Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) must have studied his Police State Handbook before giving an interview regarding the Verizon scandal, during which he expressed his personal delight at being surveilled. … Read More
Guns, the Great Equalizer: 10 Year Old Boy Trades Fire With Home Invaders
One of the suspects returned fire and then promptly fled the scene. … Read More
Congress Looks to Revise, Expand President’s War Powers
The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. … Read More
Schools scanned students’ irises without permission
Students at three facilities — an elementary school, a grade school and a high school — had their eyeballs scanned earlier this month as part of a ‘student safety’ pilot program being carried out by Stanley Convergent Security Solutions. “It simply takes a picture of the iris, which is unique to every individual,” Rob Davis, the school board’s senior director of support services, wrote home to parents in a letter dated May 23. “With this program, we will be able to identify when and where a student gets on the bus, when they arrive at their school location, when and what bus the student boards and disembarks in the afternoon. This is an effort to further enhance the safety of our students.” “The EyeSwipe-Nano is an ideal replacement for the card based system since your child will not have to be responsible for carrying an identification card,” Davis wrote. Parents at Daniel Jenkins Academy, Bephune Academy and the Davenport School of the Arts received the letter from the school board on May 24 informing them of the EyeSwipe-Nano program and that their child’s principal should be notified if they don’t want their son or daughter to participate. But elsewhere in the letter, the board explained that the program would begin last Monday, May 20. By the time the letter was received on Friday, iris scans had already been completed at the three area schools without a single student opting out, Angel Clark wrote for The Examiner this week. Because Memorial Day landed on May 27, parents were unable to receive confirmation from the school until this Tuesday, nearly one week after the scans began. In the letter, Davis described the scanning as a safe and noninvasive way of collecting students’ biometric data as a way of ensuring the safety of pupils in the Polk County school district. Parents are appalled that they weren’t informed of the program ahead of time, though, and are calling it an invasion of privacy. “It seems like they are mostly focused on this program, like the program was the problem. It’s not, it’s the invasion of my family’s Constitutional right to privacy that is the problem, as well as the school allowing a private company access to my child without my consent or permission,” one concerned parent wrote in a Facebook post that has since been shared hundreds of times. “This is stolen information, and we cannot retrieve it.” When the parent reached the school on Tuesday, she was told that the program was suspended. Reporter Michelle Malkin caught up with Davis on Wednesday and he apologized for the board’s actions and confirmed that the data had been destroyed. “Davis told me that ‘it is a mistake on our part’ that a notification letter to parents did not go out on May 17,” she wrote. “He blamed a secretary who had a ‘medical emergency.’” Polks planned to install EyeSwipe-Nano units on 17 local school busses starting next year. The scandal comes just months after a high school student in Texas was suspended for refusing to wear an identification card to class. … Read More
Rebel rehab: Former Gitmo prisoners to be ‘de-programmed’ in Yemen
Last week President Barack Obama announced the US’s readiness to lift up ban on repatriating Yemeni nationals from Guantanamo Bay top security prison. Sanaa has put a price tag on the issue, asking Washington and the Gulf capitals to fund construction of a rehabilitation center that will potentially soothe the pains of former extremists and disincline them from armed violence. “The detainees will be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society,” state news agency Saba quoted Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi as saying. On Tuesday, Hadi shared his views with the US Senator John McCain who is touring the Middle East. Yemen’s Human Rights Minister Houriah Mashhour told Reuters that the government approved the plan, but needs funding, from $18 to $20 million to bring the project into life. “The [financial] support that the United States would offer to Yemen in this regard will not be more than what it is [currently] spending to maintain Guantanamo prison,” Mashhour evaluated in an interview on Wednesday. She also addressed wealthy Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which promoted the power transfer in Yemen in 2011 and helped to stop months-long political instability in Yemen, to sponsor the rehab project. A large number, if not the majority of the Guantanamo detainees are from Yemen. Among the 86 Gitmo prisoners already cleared for transfer or release are 56 Yemeni nationals. The next 80 detainees awaiting clearance for transfer have unaccounted for number of Yemenis as well. Many of them are among the 100+ Gitmo prisoners who are on hunger strike, sometimes since February, demanding to be let out. Most of them were detained over a decade ago, following the 9/11 terror acts in the US and the American invasion to Afghanistan. Washington stopped repatriating Yemeni nationals from Guantanamo prison in 2010, following the 2009 incident of an attempted US-bound plane blast. A man who attempted to bring explosives aboard in his underwear had been trained by Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen. Yemen is one of the most impoverished countries in the Arabian Peninsula, which definitely helps Al-Qaeda cells, which traditionally recruit new members among poverty-stricken population. The Arab Spring protests in 2011 hit low-lived Yemen particularly hard, putting the country on the verge of a civil war. In the end President Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted and replaced with his subordinate Hadi. Though the situation in Yemen has largely stabilized since then, the Islamist insurgency together with Al-Qaeda are still targeting governmental facilities and troops in regular attacks and explosions. Welcome home Because of the extended US security concerns Mashhour does not expect the repatriation process to start before the end of 2013. While many of the Guantanamo prisoners were returned to the countries of origin, dozens of Yemeni nationals are still awaiting their fate in Gitmo. Mashhour stressed Yemen’s government is not going to put such people on trial because “had there been any evidence against them, the United States would have put them on trial,” she told Reuters. So Yemeni authorities are going to concentrate their efforts on rehabilitating the former detainees, Mashhour said, stressing that most of the 21 inmates repatriated before the 2010 ban have managed to return to normal life. She personally talked to some of them, she revealed, and shared that some are employed by Yemeni companies. As for those who opted to get back to militants, “very few did” the minister said, specifying she has no “precise information” on them. Mashhour pointed out that “rehabilitating [former Gitmo inmates] is an issue that is not exclusively a Yemeni issue. Saudi Arabia has a similar program which Guantanamo inmates have been put through.” She named poverty and unemployment as the main reasons for people joining extremists, therefore new jobs for the former militants returning to normal life is crucial. … Read More
UK Home Secretary proposes further snooping powers in light of Woolwich attack
The bill – widely known as the ‘snooper’s charter’– is making a comeback, alongside tighter controls on extremist groups, after a proposed stepping-up of Internet surveillance following the Woolwich murder. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg withdrew his support from the bill in April on the grounds that it was an invasion of privacy. This ‘snooper’s charter’ would have given agencies, including police and intelligence services, access to information and data collection by Internet service providers, including details of individuals’ web browsing history, social media messages and internet gaming, storing them all for 12 months. “Intelligence agencies need access,” May told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, going on to confirm that she was pressuring for the passage of the charter in the wake of the vicious attack that killed off-duty soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich. UK Privacy campaigners have reacted with fury to the proposed measures. “It is remarkable for politicians to be jumping to legislation to monitor the entire country when all the evidence to date shows this horrific attack would not have been prevented by the communications data bill,” said Emma Carr of the UK’s Big Brother Watch in a statement released on Sunday. Carr added that the law would hinder, rather than enhance anti-terror operations: It “would divert resources from focused surveillance operations at a time when the agencies are already struggling to cope with the volume of information available,” she said. One parliamentary researcher seemed to agree, tweeting that: “Security Services say they struggle to monitor 4,000 leads; how would giving them access to 60m help?” .@nickpickles @glyndaviesmp – Security Services say they struggle to monitor 4,000 leads; how would giving them access to 60m help? — Jack Hart (@MrJacHart) May 26, 2013 Michael Adebolajo, the primary murder suspect in the killing of 25-year-old British Army drummer Lee Rigby on a busy east London street, stated to a phone camera shortly following the event that the attack was a case of“an eye for an eye.” “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day,” he said.He and the second Woolwich attack suspect, the younger Michael Adebowale, were both known to MI5 but not assessed as being a potential“threat to life.” Adebolajo had reportedly handed out a wealth of extremist literature and made “rambling and intense” lectures on London’s streets. He was later found to have appeared in a court in Mombassa, Kenya, in 2010 and subsequently deported to Britain.It emerged on Sunday that he had been arrested in Kenya and appeared in court after being detained on the Somalia border. He was suspected of involvement in leading a group of Islamists to join up with terrorists in Somalia.One of Adebolajo’s childhood friends later claimed that MI5 had attempted to recruit him.The idea that the case was a lone wolf attack was later dismissed, as a further three men, aged 21, 24 and 28, were arrested in southeast London under suspicion of involvement in the killing. However, details of the case were not revealed on account of the sensitivity of the investigation. On Sunday, counter-terrorism officers arrested another 22-year-old man in relation to the killing.Michael Adebolajo, 28 and Michael Adebowale, 22, are both in hospital accompanied by guards following their shooting and arrest.In her interview, May also proposed measures banning groups preaching hate, suggesting that the threshold for defining such a group should be set much lower.“We need to look… at the question of whether perhaps we need to have banning orders, to ban organizations that don’t meet the threshold for proscription. We need to look at organizations outside government as well as what government is doing. Whether we’ve got the right processes, the right rules in place in relation to what is being beamed into people’s homes,” she told the BBC.The setting up of a new group on Sunday was announced by UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s office, stating that it would aim to fighting radicalism in schools and mosques, tighten checks on Internet material deemed inflammatory, and disrupt any “poisonous narrative” of hardline clerics, according to Reuters.“It will assess the range of strategies to disrupt individuals who may be influential in fostering extremism. It needs to confront those religious leaders who promote violence head on,” the office said in a statement, echoing May’s claim that “thousands” are at risk of being radicalized through the dissemination of information deemed extremist.May suggested measures such as the use of court orders to block some websites, using the justification that people are able to watch things online “that can lead to radicalization.”Anti-Muslim Sentiment grows?A British religious campaign group, Faith Matters, said that Rigby’s death had led to a leap in reports of attacks on Muslims, while a government-backed hotline reported a tenfold increase in Islamophobic hate crimes. Attacks on Mosques and anti-Muslim graffiti were among the offenses reported. The British National Party (BNP) held a protest in Woolwich on Saturday, ‘United against Muslim terror,’ and English Defence League marches in Newcastle over the weekend drew somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people. Marchers were heard to be shouting “Whose streets? Our streets” and “RIP Lee Rigby.” The EDL has a central London demonstration planned for Monday as well. Eleven people in total have been arrested across the UK for making racist or anti-religious comments on social media, according to the Daily Mail. Nearly two thirds of Britons believe there will be a clash between the Muslim population of the UK and the white non-Muslim population, according to a YouGov poll published on Saturday. Expectations of a serious clash have risen nine points to 59 percent, according to the poll. The percentage of respondents believing that Muslims pose a serious threat to democracy is up to 34 percent, from 30 percent in November 2012. However, two-thirds of YouGov poll respondents declared that they felt negatively about protests led by the two bodies, with a full 84 percent saying that they would never join the EDL. The Woolwich brutality could lead to long-lasting community relations damage, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said in a speech on Saturday. “Fear is an extraordinarily powerful emotion and when it takes root,” he said. … Read More
CrossTalk: ‘Democratic Iraq’ an Oxymoron?
http://www.youtube.com/v/woFlzGFWxk8?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Continue reading here: CrossTalk: ‘Democratic Iraq’ an Oxymoron?
