The Police State in the US

Today's stories from RT follow a theme - Big Brother and police state repression.

Apple has well-and-truly joined the dark forces

No shooting at protest? Police may block mobile devices via Apple

Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, from any public gathering or venue they deem “sensitive”, and “protected from externalities.”

RT,

5 September, 2012

In other words, these powers will have control over what can and cannot be documented on wireless devices during any public event.

And while the company says the affected sites are to be mostly cinemas, theaters, concert grounds and similar locations, Apple Inc. also says “covert police or government operations may require complete ‘blackout’ conditions.”

“Additionally,” Apple says,” the wireless transmission of sensitive information to a remote source is one example of a threat to security. This sensitive information could be anything from classified government information to questions or answers to an examination administered in an academic setting.”

The statement led many to believe that authorities and police could now use the patented feature during protests or rallies to block the transmission of video footage and photographs from the scene, including those of police brutality, which at times of major events immediately flood news networks and video websites.

Apple patented the means to transmit an encoded signal to all wireless devices, commanding them to disable recording functions.

Those policies would be activated by GPS, and WiFi or mobile base-stations, which would ring-fence ("geofence") around a building or a “sensitive area” to prevent phone cameras from taking pictures or recording video.

Apple may implement the technology, but it would not be Apple's decision to activate the “feature” – it would be down governments, businesses and network owners to set such policies, analyzes ZDNet technology website.

Having invented one of the most sophisticated mobile devices, Apple now appears to be looking for ways to restrict its use. 

 

“As wireless devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal media devices and smartphones become ubiquitous, more and more people are carrying these devices in various social and professional settings,” it explains in the patent. “The result is that these wireless devices can often annoy, frustrate, and even threaten people in sensitive venues.”

The company’s listed “sensitive” venues so far include mostly meetings, the presentation of movies, religious ceremonies, weddings, funerals, academic lectures, and test-taking environments

TV stations to start using military drones

RT,

5 September, 2012

The military uses unmanned aerial vehicles to strike insurgents without being detected, and the FAA will soon regulate UAVs in America for policing purposes. Is journalism next to embrace drone technology to stay, literally, on top of the news?

The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to have guidelines for domestic drone use set in stone by 2015, and by the end of the decade some agencies say that as many as 30,000 UAVs will be up in the air at any time. On the heels of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies, though, the news gathering industry — professional journalists — are examining what benefits they could reap by watching breaking events unfold from the sky without risking life and limb for the sake of a story, or that one phenomenal photo.

The Schiebel Corporation’s Camcopter, a 243-pound UAV sold to the United Arab Emirates Army and the German Navy, is being brought into discussion in newsrooms around America, where journalists will soon be able to have the option to use the same vehicles that launch missiles to make front page news.

“You’re not risking human life to get a great shot,” says Snaproll’s Preston Ryon tells TV News Check. Instead, a relatively small investment for the newsroom could let producers circumvent sending reporters into dangerous territory in lieu of launching an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with broadcasting abilities into the sky.

Some skeptics, however, have raised their eyebrows. The mere notion of taking the same aircraft made for the military for the sole sake of surveillance and destruction and bringing it stateside, for any argument, doesn’t sit well with everyone.

“Unlike airliners and helicopters, drones are actually designed to conduct surveillance,” Amie Stepanovich of the Electronic Privacy Information Center explains to TV News Check. “They are designed to have very invasive equipment to watch people’s movements.”

Stepanovich’s comments mirror sentiments made earlier this year by Stanford Law School researcher Ryan Calo, who told the Wall Street Journal that no matter which way you slice it, drones were never developed with news in mind. "The very same drone that was staking out a nest of insurgents and possibly shooting them could be deployed in New York for surveillance,” he said.

With journalism being based on the dissemination of knowledge, though, that quest to uncover information and process it for the public is raising the same question brought on by the use of UAVS elsewhere. The cost of conducting a journalism operation from up in the sky isn’t all that small. Just as with the domestic drones being considered by law enforcement agencies for sweeping surveillance under the guise of counterterrorism and crime prevention, issues regarding civil liberties are being quickly being raised by critics who are concerned over what an extra set of eyes, undetected at that, can do to their personal privacy.

Both law enforcement agencies and news outlets alike see that being able to watch with an extra set of eyes has substantial benefits for staying in their respective businesses, though, and with the price-tags of drones demanding only a few thousand dollars to start, it seems like a worthwhile investment. For now, at least, while the regulators are still researching how they will govern UAV flight in America.

“To me, the potential for using drones is just like the potential for using any other type of news-gathering equipment, whether it would be for helicopters or mobile news vans or hidden camera equipment,” adds Radio Television Digital News Association Executive Director Mike Cavender. “All those are tools of the trade and the drone to me is no different.”

In fact, the drone may be the biggest advancement in news gathering since the Internet, and other industries are seeing use for UAVS too. Steven Gitlin of AeroVironment Inc. told the Los Angeles Times last year that drone technology, "is a tool that many law enforcement agencies never imagined they could have,” because it will be utilized be agencies to essentially see and know all — the Electronic Frontier Foundation says that some drones can scan an entire city from a single spot.

“The FAA can give drone licenses to any agency that can prove that they can use them safely,” Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the audience of New York City’s HOPE convention earlier this year. Dozens of law enforcement entities now hold on to licenses to test their drones in sanctioned space, and in just a few short years those restrictions will be lifted by the FAA and the long-arm of the law could very well be extended right over the roof of your house — just don’t expect a news drone to be hesitant about hovering above your home too.

Stratforgate: 'NYPD’s felonious activities worse than Hoover’s'

Leaked Stratfor files point to alleged transgressions on the part of the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence Division. An unnamed FBI source allegedly described them as “damn right [sic] felonious activity.”

RT,

5 September, 2012

The alleged commentary came up in a November 2011 email addressed to Fred Burton, vice president for intelligence at Stratfor, a private US-based intelligence firm. Burton is former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division at the State Department with wide connections in the American intelligence community.

The senior FBI official gave an insight into the case of Jose Pimentel, a man who was arrested by the NYPD on suspicion of terror plot in November 2011, reports the Truthout news website. Back then the FBI declined to be involved in the case and the city’s district attorney would not proceed with the prosecution. It was later revealed that an NYPD informant provided Pimentel with resources to build home-made bombs. He also smoked pot with the suspect at the time the man uttered the incriminating statements that led to his arrest. All this made the case vulnerable to the entrapment defense.

In the email the FBI source details the problems with the informant and goes on to explain the tension between the NYPD’s Intelligence Division and NYPD – Joint Terrorism Task Force, an FBI-led investigative unit combining resources of federal, state and local law enforcers.

“The NYPD JTTF guys are in total sync with the Bureau and the rest of the partners who make up the JTTF – I understand there are something like 100 NYPD dics [detectives] assigned to the JTTF. NYPD Intel… on the other hand, are completely running their own pass patterns. They hate their brother NYPD dics on the JTTF and are trying to undermine them at every turn,” the message reads.

The FBI official goes on to describe David Cohen, a former CIA analyst who brought in his intelligence methods to the Intelligence Division, when he headed it in response to the September 11 attacks, as a man “who, near as anybody can tell, never had to make a criminal case or testify in court.”

“I keep telling you, you and I are going to laugh and raise a beer one day, when everything Intel has been involved in during the last 10 years comes out – it always eventually comes out. They are going to make Hoover, COINTEL, Red Squads, etc look like rank amatures [sic] compared to some of the damn right [sic] felonious activity, and violations of US citizen's rights they have been engaged in,” the official writes.

The message was sent to Stratfor’s Alpha List of analysts for background information. Burton describes the source as “an old personal friend” and apprentice.

The NYPD has faced harsh criticism for its counterterrorism activities, which human rights activists say breach the limits of law. Those include profiling of Muslim residents, infiltrating civil groups and launching clandestine operations outside of their jurisdiction.

Some 5 million Stratfor emails were stolen from one of its servers in February by the hacker group Anonymous. The data was then handed over to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks, which has been publishing it in chunks ever since. Truthout is one of WikiLeaks’ partners in the disclosures.

Stratfor confirmed the theft of the emails, but warned that whatever eventually surfaces may be altered or completely false. The company declined to comment further on authenticity of any documents published.