Tag Archives: New York Times

Iran issues a warning for America after attacking spy drone

rt.com
November 9, 2012

Following confirmation from both sides that an American surveillance drone was fired at by Iranian jets, top brass with Iran’s military say the country won’t hesitate to shoot again next time a US craft enters its airspace.

“The defenders of the Islamic Republic will respond decisively to any form of encroachment by air, sea or on the ground,” Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazayeri, a senior armed forces commander, told the Fars news agency in a report published on Friday.

One day earlier, the Pentagon admitted that an unmanned aerial vehicle managed by the US Defense Department escaped unscathed from enemy fire during a routine surveillance mission 16 miles outside of Iran on November 1. Iranians do not contest that account entirely, but do dispute America’s claim in regards to where exactly the incident occurred. According to the Pentagon, the drone was targeted last week while flying far enough off of the Iranian coast that it was considered to be in international territory. While Iran has declined to offer an exact number to counter America’s claims of being 16 nautical miles off land, remarks from foreign defense officials suggest that the US could have been closer.

Comments from both Gen. Jazayeri and Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, Iran’s minister of defense, suggest that the US aircraft was within 12 miles from the Iranian coast, making it fair game for that country’s air force to open fire.

“If any foreign aircraft attempts to enter our airspace our armed forces will deal with them,” says Jazayeri, who also serves as the deputy chairman to the country’s chief of staff. Jazayeri failed to specifically imply he was discussing the drone, but made his comments hours after the Pentagon confirmed that their craft was fired at.

According to the New York Times, Iran also disputes where the shooting actually originated from. Initially, the US says two airplanes controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot at the drone. As far as Gen. Vahidi, the defense minister, is concerned, that’s incorrect. The Times writes that Vahidi believes “the two Iranian planes, which the Pentagon had identified as Russian-made Su-25 jets known as Frogfoots, belonged to the Iranian Air Force.” The paper notes that America’s insistence that the attack came from the Guard Corps pins the blame on a group “whose activities are routinely more aggressive than the conventional Air Force.”

George Little, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Thursday that the United States has every intention of continuing its routine spy missions from international territory outside of Iran.

“The United States has communicated to the Iranians that we will continue to conduct surveillance flights over international waters, over the Arabian Gulf, consistent with longstanding practices and our commitment to the security of the region,” Little said.

Contesting Iran’s claims of being in their own airspace, Little added, “Our aircraft was never in Iranian airspace. It was always flying in international airspace.”

In a briefing released by the Stratfor intelligence group, they suggest that the US will do little to avoid any possible future altercations like last week’s. “It should be remembered that they were shooting at an unmanned aircraft, which was created in part so that no human life would be at risk if it was shot down. That doesn’t mean the United States is casual about losing a very expensive piece of hardware. It does mean that the U.S. military is unlikely to suspend operations,” writes Stratfor. “Clearly the United States doesn’t mind making the Iranians nervous.”

The assault is believed to be the first time during a 30-year plus standoff between the two countries that Iran opened fire on an American UAV. Last year, Iran hijacked one of those unmanned drones well within their territory during what the US called a routine reconnaissance mission.

AUDIO: Gerald Celente, The Golden Days are Just Ahead, A Whole New Cycle and Much More

from KingWorldNews:

Gerald Celente: Founder & Director of the Trends Research Institute – Gerald discussed gold at length, the difference between the current cycle and the 1970s, as well as other important trends with KWN. Many consider Gerald to be the top trends forecaster in the world. Gerald has been quoted and interviewed in media throughout the world such as, CNBC, Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, BBC, Time Magazine, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, FT, U.S. News, World Report, The Economist and more.

Listen Now @ KingWorldNews.com

 

Listen Here

Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.

DAVID K. SHIPLER
NY Times
April 29, 2012

THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.


But dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.

When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.

This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps.

Carefully orchestrated sting operations usually hold up in court. Defendants invariably claim entrapment and almost always lose, because the law requires that they show no predisposition to commit the crime, even when induced by government agents. To underscore their predisposition, many suspects are “warned about the seriousness of their plots and given opportunities to back out,” said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. But not always, recorded conversations show. Sometimes they are coaxed to continue.

Full article here

Your Cell Phone Makes You A Prisoner Of A Digital World Where Virtually Anyone Can Hack You

…And Track You

The American Dream
Friday, April 6, 2012

If you own a cell phone, you might as well kiss your privacy goodbye.  Cell phone companies know more about us than most of us would ever dare to imagine.  Your cell phone company is tracking everywhere that you go and it is making a record of everything that you do with your phone.


Much worse, there is a good chance that your cell phone company has been selling this information to anyone that is willing to pay the price – including local law enforcement.  In addition, it is an open secret that the federal government monitors and records all cell phone calls.  The “private conversation” that you are having with a friend today will be kept in federal government databanks for many years to come.  The truth is that by using a cell phone, you willingly make yourself a prisoner of a digital world where every move that you make and every conversation that you have is permanently recorded.  But it is not just cell phone companies and government agencies that you have to worry about.  As you will see at the end of this article, it is incredibly easy for any would-be stalker to hack you and track your every movement using your cell phone.  In fact, many spyware programs allow hackers to listen to you through your cell phone even when your cell phone is turned off.  Sadly, most cell phone users have absolutely no idea about any of this stuff.

The next time that you get a notice from your cell phone company about “changes” to the privacy policy, you might want to play close attention.  Your cell phone company might be about to sell off your most personal information to anyone that is willing to write a big enough check.  The following is from a recent CNN article….

Your phone company knows where you live, what websites you visit, what apps you download, what videos you like to watch, and even where you are. Now, some have begun selling that valuable information to the highest bidder.

In mid-October, Verizon Wireless changed its privacy policy to allow the company to record customers’ location data and Web browsing history, combine it with other personal information like age and gender, aggregate it with millions of other customers’ data, and sell it on an anonymous basis.

So who is buying this information?

We just don’t know.

But we do know that local law enforcement agencies all over the country are increasingly using cell phone data to nail suspects, and often it is the cell phone companies that are the ones selling them the cell phone data that they need.

According to a recent New York Times article, many local police departments are doing this without getting a warrant first….

“Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight.”

That same article says that cell phone companies have standard prices that they charge to local law enforcement officials for information that they request….

“Cell carriers, staffed with special law enforcement liaison teams, charge police departments from a few hundred dollars for locating a phone to more than $2,200 for a full-scale wiretap of a suspect.”

So if you are breaking the law, your cell phone may be used to gather evidence and to track you down.  In the United States, cell phone companies are required by law to be able to pinpoint the locations of their customers to within 100 meters.  So if you are a criminal, your cell phone could be leading the police right to you even as you are reading this article.

Sometimes the police don’t even use the cell phone companies.  Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran an article that discussed the capabilities of the “stingray devices” that many local law enforcement agencies are using now.

A “stingray device” acts like a cell phone tower and it can gather any information that a normal cell phone tower can.  The following is how a recent Wired article described these “stingrays”….

You make a call on your cellphone thinking the only thing standing between you and the recipient of your call is your carrier’s cellphone tower. In fact, that tower your phone is connecting to just might be a boobytrap set up by law enforcement to ensnare your phone signals and maybe even the content of your calls.

So-called stingrays are one of the new high-tech tools that authorities are using to track and identify you. The devices, about the size of a suitcase, spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower.

The government maintains that the stingrays don’t violate Fourth Amendment rights, since Americans don’t have a legitimate expectation of privacy for data sent from their mobile phones and other wireless devices to a cell tower.

Isn’t that just great?

The attitude that law enforcement agencies seem to have is that once we use a cell phone we are essentially willingly throwing our Fourth Amendment rights out the window.

In some areas of the United States, police are physically extracting data from cell phones any time they want as well.  According to the ACLU, state police in Michigan have been using “extraction devices” to download data from the cell phones of motorists that they pull over.  This is taking place even if the motorists that are pulled over are not accused of doing anything wrong.  The following is how an article posted on CNET News describes the capabilities of these “extraction devices”….

The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.

Fortunately these “extraction devices” are being challenged in court.  Let us hope that they will be banned.

But what local law enforcement officials are doing pales in comparison to what federal agencies are doing.

For example, the FBI claims that it can demand to see your cell phone data whenever it would like to.

Not only that, the FBI has also been remotely activating the microphones on the cell phones of suspects that they want to listen to.  This can be done even when the cell phone is turned off….

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Could the FBI be listening to you right now?

If there is a cell phone in the room they could be.

But some other federal agencies listen to a lot more cell phone calls than the FBI does.

It has been an open secret for a long time that the federal government monitors and records all cell phone calls that are made for national security reasons.

In fact, the federal government is even trying to collect records for calls that have been made in the distant past.  Accordingto USA Today, the goal is “to create a database of every call ever made”….

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

In addition, the federal government has been constructing the largest data center in the history of the world out in the Utah desert.  This data center will be used to house an almost unimaginable amount of digital data (including your cell phone calls).  The following is how a recent Wired article described this new facility….

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”

But isn’t it illegal for the federal government to intercept our phone calls?

Well, the cold, hard reality of the matter is that they use all kinds of loopholes and legal technicalities to get around that.

For example, if a call is “intercepted” outside of the United States and then routed to a government building inside the United States that is considered to be okay.

Of course that is a bunch of nonsense, but that is how they think.

And it is very frightening thing for governments around the world to be able to monitor and track us like this.

Increasingly, governments around the world are using cell phones to hunt down people that they do not like and haul them off to prison.  For example, a recent Bloomberg article detailed how the Iranian government is aggressively using cell phones to crack down on dissidents….

The Iranian officers who knocked out Saeid Pourheydar’s four front teeth also enlightened the opposition journalist. Held in Evin Prison for weeks following his arrest early last year for protesting, he says, he learned that he was not only fighting the regime, but also companies that armed Tehran with technology to monitor dissidents like him.

Pourheydar, 30, says the power of this enemy became clear as intelligence officers brandished transcripts of his mobile phone calls, e-mails and text messages during his detention. About half the political prisoners he met in jail told him police had tracked their communications and movements through their cell phones, he says.

Christians in Iran have learned that they must take the batteries entirely out of their cell phones before they gather for home church meetings.  If they don’t take the batteries out of their cell phones, there is a good chance that the secret police will show up and drag them off to prison.

Most Americans don’t need to worry about getting hauled off to prison for political or religious reasons at this point, but there is another aspect of cell phone security that could potentially affect all of us.

Most Americans are completely unaware of what stalkers can potentially do if they are able to hack into a cell phone.  For example, did you know that spyware can make it possible for a stalker to monitor where you are 24 hours a day and listen to everything that you say even when your cell phone is turned off?  The following is from an article posted by WTHR….

Spyware marketers claim you can tap into someone’s calls, read their text messages and track their movements “anywhere, anytime.” They say you can “catch a cheating spouse”, protect your children from an evil babysitter and “hear what your boss is saying about you.” And while you’re spying on others, the Spyware companies say “no one will ever know” because it’s supposed to be “completely invisible” with “absolutely no trace.”

Security experts say it’s no internet hoax.

“It’s real, and it is pretty creepy,” said Rick Mislan, a former military intelligence officer who now teaches cyber forensics at Purdue University’s Department of Computer and Information Technology.

Mislan has examined thousands of cell phones inside Purdue’s Cyber Forensics Lab, and he says spy software can now make even the most high-tech cell phone vulnerable.

For much more from WTHR about what stalkers can do to your cell phone, just check out this amazing video.  It is one of the best news reports that I have ever seen.

Are you starting to see how your cell phone makes you a prisoner of a digital world?

The police can listen to you and track you any time that they want to.

The federal government can listen to you and track you any time that they want to.

Big corporations can buy all of the personal information that cell phones gather any time that they want to from certain cell phone companies.

Stalkers can listen to you and track you 24 hours a day if they are able to hack in to your cell phone somehow.

If you own a cell phone and you still want to have some privacy, then you need to take the battery completely out of the cell phone when you are not using it.

Our world is becoming a much less private place, and we all need to be mindful of the changes that are happening.

Unfortunately, as our world becomes even more interconnected and even more dependent on technology, the amount of privacy we all have is likely to continue to decrease.  A digital Big Brother control grid is being constructed all around us, and in the future that control grid could potentially be used for very malevolent purposes.

So let us be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  Our world is changing, and not for the better.

Goldman Sachs Staff Buying Guns ‘To Defend Themselves Against Public Uprising’

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

Read the whole story: bloomberg.com

Your POLICE STATE: Supreme Court Ruling Allows Strip-Searches for Any Arrest

by Adam Liptak, New York Times:

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by the court’s conservative wing, wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials who must consider not only the possibility of smuggled weapons and drugs, but also public health and information about gang affiliations.

“Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,” Justice Kennedy wrote, adding that about 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation’s jails.

Read More @ NYTimes.com

Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool

ERIC LICHTBLAU
NY Times
April 1, 2012

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.


The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.

With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.

But civil liberties advocates say the wider use of cell tracking raises legal and constitutional questions, particularly when the police act without judicial orders. While many departments require warrants to use phone tracking in nonemergencies, others claim broad discretion to get the records on their own, according to 5,500 pages of internal records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from 205 police departments nationwide.

Full article here

Share this article:

Americans Embrace “Smart” Gadgets Used to Spy on Them

Infowars.com
March 17, 2012

CIA director David Petraeus has said that the rise of new “smart” gadgets means that Americans are effectively bugging their own homes, saving US spy agencies a job when it identifies any “persons of interest”.

 

Documents Reveal Rockefeller Foundation Actively Engaged in Mass Mind-Control

Jurriaan Maessen
Pressforactivism.com
March 4, 2012

From archive material from the 1940s onward, it has become apparent that the Rockefeller Foundation has for decades now fanatically nurtured research into fear-inducing brainwashing techniques for the masses.

In a series of generous grants in the 1940s- and 50s, extended to Professor Carl I. Hovland of Yale University, the Foundation actively funded research into “the psychological mechanisms through which communications exert their influence.” Main research subject deals with the question of “how the individual deals with the welter of conflicting ideas with which he is constantly bombarded; how “wishful thinking” and emotional bias affect judgment; and whether the judgment process is transferred from one situation to another are among the problems to be studied”, we read in the 1954 Rockefeller yearly report.

Hovland, besides conducting research into behavioral and attitude-changes of groups, was also part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s social science staff. In addition to that, the professor was heavily involved in other branches of the Anglo-American establishment. In the study Origins of mass communications research during the American cold war by Timothy Glander, the author explains:

“(…) Hovland held key positions on several major national boards, including the Air Force’s Human Resources Research Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Office of Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, and he doubtlessly had input in determining the research agendas that these organizations pursued.”

Already in 1948 the Foundation was directing cash toward Hovland and his team. In the 1948 report the authors outlined the reasons behind the grants given:

An understanding of communication and attitude change is important to our educational system, to those who lead great organizations, and to those who are concerned with political opinion and behavior. More dependable knowledge of how effective communication may be achieved in the area of attitude and opinion is essential (…).”

In the days of the Cold War, propaganda was often so blatantly obvious to the accustomed-to-freedom westerner that it was more easily identifiable as such. The Rockefeller Foundation understood that the American people needed to be subjected to more sophisticated forms of manipulation if the gradual push for global government was to be effectively sold in the decades to come. The 1954 report explains:

 

“Although movies, television, and comic books are widely believed to be effective in contributing to the rise in juvenile delinquency in this country, these and the other media of mass communication appear to be much less effective when applied to the desirable end of promoting good citizenship, or a positive democratic ideology in the “cold war.””

“Good citizenship”. A phrase that should chill the very fiber of every freedom-loving individual.

“(…) it is feared that Soviet mass communications are outstandingly successful in disseminating communist propaganda, both behind the Iron Curtain and in neutral countries. In an effort to throw light on this anomaly and to aid development of scientific principles governing the effectiveness of mass media, the Rockefeller Foundation has continued its support of the Communications Research Program at Yale University with an outright grant of $200,000.”

In 1954, 200,000 dollars was an exceptional amount of money. This substantial grant is just one example out of many in which the Rockefeller Foundation threw huge sums of cash in the direction of social scientists for refining and perfecting the art of indoctrination. One of the results of their studies was that fear, induced or otherwise, makes the person a willing victim for the elite. The website changingminds.org gives an adequate summing up of professor Hovland’s findings:

“You do not have to cause pain to create fear. The human frontal cortex has a primary function in thinking about the future. We are quite skilled at imagining what might happen and experiencing anticipatory emotions. This has proved helpful in our evolution, but it can also cause problems as anticipated fear of things that may not happen cause us stress and allow others to persuade us.”

The study-phase has long since evolved in the implementation-phase. In the mid seventies the Foundation was already busy buying off reporters and funding media-empires into existence. Even then “climate change” was actively being promoted as a tragic result of human meddling in the affairs of mother earth. Genetically engineered food was already being pushed as the cure to remedy all ills. The thing was putting the emotion-based responses as observed by Hovland into practice. The 1974 Rockefeller Foundation journal reports:

“Several science editors were asked to participate in Foundation meetings on climate change, food production and interstate conflict, genetic resistance in plants to pests, and aquaculture. Stories appeared subsequently on the front page of The New York Times, and the Associated Press carried substantial stories which were widely used. In each instance, the writers were introduced to our program officers and encouraged to use them as resource people. (Officers are now, in fact, being called on by journalists, particularly in areas of current high news interest such as food production, population problems, environmental issues, and the arts.).”

On several occasions, and in different publications spread throughout its long and sordid past, the Rockefeller Foundation openly brags using media- figureheads for their own purposes. In none of these instances does the RF mention any problem encountered with any of the media moguls they contacted. In the 1974 yearly report, Bill Moyers is mentioned as one of the beneficiaries of information disseminated by the Foundation.

“In preparing its remarkable 25-part series on the world food situation, the New York Times reporters have become acquainted and have established fruitful ongoing relationships with a good many of our officers. Our staff have provided substantial information and further contacts for Bill Moyers in his television series dealing with the problems of global interdependence. These are only a few of the many productive new relationships we have established with representatives of the mass media.

In order to sell the public on world government, the research of professor Hovland has proven invaluable. As anyone can see, the techniques are fanatically being applied to this day. Consider the warmongering-machine the Anglo-American establishment fires up as soon as geopolitical objectives come into view. In part II of this investigation we will delve into another dimension of professor Hovland’s research which lies at the core of all mass communications: the influence of film and music on the subconscious mind, directed both at the individual and at the masses.