63 months!

Not one torturer, not one wiretapper, not one CEO of a major bank in jail, none. But Barrett Brown gets 63 fucking months.

Meanwhile, the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator threw down the gauntlet, wants backdoors from all tech companies running the communications networks.

*quality media counter terrorism

@lantern53

When you have a country were it is acceptable for SWAT teams equipped with more weapons and body armor than an average soldier in your national military to kick down doors and throw flashbangs into people's homes on the "suspicion" that a small amount of drugs may be in the house, or to intimidate peaceful protestors by raising their weapons towards them, when it is acceptable for the NY city police department to conduct secret surveillance on anyone within three states who happens to be a Muslim in the name of counter-terrorism activities, when it is acceptable to taze people simply because they don't provide identification upon demand, when it is acceptable for the police to go to the wrong house to serve a warrant and shoot the dog that happens to live there then I think it is only natural that people are going to hate on the police. The police in the US (particularly the LAPD) have earned the hate they receive ten times over in my opinion for a lot of the reasons he states in this video.

Like he said, the problem is that you are telling a group of people that they are there to enforce the law. Which isn't a problem until it dawns on some of them that they occupy a position that allows them to actually act above the law and get away with it.

Every cop should have to have a camera attached to their uniform that is recording at all times while they are on duty and that video should be available for a civilian oversight committee to review. The committee should have the ability to punish or fire officers who overstep their authority or misbehave on the job. And the videos should be public record so we can see both the good cops and the bad.

My understanding is that he owned a 2013 model. Also, @chingalera, my understanding is that the car was traveling south, and thus the engine was found a couple hundred feet in front (not behind) the vehicle.

Personally, I find this suspicious. Most suspicious is the call a few hours prior to the accident he made to a wikileaks attorney. Normally, I wouldn't expect official agencies to put out a "hit." There are just safer ways of going about preventing a damaging story, like detention, or smear campaigns. However, if it's possible he had damaging documents that he could release via wikileaks, it would be out of their control. In that case I'd entertain the possibility.

Also, Richard Clarke (former Counter Terrorism Czar) has points out that we have good reason to believe that major country intelligence organizations have the ability to remotely control cars. Further, he pointed out that this crash (especially the lack of skid marks) is consistent with such. He was careful, however, not to explicitly implicate any particular agencies. For my money, LAPD is at least as likely as the FBI. Those fuckers are no good.

@lantern53

i think the only thing manning did that could be considered "wrong" is the pure data dump he performed.

unlike snowden,who sifted and vetted the information and then forwarded the information to a journalist (glenn greenwald at the gaurdian),manning just dumped massive amounts of information to wikileaks.

but manning is also paying a high price and he is willing to pay that price.
so while i may disagree with his methodology i admire his courage to face the full force of the united states federal government.

its interesting that you find people who criticize the federal governments practices as being confused.
let us look at the definition of terrorism shall we?

from the FBI:“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” (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85).

now the key word here is "unlawful".
which can be translated as being "when THEY perform acts of violence against a population it is "terrorism" but when WE perform acts of violence against a population it is "counter-terrorism" because WE made it lawful".

the arguments is about distinctions and it is flimsy when you question the validity coming from a government which performs drone strikes on a daily basis on brown people.

when a person straps a bomb to their chest and walks into a cafe and detonates themselves in a crowd they are a terrorist.
when the US government sends drone strikes and bombing runs to a village in yemen they are terrorists.

there is no distinction.
just because the government proclaims otherwise or your desire for the US to be standing on moral ground are irrelevant.

they are,by definition,both terrorists.

and when you consider the guidelines put forth by the nuremberg trials after WW2,in which it was the UNITED STATES government which implemented the majority of those guidelines both bush and obama and consequent participatory members of those administrations should be (and ARE in the international court of law) war criminals.

but the united states government conveniently ignores just about everything outside their own interest.even if that interest after the second world war was to diminish the practices our very own government engages in on a global scale every day.

it is the height of hypocrisy and reveals a moral bankruptcy that is staggering.
when they do it =terrorism
when we do it=counter-terrorism

i call bullshit.

http://www.aclu.org/reform-patriot-act

http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/15/10-reasons-the-u-s-is-no-longer-the-land-of-the-free/

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/patriotact/patriotactprovisions.html

and for the person who mentioned that congress holds the most power in our legislature:
http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr/documents/MARSHALL.pdf

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/congress-government-spying-votes-charts/65969/

http://www.civilfreedoms.org/?p=7260

i could literally do this all day.
please understand my friend i am NOT buying into any media hysteria.
i just do not trust power and the past two administrations have proven they do not deserve it.

another point i would like to make is my suspicion is not the mere fact of a metadata dragnet perpetrated by the NSA.
hell..if you have a facebook you know your info is being jacked.
no..thats not where my skepticism lies.
for while i am not wholly comfortable with a government organization scooping up massive amounts of data,what bothers me far worse is our government expressly barring (verizon in this case) from letting their customers know the very existence of the program.

i also cannot nor will i ever accept the tacit and,in my opinion,bullshit reasoning that this is all about counter-terrorism.

there is far too broad a brush that can be painted with abuse.
and it is the abuse of power that i am concerned with.

see:
patriot act 1
patriot act 2
victory act 1
victory act 2
military commissions act of 2006
NDAA of 2012

which brought us the great hits of the past decade:
torture
warrantless wiretaps
illegal wars
assasinations
persecution of whistleblowers
persecution of journalists

im sorry man but we are in fundamental disagreement on this.
you see this as a necessary tool for law enforcement and counter-terrorism
and i see a horrific landscape of possible abuses by a government i feel no longer represents the citizenry but is,in fact,an arm of wall street and multi-national corporations.

and the possibilities of abuse are massive.

"I believe wiretaps are an important tool for law enforcement/counter terrorism..."

This is not Counter Terrorism, this is simply terrorism. Do I have to remind you of how COINTELPRO was used over 4 administrations to intimidate and assassinate those who fought for social justice?

"Contrary to media hysteria, Obama can't listen in on your phone calls or read your sexts without a court order."

A court order doesn't stop them, they don't listen to the courts. They use them to cover their ass but if they think my friends are organizing to protest they can read all about it in our emails and take steps to have the FBI Focus a crackdown on us. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

Now on to your direct questions.
"Do you all think that surveillance should be a legal tool in criminal investigations?"

Yes, but the government has never been interested in counter terrorism being called or assessed as a criminal act. When we started the War in Afghanistan it was to get Osama Bin Laden and we ordered them to give him up. They asked rightly for the evidence against him. We decided that it didn't matter, let's fucking kill as many people as possible and destabilize the region to get this guy, risking the deaths of up to 4 million people and increasing the threat of terror. The worst part is WE KNEW we were increasing the threat of terror, we did it anyway.

This is just one example there are countless others, even a worse one by Obama himself, it's a travesty. So no this isn't about Criminal Investigation, we have NEVER been interested in that.

"If yes, what changes do we make to current policy without rendering surveillance toothless?"

We address legitimate grievances with the nations and peoples we are wronging, and fall in line with international law. We increase terrorism on ourselves by our actions.

I've got tons more but this is getting long. The point is I'm not going to give this government anything. I'm not willing to, they've proven that they cannot have any sort of power whatsoever.

You specifically need to read up on some things because apparently you woke up today and believed you were dealing with rational people who are just trying to protect us. You're not, these guys don't work for us, they hate us.

@enoch @Fletch @Yogi

I've done a complete turn around on this issue for sure. After doing some reading, I believe this to be much ado about nothing. I know I'm taking an extremely unpopular position here, siding against the left, the right, the media and videosift, essentially siding up with Obama and David Simon. Taking an unpopular position has never stopped me before. /vanity

I believe wiretaps are an important tool for law enforcement/counter terrorism, but only if there are proper checks and balances in place to make sure that these searches are constitutionally 'reasonable' and not a means of abuse.

Contrary to media hysteria, Obama can't listen in on your phone calls or read your sexts without a court order. That warrant has been the go to check and balance for decades, I don't see why it shouldn't be sufficient today.

BUT IT'S ALL DONE IN SECRECY. Yeah, that's kind of the point of a wiretap.

BUT WHAT IF THIS POWER IS ABUSED? Then we need to reassess checks, balances, oversight, etc...

My questiosn to you:

Do you all think that surveillance should be a legal tool in criminal investigations?

If yes, what changes do we make to current policy without rendering surveillance toothless?

I'm open to any arguments you want to pose or any reading material you want to share. Am I missing something here? Change my mind.

>> ^VoodooV:
Who is he?


He's worked in Counter Terrorism (read Terrorism for the mighty) for a long long time. He was appointed by H.W. Bush to the National Security Council. He was also responsible for ignoring Saddam Husseins negotiations and concessions so we could go to war in Iraq the first time. He's just basically a shithead who has a lot of blood on his hands. Whereas Grover Norquist and that other nobody are just Tax whiners.

>> ^raverman:

America has some of the highest rates of crime and imprisonment of most developed nations per capita.
I bet most Americans don't even know that... or believe that the freedom and democracy makes the US a safer place to live.
but why?
Culture? Too much sense of individualistic entitlement?
Guns? How might criminality be linked psychologically to arming individuals that suggests a constitutional entitlement to personal violence?
System? Does Imprisonment reduce re-offending? are long jail time sentences better than rehabilitation? Are sentences appropriate to crimes committed?
Everyone's focused on reducing crime and not asking if the cycle of punishment may be part of the problem.


theFreak pretty much nailed it above.

America has turned prisons into a profit generating system. In fact, crime itself, including terrorism, has created an enormously profitable system - private prisons, private guards, private security, private counter-terrorism (espionage, etc.). all funded with the taxpayer buck by means of politicians who claim to "reduce" government at the cost of incredible windfalls to private contractors (and nice "donations" back to the politician).

To keep the motor humming, the lower classes are generally targeted.
From a propaganda standpoint, being poor (and black) in this country is pretty much equated with being a criminal. It is an essential element in the "blame the poor" lie for the woes of this country. Since it is drilled into our brains, our society largely doesn't give a fuck that the laws and enforcement of the laws are generally inequitable to the lower income class.

and so the wheel turns.
Only an informed public can fix this crap.

From www.washingtonsblog.com:

... Dick Cheney was in charge of all counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. See this Department of State announcement; this CNN article; and this essay.

In fact, 5 war games were scheduled for 9/11, including games that included the insertion of false radar blips onto air traffic contollers’ screens. Specifically, on the very morning of September 11th, five war games and terror drills were being conducted by several U.S. defense agencies, including one “live fly” exercise using REAL planes.

Then-Acting Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard B. Myers, admitted to 4 of the war games in congressional testimony — see transcript here or http://www.spiegltech.com/media/McKinney2.rm">video here (6 minutes and 12 seconds into the video).

Norad had run drills for several years of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, and “numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft”. In other words, drills using REAL AIRCRAFT simulating terrorist attacks crashing jets into buildings, including the twin towers, were run. See also http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/news_photos/Contingency_Planning_Photos.html">official military website showing 2000 military drill, using miniatures, involving a plane crashing into the Pentagon.

Indeed, a former Los Angeles police department investigator, whose newsletter is read by 45 members of congress, both the house and senate intelligence committees, and professors at more than 40 universities around the world, claims that he obtained an on-the-record confirmation from NORAD that on 9/11, NORAD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack exercise which involved government-operated aircraft posing as hijacked airliners.

On September 11th, the government also happened to be running a simulation of a plane crashing into a building.

In addition, a December 9, 2001 Toronto Star article (pay-per-view; reprinted here), stated that “Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated information, what’s known as an ‘inject,’ is purged from the screens”. This indicates that there were false radar blips inserted onto air traffic controllers’ screens as part of the war game exercises.

Moreover, there are indications that some of the major war games previously scheduled for October 2001 were moved up to September 11th by persons unknown.

Now here’s where it gets interesting … Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified to the 9/11 Commission:

“During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President … the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!?”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfdOwt2v3Y]

(this testimony is confirmed here and here).

So even if 9/11 wasn’t foreseeable before 9/11, it was foreseeable to Dick Cheney – who had been attacking democracy for nearly 40 years – as the plane was still 50 miles away from the Pentagon.

Susan Lindauer:
...
I got indicted for protesting the War in Iraq. My crime was delivering a warm-hearted letter to my second cousin White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, which correctly outlined the consequences of War. Suspiciously, I had been one of the very few Assets covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations for seven years. Thus, I was personally acquainted with the truth about Pre-War Intelligence, which differs remarkably from the story invented by GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.

More dangerously still, my team gave advance warnings about the 9/11 attack and solicited Iraq’s cooperation after 9/11. In August 2001, at the urging of my CIA handler, I phoned Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism to ask for an “emergency broadcast alert” across all federal agencies, seeking any fragment of intelligence on airplane hijackings. My warning cited the World Trade Center as the identified target. Highly credible independent sources have confirmed that in August, 2001 I described the strike on the World Trade Center as “imminent,” with the potential for “mass casualties, possibly using a miniature thermonuclear device.”

Thanks to the Patriot Act, Americans have zero knowledge of those truths, though the 9/11 Community has zoomed close for years. Republican leaders invoked the Patriot Act to take me down 30 days after I approached the offices of Senator John McCain and Trent Lott, requesting to testify about Iraq’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation and a comprehensive peace framework that would have achieved every U.S. and British objective without firing a shot. Ironically, because of the Patriot Act, my conversations with Senator Trent Lott’s staff got captured on wire taps, proving my story.

You see, contrary to rhetoric on Capitol Hill, the Patriot Act is first and foremost a weapon to bludgeon whistleblowers and political dissidents. Indeed, it has been singularly crafted for that purpose.

The American people are not nearly as frightened as they should be. Many Americans expect the Patriot Act to limit its surveillance to overseas communications. Yet while I was under indictment, Maryland State Police invoked the Patriot Act to wire tap activists tied to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group dedicated to wind power, solar energy and recycling. The DC Anti-War Network was targeted as a “white supremacist group.” Amnesty International and anti-death penalty activists got targeted for alleged “civil rights violations.”
...
I cannot forget. I cannot forget how I was subjected to secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony that denied my right to face my accusers or their accusations in open court, throughout five years of indictment. I cannot forget my imprisonment on a Texas military base for a year without a trial or evidentiary hearing.

I cannot forget how the FBI, the US Attorneys Office, the Bureau of Prisons and the main Justice office in Washington — independently and collectively verified my story— then falsified testimony to Chief Justice Michael Mukasey, denying our 9/11 warnings and my long-time status as a U.S. intelligence Asset, though my witnesses had aggressively confronted them. Apparently the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to withhold corroborating evidence and testimony from the Court, if it is deemed “classified.”

I cannot forget threats of forcible drugging and indefinite detention up to 10 years, until I could be “cured” of believing what everybody wanted to deny— because it was damn inconvenient to politicians in Washington anxious to hold onto power.
...

Kind of like how counter-terrorism succeeded when you praised the illegal kill order on Osama?

[Drops the mic. Walks off stage]

>> ^mxxcon:

did he throw something into the bus and it exploded or did he try to break a window and something detonated inside?
announcer toward the end says "exercise to free hostages ended successfully. hostages have been freed and assailants have been apprehended."
even bigger WTF, if they had hostages in that bus did special-ops blow it up?!


They did manage to get people out of the bus and they were still alive. I think it's just an extreme flashbang, very dangerous, mostly non lethal.

Your video, WTF Russian Counter Terrorism Training, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.