RawStory Reports
The spy shop that brought you the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program wants to expand its power under President Barack Obama, the nation's top intelligence chief told Congress Wednesday, in a little-noticed intelligence grab.
While acknowledging that many distrust the agency for its role in eavesdropping, Obama Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair said he believed the agency should expand into a permanent role in handling government cybersecurity efforts. [MORE]
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Napolitano on "Immigration" & Border Wall Fence
BTC Commentary: Preview of 3/2 Speech @ Brave New Books
Before I get too far in, I like Janet Napolitano better than Michael Chertoff. As odious and fascist as DHS can get, the lack of cash in our States is humanizing this agency. I appreciate that Napolitano is capitalizing on the pragmatics of managing the DHS budget. Especially when she says things like this:
"Look, you cannot build a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, and call that an immigration policy." - Janet Napolitano on NPR.
We are so "haters" on any part of the Real ID Act, including the ineptitude of a border wall fence. To the admission of Minutemen border watchers, the fence only keeps out 11% of those who intend to cross. Our translation: the border wall fence keeps out the handicapped. Thus, pounds nails into the coffin of the very dead argument that Duncan Hunter's border fence WORKS.
You cannot argue with Janet on this. She governed in a state where people die every year in extreme desert conditions to enter this country. She knows a simpleminded fence vs. desperate people will lose the battle. We don't need the Real ID Act to enforce immigration in Texas or anywhere else in the U.S.
It's time to face the Elephant in the living room. Ask yourselves why the U.S. has maintained policy of NOT enforcing it's immigration and then overlegislating around the issue and co-opting the immigration debacle as argument to muddy the political waters. One such case would be the case with getting too attached to the Real ID Act's rubber crutch immigration policy.
They can build the fence and then NOT enforce the Amnesty clause just like they maintain policy of NOT enforcing current immigration laws. Looks like we are left holding Le Bag with a new handy dandy big brother license as a reward. How does that make you feel?
If you can let go of the LEAST effective plan for immigration policy you can start dealing with the beefier issues: employment, labor and what real enforcement of immigration law will look like. However, that is not our chief concern. Our concern is our American Identity.
Don't make immigration the licenseholders problem. Napolitano is not out of the woods with us by any stretch. Her cattle call to the tech trough for RFID Enhanced Drivers licenses seeks to kick us back to square one.
Our biggest hurdle yet, past Napolitano & DHS, are people who believe that Real ID's immigration policy is needed. We have all the law and immigration policy we need- we just don't enforce it.
Again - don't make it the licenseholder's problem. We do not need biometrified licenses with Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative gridding so the tech contractors can sleep in comfort at night while our physical attributes are sifted by narcissists like it's their Intellectual Property. That is not what America is about.
We draw the line. We don't run our country like the Eastern block of Europe circa 1940. It's time to remind our leaders of America's real identity. The plan to catalogue you, sift and create a product identity for you is not your idea. It's not an American idea. It's a globalist idea.
Please don't concede to a place in your conciousness where you believe the policy generators who put Real ID in place aren't looking for a way to save it. Napolitano's re-branding of Real ID as Enhanced Drivers Licenses is an attempt to save it. You must resolve that this is not your life BEFORE there is an RFID reader on every shopping center corner in your neighborhood.
Before I get too far in, I like Janet Napolitano better than Michael Chertoff. As odious and fascist as DHS can get, the lack of cash in our States is humanizing this agency. I appreciate that Napolitano is capitalizing on the pragmatics of managing the DHS budget. Especially when she says things like this:
"Look, you cannot build a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, and call that an immigration policy." - Janet Napolitano on NPR.
We are so "haters" on any part of the Real ID Act, including the ineptitude of a border wall fence. To the admission of Minutemen border watchers, the fence only keeps out 11% of those who intend to cross. Our translation: the border wall fence keeps out the handicapped. Thus, pounds nails into the coffin of the very dead argument that Duncan Hunter's border fence WORKS.
You cannot argue with Janet on this. She governed in a state where people die every year in extreme desert conditions to enter this country. She knows a simpleminded fence vs. desperate people will lose the battle. We don't need the Real ID Act to enforce immigration in Texas or anywhere else in the U.S.
It's time to face the Elephant in the living room. Ask yourselves why the U.S. has maintained policy of NOT enforcing it's immigration and then overlegislating around the issue and co-opting the immigration debacle as argument to muddy the political waters. One such case would be the case with getting too attached to the Real ID Act's rubber crutch immigration policy.
They can build the fence and then NOT enforce the Amnesty clause just like they maintain policy of NOT enforcing current immigration laws. Looks like we are left holding Le Bag with a new handy dandy big brother license as a reward. How does that make you feel?
If you can let go of the LEAST effective plan for immigration policy you can start dealing with the beefier issues: employment, labor and what real enforcement of immigration law will look like. However, that is not our chief concern. Our concern is our American Identity.
Don't make immigration the licenseholders problem. Napolitano is not out of the woods with us by any stretch. Her cattle call to the tech trough for RFID Enhanced Drivers licenses seeks to kick us back to square one.
Our biggest hurdle yet, past Napolitano & DHS, are people who believe that Real ID's immigration policy is needed. We have all the law and immigration policy we need- we just don't enforce it.
Again - don't make it the licenseholder's problem. We do not need biometrified licenses with Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative gridding so the tech contractors can sleep in comfort at night while our physical attributes are sifted by narcissists like it's their Intellectual Property. That is not what America is about.
We draw the line. We don't run our country like the Eastern block of Europe circa 1940. It's time to remind our leaders of America's real identity. The plan to catalogue you, sift and create a product identity for you is not your idea. It's not an American idea. It's a globalist idea.
Please don't concede to a place in your conciousness where you believe the policy generators who put Real ID in place aren't looking for a way to save it. Napolitano's re-branding of Real ID as Enhanced Drivers Licenses is an attempt to save it. You must resolve that this is not your life BEFORE there is an RFID reader on every shopping center corner in your neighborhood.
Brave New Books Appearance with K. Albrecht
Katherine Albrecht,SPYCHIPS author
Reception, Panel & Book Signing
PROGRAM OF EVENTS
LOCATION:
Brave New Bookstore
1904 Guadalupe
Austin, TX 78751
A Central Texas Public Advocacy Forum on RFID Awareness
Featuring privacy expert and author, Katherine Albrecht
Sposored in part by Brave New Bookstore, The 5-11 Campaign, CETI, Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance, Truth Seekers South Austin, Freedom School Alliance
6:00 PM - Doors on Event
7:00 PM - Introductions &
Central Texas Public Advocacy Panel
Emcee: Randall Mach, Truth Seekers South Austin
Brief advocacy speeches on the dangerous proliferation of RFID microchip technologies as identity, followed by public input
question & answer.
8:30 PM - SPYCHIPS Book signing with Author K. Albrecht.
Special Thanks Catherine Allen of CETI for sponsoring travel accomodations for Ms. Albrecht.
LIVE REMOTE WITH DJ Debra Stevens, Charlotte Brown & George Butler
Broadcast Sponsored by 90.1 FM, Freedom Underground Radio,
Rule of Law Radio &
GCN Communications
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Katherine Albrecht ; Director of CASPIAN Consumer Privacy
(Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), an 18,000-member grass-roots organization she founded in 1999 to oppose consumer surveillance informing decision makers, universities, civic leaders, and trade groups across the U.S. about technological threats to our freedoms.
Sheila Dean : Grassroots Advocate for the 5-11 Campaign, Texans Against Real IDs - A public policy, legal reform, and media advocate leading Texas opposition against the Real ID Act. Read her blog: http://www.BeatTheChip.blogspot.com. Visit 511Campaign.org
Judith McGeary: Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance - An attorney and advocate against the use of microchipping mandated for farm animals. She and her husband also run a small organic farm, with horses, cow, sheep, and poultry, based on the principles of holistic resource management.
Lisa Cappoletta: CETI, San Marcos - Leader in the fight to restore sanity to animal indentification without the mandatory use of microchip technologies in pets in the City of San Marcos, TX.
EDL's "More Insidious" according to Privacy Experts
OPINION :Eleanor Duckwall on Incrementalism & Purpose of Real ID
BTC -Continued news from privacy expert, Katherine Albrecht about Napolitano's re-branding of Real ID.
LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Radio chip coming soon to your driver's license?
Homeland Security seeks next-generation REAL ID
By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Washington state's enhanced driver's license
Privacy advocates are issuing warnings about a new radio chip plan that ultimately could provide electronic identification for every adult in the U.S. and allow agents to compile attendance lists at anti-government rallies simply by walking through the assembly.
The proposal, which has earned the support of Janet Napolitano, the newly chosen chief of the Department of Homeland Security, would embed radio chips in driver's licenses, or "enhanced driver's licenses." [MORE]
BTC -Continued news from privacy expert, Katherine Albrecht about Napolitano's re-branding of Real ID.
LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Radio chip coming soon to your driver's license?
Homeland Security seeks next-generation REAL ID
By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Washington state's enhanced driver's license
Privacy advocates are issuing warnings about a new radio chip plan that ultimately could provide electronic identification for every adult in the U.S. and allow agents to compile attendance lists at anti-government rallies simply by walking through the assembly.
The proposal, which has earned the support of Janet Napolitano, the newly chosen chief of the Department of Homeland Security, would embed radio chips in driver's licenses, or "enhanced driver's licenses." [MORE]
Friday, February 27, 2009
Two suspected undocumented workers busted with fake TWICs
Just when you thought hyper expensive technologies made you more secure ... then THIS from LANDLINE magazine.
Two men face charges after allegedly using fake TWIC ID cards to work at the Port of Fourchon, LA.
BTC Commentary: I guess the idea here is that if you take the time to make an expensive, tech savvy card, those who intend to fake it to break the system will find a way. The rest of us shouldn't put up with the addded costs and the hassles managed into our already overcomplicated lives.
Two men face charges after allegedly using fake TWIC ID cards to work at the Port of Fourchon, LA.
The men, Ernesto Cordova, 25, and Roosevelt Amores, 32, were reportedly charged with illegal entry into critical infrastructure, in addition to invalid driver’s license charges after a security employee noticed several misspelled words on the fake TWIC cards.
“It was a pretty good duplication,” Callais told the Houma Courier. “Only with the trained eye would you see there were some differences between that and a regular TWIC.”
The men also are under suspicion for being the in U.S. illegally, the Courier newspaper also reported.
According to the article, Harbor Police Chief Jon Callais said that the guard’s port training helped him zero in on the suspected workers.
The Courier article didn’t say how many days the pair had used the fake TWIC cards to illegally enter the port, but the Port of Fourchon had been requiring TWIC cards for access for nearly a month at the time of arrest.
Police said the men worked for the Danos and Curole offshore-service company.
Callais told the New Orleans City Business publication in 2007 that Port Fourchon was vulnerable to terrorism at that time because it had “no cargo tracking system, no incoming vessel identification, no gates and no way to track workers.”
THIS JUST IN...
"We're supposed to be operating on a risk basis as far as homeland security," Dent said. "I don't think mule drivers in colonial garb rise to the level." - Charlie Dent, canal boat passenger.
Feds subject mules to anti-terror rules
UTAH JOINS THE FIGHT TO BEAT THE CHIP
Utah may defy feds on REAL ID
The state of Utah would thumb its nose at federal requirements of the 2005 REAL ID Act under provisions of a bill that passed the House on Thursday.
The mandate of the U.S. Congress, crafted by the Department of Homeland Security, calls for states to come into an initial level of compliance, including specialized photography to aid facial recognition software and the establishment of an accessible database, by 2010, with further requisites to follow.
Under provisions of HB64, sponsored by Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, the Utah Driver's License Division would be prohibited from implementing the requirements of REAL ID — a move Sandstrom said many states have already made.
"Utah … would be joining 21 states that have done the same thing," Sandstrom said. "This really is the framework for all kinds of government intrusion in our life."
Rep. Bradley Daw, R-Orem, testifying in support of the bill told the body that complying with REAL ID was not a simple, or inexpensive, task.
"It is not a minor change to the driver's license," Daw said. "The quote is anywhere from $20-80 million … we should be able to manage our driver's licenses the way we see fit."
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Rep. Raymond of Laredo Beats The Chip
AUSTIN- According to a staffer for Texas State Representative Richard Pena Raymond, DPS approached the Vice Chair of the Appropriations committee for funding to implement Real ID in the State of Texas and was firmly denied.
Full webcast on the day's appropriation hearing here:
http://www.house.state.tx.us/committees/broadcasts.php?session=81&committeeCode=036
YOU MAY THANK Rep. PENA RAYMOND BY CALLING HIS OFFICE :
Full webcast on the day's appropriation hearing here:
http://www.house.state.tx.us/committees/broadcasts.php?session=81&committeeCode=036
YOU MAY THANK Rep. PENA RAYMOND BY CALLING HIS OFFICE :
512-463-4630
OR SENDING A NOTE HERE:
http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/email.php?dist=42&rep=richard.raymond
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