DHS says people taking pictures of schools could be terrorists.

Excerpt from "DHS Infrastructure Protection Report: Elementary and Secondary Schools"

Indicators of potential surveillance by terrorists include:

•Persons using or carrying video/camera/observation equipment in or near the school over an extended period
•Persons discovered with school maps, photos, or diagrams with key components or sensitive areas highlighted

Monitoring, Surveillance, Inspection:

•Evaluate needs and design a monitoring, surveillance, and inspection program
•Provide visual surveillance capability (e.g., designated surveillance points, cleared lines of sight)
•Install intrusion detection and alarm systems
•Deploy personnel assigned to security duty to regularly inspect sensitive or critical areas
•Continuously monitor all people entering and leaving the facility for suspicious behavior (photographers?)
•Continuously monitor all vehicles approaching the facility for signs of threatening behavior
(photographers?)
http://publicintelligence.net/dhs-elementary-secondary-schools/

Terrorism Fear button and funding: Ridiculous DHS spending:

If pushing the FEAR button is the only way cash-strapped towns can get the funds, then something is terribly stinky about the DHS UASI grant program...which has handed out about $7.144 billion over the last decade.

Senator Colburn mentioned this way to tap Homeland Security grants in his report titled "Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Department of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities" [PDF]. He wrote, "The balancing act between liberty and security has been tenuous throughout the history of our nation, founded upon basic freedoms granted by our Creator and protected from government infringement within the Bill of Rights of our Constitution. But a new element has been added to this equation over the past decade that threatens to undermine both our liberty and security-excessive government spending and insurmountable debt."

We should never sacrifice all of our freedoms in the name of security. We similarly cannot mortgage our children and grandchildren's future by funding unnecessary and ineffective programs, even including those that have important missions.

"North America is the least likely region to suffer from terrorism," according to the Global Terrorism Index [PDF] released by the Institute for Economics and Peace. So try not to get whiplash when you read that "terrorism is local," according to DHS Program Manager for Social and Behavioral Science, Richard Legault, who is the only research criminologist on Homeland Security's staff. Legault told The Crime Report, "Situational prevention will just make it harder for them to do bad things in particular areas. You start to see that, just like crime, and just like criminals, at least in the U.S., terrorism is local. Most terrorist acts and the preparation for them in the U.S. happen in a 30-mile radius." Is that why so many of the surveillance technologies are worded to both supposedly combat potential terrorism and crime?

It's an amazing head game waged against Americans and made easy by pushing the fear button to attain surveillance via DHS funding.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/terrorism-fear-button-and-funding-ridiculous-dhs-spending

Here's a few more stories of DHS terror mongering:

• Everyone in US under virtual surveillance;' Are you sure you have nothing to hide?

• Feds monitor Facebook: What you 'Like' may make you a terrorist

• Killer robots, indestructible drones & drones that fly and spy indefinitely

• Naughty or nice? Verizon DVR will see and hear you to find out before delivering ads

• BS detector: Does watching Fox News or blindly believing PR studies make you stupid?

• Social media surveillance helps the government read your mind

• Microsoft provides fusion center technology & funding for surveillance

• The invisible surveillance state: DHS and the end of America as we know it

Suspended police officer arrested for impersonating a cop by an undercover Homeland Security agent on highway:

Florida - A suspended South Miami cop remained in jail Thursday on charges that include impersonating a police officer.

Carlos Lazaro Rodriguez, 33, was pulled over Tuesday for speeding an estimated 100 miles per hour on the Florida Turnpike at Southwest 8th Street, authorities said. Although he was suspended from the force at the time, he told the undercover Homeland Security agent who stopped him that he was a police officer. (why has our gov't. given police powers to Homeland Security officers? Are they America's secret police, Stasi or S.S.?)

According to the agent, Rodriguez was driving down the emergency lane, calling out to other drivers and telling them to pull over.

"My window's down and he's passing me and I tell him, 'Hey, what's going on, man, what do you need?'" the agent said. "And he looks at me again and says, 'Police, you pull over." And he's got a weird look on his face."

When the agent pulled Rodriguez over, he saw that he was also carrying two pellet guns that were altered to look like assault weapons.
http://lawreport.org/ViewStory.aspx?StoryID=11486