The making of the U.S. internal security apparatus, how America has become a suveillance state.
For over one hundred years U. S. government authorities have imported draconian police state techniques and technology developed overseas back to the American homeland, whether involving torture, surveillance, and suspension of human rights and liberties, using the overseas country as a laboratory for counterinsurgency and rearming local security forces for repression. We saw evidence of this recently on the streets in Boston and Watertown with martial law maneuvers used in Iraq and Afghanistan. I witnessed Professor Alfred W. McCoy deliver these same illuminating remarks at the University of Tulsa and had an opportunity to briefly discuss aspects of his internationally recognized research on CIA covert operations, the global narcotics trade, and the origins of the National Security State with him. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Traffic (New York: Lawrence Hill Books, revised, 2003), and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009). From suppressing the Filipino Insurrection following the Spanish-American War to the destructive counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, these martial exercises in unlawful, extra-constitutional behavior have continued unabated. And like the prodigal son of New Testament scriptures, they have come home.
Watch the video by Alfred McCoy:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/136825.html
America is becoming a police state:
Bill Maher called Boston police officers “unprofessional” on Friday for shooting at the boat where Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding even though it turned out he was unarmed.
“I agree that we shouldn’t have given the kid his Miranda rights because he probably had information. We wanted to take him alive. We all agree with that.… there could’ve been bombs out there, there could’ve been an accomplice. So we wanted to take him alive. If you agree with that then what the cops did there was unprofessional. That’s called contagious fire,” Maher said on HBO’s “Real Time.”
According to reports, no gun was found inside the boat after Tsarnaev was captured, although the Boston Police commissioner had earlier said that cops had exchanged fire with the suspect.
Maher also said that America is becoming a “police state.”
“I want to talk about the police, who I am a supporter of… Look at this, I mean if this is what you have – why don’t you invade a country? …. I mean go up to Canada – take their oil… This country is becoming a police state. And it is very troubling to me,” Maher said, while showing pictures of police officers patrolling the city and searching for Tsarnaev.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/bill-maher-boston-police-90700.html
How the U.S. funds NATO: The rise of the global police force
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Police Operational Mentor and Liaison Team (POMLT) combines police forces from over 20 countries to “coach, teach, mentor, provide the conduit for liaison, and when necessary, support the operational planning and employment of the ANP unit to which they are aligned in order to support the development of a professional, sufficient and self-sustaining ANP.”
This year, NATO facilitated an airstrike against the CIA – created Taliban in Ghazni, Afghanistan. It was confirmed by local authorities that “”The NATO planes went there to assist the police, but the post was bombed and four police were killed. Two civilians present were also killed.”
Because of the rise of the BRICs nations, the NATO believes that countries will need to rely on this international police force “to manage a range of threats and challenges.”
The perception of the international community is that the BRICs nations are “torn internally between accepting the status quo . . . only if their power in the institution is increased; or trying to fashion a new system altogether.”
NATO has grown into a “UN-US crafted attempt to build history’s first, first of all largest military bloc of 28 members, with 3 nuclear powers – nothing like this has ever existed before.”
In 2011, then US Defense Secretary Robert Gates admonished the US government for “willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets.”
Gates acknowledged that with the US contributing $711.8 million to NATO operations in foreign nations translates to 1/5 to ¼ of NATO’s overall budget.
Andrew Bacevich, professor at Boston University, commented that the US spends more on NATO than “all other nations on the planet combined.”
According to the Congressional Budget Service, in 2009 – 2010 the US government, through the Department of the Army’s Operations and Maintenance account, provided between $408 million and $431 million.
The 2012 Department of Defense (DoD) Military Construction Program and Budget (MCPB) document shows a contribution to funding for NATO surveillance programs and intelligence operations, mobility, logistics with a focus on transportation and infrastructure.
The US contributed $282 million to NSIP under the guise of ongoing military operations that seek to preserve peace while NATO itself as focused its efforts on national politics and economics.
http://www.occupycorporatism.com/how-the-us-funds-nato-the-rise-of-the-global-police-force/
The U.S. gov't. and corporations are the criminals spying on Americans:
Verizon has patented technology that turns a DVR into a personal spying tool to watch Americans in their own homes.
Verizon is calling this endeavor FierceCable that is able to display “acute sensitivity in customers’ living rooms: argument sounds prompt ads for marriage counseling, and sounds of cuddling.”
Verizon explains: “If the detection system determines that a couple is arguing, a service provider would be able to send an ad for marriage counseling to a TV or mobile device in the room. If the couple utters words that indicate they are cuddling, they would receive ads for a romantic getaway vacation, a commercial for a contraceptive, a commercial for flowers, or commercials for romantic movies.”
The patent is entitled “Methods and Systems for Presenting an Advertisement Associated with an Ambient Action of a User” and filed by Brian F. Roberts who invented the technology on behalf of Verizon Patent and Licensing INC. Under the guise of perfecting marketing and advertising, the spying “method includes a media content presentation system presenting a media content program comprising an advertisement break, detecting an ambient action performed by a user during the presentation of the media content program, selecting an advertisement associated with the detected ambient action, and presenting the selected advertisement during the advertisement break.”
In home ambient activities such as “eating, exercising, laughing, reading, sleeping, talking, singing, humming, cleaning, and playing a musical instrument; as well as cuddling, fighting, participating in a game or sporting event” can be surveilled using this technology. All cellular phones can interact with this device as a separate mode of surveillance.
It is as simple as speaking a word, and the MCPS is activated. Embedded “computer-executable instructions” working in tandem with the MCPS will allow specified advertisements through the utilization of “depth sensors, image sensors, audio sensors and a thermal sensor.”
In 2008, Comcast patented infrared camera technology that will recognize individuals in their living room. The sensors inside a cable box will the person and anticipate their television viewing preferences.
Retailers have begun to use surveillance mannequins manufactured by EyeSee who are equipped with facial recognition cameras embedded in their eyes that can decipher a customer’s age, gender and race. Under the guise of marketing better to the public, shoppers are subjected to giving up personal data without their expressed consent which could be sold to the intelligence community and used against them if profiled and retained by the NCTC or another federal surveillance agency.
Recently, the CVS Caremark Corporation began requiring employees to disclose personal health information (including weight, blood pressure, and body fat levels) or else pay an annual $600 fine. Workers must make this information available to the company’s employee “Wellness Program” and sign a form stating that they’re doing so voluntarily.
CVS argues this will help workers “take more responsibility for improving their health.” At one level, this makes a certain sense. Because the company is paying for their employees’ health insurance, they naturally prefer healthier workers. But at a deeper level, CVS’ action demonstrates a growing problem with our current system of employer-provided health insurance. If our bosses must pay for our health care, they will inevitably seek greater control over our lifestyles.
ObamaCare requires large employers to offer health insurance to workers (or else pay a penalty). As a result, more people are discussing how best to link employment to healthy behavior. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine recently featured a pair of high-profile editorials debating the merits of allowing companies to discriminate against smokers, “for their own good.”
Furthermore, ObamaCare pays government grants to encourage companies to implement these “wellness programs.” Hence, employers who wouldn’t otherwise concern themselves with workers’ lifestyles now have an incentive to do so in order to collect federal funds.
The flip side of coupling health insurance to employment. Some employers (like Regal Cinema) are cutting back on worker hours to reduce those insurance costs. Others will still cover their employees — but will want to monitor those employees’ health and activities.
In December of 2012, the Obama administration gave their consent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to mandate black box event data recorders (EDR) be installed in all new cars in the US.
The information recorded by EDRs includes:
• vehicle speed
• whether the brake was activated in the moments before a crash
• crash forces at the moment of impact
• information about the state of the engine throttle
• air bag deployment timing and air bag readiness prior to the crash
• whether the vehicle occupant’s seat belt was buckled
Advanced EDRs can collect detailed information about drivers and their driving habits; including the size and weight of the driver, the seat position, the habits of the driver as well as passengers.
The excuse is the EDRs gather information about car crashes in the moments leading up to the accident that manufacturers can use to improve their safety measures when constructing vehicles.
However, the government regulation utilizes surveillance technology with policies that do not outline the expressed use of the data collected in the EDRs.
http://www.occupycorporatism.com/us-gov-and-corporations-are-the-criminals-spying-on-americans/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2013/04/25/big-brother-has-a-new-face-and-its-your-boss/?partner=yahootix
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/26/supreme-court-eavesdropping-law-doj-argument
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2315863/Big-brother-switch-fridge-Power-giants-make-millions--pay-sinister-technology.html