Reference Roulette

Jackpot for underground references. Got a new assignment a few minutes ago. I’ll be probing for resources and yielding what I find for the next five to ten minutes. Bare with and use what you can:

Havoscope –  Black Market Intel

Screenshot: Southwest U.S.A.

Immigrant sanctuary effort may head to Texas

Julián Aguilar, The Texas Tribune 2 p.m. CDT September 30, 2014

Those leaders are calling on congregations to openly offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who could be deported under current immigration laws.

(Photo: Julian Aguilar/Texas Tribune)

Story Highlights

• Faith-based and congressional leaders from Ariz., Ill. and Pa. announced a sanctuary movement
• Faith leaders were asked to open their churches, other places of worship to undocumented immigrants
• Leaders hope to pressure the Obama administration into acting soon on the issue
• The White House announced that it would delay any action on immigration until after Nov. elections

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El PASO — Faith-based leaders in Texas could be asked to open their churches and other places of worship to undocumented immigrants at risk for deportation as part of a growing national movement. And while some leaders say they would consider such a request — as some Texas churches did in a similar movement decades ago — others say they have been providing such shelter for years.

Last week, faith-based and congressional leaders from Arizona, Illinois and Pennsylvania announced a multistate sanctuary movement patterned off a similar effort that took place in the 1980s.

Those leaders are calling on congregations to openly offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who could be deported under current immigration laws. In addition to offering such immigrants protection, the leaders hope to pressure the Obama administration into acting soon on the issue. The White House announced last month that it would delay any action on immigration reform until after the November elections.

Sidney Traynham, a representative of Church World Service, a faith-based humanitarian agency and a member of the Sanctuary 2014 coalition, said that it had reached out to Texas congregations but that none are a part of the movement yet.

In the 1980s, more than 500 congregations, including some in Texas, joined the effort and built an “underground railroad” used by undocumented immigrants to travel to and from safe houses to congregations, according to the Sanctuary 2014 website.

Whether the effort can be duplicated in Texas this time around hinges on various factors, said Michael Seifert, the network director of the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network, a network of community organizations. Among them is the perception of why people are fleeing, he said. In the 1980s, Central Americans were engulfed in civil wars and mayhem that the United States was directly involved in, including the Iran-Contra affair. Today, most of the Central Americans coming into the U.S. say they are fleeing cartel violence and poverty. Though politicians express sympathy for the migrants, some also argue for swift deportation.

“It could be a really different response if we had Marine Corps or mercenaries going down the streets” in Central America, Seifert said. “It’s different in response to drug cartels going nuts.”

A U.S. Border Patrol spokesman did not return a call seeking comment on how the movement could affect the agency’s daily operations.

Seifert added that the conversations on whether congregations in the Rio Grande Valley should take part in the movement, or exactly how they can, are ongoing.

“I’m not sure we’re there yet, but I am also quite aware that the sensibilities of people wanting to take people in are,” he said. But the divisiveness surrounding the immigration debate might also be a reason for congregations to pass on the effort this time, Seifert said.

The surge of Central Americans, specifically the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have crossed the Rio Grande recently, has enraged conservatives who blame President Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, for luring the migrants here and causing the influx. Congressional debate on immigration legislation, which had stalled this year, is expected to re-emerge this fall. And following a 2013 Texas legislative session where few immigration-related bills were filed, state lawmakers are expected to be more active on the issue when they return in January.

The Rev. Diane McGehee, the director of the Center for Missional Excellence for the United Methodist Church’s Texas Annual Conference, said the concept of sanctuary comes from a simple belief: All people deserve a place of worship regardless of immigration status or any other factor.

The Texas chapter of the United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdiction includes 700 congregations, some which would consider joining the effort, McGehee said.

“There probably would be churches that would be enthusiastic about doing this,” she said. “And you probably have some that would not want to go that route.”

Ruben Garcia, the director of Annunciation House, an El Paso-based immigrant shelter, said he supports the sanctuary efforts across the country.

But Garcia, whose group took in hundreds of undocumented immigrants during last summer’s immigrant surge, adds that churches and other groups have been providing shelter for decades for reasons that are not politically motivated.

“The question isn’t ‘Is there the political will?’ because it’s been done before,” he said. “Right now we have 15 to 20 immigrants at Annunciation House. We don’t go out there and say, ‘We are declaring sanctuary.”

But he doesn’t mind if congregations in Chicago, Philadelphia or elsewhere do it for political reasons because the issue gets raised in environments where people are usually uninformed.

“They’ve got the theories, we’ve got the warm bodies [on the border],” he said.

The Catholic Diocese of El Paso, which provided temporary shelter to more than 3,000 undocumented immigrants last summer, expressed a similar position.

“The way the diocese sees it is that they have always welcomed the undocumented and they are going to continue to do so,” diocese spokeswoman Elizabeth O’Hara said.

Click here to read this story at its original home with our content partners at The Texas Tribune.

Reference: Shadow Economy Jobs

Ragnar’s Guide to the Underground Economy – Paladin Press

http://www.paladin-press.com/…/ECONOMYPDF-Ragnars-Guide-To-The-Und…

Introduction. 1. Chapter 1. Making a Living without Having a Job. 5. Chapter 2. Rules of the Road—How Active Participants in the. Underground Economy Keep …

First and Last

French resistance hero Raymond Aubrac dies aged 97

France mourns ‘last great witness’ of the second world war, who defied the Nazis and survived torture by Klaus Barbie

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Raymond Aubrac with his wife Lucie in 1987. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

France is mourning the death of Raymond Aubrac, one of its last great heroes of the resistance, whose bravery and exploits with his wife Lucie against the Gestapo became the stuff of legend and film.

Aubrac, who died aged 97 in the Val de Grace military hospital in Paris on Tuesday evening, was, along with his late wife, a leading figure in the underground fight against Nazi occupation.

He was a Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur, held the Croix de Guerre and Rosette de la Résistance, and was one of only around 20 surviving members of the Compagnons de la Libération.

He remained politically active to the end, visiting schools and colleges to talk about his wartime experiences.

Aubrac was born Raymond Samuel, into a family of Jewish shopkeepers, on 31 July 1914 – the day the French Socialist leader and celebrated pacifist Jean Jaurès was assassinated, just after the outbreak of the first world war.

After studying law, then a master’s degree in science from Harvard, he was an army engineering officer on the Maginot line on the German border when the second world Wwar broke out.

His parents, Albert and Hélène Samuel, were deported from France and died in the Nazi concentration camps.

After marrying Lucie, whom he met in December 1939 as a student in Paris, both joined the French Rresistance using the pseudonym Aubrac.

Raymond Aubrac was involved in creating one of the eight movements that made up the National Resistance Council. The main activity of his movement was to publish a secret newspaper called Libération, the forerunner of today’s daily paper.

Aubrac was arrested in June 1943 at Caluire, near Lyon, with Jean Moulin, head of the Resistance Council, and 12 other fighters. He was interrogated and tortured by the notorious head of the Gestapo, Klaus Barbie – nicknamed the Butcher of Lyon. Moulin died after the ordeal.

In an interview with Paris Match in 1983, Aubrac recounted Barbie’s pleasure at making his victims suffer. “I had the impression that he wasn’t really interested in the answers of the questions he was asking. His pleasure was to feel his power, his force, by torturing.”

Aubrac was freed four months later when Lucie led a daring commando raid on a lorry moving him and other resistance members from jail in Lyon. The episode was later made into a film.

Hunted by the Gestapo, the couple fled for London, from where Aubrac travelled to Algeria. After the war, he became regional commissioner of the Republic at Marseille, responsible for de-mining the coastal area, before taking up the national post of inspector general for reconstruction.

Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to “a heroic figure of the resistance”. In a statement, the French president said: “These quiet heroes who saved the honour of France at a moment when she seemed lost are dying, one after the other. We have a duty to keep their memory alive at the heart of our collective remembrance.”

The Socialist presidential candidate, François Hollande, whom Aubrac had openly supported, said: “In the most sombre periods of the history of our country he, with Lucie Aubrac, was one of the righteous who discovered in themselves, and in the melting pot of universal values that is our republic, the force to resist Nazi barbarity”.

Serge Klarsfeld, a lawyer and president of the Association of Sons and Daughters of the Deported Jews of France, saluted the “last great witness” of the resistance. “They were extraordinary people”, Klarsfeld said.

Lucie died in 2007 at the age of 94. The couple had three children and 10 grandchildren.

In an interview in Le Monde in March last year, Aubrac said the decision he was most proud of was choosing his partner. “You know,” he said, “in life there are only three or four fundamental decisions to make. The rest is just luck.”

• This article was amended on 12 April 2012. In the original version, the name of the Association of Sons and Daughters of the Deported Jews of France was wrongly given as the Association of Boys and Girls of the Deported Jews of France. This has been corrected.

Scientology.vox

Scientology on Campus: Stress Test a Lie

Source: The Northener,Student Newspaper of NKU; www.the northerner.com

Aaron Sprinkles, Viewpoints Editor
April 11, 2012
Filed under Viewpoints

As I walked into the Student Union this morning I noticed that Scientologists were administering “free stress tests” to gullible students passing by. I was shocked. NKU has played host to plenty of crackpots in the past, but Christian fundamentalism is, at least, a silly idea with roots here in Kentucky. For the uninitiated, Scientology is a pernicious cult created by a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard. Legend goes that, in the 1950’s, Hubbard entered into a bet with another writer to see which of them could codify their fictions into a living, breathing religion. This alone should be enough to give one pause when dealing with these people.

While it may seem unfair to label Scientology a cult considering the fact that virtually every major religion began in much the same way, I simply don’t care. The last thing this campus, let alone the world, needs is another body of un-falsifiable gibberish to be revered. The Church of Scientology is infamous for using litigation to silence and terrify its critics while cloaking itself in the language of tolerance. The freedom of groups like this to operate is the price of a free society, but the marketplace of ideas demands that nonsense be checked by the products of clear thinking.
As for the actual tenets of Scientology, the core is bad science fiction (as you might expect) wrapped in the kind of self-help rhetoric you can get cheaper at a Tony Robbins seminar. In essence, Scientology proposes that humans are amnesiac alien souls, possessed by a nebulous body of bad memories called engrams – which, conveniently, can only be purged by buying increasingly expensive “auditing” sessions from the Church. These sessions, a bizarre twist on religious confession, typically involve readings with the “E-meter,” a machine that projects an inconsequential amount of electric current through the subject, and a kind of faux-psychotherapy. Stupid, right? But as history shows, no idea is too stupid to be believed if sanctified by tradition. After decades of dispute with the IRS, the Church of Scientology managed to get tax-exempt status in 1993, paving the way for popular recognition of Scientology/Dianetics as a religion. The stage is now set for the group to extend its hold on the feebleminded, replacing belief in Bronze Age myths with a dangerous pseudo-scientific rhetoric designed to confound the most credulous sector of society.

Unlike some other cults which sought a high degree of control over their members, most notably Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, Scientology/Dianetics functions more like a financial scam or pyramid scheme with religious overtones; although, the Church has been implicated in numerous attacks on what they term “suppressive persons,” a definition encompassing basically anyone critical of the Church. Operation “Snow White,” perpetrated by the Church, is held to be the second-largest infiltration of the federal government to date apart from that of the KGB – the purpose of which was to destroy federal records of the Church and its founder. The act most revealing of the insidious and corrupt nature of this “religion,” however, was the attempt to frame journalist Paulette Cooper, author of a book critical of Scientology, by implicating her in a concocted plan to bomb the Church.

So what is the proper response to this odious organization? Ridicule. Intelligent ridicule punctures the pretensions of know-nothings who make it their mission in life to lead others astray. While sober debate has its time and place, charlatans like these disciples of Hubbard are undeserving of serious consideration and will simply convert any real argument into a perception of legitimacy for their cause. This can’t be allowed, and debate isn’t necessary. Proponents of un-falsifiable dogmas exist by definition outside the bounds of scientific debate, and can be safely ignored without consequence. The proper response to ideas espoused by a dangerous cult is not jousting at windmills, but exclusion and scorn.

Cold Porridge, Warm Pot:Cyberwar Update

By Paul Wagenseil, SecurityNewsDaily Managing Editor

updated 3/6/2012 4:02:39 PM ET

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All those computer users whose Internet access was about to be cut off by the FBI can breathe a bit easier.

Late yesterday (March 5), federal Judge Denise Cote granted the federal government another 120 days to keep running several Domain Name System servers that were keeping hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of infected computers online.

The servers had been due to be shut off this coming Thursday, March 8, after the previous 120-day mandate given in the original protective order had run out. The new deadline is July 9.

FBI won’t cut off your Internet for another 4 months

Judge grants extension to keep infected servers running until machines cleaned up

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com

On Nov. 8 of last year, Estonian authorities busted a low-key cybercrime ring who’d used a variety of malware, collectively called “DNSChanger,” to infect approximately 4 million PCs, Macs and network routers worldwide and redirect those machines’ Web traffic to bogus websites controlled by the gang.

As far as online crime goes, the Estonians were strictly white-collar. They made a small amount of money each time one of the unsuspecting users clicked an ad on one of their sites. Still, the gang made about $14 million in nearly five years.

But a side effect of the scheme was that all Internet queries from the infected machines had to be routed through servers controlled by the gang, most of which were located in the United States.

[ Will the FBI Shut Down My Computer on March 8? Questions and Answers ]

Advertise | AdChoices

So after the arrests in November, the FBI was faced with a dilemma: Unplug those servers and cut off millions from the Internet, or keep the servers, or facsimiles of them, up to keep millions of innocent users online?

Justice Department officials chose the latter option, and figured 120 days would be enough time for the infected machines to be cleaned up.

They were wrong. It’s not really clear just how many machines are still infected, but security blogger Brian Krebs cited as many as 3 million worldwide a month ago.

The argument could be made that if only a quarter of the infected machines have been disinfected in the past four months, we’ll be well into 2013 before they were all sanitized. Hence, some security experts feel that renewing the protective order would just be kicking the can down the road.

To find out whether your computer or network router is infected with DNSChanger malware, click here. If you are infected, make sure you’ve got a serious anti-virus security suite, update it and run a full system scan. If that doesn’t work, contact a computer professional.

WMDs and Plame on Film

 

At the centre of Fair Game, real people

 

 

By COLIN COVERT, McClatchy-Tribune November 5, 2010

 

 

• Story
• Photos ( 1 )

 

 

Retired CIA employee Valerie Plame and her husband, diplomat Joe Wilson sued Bush Administration administration officials in 2006, charging that vice-president Dick Cheney, his aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and presidential adviser Karl Rove destroyed her career when they leaked her identity to the press.

Photograph by: CHIP SOMODEVILLA GETTY IMAGES, McClatchy-Tribune

Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent working to curtail nuclear proliferation. In 2003 her career was assassinated. Plame’s secret CIA job was illegally exposed by the Bush administration in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, who had accused the White House of falsifying intelligence to mislead the public and build a case for invading Iraq.

Wilson, a diplomat posted to Africa and Iraq during the first Bush administration, conducted the CIA’s 2002 fact-finding mission to Niger, investigating rumours that Saddam Hussein’s regime sought to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium. His report concluded the story was bogus.

When President Bush reiterated the Niger allegations -the now-famous 16 words -in his 2003 State of the Union address, Wilson went public with his findings in the New York Times. His wife’s undercover status was blown in retaliation a week later.

The White House reprisal endangered Plame’s foreign contacts, torpedoed the couple’s careers, impugned their integrity and pushed their marriage to the brink.

Plame’s life as a spy and her betrayal by the White House is the subject of the Hollywood drama. Fair Game. I spoke with Plame and Wilson by phone from their Santa Fe, N.M., home last month.

What was it like to go from a life of secrecy to unintended celebrity?

VP: Very difficult. I went from a career where obviously discretion is paramount and literally overnight

all that changed. I have found it very difficult to be a public person. One positive thing that has come out of it is I have been able to advocate publicly for things I was doing while at the CIA, which was counter-proliferation. (Plame appeared as an on-screen expert in the anti-nuke documentary Countdown to Zero released this year.)

Some of your critics charge that you appear to be enjoying your celebrity too much, profiting from book and film deals and hobnobbing in Hollywood.

JW: I wrote an article asserting the administration had possibly skewed the intelligence to justify a war in which now over 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis have been killed. Two days after my article appeared, the White House press spokesman acknowledged that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address. Everything else has come about as a consequence of defending myself and my wife and my family against their attacks. If they had never attacked me, we wouldn’t be here. If they stop attacking me, they won’t have to worry about the sequel.

VP: None of this happened so we could write books, I assure you.

Joe, in the film you are portrayed as a man of considerable ego. How did that feel?

JW: What ego? I’ll just put it to you this way. When during the course of your adult life it has come upon you to face down Saddam Hussein and subsequently George W. Bush, then it becomes difficult to take people named Scooter seriously. (Vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby, one of the sources of the leak, was convicted of five counts of lying and obstructing justice.) I think my arrogance is leavened with more of a sense of humour than Sean shows.

How truthful is Fair Game?

VP: It’s not a documentary. It’s condensed, and there is some composting of characters. But I think it does a really good job of portraying what we went through, and the truth of the matter.

There’s a scene where someone accosts Joe in a restaurant as he is having a business meeting and accuses Valerie of being a traitor. Did that actually happen?

JW: I was in a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and I got up and left. This person went over to the people I was having lunch with and said, “If you work with Wilson you’ll never work in this town again.” But that actual confrontation did not happen.

Did the actors meet with you to study your voice and mannerisms?

JW: I spent a lot of time with Sean both here in Santa Fe and in New York.

VP: Naomi didn’t come here but we spent a lot of time together and we’ve become quite good friends.

What would you tell someone coming to you for advice about a career in government service?

JW: The 21st century is going to be perhaps more dangerous than the 20th century was. We’re going to need the very best and the brightest in our military services, our intelligence services and our diplomatic services and they are all great, great careers.

VP: I loved doing what I was doing and was proud to serve my country. Despite what happened to us, there are so many ways to engage. It doesn’t have to be at the federal level, but trying to effect positive social change, there are a lot of ways to do that.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/centre+Fair+Game+real+people/3781322/story.html#ixzz15NSS5RZG

Oochabatawata wata.. et alia:Weather Underground

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OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL

FBI informant to Congress: Investigate Ayers, Dohrn now

 

Warns that Weather Underground networks still could be operating

 

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Posted: October 22, 2010
8:30 pm Eastern 

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

San Francisco Police Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell was killed by shrapnel from an anti-personnel bomb built and planted by Bill Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, according to an FBI report

A former undercover FBI informant who once spied on 1970s anti-war radicals who bombed government offices is calling on Congress to set up a committee or task force to bring “terrorists” – including those who may be in high and influential positions today – to justice.

The request comes from Larry Grathwohl, whose book “Bringing Down America – An FBI Informer with the Weathermen” alleges Bill Ayers, a friend of President Obama, told Grathwohl that Bernardine Dohrn, who later became Ayers’ wife, placed a pipe bomb outside a San Francisco Police Department building Feb. 16, 1970.

The shrapnel from the anti-personnel bomb’s explosion killed Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell. Another officer, Robert Fogarty, was wounded in the face and legs and left partially blind.

What makes Barack Obama tick? Read about it in “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”

Grathwohl’s plan was outlined in remarks prepared for the Marxism in America conference sponsored yesterday by America’s Survival in Washington.

(Story continues below)

Grathwohl also appears in a series of videos to explain his concerns over the still-open case along with Cliff Kincaid, president of America’s Survival, and Max Noel, a former FBI agent and member of the Weatherman Task Force.

The first video of the series:

The remaining videos are posted on the Marxism in America conference website.

“My greatest fear today is that the Department of Justice (under Obama appointee Eric Holder) will protect these terrorists by blocking an attempt to bring them to justice,” Grathwohl said. “Consider that President Obama held his first fundraiser at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn when he was running for the state Senate in Illinois.

“Do you think there might be some resistance to placing these two people on trial for the murder of Brian McDonnell? These are President Obama’s friends. He and Bill served on a board and appeared at functions together.”

Grathwohl said a resolution would be for Congress to act.

“I urge the new Congress to create a committee or subcommittee to facilitate the efforts of law enforcement in bringing terrorists to justice. For example, a new House Internal Security Committee can assist in that regard. The Senate could consider reinstating a Senate Internal Security subcommittee. Such committees should also investigate the groups that represent a current danger to the internal security of this country,” he said.

William Ayers

“The Marxist terror threat has not gone away, as we have seen with the recent FBI raids on U.S.-based Marxist groups suspected of providing assistance to foreign terrorist groups in the Middle East and Latin America. Some Marxists are now openly supporting what they call ‘revolutionary Islam.’ Osama bin Laden is recommending anti-American books written by U.S. ‘progressives,'” he said.

WND previously reported on the links that appear to connect Ayers and Dohrn to far more violence that they might be comfortable recognizing.

WND also has documented reports from the FBI that Dohrn built and planted the bomb that killed a San Francisco police officer in 1970.

WND reported last year when top law enforcement officers in San Francisco signed a letter accusing Ayers and Dohrn of being directly behind the bombing, but the Obama Justice Department then told them not to comment on the case.

At that 2009 press conference, directed by Kincaid, the leaders of the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association made public a letter pointing a finger at Ayers and Dohrn that demanded those responsible for the bombing be brought to justice.

“There are irrefutable and compelling reasons to believe that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn are largely responsible for the bombing of Park Police Station,” the officers stated in the letter.

The San Francisco Chronicle then reported the police group members who signed the letter received calls from the Justice Department and a local police chief telling them to remain silent.

Larry Grathwohl

No one has been charged in the bombing. Ayers, a Weatherman founder, has denied involvement. In an interview with the New Yorker, Ayers said, “We killed no one and hurt no one.”

Of the McDonnell bombing, Grathwohl has quoted Ayers saying, “It was a success. But it’s a shame when someone like Bernardine has to make all the plans, make the bomb and then place it herself. She should have to do only the planning.”

In the conference remarks, Grathwohl said, “The charges have not yet been brought in this ‘cold case’ but I can tell you that a law enforcement entity called the Phoenix Task Force is working to solve the murder of Sergeant McDonnell as well as other police officers who died in the line of duty during that period of Weather Underground violence and terrorism.”

Grathwohl continued, “Justice can still be done. And that is why I am here today. I have recently met with the lieutenant in charge of the Phoenix Task Force. … He assures me that the effort remains focused and the motivation is to gather the evidence and bring the killers to justice. I should add that the murder of Sergeant John Young by the Black Liberation Army when they attacked the Ingleside Police Station in 1971 has been solved and successfully prosecuted.”

He also suggested there reasonably could be a sense of urgency over the investigations.

“Let me say that we cannot rule out the possibility that remnants of the Weather Underground network still exist, protecting terrorists and facilitating their activities. It is significant that the FBI recently updated its ‘Most Wanted’ listing for Leo Frederick Burt, accused of bombing the University of Wisconsin, on August 24, 1970, killing a 33-year-old researcher and causing $6 million in damage to the building. He is still on the run. Burt was not a member of the Weather Underground but a spin-off group,” he said.

The conference also addressed the work of Paul Kengor, whose new book “Dupes” shows how “progressives” have been manipulated by international communist concerns.

Kincaid also addressed what the Frank Marshall Davis archives at Washington University in St. Louis reveal about the communist connections and associations of Obama’s childhood mentor.

Infomation retail markets

Learn how cybercriminals operate, sell info

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Tags:

technology, save money / consumer news, ric romero

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Ric Romero
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LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Learn how cybercriminals operate and sell your personal information on the Internet black market.

Inside the Norton Black Market Experience truck, one can experience the inner workings of cybercrime.

“Cyber crime is an enormous underground economy, and in fact the Department of Homeland Security says it might be bigger than the international drug trade,” said Norton Internet Safety advocate Marian Merritt.

All it takes is an unprotected computer for cybercriminals to commit their crimes.

With your identity, they can create a virtual superstore, selling counterfeit Social Security cards, passports and credit cards with your name on them. They can also get access to your money.

One exhibit inside the truck features recordings of real victims, including one woman who thought she was safe until a key logger attacked her computer.

Stopping most cybercrime means having some sort of Internet security software, whether it be from Norton or some other source.

If you want to check out the Norton Black Market truck it will be at Fry’s Home Electronics in Manhattan Beach, located at 3600 North Sepulveda Blvd., on Friday and Fry’s Home Electronics in the city of Industry, located at 13401 Crossroads Parkway North, on Saturday.

(Copyright ©2010 KABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

By the pen, not the sword

POLITICAL PRISONER CORRESPONDENCE AND THE FBI

(from Sacramento Prisoner Support)

Recently we began receiving documents in response to a FOIA request we filed with the FBI about Eric McDavid. The documents have uncovered a few alarming pieces of information, but one in particular we felt it necessary to share with the public as soon as possible. For years people have been speculating that writing political prisoners would result in a person being “put on a list.” Unfortunately, it seems that those speculations were not unfounded.

We have received perhaps hundreds of pages documenting Eric’s correspondence with other people. These letters are not just kept on file – the Sacramento County Main Jail forwarded all of these letters to the Sacramento FBI field office, which then forwarded them to local field offices around the country (and to law enforcement internationally) to warn the FBI in other cities of a “possible environmental/animal rights extremist” or “a possible anarchist extremist” in their community. Originally, the FBI’s communications included a statement that “Sacramento is forwarding this communication for information purposes only.” But later, they began including a much longer statement which read, in part: “this information has been determined to be of such a nature that some follow-up as to the possibility of criminal activity is warranted…” These statements were included no matter what was the content of the letter – often the documents include the statement that the letter was “benign in nature.”

It is unclear whether or not the FBI is still forwarding Eric’s correspondence to local field offices. We have not received any documents dated after his move to a federal facility. It is also unknown whether or not all correspondence with political prisoners is treated in the same manner. What we do know is that if a person sent Eric a letter to the Sacramento County Main Jail with their full name and address on it, the local FBI field office more than likely now has that information.

We are not sharing this information to raise alarm or spread fear. We have every intention of continuing to write political prisoners, and we urge others to do the same. That said, we hope to expose the FBI’s politically motivated investigations and, unlike the FBI, we believe people have a right to know when they have been spied on. This kind of government intrusion could cause the “chilling effect” so often thrown about in conversations about 1st amendment activities. But when we give in to those fears, political prisoners are the ones who suffer. And this is exactly what the government wants. The state is constantly trying to expand its reach by gathering information about social movements and those who participate in them. Instead of letting this new information scare us into silence, we should use it to make informed decisions about how we support and prioritize political prisoners. This kind of repression has implications for more than just people involved in “activism.” Millions of people are incarcerated in this country. It is possible that the government uses similar tactics to investigate other communities that they actively repress. Writing our friends, family members and comrades should not be a justified excuse for investigation – no matter who our friends are.

We are attaching three documents. The first is typical of the documents the FBI sent towards the beginning of Eric’s time at Sac County. The second is an example of what they sent to international law enforcement agencies. The final document is an example of the later version with the language about “follow up” being “warranted.”

If you would like to find out if the FBI has been collecting information on you, here is a website that explains how to request information under the freedom of information act.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/press/information/topic.aspx?topic=how_to_FOIA

Consumer queries into FBI & DEA use of Google Earth

Consumer Watchdog wants to know what the FBI and DEA are using Google Earth for

By Shane McGlaun on Tuesday, Aug 10th 2010 No Comments

Worth Reading?

+9 [13 votes]

Consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog claims that the FBI and the DEA are making extensive use of Google Earth according to federal spending records. What those spending records don’t say is exactly what the agencies are using Google Earth for.

According to the records, the FBI spent over $600,000 on Google Earth while the DEA has spent $67,000 on the application. DEA records show that Google Earth is being used along with the agencies High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program that targets specific geographic regions where drugs are more prevalent.

The FBI is completely mum on its use of Google Earth. Consumer Watchdog wants to know if Google Earth is being used in racial profiling. I don’t quite get how old satellite images used on Google Earth can help catch drug traffickers unless the DEA is using the software to look for areas where drugs are grown in the US.

Privacy and Google Earth

Google Earth: Our Newest, Creepiest Crime-fighting Tool

Google Street View has been known to preserve records of crimes past. Now, a Long Island town is using Google Earth satellite images to go after rule-breakers. Riverhead has busted 250 homeowners for backyard pools constructed without proper permits. Creepy!

From the AP:

Sean Walter, an attorney and first-term town supervisor in Riverhead, N.Y., insists he is a staunch defender of privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

But Walter supported using Google Earth images to help identify about 250 Riverhead homes where residents failed to get building permits certifying their swimming pools complied with safety regulations. All but about 10 eventually came to town hall.

Google Earth has also become an important tool for the FBI, though they’re not saying what they use it for. According to federal contract records reviewed by the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, the FBI has spent more than $600,000 on Google Earth since 2007, with $320,000 spent on a product called Google Earth Fusion. Fusion “allows organizations which already possess their own data to input this information into Google Earth and display it in geospatial form,” according to Consumer Watchdog.

Hey, FBI, here’s a case for you: What’s that airplane doing in Bushwick?

Send an email to Adrian Chen, the author of this post, at adrian@gawker.com.

Tip Jar $20.36

Ok. you tell me how much this is worth in tUL’s tip jar…

I used to believe my eyes, but thanks to doubt and assimilation I’ve changed my mind. Now considering the amount  I hear, I have to take days if not months to find concrete supporting evidence before I go cockarell with a full crown at sunrise. Arlington, Texas and Fort Wort, Texas, CNN listed in the top four rankings of cities with the best water supply in the U.S.A. I followed some of both stories over time . What bolstered my suspicions was playing down in the allegedly “no trespassing” parts of waterways (In my defense there was no sign.). During the best of times in other jobs the whispers and bodiless voices articulated revenge for those green and who know how to stay biologically clean in and out. Personally speaking, cataclysm forced those two cities to improve water quality. Although I have no culprit to which to point, but I did come across an article talking about strategic protection of Texas’s water infrastructure being a point of great lacking. And there was no plan for changing that in the future.

Take that, coupled with the public broadcasting systems’ documentary about water wars, drilling and development in Texas. The shadow side of me wants to suggests corporate sabotage, espionage and maybe toss in a radical group or two. Throw in a backroom whisper or a soccer mom on the telephone in the backyard gaffawing over someones possession of a biological weapon somewhere between Azle and Rockwall and you have the making of the world tUL gleans on what seems a regular basis.

Take this with a grain of salt. Some of it is here say. Some of it is foggy memory. Some of it is recounting years old. But the makings of a good story from an inclination and a whim.

Fluted Frog, Esq.

Writer’s Note: Like in speeches don’t open by apologizing and most certainly don’t apologize for you opinion when you are writing. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. Which means you have just as much right to speak your mind articulately as another. On one hand Frog, we can use your opinions to fertilize others. Crap that don’t fertilize, is just a waste of time. Let the readership evolve their own opinions. Give a homosapien a chance to think, they might stand up for themselves.

~W.H. Tespid

Late Again:China Town Hall 2009

Can’t get to one of our venues around the country for this year’s CHINA Town Hall?  Then join our nationally webcast conversation with Dr. Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State East Asian and Pacific Affairs at 8:00 p.m. EST tomorrow (Tuesday evening, December 8), from the comfort of your home!   A few minutes before 8:00 p.m. EST, click this link and follow the instructions to log in to what promises to be an informative discussion about the current state of U.S.-China relations.  (To maintain the event’s exclusivity, we will not be posting the webcast link on our website.)   Please note:  If you miss the LIVE webcast, visit the CHINA Town Hall section of our website — www.ncuscr.org/cth — on or after December 10 to watch a recording of the proceedings.     More about the 2009 CHINA Town Hall   China’s rapid development and Sino-American relations have a direct impact on the lives of just about everyone in the United States. CHINA Town Hall:  Local Connections, National Reflections, is a national day of programming designed to provide Americans across the United States and beyond the opportunity to discuss these issues with leading experts.  The third annual CHINA Town Hall will be held at 8:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday evening, December 8, 2009.   The National Committee is pleased to present this program, which features a nationwide webcast by Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, followed by local presentations from on-site China specialists addressing topics of particular interest to the community.  Each program is cosponsored by the National Committee and a local organization(s).  CHINA Town Hall is generously underwritten by the Starr Foundation.   Prior to assuming his current position in June 2009, Kurt Campbell was the CEO and co-founder of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and concurrently served as the director of the Aspen Strategy Group and chairman of the Editorial Board of the Washington Quarterly.  Dr. Campbell has served in several capacities in government, including as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific, a director on the National Security Council staff, deputy special counselor to the president for NAFTA in the White House, and White House fellow at the Department of the Treasury. For a list of local venues and speakers please visit the National Committee website. AT A GLANCE DATE:  Tuesday, December 8, 2009 TIME:  8:00 p.m. EST PLACE:  For the list of local venues and speakers please visit the National Committee website.   LIVE WEB LINK: Click here

71 W. 23 Street Suite 1901 | New York, NY 10010 US

IRQ: Investigators Reference Question

1) Can cyanide be rendered undetectable in a water shed system?

2) Is there such a thing as powderless amphetamines?

3) When methampethamines and cyanide come in contact in an open body of water, what are the helath effects oon human, animal and plant populations?

4) If water poisonings in mass systems have the effect on human popluations in the manner of high anxiety and depression is the ethical decision to treat the body of water to counter symptoms? (i.e. adding a number of anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety pills to the body of water?)

5) Can antipsychotic mask evidence of harsher chemicals. (Stretch: is that way arsenic went undetected in the death of Napolean till decades later?)

Questioning conundrum: What is the ceiling on the number of drug labs does it take to poison a city’s water system a go undetected? Code enforcement problem or a prosecution boundary?