NAZI INTERNATIONAL # The 4th Reich - POLICE STATE USA/EU # (Ongoing videos & articles)

No Checks or Balances in Warrantless Wiretapping Despite Holder's Assurances
Trevor Timm
Thursday, March 8, 2012
EFF

Attorney General Eric Holder gave a much publicized speech at Northwestern law school on Monday, in which he attempted to explain the Obama administration’s constitutional authority for killing U.S. citizens abroad without judicial oversight. Holder in part claimed that there is a difference between “due process” and “judicial process”, the latter of which — according to him — is not guaranteed under the Constitution. The speech was predictably and widely criticized in legal circles on Fifth Amendment grounds, but an overlooked section of his speech should also give constitutional experts pause: Holder’s stance on the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) and warrantless wiretapping.

Holder spent a portion of his speech arguing that legal tools used to fight terrorism (excluding the killing of al-Awlaki and other American citizens overseas) are rightly subject to “check and balances” and “a comprehensive regime of oversight by all three branches of government.” He curiously used section 2702 of the FAA as his prime example, a law he says “protect the privacy and civil rights of innocent individuals.”

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The Corrupt Influence of Money in the American Political System
by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
March 8, 2012

" I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."
- U.S. President Barack Obama, Sunday, March 5, 2012, speech to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)

“There are about 50 countries in the world that have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon if they chose to do so, making Iran far from unique but for its persistence as a thorn in the side of Israel and Israel’s powerful lobby in the United States.”
- Philip Giraldi, Council for the National Interest

"The truth is there are very few members [of the U.S. Congress] who I could even name or could think of who didn't at some level participate in that [system of bribery and corruption in Washington D.C.]."
- Jack Abramoff, professional lobbyist and onetime power broker for the elite of Washington, D.C. (during a CBS's 60 Minutes interview, Sunday November 6, 2011)

“I'm against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it's doable, I'm going to do it.”
- Sheldon Adelson, casino magnate who has donated $11 million to Newt Gringrich's super PAC Winning Our Future, suggesting that he might give as much as $100 million to support the GOP presidential candidate

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

The Criminalization of Protest: Say Goodbye To Free Speech in America
by Devon DB
March 9, 2012

A new bill, HR 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, also known as the “Trespassing Bill,” is soon to be signed into law by President Obama. This bill effectively criminalizes protest and will hurt protest groups and movements such as Occupy quite hard.

The bill as states that anyone who knowingly “enters or remains in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so” with the “intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct in or [in] proximity to, any restricted building or grounds” or “impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions” will be punished with a fine or “or imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both.” (emphasis added)

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil
by Washington’s Blog
March 9, 2012
Washington's Blog

Yes, Obama Claims Power to Kill Americans on U.S. Soil

Fox News reports: FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder’s “[criteria] for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.

“I have to go back. Uh, I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not,” Mueller said when asked by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., about a distinction between domestic and foreign targeting

Graves followed up asking whether “from a historical perspective,” the federal government has “the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil or just overseas.”

“I’m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice,” Mueller replied.

Indeed, Holder’s Monday speech at Northwestern University seemed to leave the door open.

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley writes: One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

The Collapse of American Democracy
by Barry Grey
March 12, 2012
World Socialist Web Site

One week ago, US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech asserting the right of the president to secretly order the assassination of American citizens. Citing the so-called “war on terror,” he claimed that this never-before-asserted authority was lawful under the president’s war-making powers and was not subject to judicial review.

Holder stressed that the president’s power to order extra-judicial killings was part of a range of powers including the abduction of suspected terrorists and their indefinite internment, without trial, either in civilian or military prisons. Having noted that terrorists “reside within our own borders,” he insisted that the government’s authority to use lethal force was “not limited to the battlefields of Afghanistan.”

In an attempt to give a constitutional gloss to this assertion of police-state powers, Holder made the astonishing assertion that “due process and judicial process are not one and the same… The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

The speech was in response to pressure on the administration to provide a legal rationale for the targeted killing of three US citizens in Yemen last fall. Anwar al-Alawki, an alleged Al Qaeda leader, was killed in a drone attack along with another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman Alawki, was killed in a separate drone attack.

One would think that such a sweeping and extraordinary speech, asserting the right of the US government to summarily kill its own citizens, would become the focus of political discussion and the topic of heated debate. In fact, the media and the political establishment virtually ignored it. None of the three network news programs mentioned it. Articles in the major newspapers reporting the speech were relegated to the inside pages.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

SEE IT COMING AND STOP IT, EVEN IF IT COSTS YOU EVERYTHING - Why Pakistan Must Fall!
By Gordon Duff

This article was written in 2010, does it stand to the view point?

“The 2010 election had one purpose, war with Iran, even if the risk is world conflict and the real loser, no matter what happens on the battlefield is the United States.”

Plans are in motion for a “false flag” attack on America. Iran will be blamed, everyone knows that and Iran will be totally innocent. This is the last thing Iran would ever want. The most likely scenario is a nuclear attack.

Two bombs are missing, bombs built by Israel in South Africa and lost long ago. These were supposedly Saddam’s bombs. Now we are told Iran has them. Israel has had them all along and the fear, they may be inside the United States already.

The Israeli game with these weapons is one of the worst kept secrets in the world and has already cost the deaths of many. It will take nothing short of the detonation of one of this Hiroshima sized Israeli nukes to push America into Israel’s war with Iran, much as hunting for these nukes which Israel informed President Bush were in Iraq, led “the decider” to making one of the many blunders of his career. Our next 9/11 will be nuclear.

CONTINUE: [link to www.opinion-maker.org]

Last Edited by RoXY on 03/14/2012 08:07 AM

The most striking revelation is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder.



Last Edited by RoXY on 03/15/2012 11:45 PM

Latest Spy Gadget Introduced by the CIA: Your House
Nicholas West
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Activist Post

As if the brain-numbing effects of TV programming were not horrible enough, the CIA has openly admitted that it would like to use what many refer to as the "idiot box" as a bona fide surveillance tool.

The increasingly interconnected nature of the gadgets in our households now forms a network of information that continuously leaks into the ether our personal preferences, ideas, plans, and desires. It is a framework that any intelligence agency would drool over.

One can hear CIA director, David Petraeus, practically giggle with thanks when he states that people have essentially "bugged themselves" in their own homes. And, like any good spy agency, they are prepared to exploit it.

The exponential growth of supercomputers is now combining with an array of small, cheap, low-power chips that form the heart of a processing network that can monitor and remotely control any device, from TVs to appliances, light bulbs, just about anything that connects to the Internet, or can be read through radio waves.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Executive Order - National Defense Resources Preparedness

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
March 16, 2012
Executive Order -- National Defense Resources Preparedness

EXECUTIVE ORDER

NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2061 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

PART I - PURPOSE, POLICY, AND IMPLEMENTATION
Section 101. Purpose. This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (the "Act").

Sec. 102. Policy. The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States.

Sec. 103. General Functions. Executive departments and agencies (agencies) responsible for plans and programs relating to national defense (as defined in section 801(j) of this order), or for resources and services needed to support such plans and programs, shall:

Read more: [link to www.shtfmovement.com]

POLICE STATE USA: New Obama Executive Order Seizes U.S. Infrastructure and Citizens for Military Preparedness
by Brandon Turbeville
March 18, 2012
Activist Post - 2012-03-17

In a stunning move, on March 16, 2012, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order stating that the President and his specifically designated Secretaries now have the authority to commandeer all domestic U.S. resources including food and water. The EO also states that the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military. The EO also contains a vague reference in regards to harnessing American citizens to fulfill “labor requirements” for the purposes of national defense.

Not only that, but the authority claimed inside the EO does not only apply to National Emergencies and times of war. It also applies in peacetime.

The National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order exploits the “authority” granted to the President in the Defense Production Act of 1950 in order to assert that virtually every means of human survival is now available for confiscation and control by the President via his and his Secretaries’ whim.

The unconstitutionality of the overwhelming majority of Executive Orders is well established, as well as the illegality of denying citizens their basic Constitutional and human rights, even in the event of a legitimate national emergency. Likewise, it should also be pointed out that, like Obama’s recent Libyan adventure and the foregone conclusion of a Syrian intervention, there is no mention of Congress beyond a minor role of keeping the allegedly co-equal branch of government informed on contextually meaningless developments.

As was mentioned above, the scope of the EO is virtually all-encompassing. For instance, in “Section 201 – Priorities and Allocations Authorities,” the EO explains that the authority for the actions described in the opening paragraph rests with the President but is now delegated to the various Secretaries of the U.S. Federal Government. The list of delegations and the responsibility of the Secretaries as provided in this section are as follows:

(1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;

(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;

(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;

(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;

(5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and

(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

Incentivizing citizens spying through ‘soft control’ and cell phones
Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Activist Post

Like me, chances are you have probably never heard of the concept of “crowd soft control,” or just “soft control,” for that matter.

“Soft control” is a way to leverage the millions of cell phones owned by Americans across the United States of America in order to assist in massive data gathering – and potentially surveillance – operation; and with 88% of Americans now owning a cell phone, this shouldn’t be all too difficult.

This goes far beyond the data collection of Silicon Valley giants and even the surveillance capabilities already available via smartphone applications.

Researchers now see an infinite amount of possibilities when it comes to how they can leverage the audio recording capabilities and photography capabilities, not to mention global position systems (GPS) on most modern mobile devices.

Some of the more tame examples could be services that collect data from users in order to monitor noise pollution or air quality, as well as applications which could create maps from the various pictures taken on users’ devices.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Hank asks NSA director tough questions about wiretaps, e-mail intercepts




NSA Chief Denies, Denies, Denies Wired’s Domestic Spying Story
By Ryan Singel
March 20, 2012

NSA chief General Keith Alexander faced tough — and funny — questions from Congress Tuesday stemming from Wired’s story on the NSA’s capabalities and warrantless wiretapping program.

Congressman Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, asked Alexander whether the NSA could, at the direction of Dick Cheney, identify people who sent e-mails making fun of his inability to hunt in order to waterboard them.

Alexander said “No,” adding that the “NSA does not have the ability to do that in the United States.” Elaborating, Alexander added: “We don’t have the technical insights in the United States. In other words, you have to have [...] some way of doing that either by going to a service provider with a warrant or you have to be collecting in that area. We’re not authorized to do that, nor do we have the equipment in the United States to collect that kind of information.”

That statement seemingly contradicts James Bamford’s story, The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say), as well as stories from The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and Wired, which collectively drew a picture of the NSA’s post-9/11 foray into wiretapping the nation’s telecommunication’s infrastructure to spy on Americans without getting warrants.

CONTINUE: [link to www.wired.com]

Last Edited by RoXY on 03/22/2012 03:35 AM

Cloud-based video surveillance on the rise with potential for exponential growth
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Activist Post

According to IMS Research, the world market for cloud-based video surveillance, also known as Video Surveillance as a Service, or VSaaS for short, is only going to continue to grow in coming years, further helping the expansion of the global Big Brother surveillance grid.

Considering the rise of VSaaS with the overall trend of increasing surveillance, voluntary citizen spying, the announcement that internet service providers will begin monitoring on all internet activity, and the ever-expanding behemoth Department of Homeland Security, it appears that our society is continuing to go deeper down the rabbit hole of the paranoid surveillance state.

In 2011 alone, the market was in the neighborhood of $500 million, which represents an increase of 25 percent over 2010.

“Growth in the VSaaS market is a result of increasing demand from consumer, small-to-medium businesses, and government end users,” Sam Grinter, a market analyst with IMS Research, said.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

National Counterterrorism Center gets insane new power over private data on Americans
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Friday, March 23, 2012
Activist Post

Just when you thought the ludicrously paranoid federal government of the United States of America couldn’t get any worse; Attorney General Eric Holder has signed new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

The American Big Brother surveillance state has grown exponentially over recent years and it does not look like it is going to be slowing down any time soon with the new guidelines which allows private data on Americans to be held when there is no suspicion of them being tied to terrorism for a whopping five years.

Keep in mind, Internet service providers just announced that they will soon be engaging in the largest digital spying operation in history, along with the National Security Agency (NSA) building a behemoth data center to process information, which could include just about anything.

Now the NCTC is getting even more power from the Obama administration, something akin to the George W. Bush-era “Total Information Awareness” program which was supposedly partially shut down by Congress.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

No Charges, No Trial, No Lawyer, No Jury: Straight to Execution - The new American justice system for U.S. citizens.
P. Revere
Friday, March 23, 2012
Activist Post

It seems big changes are all around our country now; things like globalization, the economic crisis, and our “war on terror”. I have to ask myself why the war on terror is stealing our chances of living as free people, in a free country, being governed by the consent of the people?

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 has destroyed three of the ten guarantees of your liberty as stated in the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights. Any U.S. citizen can now be arrested by the U.S. military while inside the U.S. and can be permanently jailed with no charges, no right to a trial, and no lawyer to assist with a defense.

Yes, it is all true. It is now the law of the land. Congress wrote it and President Obama signed it into law on December 31st, 2011. It is the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012 (NDAA 2012). The problems with the new law are located in Title X, subtitle D, subsections 1031 and 1032. Under it, the U.S. military can now arrest U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and indefinitely detain them without charge, without a trial, without the right to ever appear before a civilian judge, and without the right to a lawyer. The U.S. citizen might then be transferred to “any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity”. Why was the person arrested by the military? Because the person is a “suspected terrorist” or “conspired with suspected terrorists”.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

New Big Brother facial recognition system scans 36 million faces per second
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Activist Post

A new system has emerged to process surveillance footage for facial recognition, and it makes much of the previous technology seem like it belongs in the Stone Age, further empowering the Big Brother surveillance state.

This is just another front in the rapidly growing surveillance industry which preys upon the fear and paranoia of the American people which has been instilled by the government through the Department of Homeland Security and their allied entities.

Perhaps the only system that can compete with this blazing fast technology is the facial recognition systems being developed for military drones, which incorporate three-dimensional models of the target’s face. This method allows for even less of the target’s face to be visible while still being able to positively identify them.

The novel system developed by Hitachi Kokusai Electric of Japan is able to process video footage faster and more flexibly any previous technology could allow, thus enabling an even faster response to positive identification.

The system was displayed at the Security Show Expo in Japan and it is capable of processing a wide range of information including both still images and video footage.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

14 defining characteristics of fascism: The U.S. in 2012
Gregory Patin
Monday, March 26, 2012
Activist Post

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
- Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here. (1935)

In the spring of 2003, ex-corporate executive and political scientist Lawrence W. Britt published an essay in Free Inquiry magazine entitled “Fascism Anyone?” In his work, Britt examined the traits of the two governments that formed the original historical model for fascism, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and five other protofascist regimes that imitated that model, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. He identified 14 characteristics that were common to all of them.

These traits have since been widely accepted as the 14 defining characteristics of fascism.

Nearly three generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, all of these regimes have been overthrown, but fascism’s principles can still be found in many nations. History tends to repeat itself because many leaders and nations fail to learn from history, or they draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm in the world today.

In the U.S., leaders, teachers, media and citizens proudly claim that America is a democratic society with certain freedoms and rights guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution, Bill of Rights and rule of law. But is that really the case?

A close look at the 14 characteristics of fascism in light of what has changed in America in the past few years may raise some questions as to whether or not Americans truly live in a democratic society.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

AL QAEDA AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS: Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda.... An Incessant and Repetitive Public Discourse (Part I)
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
March 24, 2012

There is something disturbing in the nature of post 9/11 public discourse. Incessantly, on a daily basis, Al Qaeda is referred to by the Western media, government officials, members of the US Congress, Wall Street analysts, etc. as an underlying cause of numerous World events. Occurences of a significant political, social or strategic nature - including the US presidential elections campaign - are routinely categorized by referring to Al Qaeda, the alleged architect of the September 11 2001 attacks.

What is striking is the extent of media coverage of "Al Qaeda related events", not to mention the mountains of op eds and authoritative "analysis" pertaining to "terror events" in different part of the World.

Routine mention of Al Qaeda "fanatics", "jihadists", etc. has become - from a news standpoint - trendy and fashionable. A Worldwide ritual of authoritative media reporting has unfolded. At the time of writing (March 24, 2012), "Al Qaeda events" had 183 million entries on Google and 18,200 news entries.

A panoply of Al Qaeda related events and circumstances is presented to public opinion on a daily basis. These include terrorist threats, warnings and attacks, police investigations, insurgencies and counter-insurgencies, country-level regime change, social conflict, sectarian violence, racism, religious divisions, Islamic thought, Western values, etc.

In turn, Al Qaeda - War on Terrorism rhetoric permeates political discourse at all levels of government, including bipartisan debate on Capitol Hill, in committees of the House and the Senate, at the British House of Commons, and, lest we forget, at the United Nations Security Council.

All of these complex Al Qaeda related occurrences are explained - by politicians, the corporate media, Hollywood and the Washington think tanks under a single blanket "bad guys" heading, in which Al Qaeda is casually and repeatedly pinpointed as "the cause" of numerous terror events around the World.

CONTINUE: [link to globalresearch.ca]

Last Edited by RoXY on 03/26/2012 09:20 PM

New Counterorrism Guidelines Gives Authorities Vast Access to Private Info of Innocent Americans
Trevor Timm
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
EFF

On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signed expansive new guidelines for terrorism analysts, allowing the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) to mirror entire federal databases containing personal information and hold onto the information for an extended period of time—even if the person is not suspected of any involvement in terrorism. (Read the guidelines here).

Despite the “terrorism” justification, the new rules affect every single American. The agency now has free rein to, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage put it, “retrieve, store and search information about Americans gathered by government agencies for purposes other than national security threats ” and expands the amount of time the government can keep private information on innocent individuals by a factor of ten.

From the New York Times: The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said. The guidelines are also expected to result in the center making more copies of entire databases and “data mining them” using complex algorithms to search for patterns that could indicate a threat. (emphasis ours)

Journalist Marcy Wheeler summed up the new guidelines nicely saying, “So…the data the government keeps to track our travel, our taxes, our benefits, our identity? It just got transformed from bureaucratic data into national security intelligence.”

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Kids All Over America Are Being Put On Buses And Sent To Alternate Locations During School Terror Drills
Michael Snyder, Contributor
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Activist Post

All over the United States, school children are being taken out of their classrooms, put on buses and sent to "alternate locations" during terror drills. These exercises are often called "evacuation drills" or "relocation drills" and they are more than a little disturbing. Sometimes parents are notified in advance where the kids are being taken and sometimes they are only told that the children are being taken to an "undisclosed location".

In the years since 9/11 and the Columbine school shootings, there has been a concerted effort to make school emergency drills much more "realistic" and much more intense.

Unfortunately, the fact that many of these drills are deeply traumatizing many children does not seem to bother too many people. Do we really need to have "active shooter" drills where men point guns at our kids and fire blanks at them? Do we really need to have "relocation drills" where kids are rapidly herded on to buses and told that they must surrender their cell phones because they will not be allowed to call anyone? Our schools more closely resemble prison camps every single day, and our children that are suffering because of it.

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

The real Evil is this

This is a very real battle of power & control over the Human 99% + 60% - 39% = Most of you .

The sheep carrying the mark of the beast for there one world order.

Patent awarded for “behavioral recognition” surveillance software system
Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Activist Post

The American surveillance state is becoming increasingly advanced, expansive and capable of processing huge amounts of data at blinding speeds.

Now Behavioral Recognition Systems, Inc., also known as BRS Labs, has developed an artificial intelligence-based system which supposedly can automatically recognize human behavior.

Technology which seems similar on the surface already exists and is being used on surveillance platforms like the “Intellistreets” street lights. These street lights, which are outfitted with a great deal of surveillance equipment, are reportedly capable of monitoring activity and telling the difference between certain behaviors while also being able to tell the difference between humans and animals. This technology could be used to enforce curfews, track the movement of individuals, and supposedly spot fights and other crimes.

However, BRS Labs’ technology, which was awarded U.S. patent number 8,131,012 (go here if link doesn’t open properly) by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to Government Security News, seems to blow that older system out of the water. This is because previous technologies relied on specific rules put in place by human operators, whereas the new system relies on “reason-based video surveillance behavior recognition software.”

CONTINUE: [link to www.activistpost.com]

Microsoft Raids Tackle Internet Crime

Microsoft employees, accompanied by United States marshals, raided two nondescript office buildings in Pennsylvania and Illinois on Friday, aiming to disrupt one of the most pernicious forms of online crime today — botnets, or groups of computers that help harvest bank account passwords and other personal information from millions of other computers.

With a warrant in hand from a federal judge authorizing the sweep, the Microsoft lawyers and technical personnel gathered evidence and deactivated Web servers ostensibly used by criminals in a scheme to infect computers and steal personal data. At the same time, Microsoft seized control of hundreds of Web addresses that it says were used as part of the same scheme.

The sweep was part of a civil suit brought by Microsoft in its increasingly aggressive campaign to take the lead in combating such crimes, rather than waiting for law enforcement agencies to act. The company’s targets were equipment used to control the botnets, which criminals, known as bot-herders, use for ill intent.

In each case, Microsoft obtained court orders that permitted it to seize Web addresses and computers associated with the botnets without first notifying the owners of the property. The secrecy was necessary, Microsoft argued, to prevent criminals from re-establishing new communications links to their infected computers.

Mr. Perlotto and Microsoft said they did not see civil legal action against people who commit online crime as a replacement for law enforcement action, which can result in much stiffer criminal penalties. “We equate this to a neighborhood watch,” Mr. Boscovich said.

More @ link:

[link to www.nytimes.com]