about “secret law.”  You’re not even allowed to know the White House’s rationale (if it exists) for why this war is legal.  It simply decrees that it is, and you’ll have to comfort yourself with that.  That’s how confident they are in their power to operate behind their wall of secrecy: they don’t even bother any longer with a pretense of the most minimal transparency.

The post The Ever-Expanding Bipartisan Surveillance State appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.