Terrorism // Current TV

We Just Built Skynet in the Desert, Now What?

Ten years after 9/11, the National Security Agency (NSA) is close to putting the finishing touches on what will be the single biggest spy center in the country. According to James Bamford of WIRED, this new one million-square foot spy complex in the Utah Desert will actually be capable of monitoring, intercepting and de-encrypting just about any message sent over any communication network in the country. It will be capable of keeping tabs on any civilian in the U.S. or any foreigner visiting the USA. And it will all be hooked up to federal computers in Washington, giving it access to the records and databases of the most powerful government agencies in the country. If all this is starting to sound a lot like Skynet in the Terminator movies, that’s because, well, it is - minus the Schwarzenegger robots, of course.

The sheer amount of data that the NSA – and by extension the CIA, FBI and Pentagon – will be able to collect on both foreigners and its own civilians is staggering. The $2 billion center, which goes by the disarmingly bland name of the Utah Data Center, is the final piece in the puzzle for the Pentagon, which has been attempting to build a Global Information Grid ever since 9/11. Remember the Total Information Awareness program of 2003? Well, it’s now here in physical form – and it’s heavily guarded. In military parlance, it’s not a “soft” target - the facility has been hardened to the point where a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling at 50 miles per hour couldn't muscle its way inside. At its peak, this new surveillance center will be able to handle so much data that the NSA practically had to coin a new word to describe it: yottabytes. There are so many servers running this system that the annual cooling costs are estimated to be $40 million.

That’s quite an electricity bill for a "data center."

That's because this federal spy center goes far beyond what’s already being collected about us online, to explore the “Deep Web” that’s all but invisible to typical search engines. The spy center will also delve into the world of code-breaking and reverse-encryption. Even things that we think are far beyond any type of cyber-penetration will be readily available to the powers-that-be. That’s where things get downright scary. We assume that spambots and spiders slither behind us everywhere we go online, but what do we really know about all the other information that is being tracked about us? What information is being collected about us by security monitors in the streets and satellites overhead? The scope of what's being collected by the NSA is breathlessly thorough in detail, reaching into every area of our lives:

"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.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy."

This digital "pocket litter" that each of us leaves behind us may sound harmless – but that's until all of this highly unstructured data gets dumped into a supercomputing capable of mining all this data and producing patterns and insights. This “pocket litter” is no longer trash once it can be used to construct ever-more precise profiles of everyday civilians and predict future behaviors.

“Cybersecurity” and “the war on terror” are handy little buzzwords for enabling governments to extend their cyber-surveillance over every aspect of our lives. At the end of the day, pure democracy and absolute authoritarianism are really just flip sides of the same coin. This is precisely why dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We are so terrifying. Authoritarian regimes always start out with a willingness to help - not enslave - its civilians. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. A government that claims to protect its citizens by spying on them is a government that needs to be watched, monitored and held under strict surveillance by its own citizens.

http://bigthink.com/endless-innovation/we-just-built-skynet-in-the-desert-now-whatTen years after 9/11, the National Security Agency (NSA) is close to putting the... more

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Military Drill Spurred by Clinton Violates Posse Comitatus

Military Drill Spurred by Clinton Violates Posse Comitatus By Anthony Wile... more

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The Continually Expanding Definition of Terrorism

The Continually Expanding Definition of Terrorism

Public Intelligence

Though the United States has been engaged in a Global War on Terror for more than a decade, the U.S. Government surprisingly does not have a standardized definition of terrorism that is agreed upon by all agencies. The State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and a number of other government agencies all utilize differing definitions of what constitutes an act of terrorism. This lack of agreement has allowed individual agencies to present different and, in some cases, far more inclusive definitions of terrorist acts enabling the use of expanded investigative procedures that might not be applicable in other agencies.

The FBI utilizes a definition of terrorism based upon the agency’s general functions under 28 CFR § 0.85. Under this regulation an act of terrorism is defined by “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” The USA PATRIOT Act expanded this definition to include domestic acts within the definition of terrorism. Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act modified the legal definition of terrorism (18 USC § 2331) to include a category of “domestic terrorism” that is defined by “acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State” intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population”, “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion” or “affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping” that are conducted primarily within the jurisdiction of the U.S. At the time, this expansion of the definition of terrorism was decried by the ACLU as “broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations.”

One of the defining features of terrorist acts has always been a component of violence. Even under the expanded definition of terrorism created by the USA PATRIOT Act, there must be an act that is “dangerous to human life” indicating some form of physical harm to others could arise from the action. However, the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security, extended the definition of terrorism further by including any act that is “damaging to critical infrastructure or key resources.” Though this definition differs from the legal definition of international and domestic terrorism under 18 USC § 2331, the modified definition is currently used by DHS as the basis for their own activities and intelligence products that are disseminated to federal, state and local law enforcement. The modified definition of terrorism is presented in a revised Domestic Terrorism and Homegrown Violent Extremism Lexicon published last year by DHS:

Any activity that involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive to critical infrastructure or key resources, and is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state or other subdivision of the United States and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

Notice that the statement “potentially destructive to critical infrastructure or key resources” is part of a disjunction, indicating that the act need not be “dangerous to human life” for it to be considered an act of terrorism. This means that, according to DHS, a non-violent actor could be capable of committing an act of terrorism simply by engaging in “potentially destructive” behavior towards some part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. Due to the fact that large sections of domestic infrastructure, including everything from banks to bridges to milk processing plants, are now considered critical infrastructure, a wide range of “potentially destructive” actions could be investigated by DHS or any one of the dozens of fusion centers around the country as potential acts of terrorism. The DHS Domestic Terrorism Lexicon states that the definitions presented in the document are designed to “assist federal, state, and local government officials with the mission to detect, identify, and understand threats of terrorism against the United States by facilitating a common understanding of the terms and definitions that describe terrorist threats to the United States.”

A recent report from the Congressional Research Service states that this ambiguity in the definition of terrorism can create confusion “in the investigative process regarding exactly when criminal activity becomes domestic terrorism.” The report also notes that the government often uses the terms “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably creating further ambiguity as to what exactly constitutes an act of terrorism. A 2009 study from Syracuse University found that U.S. Federal District Courts, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division and federal prosecutors all rely on different criteria to determine whether or not specific cases involve terrorist acts. This lack of agreement has led to widespread failures to obtain prosecutions of suspects recommended for charges by investigative agencies. In fact, the study found that from 2004-2009 “assistant United States attorneys all over the country declined to bring any charges against two out of every three (67%) of the thousands of terrorism matters that the investigative agencies had recommended for criminal prosecution.” The Syracuse study ends with a warning about the ambiguity surrounding the definition of terrorism:

The strong evidence that various parts of the government do not share a common understanding about terrorism has important consequences for all Americans. Those most immediately affected are the thousands of people whom the investigative agencies each year incorrectly recommend for prosecution in federal court. But to the extent that the investigators systematically waste their time targeting the wrong suspects, the chances increase that they will fail to identify the real terrorists who right now may be seeking to plant bombs, spread poisons or otherwise harm a much larger number of innocent people.

To solve these problems the study offers a surprisingly straightforward solution: come up with “a clear and understandable definition of terrorism.”The Continually Expanding Definition of Terrorism Public Intelligence Though the... more

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House Fails To Pass Amendment Scaling Back NDAA Indefinite Detention Provisions

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/house-fails-pass-amendment-scaling-back-ndaa-inde... more

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Protesting NATO: What to Know About the Secret Service and H.R. 347

The forthcoming summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, set for May 20 and 21 in Chicago, could be the first public test of H.R. 347, the recently passed law that expanded the ability of the Secret Service to suppress protests in or around certain restricted zones near individuals under its protection. We've written about H.R. 347 here and here.

NATO summits are interesting affairs. Unlike the periodic meetings of member nations, the summits are more stately and elaborate events, meant to introduce major policy changes or new members to the strategic alliance (among other things). This means lots of Very Important Persons, and lots of Very Controversial Issues. Both of these things mean lots of expected First Amendment activity.

As far as H.R. 347 goes, the NATO summit has been declared a "National Special Security Event" by the Department of Homeland Security. This puts the Secret Service in charge of the overall security plan. My understanding is that the FBI chips in with counterterrorism and counterintelligence assistance, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (another DHS agency) is in charge of emergency preparation. It also means massive security preparations and infrastructure—and lots of opportunities for the suppression of lawful protest.

The entire area around Chicago's McCormick Place—the main site for the summit—will be off-limits to unauthorized personnel, and I believe will qualify as a restricted zone under the federal law that was amended by H.R. 347. Additionally, the Secret Service plans to close parts of Lake Shore Drive and I-55 near the summit as well as other locations in the Loop.

For protesters, this means a couple of things. First, be aware of the types of conduct covered by the law amended by H.R. 347 (all of this stuff was actually illegal before the recent revamp, which is partially why the bill sailed under the radar). That is, you cannot:

(1) Enter or remain in one of these zones without "lawful authority";
(2) Engage in "disorderly or disruptive conduct" in or near one of these zones that "impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government activities or official functions" (but you must intend to impede or disrupt those activities or functions);
(3) Block or otherwise impede an entrance or exit to one of these zones (but you must again intend to disrupt government activities or official functions); or
(4) Engage in any act of physical violence against person or property in any restricted zone.

Second, note this is where the lowered intent standard in the law, which we explained here, could come into play. Previously, per the one case discussing the scope of the law amended by H.R. 347, there was a question about whether you had to affirmatively know your actions were unlawful under federal law before you could be convicted under the relevant federal statute. Under H.R. 347's amendments to that statute, I think it's safe to say that requirement is gone. All you need to know are the "facts underlying" the offense, meaning that you merely need to be aware you're engaged in the conduct described above in one of these zones, but not that it's illegal.

In practice, this could mean that protesters who inadvertently find themselves in one of these areas could be arrested and charged under H.R. 347. That said, the law also requires that the area be "posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted," meaning that it would have to be obvious based on signage, a cordon of police officers surrounding the area or some other means that the area is a federally restricted area. If not, it would arguably be difficult to form the required intent to commit the crime. That will not necessarily, however, stop the authorities from arresting you.
(Click the link at the top of the page to read more)

EMAIL THE PRESIDENT AND YOUR REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS:
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtmlThe forthcoming summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, set for May 20 and... more

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Chris Hedges discusses the NDAA and what it could mean for journalists.

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How did the US Foil al-Qaeda?

intelligence game goes deeper than I thought it did

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The FBI Role in 9/11

Every military and intelligence operation has a “cover and deception” aspect. Most have several, backup stories to use if one fails, like the inflatable tanks that Patton’s “empty army” used in Britain in 1944 to fool the Germans. 9/11 was no different, the cover and deception there was to prove that a group of FBI informants, some “cloned persons,” some Israeli agents, were actually hijackers planning 9/11.

The “hijackers” and those briefed about them, those who met them at strip clubs owned by Jack Abramoff, those told of them by “spies” were all conned, just like Hitler was, the “hijackers” were just more of Patton’s “rubber inflatable tanks.”

Informants of all kinds, some CIA “whistleblowers,” some Army, some honest decent people who were lied to were “set up” to sell this story, this fabrication about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, not one word of truth in all of it.

Behind this stood CGI videos, phony wreckage, a 9/11 Commission made of political hacks and cowards, and behind them stood a press like the BBC reporter who told of the destruction of Building 7 while it stood virtually undamaged behind her. Every aspect of 9/11 was scripted, all movies, all photographs, key phony testimony, the phony hijackers, the phony informants, the phony news stories, all to cover the biggest insurance fraud in history, to orchestrate one of the biggest war crimes in history, the illegal invasion of two countries, and to serve key Israeli interests.

This is enough to prove it all false, all by itself, no rational person need look one inch further than this: - go to link for video

Then there is the story about the Pentagon. The Air Force disproves this story alone through the history of their attempts to modify the B 52, strongest plane in the world, to fly 300 feet off the ground at half the speed of the supposed “hijacker” plane. This article should be enough.

Then the a similar plane was tested in New Zealand. It would not fly under 150 feet at 240 mph. The plane, as many pilots and engineers described, would fly apart. The plane said to have hit the Pentagon is unable to fly 560 mph under 25,000 feet because of drag. The Pentagon is 84 feet tall. The Pentagon was hit at 5 feet off the ground at 560 mph. The “platform” had a wingspread of less than 10 feet. This single video alone disproves all testimony: - go to link for video

Then the NORAD satellite photo of the missile attack on the Pentagon was released, proof on proof on proof, no hijackers, no magic planes: - go to link for video

...

The proof goes on and on and on and on, but you cowards just won't listen.Every military and intelligence operation has a “cover and deception”... more

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Al Qaeda Magazine Instructs Followers to Start Forest Fires in the US

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

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.

ut all these 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.

Undercover operations, long practiced by the F.B.I., have become a mainstay of counterterrorism, and they have changed in response to the post-9/11 focus on prevention. “Prior to 9/11 it would be very unusual for the F.B.I. to present a crime opportunity that wasn’t in the scope of the activities that a person was already involved in,” said Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union, a lawyer and former F.B.I. agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups. An alleged drug dealer would be set up to sell drugs to an undercover agent, an arms trafficker to sell weapons. That still happens routinely, but less so in counterterrorism, and for good reason.

“There isn’t a business of terrorism in the United States, thank God,” a former federal prosecutor, David Raskin, explained.

...

Yea right...terrorism is big business in the US. We got all the naked body scanners after the so-called "underwear bomber." Then you find out Michael Chertoff, former Homeland Security director's private firm invested in them and were already ordered prior to the event. The list goes on and on: 7/7 London, Mumbai, Oklahoma City and the coup de grace of false flags, 9/11. Research OPERATION GLADIO...this sh!t's been going on for 60 years.THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years... more

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Italy: Jihadist Arrested in Rome, Police raids in Milan, Palermo, Cagliari, Cuneo and Salerno - Atlas Shrugs

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Report: U.S. trained terror group

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