Jason Bermas: Government Turning Bugs into Spies (video)
The Alex Jones Show
December 28, 2011
Jason Bermas gives Alex an update on the latest tech toys coming out of the military industrial complex. Yes, the Pentagon is now turning bugs into little spies to be used against you.
http://www.myspace.com/jasonbermas
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/
Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza “Microchips implanted in people who are under government Healthcare” (video)
HardTimes.ca
May 13, 2010
http://blip.tv/hardtimesca/tony-danza-tap-dance-extravaganza-interview-montreal-april-2010-3636803
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[Potent News Editor’s note: That was back in the middle of 2010. Here is a related article from August 25, 2011 –> Hospital patients now being microchipped with “electronic tattoos”]
With all of the pieces in place, when will the hammer drop?
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
December 22, 2011
Over the past few months, those who have been paying attention have witnessed some of the most disturbing developments in modern American history unfold at breakneck speed.
This includes the explicit codification of indefinite detention without charge or trial as well as rendition under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Fiscal Year 2012, the KBR move to create a team of sub-contractors to activate the so-called FEMA camps on a moment’s notice and the designation of American citizens as the enemy under Continuity of Government (COG) plans created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Unfortunately, the file revealing the FEMA COG plans, entitled “National Continuity Programs (NCP) Program and Mission Support Services (PAMSS)” was quickly removed from the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) official website, according to Infowars.
All that is left is a message warning users to not upload any classified materials, even though the document was listed as “Source Selection Sensitive” and not classified, as the warning notice might have you believe.
This serves as just another example of our criminal, corrupt government believing that there is no need for them to be accountable for their actions to the American people which are used as collateral and man power in their insane schemes.
These developments have been part of a gradual march toward an all-encompassing authoritarian police state with a massive surveillance grid so expansive George Orwell would likely never believe it could be reality.
Just a few pieces of this incomparably complex control grid include the Carrier IQ monitoring software which is loaded on to every major smartphone by every major wireless service provider, drone surveillance which includes so-called threat assessment technology and facial recognition, comprehensive and centralized biometric databases, along with widespread citizen spying programs.
This surveillance state, which has already been rolled out and is only increasing in reach and depth, is complimented by the militarization of police moving towards a de facto martial law.
However, the NDAA makes the steady move to turn local and state police departments into paramilitary forces look like child’s play.
Previously, I believed that programs like the Pentagon’s 1033 program were being used to transform public servants into public oppressors without having to formally declare martial law, but now it is clear that I was wrong.
Under the NDAA, there is absolutely no need to declare martial law now or in the future, given that it effectively eviscerates the Bill of Rights, the Posse Comitatus Act and the Non-Detention Act.
Declaring martial law would just be redundant, given that there is absolutely nothing stopping the military from kicking down the doors of innocent Americans and holding them indefinitely under the guise of fighting terrorism.
We are already seeing military technology being rolled out in situations where it hardly seems warranted, as was the case with the use of a Predator B drone in North Dakota, along with the entirety of the dangerous domestic drone program, and the decision to deploy an armored personnel carrier (APC) to the Occupy Tampa protests.
There is no need for the individual to even have tenuous links to terrorism or terrorist groups, as the military will never be forced to justify their actions or present evidence to anyone.
Even more disturbing is that now American citizens can be charged with providing “material support” to terrorists simply by writing about issues which might otherwise be covered by free speech.
This was exemplified by the case of 29-year-old Tarek Mehanna who federal prosecutors claim travelled to Yemen in 2004 in hopes of training as a terrorist and then killing American soldiers fighting in Iraq.
However, Mehanna failed to locate any training camps – clearly indicating he is not keyed in to the terrorist underworld – and then allegedly returned home to promote al Qaeda by writing about violent jihad against the United States online.
Mehanna and his legal team gave a much different story: instead of going to Yemen to attempt, and fail, to find a terrorist training camp, Mehanna claims that he went to Yemen simply to receive instruction to become an Islamic scholar and that his writings on the internet were protected by free speech.
Carol Rose, the executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said that they are “gravely concerned that today’s verdict against Tarek Mehanna undermines the First Amendment and threatens national security.”
“Under the government’s theory of the case, ordinary people – including writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers – could be prosecuted for researching or translating controversial or unpopular ideas. If the verdict is not overturned on appeal, the First Amendment will be seriously compromised,” the ACLU’s statement said.
It is clear that there is an assault on the Constitution on all fronts, with the federal government leading the charge in the war against our liberties, as clearly shown by the disturbing levels of support for the NDAA seen in both the House and Senate.
Increasingly American citizens are being treated like the enemy, and if the NDAA’s sections are fully utilized, many Americans could be locked up as prisoners of war and civilian internees without charge or trial with no hope of being released until the government makes the call.
The disturbing truth is that being designated a civilian internee is literally the best case scenario for people like myself who relentlessly expose government malfeasance and the evisceration of our most essential liberties as protected by the Constitution.
The mainstream corporate controlled media is all but completely ignoring the NDAA, and when they do cover it, which is laughably rare, they whitewash the most important sections and claim that the bill does not actually provide for the indefinite detention of American citizens, which I clearly debunked in a previous article.
As every week goes by, it becomes clearer that we are approaching a crossroads in this nation and around the world.
One road will lead us even further down the slippery slope of tyranny into a situation that would make the Orwellian police state we currently see unfolding around us look tame.
This road leads to massive indefinite detention of American citizens in FEMA prison camps which have already been erected around the nation, along with the establishment of even more detention centers on military installations and elsewhere.
It also leads to the total abolition of habeas corpus and all of the rights which so many Americans never imagined could ever be in danger of being impinged on, restricted, or even removed altogether.
The other road is obviously the one I would much prefer we head down.
This is one where the traitors in our government are brought to justice, the tyrannical financial establishment is dismantled in favor of a much more equitable debt-free monetary system, and the global imperialistic force serving the corporate elite that the United States military has become is radically changed.
The nationwide and now global surveillance state would be scrapped, the mainstream media would become irrelevant and die off in a matter of days, the government would no longer believe itself to be immune from criticism and the once opaque operations would become open and accountable to the people footing the bill.
No longer would innocent people be slaughtered at home and abroad in the name of the sham that is the war on terror and the United States would no longer be the reviled death machine that it has become thanks to our hijacked government.
Collusion between corporate interests and all government corruption would no longer be the rampant, parasitic blight that it currently is.
Our freedoms and safety would be secured, not through a phony war on terror which seeks to have us trade liberty for security, but instead through a genuine government that actually sought to protect its citizens and not use them as collateral and slave labor in private prisons.
The failed drug war would end and thus the countless non-violent offenders we are paying to keep locked up in college for criminals while they are exploited for cheap labor by government-connected corporations would no longer fill our prisons.
Medical marijuana could replace many overpriced and dangerous pharmaceutical treatments and hemp could drastically impact countless industries and revive the American economy and turn the United States back into the manufacturing powerhouse and economic power it once was.
Bankers would be held accountable for their criminal activity and no longer would our government be a revolving door system for corporations and their employees.
It would truly be a government of the people for the people, but this not something that would happen overnight nor is it something that could occur without the majority of Americans waking up to reality and taking a stand.
It now appears that it is only a matter of time until the government either drops the hammer and we find ourselves travelling rapidly down the dark road or the American people finally stand up and refuse to let our nation be destroyed any further.
Hopefully Americans will not wait to take action until the worst case scenario has unfolded, as it very well might be too late at that point.
I encourage all of my readers to spread this information to anyone and everyone and encourage them to actually look into it, check my sources and decide for themselves if they want to wait and ignore the signs or start making an effort to make our country, and the world, a better place for ourselves and future generations or just allow a once-great nation to become a system that would make the Soviets green with envy.
Short URL: http://EndtheLie.com/?p=32137
The Carrier IQ Conspiracy
by Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
December 16, 2011
Just weeks ago Trevor Eckhart, a security researcher and Android operating system developer, discovered a mysterious process running in the background of his Android-based device.
This program turned out to be Carrier IQ, or CIQ, and specifically the IQ Agent which is installed on mobile devices from all major carriers before they reach the consumer, totaling some 150 million phones, mostly in the United States.
The software is billed as a diagnostic tool which allows cellphone carriers to “better understand how mobile devices interact with and perform on their network,” according to an official Carrier IQ document that attempts to dispel what they bill as rumors and unfounded concerns of consumers and researchers.
The document is somewhat opaque and esoteric for those of us not familiar with the terminology and technology at work in these highly complex systems but some of it is quite easy to understand.
In the second paragraph of the introduction we read, “We want to thank Trevor Eckhart for sharing his findings with us through a working session that helped us to identify some of the issues highlighted in this report.”
This gives the impression that Carrier IQ was happy to see the findings of Eckhart and what he uncovered, but this is far from reality.
Eckhart discovered that the software was integrated with Android at the deepest levels and was able to monitor, record, and transmit even the most private data and interactions with the device.
He alleged that it could monitor every single individual keystroke and every interaction with the screen for that matter, along with encrypted Internet browsing sessions and searches, GPS data, network data, battery data, among other pieces of information which many people would likely like to keep private.
Instead of praising Eckhart and working closely with him as the introductory paragraph might have you believe, Carrier IQ sued Eckhart for copyright infringement because he made publicly available training materials accessible to interested parties, where otherwise they might not have been able to find them on the Carrier IQ website.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, stepped in on Eckhart’s behalf and countered their frivolous legal threat – clearly intended to silence Eckhart and stifle his research – after which Carrier IQ withdrew their threat entirely.
(Infographic credit: Eletronic Frontier Foundation)
The EFF has produced a simplified, but not dumbed-down, explanation of Carrier IQ and how exactly it operates, which you can read here.
For those who are interested in learning more about this program, which is likely active on your device if you own a smartphone, this brief article is an absolute must read.
Carrier IQ continues to maintain their innocence and claim that the software does not record keystrokes (and thus the content of every email, text message, or anything else you might type), but Eckhart’s research shows otherwise.
The second video released by Eckhart (seen here) clearly shows the software doing things that Carrier IQ claims it does not, along with others who seek to defend this technology and the erosion of privacy in the digital age.
As a result of Eckhart’s findings, lawsuits have been filed against Carrier IQ, HTC, Samsung, Apple, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Motorola, alleging that it breaches the Federal Wiretap Act, Stored Electronic Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Despite the company’s insistence to the contrary, the suit alleges that, “[i]n addition to collecting device and service-related data, Carrier IQ’s software can collect data about a user’s location, application use, Web browsing habits, videos watched, texts read and even the keys they press.”
The establishment media has come to the aid of their corporate cronies, citing so-called experts who “debunked” Eckhart’s findings.
Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET (which is owned by CBS Interactive and is thus part of the “big six”) and Dan Rosenberg, a supposed security expert allegedly debunked Eckhart’s findings, although their evidence is hardly compelling.
“The application does not record and transmit keystroke data back to carriers,” Rosenberg said, adding that after reverse-engineering the software he found that, “there is no code in Carrier IQ that actually records keystrokes for data collection purposes.”
What is his proof? Well, nothing other than CNET’s claim that Rosenberg “analyzed the assembly language code with a debugger that allowed him to look under the hood.”
We are simply supposed to believe this because he has discovered security vulnerabilities in various systems in the past; after all, no one has ever misrepresented the truth for monetary compensation, right?
They also point to another “well-known security expert” named Rebecca Bace who claims that Carrier IQ gave her access to the company’s engineers and internal documents.
“I’m comfortable that the designers and implementers expended a great deal of discipline in focusing on the espoused goals of the software–to serve as a diagnostic aid for assuring quality of service and experience for mobile carriers,” Bace said.
That’s all well and good, but the proof is in the pudding; and here they’re just telling us that they have pudding somewhere – you just don’t get to see it or verify the veracity of the existence of the pudding.
After all, they’re the experts and we’re just supposed to take their word for it. I guess they missed the appeal to authority fallacy in their studies – or lack thereof – of logic.
Carrier IQ doesn’t even seem to be able to keep the story straight, with their Vice President Andrew Coward claiming that his statement in Wired was a misquote in which he said the software could read text messages.
However, during the interview he did clearly say that carriers are able to collect data that would be able to determine the exact person who is using the phone, what programs they are running, when they charge the battery, what calls they make and where, etc.
His statements are hardly reassuring, even if the claim that the Carrier IQ software does not function as a keylogger is true, which is hardly clear at this stage.
Coward and Carrier IQ have found themselves in a bit of an imbroglio, with Coward saying, “One of the lessons we’ve had from this … clearly we should not have done that cease and desist.”
“What may have been the right response three or four years ago may not be the right response for now and … and we apologized … we did not expect that we would need to be so open and transparent about everything… We recognized as the crisis kind of developed that that was required for us to clear our name. That was a huge learning process,” Coward told CNET.
I find it absolutely astounding that he apparently thinks they would never have to be open and transparent about what their software is collecting and for what purposes.
I guess Coward never thought that it would be discovered and exposed in the first place, so no contingency plan had been created to deal with the massive fallout which we are now witnessing.
When asked about their competitors, Coward said that they only offer over-the-air downloadable software, whereas the Carrier IQ software is embedded into the device to make it not only hard to detect, but nearly impossible for any regular user to remove or control.
It gets even more interesting when we consider the fact that Coward (who was identified by The Washington Post as the senior vice president for marketing, a different title than what was given by CNET) revealed, “This week Carrier IQ sought meetings with the FTC and FCC to educate the two agencies … and answer any and all questions,” while adding that he was “not aware of an official investigation.”
Meanwhile, anonymous FTC officials said that they were conducting an inquiry into Carrier IQ and a spokeswoman for the FTC would not confirm or deny an investigation.
However, a public relations contractor for Carrier IQ named Mira Woods told The Washington Post in an email, “We are complying with all investigations at this time as we have nothing to hide … We have been completely transparent through this process.”
Later Woods requested that “investigations” be changed to “inquiries,” likely because the statement implies that there are indeed investigations going on currently with which they are complying.
Woods said, “We sought the meetings with the FCC and FTC in the interest of transparency and full disclosure,” thereby claiming that they sought out the meetings and thus were not an investigation.
In an official statement issued later in the day, Carrier IQ said, “This week Carrier IQ sought meetings with the FTC and FCC to educate the two agencies about the functionality of its software and answer any and all questions. Although Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-Chairman of the Bi-Partisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, has asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the practices of Carrier IQ, we are not aware of an official investigation into Carrier IQ at this time.”
The situation gets even more interesting and complex when we consider the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and their involvement in this debacle.
When Michael Morisy, a reporter for MuckRock News, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data” which was obtained through any Carrier IQ program, the FBI denied the request because it was considered “law enforcement records.”
In response to Morisy’s request, the FBI wrote, “The information you requested is located in an investigative file which is exempt from disclosure.”
Paul Bresson, spokesman for the FBI, would not comment – meaning he would neither confirm nor deny, which in itself is a tacit confirmation – on if an investigation into Carrier IQ was ongoing or if they were utilizing the software for surveillance purposes of their own.
For anyone remotely familiar with issues like this, the phrase “plausible deniability” leaps to mind.
In addressing the FBI’s connection to Carrier IQ, the company said that the data gathered by the software are “not designed for law enforcement agencies and to our knowledge [have] never been used by law enforcement agencies.”
However, this means little to nothing in today’s America in which the PATRIOT Act can gag anyone from speaking of the warrants or investigations conducted by the federal government.
Even if they had knowingly handed over data to the FBI or DHS, or perhaps built the software for that purpose from day one, they likely would be prevented from ever confirming that fact or even hinting at it.
In another statement Carrier IQ claimed, “Carrier IQ [has] no rights to the data gathered and [has] not passed data to third parties. Should a law enforcement agency request data from us, we would refer them to the network operators. To date and to our knowledge we have received no such requests.”
Once again, if they had received such requests, it is very likely the case that they wouldn’t be able to speak about it.
It is clear that it is not the innocent diagnostics tool they would like to make it out to be, as the official responses from some companies have shown.
In an official statement, Sprint said, “We collect enough information to understand the customer experience with devices on our network and how to address any connection problems, but we do not and cannot look at the contents of messages, photos, videos, etc. using this tool.”
The wording of this statement does, however, imply that the software is capable of doing these things, they just “do not and cannot” view it themselves.
Apple’s statement is most interesting, as they clearly indicate that the software is not only capable of recording keystrokes, but also is capable of recording messages or other personal information.
“We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages, or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so,” the statement said.
The details surrounding Carrier IQ are still quite fuzzy at this point but it is clear that it is not just a diagnostic tool collecting anonymous information to make our user experience better.
Like so much Big Brother technology, it is billed under one purpose and yet is capable of so much more.
Another trend we see repeating here is the constant contradictions, confusion, and misinformation or even disinformation pumped out by the establishment media and their “experts.”
I will continue to follow this story and write future articles about it as more information becomes available and a clearer picture begins to emerge.
Suffice to say, I’m not ignorant or naïve enough to think that this isn’t being used to collect private, sensitive data from millions of devices across the United States which is then funneled to centralized government databases.
It would be nice to think this wasn’t the case, but I would have to throw out literally everything I have learned in my research, all of which is based on irrefutable facts which one has to either delusionally refuse to pay attention to, or accept as a reality of the global police state control grid under which we currently live.
This article first appeared at End the Lie
Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com
Big Brother is watching you: Madison Ruppert on Flow of Wisdom Radio (audio)
End the Lie
November 14, 2011
We chat about Big Brother, surveillance, Google and Facebook storing and selling your information, constant monitoring, the massive surveillance grid that has infected our lives in countless ways and much more. Originally aired on Sunday, November 13th at 9-10 am Eastern. This interview aired on WCDX Richmond, Virginia and WYTT Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina.
Visit http://EndtheLie.com/ for critical information on Big Brother and more. If you would like to interview Madison Ruppert just send an e-mail to Admin@EndtheLie.com to schedule it.
Related posts:
- Madison Ruppert interviewed on the Common Sense Show on RBN
- End the Lie on Blacklisted News Radio
- US and UK establish trans-governmental global Big Brother
- White House to unveil new Big Brother cybsecurity strategies
- Big Brother eat your heart out: “Behaviormetric” technology reads facial expressions
Short URL: http://EndtheLie.com/?p=27502
Drones, big brother, the police state control grid and more with Madison Ruppert and James Corbett (video)
End the Lie
December 15, 2011
http://EndtheLie.com for more critical news and information
In this fast-paced hour Madison Ruppert of End the Lie and James Corbett of the Corbett Report (http://CorbettReport.com/) discuss a wide variety of topics including the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, for the fiscal year 2012, domestic use of drones (UAVs), the insecurity of these systems, drone surveillance, the global police state control grid, big brother technology, endless war, the economy and the manufactured Eurozone crisis, what got us into this field of research and more.
This is truly a compelling hour of talk radio that you can’t afford to miss. Packed with information, all of which is fully documented, you’d be truly doing yourself a disservice in not checking this out and sharing it with friends.
If you would like to have Madison Ruppert on your show or podcast just email Admin@EndtheLie.com to schedule it.
(hat tip: Victors Post)
Every single tweet being turned over to U.S. government
by J. D. Heyes
Natural News
December 8, 2011
(NaturalNews) They say there are billions of them, with more than 50 million added per day. But whatever the actual number, every single tweet ever sent since the beginning of Twitter-time is set to be turned over to Uncle Sam.
According to Federal News Radio earlier this week, Twitter has struck a deal (deal?) with the Library of Congress to archive every single tweet. Rather than treat them as free, protected speech, the billions of Tweets are being treated as historical documents and will archived as such, the report said.
“We have an agreement with Twitter where they have a bunch of servers with their historic archive of tweets, everything that was sent out and declared to be public,” Bill Lefurgy, the digital initiatives program manager at the library’s national digital information infrastructure and preservation program, said on Federal News Radio.
“We were excited to be involved with acquiring the Twitter archives because it’s a unique record of our time,” he added. “It’s also a unique way of communication. It’s not so much that people are going to be interested in what you or I had for lunch, which some people like to say on Twitter.”
Which begs the question: What, then, is the government “interested” in? According to the report, the tweets will be made available to researchers who “could then data-mine for interesting information.”
“There have been studies involved with what are the moods of the public at various times of the day in reaction to certain kinds of news events,” said Lefurgy. “There’s all these interesting kinds of mixing and matching that can be done using the tweets as a big set of data.”
The agreement, it turns out, has been in the works since last year.
Reportedly, no Tweets that users have “protected” will be included in the data dump, but let’s ask the obvious question here: How many of us actually believe that private tweets aren’t somehow going to show up in this LOC tweet repository – for some researcher to “data-mine?”
So, the lesson here is this: If you think your tweets are just going to vanish into the unknown after you send them, think again. And be careful what you tweet; some “researcher” may just “data-mine” it some day, to your dismay.
In the electronic age, privacy is increasingly becoming a quaint concept of the past.
Sources:
PN 