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Keeping An Eye On Total Information Awareness
mesozoic writes "Wired is running a story about hackers publishing John Poindexter's personal information (like satellite photos of his home) to protest the proposed Total Information Awareness system. This is just too funny, and it may even raise a few more eyebrows among the national media."
TIA only serves to demonstrate the supreme arrogance of the US govt - quick! search the big database for "white van"
That was classic intercourse!
Poindexter could not be reached for comment for this story, and calls to his home phone now reach a recording: "The party you are calling is not available at this time."
:(
boo hoo... and I wasnt invited
It's called "risk management".
It could provide him and his supporters with some evidence as to why they need such a system. Something along the lines of "hackers" (to be written as "terrorists" in the PowerPoint presentation) being able to find high-ranking DoD personnel even at home, only goes to prove we need to keep tabs on everyone.
I'm not a fan of the proposed system either, but this kind of protest might do exactly the opposite of what they intended it for.All I can say is, awesome Simply awesome. :)
Of course, this could lead to new restrictions on who can access aerial photos, etc.
This space available.
Don't stop at Poindexter, We should setup a TIA-like program for all 'bad' politicians. I think we should do Ashcroft next, maybe a few of his sheeplings.
I want every little peice of information, right down to what toppings he orders on his pizza. Dont stop until they realise how wrong what theyre doing is.
I'd even be willing to offer some server space for a more elaborate project like this.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Focusing on individuals like Poindexter is too time-consuming and slow. We need to track everybody.
John Poindexter hasn't broken any laws
Sure he has, he just can't be tried and convicted for his criminal acts because Congress handed him immunity.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I don't think people are really trying.
I do not want publically available information like his phone number and house construction materials. I want real data, of the type the government is trying to conglomerate. Satellite photos Bah! What's next, a whereis.com map?
Print me a list of his credit card transactions, the itineries from his plane journeys and his bank balance and I will be impressed.
and one that illustrates the point excellently.
:/
it's particularly encouraging that the press don't seem to be universally attacking the stunts as well.
it staggers me that people don't immediately start shouting "1984!!" when this sort of thing is suggested. im also a bit disappointed that clinton is a supporter, i thought he was a bit more libertarian than that
"Rrrrrringgg"
(The mind boggles.)
I'm 29!
You have got to be kidding!
In you or I were in anything like his
shoes, we would be rotting in Levenworth.
Go read your history son.
So... when is the government going to declare the MS paperclip a terrorist?
What about the former criminal who's done his/her time and gone straight? Will they be marked for life because of some absurd TIA system? Will they have to wear a big C on their chest?
Sounds familar? This country is going down the toliet faster then my last bowel movement. It makes me sick.
...is good for gander. Nice little article, I really hope this little skit achieves what it sets out to do and doesn't end up off course, as so many of these good intentions do.
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
Good luck.
Here's something interesting ---
I wonder what will happen in schools in a few years? When we were all kids growing up, we were taught that we were the greatest nation because we had certain freedoms, that the government had limited power over watching us etc, instead of places like soviet Russia (where the CD players listen to YOU--- woops, wrong post) that watch and control their citizens.
What is probably going to happen is that kids in schools today will be taught (slowly as not to draw attention to it) that it is good and proper for the government to watch its citizens, that there is no such thing as a "right to privacy" etc... and kids being kids will dismiss our ideas of personal liberty, privacy, etc as old fasioned - or worse, that they see mommy or daddy using PGP or linux, or planting a tree in front of the security camera in their house, and thinking that mommy or daddy must be terrorists...
Just my 2 cents' worth...
RickTheWizKid
Last I heard, he was directly implicated in the supply of weapons to terrorists. Ok, he got immunity from a friendly regime, but Poindexter broke laws that any other person would spend a long time in prison for.
See my journal, I write things there
You're an idiot.
Adequacy.org is/was a parody site.
Someone mod him down.
Trying to change John Poiedexters mind is useless. But you CAN cut off the money to his idea so it can't take shape.
For the TIA to happen, there has to be money.
That money has to come from taxpayers, allocated by congress, then some government contractor has to take that money.
Give the TIA treatment to:
1) Congresspeople and their top staffers. Congress members who are in favor of this idea get the TIA treatment. Russ Feingold should have nothing to worry about, as he was the only one with a backbone WRT the PATROIT act.
2) The CEO's, lead techs and board of directors of the contractors who TAKE the "dirty money" should also get the TIA treatment.
You could start off with pictures, telephone numbers, tax info...that is low-hanging fruit. Add in any court cases they have been involved with.
I agree, this is so Orwellian. Wasting a unholy ammount of money, to filter a few bad people. Give them another black hole to filter money to politicans, ya thats the ticket.
I sometimes think, that our goverment has opened the doors to the world, not for cheep labor, not because of humanity, but to delute the mass of people who have voices and care about where they live. That gives them a agenda, a reason to clatter the sabers, and let you know how they are going to spend BILLIONS in finding the bad guys they let in. Oh ya, and help their buddies become rich. Why should they care, work two years, and get full pay for life.
I suggest you talk to your VOTING friends, parents, and anybody who will lend a ear, that this is a BAD thing. Its hit the papers here in Dallas, so it makes a nice conversation topic. Actually it helps having a known criminal working on it. Makes the whole administration look bad for supporting the idea.
You have that wrong. Clinton is not a "libertarian", he is a libertine. Big difference.
IIRC, the A-Team drove a black van.
;)
I pity the fool who doesn't know that!
Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.
- Oscar Wilde
After all, aren't we simply constituents making our views known to people who putatively represent *us*?
TIA: An Impossible Socialist Dream
From the drawing on http://www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm we can learn thar your "privacy and security" goes into their "automated virtual data repository". :)
I first followed the link to the Total Information Awareness page and while reading it I thought "wow, this is an incredible good parody page". Then reading the article at wired I realized that some people really had written that TIA page seriously and that such an organizetion actually exists. I am just amazed and somewhat sad that it is possible to be so naive and stupid and believe in such a "total information awarenes" concept.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
Using such playground language only serves to paint Gilmore as some juvenile lefty-crank. Gilmore's article would have greater impact if he chose to speak plainly and coolly in an adult voice.
We know he's emotional about this issue, but take a few deep breaths, set the emotion aside, gather your thoughts and express them rationally and clearly. There are far too many of us on this side given to tantrums and rants.
One Bush voter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ...
One of the problems of privacy advocates is that you can never get a reliable attributable quote from them.
To be honest, It is way too late to stop this admin. The critical time was shortly after 9/11.There was enough of a scare about 9/11 and anthrax (which the admin did a number of lies on), that this admin has been able to remove the normal public oversight and religate it to the politicians. So everybody went for an impossible security from terrorist and have now set us up for terrorism from our own government. Keep in mind, that for a long time, admins. have hidden what goes on by keeping it out in the open and changing the verbage on it. I was into, supposedly, a bio. defense project at a university back in the early 80's. As time went on, we were instructed by the DoD to make changes to what and how we did. It became apparent over time, that we were not working on defense, but offense. Yet, it was out in the open and appeared defensive. BTW, that is the reason why the US has pushed the UN inspectors hard in Iraq to fully inspect the universities.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Quote from DARPA: "The goal of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists - and decipher their plans - and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts."
What a load of bull*. Why has NOBODY asked the Security Services the following? I have posted this argument several times before.
Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"
This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something illegal.
It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.
They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.
This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from ZDNET: "Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols."
"Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home", you may foolishly say. Or, just as dumbly, "They will not be interested in anything I do".
This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in UK when government looked for dirt on individuals of Paddington crash survivors group. It was led by badly injured Pam Warren. She had over 20 operations after the 1999 rail crash (which killed 31 and injured many).
This group had fought for better and safer railways - all by legal means. By all accounts a group of fine outstanding people - with good intent.
So what was their crime, to deserve this investigation? It was just for showing up members of government to be the incompetents they were.
As usual, government tried to put a different spin on the story when they were found out. Even so, their intent was obvious - they wanted to use this information as propaganda - to smear the character of these good people.
Our honourable government would rather defile the character of its citizens, rather than address their reasonable concerns.
The government arrogantly presume this group of citizens would not worry about having their privacy invaded.
They can also check your outgoings match your income and that you are paying enough tax. What do you think all this privacy invasion is for? The War on Terrorism? You poor dupe. All your finances for them to scrutinize; heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent.
The authorities try make everything they say sound perfectly reasonable.
e.g. Officials from US Defence Department agency have said that they want, "the same level of accountability in cyberspace that we now have in the physical world".
Do government currently keep records of everything that you touch in the physical world to analyse?
No they do not - So then, is that the same level of accountability?
They wish to keep an electronic tag on you, like some kind of animal. Actually it is even worse than this - like some pervert sex offender that they have to keep track of. Would any person of intelligence call that accountability?
Do not believe the lies of Government - even more of your money spent on these measures will not protect us from terrorists. Every argument they use is subterfuge - pure spin.
In UK, the RIP Act is unjust - dim-witted ill-informed MPs believed governments 'experts'. Remember - they will get everything about you, your phone calls, emails, TV viewing - everything.
Americans - the Total Information Awareness plan, USA Patriot act and Homeland Defence - you are more technologically aware, are you really that easily led?
I cannot stress enough - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them. I know from experience, as fact, they have no morals and will purposefully twist this information to use against you. I have documentary evidence of this - actual government agency case notes. Should government take legal action to deny that they pervert how personal information is used, then these documents may be viewed in a court of Law.
P.S. The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization and the United States Department of Commerce are hiding the simple solution to trademark and domain name problem. The solution was ratified by honest attorneys. Please visit my site - not associated with United Nations WIPO.org. The United Nations WIPO deal with these conflicts - but are without honour and too cowardly to directly answer my easy questions (as are the US DoC).
All the information quoted in the article that people have dug up is publicly available anyway. If you want to make anyone's life a misery, get their phone number, publish it, post their address - and make sure to target geeks who think it's all very funny, so they'll get signed up for lots of mailings and badgered with phone calls. In cases like spamming the spammer, it's funny and appropriate. In cases like information awareness, making his address public is one step - harrassing him using those details is another thing entirely.
I mean, come on, they have access to all your information in case of need anyway. They can already subpoena banks, airlines, get your criminal records etc... so what if the FBI can access your records at any time? You think they're going to find it funny that you rent a pron video of animal action once a month? They're not even going to care... the local store clerk has far more chance of finding it funny. Having information accessible to governments is not a problem unless you're naughty.
If you seriously think that a central repository of information about you is so much worse than the chance of it doing good by catching criminals or terrorists, I personally think you're a dumbass. You think they're even going to look at your records unless the computer highlights something dodgy? You think that your credit card information will be published online for anyone to google? Yah.
If you don't trust those people who'll be working with the information, do something about it - lobby for better selection procedures, vote for someone else. If you think harassing somebody who rightly thinks it's a good anti-crime system is a good way of preventing the system occuring, ask yourself - who's it going to help?
...on a par with the usual juvenile Halloween vandalism. It's only impact will be to discredit the adults in the room.
That a Slashdot editor put down his comic book long enough to find this two-day old story so funny tells us a lot.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
This continuing story is based very little on fact, and mostly on emotions. Here are two of the points that I think cause some of the anger and confusion:
/. would argue that fighting terrorism is a bad thing. The policy aspect determines *what* information would go into the system. It would be totally determined by law, and like any law of this nature (IMHO) we citizens could (and should!) oppose ones that sacrifice our hard-won personal freedoms. This guy said it better:
1. The TIA system *could* be applied to personal information.
2. Poindexter is an unliked former government official with a criminal record.
Regarding 1, what people are missing is that there are two aspects (at least with respet to this program) of developing software: technology and policy. With TIA, the technology is mining large quantities of *some* data to find patterns to help stop terrorists. I don't think many on
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
Regarding 2, Poindexter was probably a great choice for the technical development of the program (he's really smart), but in hindsight a bad choice for personal reasons.
So what can we as software developers do? I think we have a duty to do what we can to ensure our programs are used correctly. Should people who do research into data mining stop because it might be used against innocents? No - someone else *will* develop the program, and they might not care about personal freedom implications. In the case of data mining, we should do as much to make the programs smart enough to limit (as much as possible) their inappropriate application to innocents. A few ideas: ensure that the program tells users when they are returning results that aren't valid, when they are being applied incorrectly, etc. But ultimately we cannot control how our work is applied - it's like developing any powerful technology such as, say, a web authoring tool - yes you can use it to promote hatred, tell how to bomb your local clinic, or publish my personal phone number and pictures of my house because you don't like me.
Just trying to present a bit of balance...
Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket? Then you belong in there. Poindexter doesn't.
So where and when do we start signing him up for mailing lists?
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
You just might learn something.
FYI: Guns are bad, Smoking is bad, drunkenness is bad, verbal abuse is bad, physical abuse is bad...is there anything else that your child is being taught that contradicts your style?
No Comment.
Here's a list of people who I don't like - please hurt them:
...
o
These acts are inexcusable. We may not like Poin. or what he is doing but it is all in pursuant 'of a better way' to stop things like what happened 9/11. It may not be perfect. It might not even work. But these childish actions only serve to add credence to the notion that much of america is apathetic and unappreciative of the liberties we do have.
I'm a law abiding citizen who never had a big brother. So be it if I do tomorrow.
my other sig sucks less
Why do I get the nasty idea that the some people in the military/CIA had thought of the Total Information Awareness program some time ago and were just waiting for a problem to propose it as a solution ?
I mean the horrendous events of Sept 11th didn't slip past the security services because there wasn't enough information available, they slipped past because none of the analysts connected the dots between known associates of terrorists in the USA + money being sent to these people from Saudi + lots of odd(*) people wanting to learn how to fly jets = big friqin problem.
Increasing the amount of detail that the analysts have to deal with would not solve any of the problems that allowed Sept. 11th to happen, but would make the governments job of cracking down on US dissidents easier.
It's the same in the UK. The civil service seem very eager for there to be a national identity card, and keep proposing it as a solution for a variety of different problems.
One year it can be used to combat terrorism, the next it can be used to crack down on asylum seekers. ooh how about we use to prevent identity fraud ? Every time the public refuses to accept this government monitoring of them, but still the civil servants keep suggesting the same plan over and over.
* Odd people = Students who come to the US on a visa, then are allowed to drop the studying and start learning how to do a job (breaking the terms of their visa), and who then act suspiciously enough during the lessons, so that the instructors call the FBI to warn them they think the students might be terrorists wanting to fly the planes into buuldings
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
It may be cheesy and sophomoric, but it works.
He is a fuckin' ratfink. Actually, I think the word 'fink' needs to be broadly applied to all of America's current ruling aristocracy.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Couldn't some resourceful and concerned programmer simply write and distribute a program that could automatically generate key phrases and insert them into chat and e-mail messages to trigger Carnivore? DOS THEIR servers with bogus warnings that could constantly change monthly to keep up with their filters? I am sure those we write to would understand and even adopt the practice. It would only take a few thousand people all answering their phones with a, "Hello, allah ackbar!, proceed with mission, what's up? How could they truly filter out such massive amounts of info? Jam the system. Bring it to it's knees.
After all, you voted these jackasses in when you voted for a demopublican or a republicrat.
I guess a few of you voted Libertarian, and thus can't be blamed, but the rest of you made your bed - now lie in it.
Lets say someone kills someone else with a gun. The act of killing can be judged based on many factors (although it is my opinion that it's easier to prove that any killing is in some way bad rather than that any killing is in some way good.) The act of being killed can also be judged, but only weakly ... what if the person killed ran in front of an operating machine gun?
But the gun ... no, the gun is neither good nor bad.
The sarcastic asshole liberal would also like to add, "I'm sure this is what you explained."
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
They can already subpoena banks, airlines, get your criminal records etc... so what if the FBI can access your records at any time?
That is the whole point! Yes the FBI can get this information, but first they have to prove to a judge that there is probable cause that you are breaking the law. They can't just walk down the hallway and say, give me everything on X and don't ask why.
The US Constitution and laws are built this way for a reason. There is a whole system of Checks and Balances to help prevent misuse of power. To prevent, specifically, the tyranny the colonies were living with under the English rule. How have those goals to prevent tyranny changed in 200 years?
That haven't; some politicians have just forgotten why the country was formed.
Come on everyone, this whole post is basic 9th grade civics.
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
Partial Quote Below
to quote:
1)...INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA...
2)...Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"...
3)...e.g. Officials from US Defence Department agency have said that they want, "the same level of accountability in cyberspace that we now have in the physical world". Do government currently keep records of everything that you touch in the physical world to analyse? No they do not - So then, is that the same level of accountability?...
4)...Americans - the Total Information Awareness plan, USA Patriot act and Homeland Defence - you are more technologically aware, are you really that easily led?...
Now to respond to those, as a citizen of the US, and a recent voting-age person:
1)Correct...the terrorists despise the US, and all of our technology...if they use it, then they're being massively hypocritical, although apparently, one of the Sept. 11, 2001 attack terrorists
(referring to it as 9.11 is dumb...there's been 2002 9.11's since we started calling it AD..., in fact, I had a test question "when was 9/11?" answers:
a)9/11/04
b)9/11/03
c)9/11/01
d)9/7/95
I told the teacher, technically, a, b and c were correct.) had a hotmail email account, but the account timed out *60 days unuse, account cleaned* and the gov't was mad that it had, MS then said 'sorry, we didn't know.'
2)If we have nothing to fear, then we shouldn't have the TIA passed/created. Go take a look at the movie "Minority Report" (BTW, I haven't personally seen the movie...but from what I understand, it's about a time when police go back in time/look into the future to see and to stop 'future crimes,' and then the main character is hunted down for some 'future crime' and it's apparently a set-up) and you'll see what'll happen with this system...it's pretty much the same thing, IMHO.
3)The problem with cyberspace is that in one way or another, every shred of information passes through the top-level (Tier-1) ISP's, which are the ISP's ISP's...so all the gov't would have to do is tie into THAT system (instead of installing monitors in EVERY local ISP) and so they can have much more 'accountability.' But, in cyberspace, most things that are said or done do little permanant damage, notwithstanding viruses, and attacking key computer systems. (central databases, traffic control...neither of which should be connected to the internet anyway)
4)Those of us on Slashdot here ARE aware of what's going on...but there's only about 1/2 to 1 million of us maximum...and most of us don't have the time/resources/willingness to do anything about it...I would, and I do, as a member of my high school's journalism class, I cover all the MS and privacy stuff...and if need be, I'd be willing to vote for/run for a certain position if I could only get some more people to help.
Most of America is quite ignorant or else doesn't really care, that's where half the problem lies. The other half is that the big media conglomerates are probably some of those that would benefit (secretly, of course) from this database, and thus are either keeping it quiet, or else providing a positive spin on it, whenever they present it in the news.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The next addition (if it's not part already) of TIA will be keeping track of who accesses public databases looking for information about public figures.
Remember our good friend Henry Kissinger? He just resigned from the non-partisan committee to investigate September 11, and changed his answering machine message because of all the flak over having a war criminal and cover-up artist in charge of the most sensitive piece of police work going on right now. I'm sure he's in favor of locking up people who look for his personal info... or at least overthrowing their democratically elected leaders and installing a dictator who will kill them anyway.
(aside: I can't stop laughing at this one joke on the most recent page of Get Your War On -- When Kissinger signs a government paycheck, does he use a ballpoint pen, or the bloody, severed limb of an East Timorese child?)
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
I may be off base here, but every time I see what is effectively a "There will be too much data for them to abuse (or attack one person)" I think the following:
That sounds, and is, silly; you only need to use a small part of the border to cross illegally. I think the "too much data" argument is equally silly. You don't need to use all of the data provided to perform illegal actions, just a small part of it. Similarly, adding a bunch of noise won't prevent someone from being persecuted because they emailed the same phrase as a joke.
Putting data into one place is dangerous, period.
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
Visit
.
Get Your War On for the latest updates on how the Cheney
Rumsfeld administration is profiting.
CANADIANS TO LEAD WEAPONS INSPECTION TEAM INTO USANovember 21, 2002
(Toronto) - A coalition of Canadian peace groups today
announced their intention to send an international team of
volunteer weapons inspectors into the United States later
this winter. The coalition, Rooting Out Evil, are recruiting
inspectors through their newly launched website,
Routing Out Evil
"Our action has been inspired by none other than George W.
Bush," said Christy Ferguson, a spokesperson for the group.
"The Bush administration has repeatedly declared that the
most dangerous rogue nations are those that:
1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, andnuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties; and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.
"On the basis of President Bush's guidelines, it is clear
that the current U.S. administration poses a great threat to
global security," said Ferguson. "We're following Bush's
lead and demanding that the U.S. grant our inspectors
immediate and unfettered access to any site in the country -
including all presidential compounds - so that we can
identify the weapons of mass destruction in this rogue
state," added David Langille.
Visitors to Rooting Out Evil's website are invited to sign
on as honorary members of the weapons inspection team.
Honorary inspectors can participate in the action, or they
can simply lend the support of their name as they would on a
petition. The actual inspection team that crosses the
border will be comprised of prominent individuals from
Canada and other countries.
The Rooting Out Evil coalition includes Greenpeace Canada,
the Centre for Social Justice, and the Toronto Committee
Against War and Sanctions on Iraq, and is supported by
American groups such as the National Network to End the War
Against Iraq, Global Exchange and the US section of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. They
oppose the development, storage, and use of weapons of mass
destruction by any state.--For information: David Langille or Christy Ferguson
info@rootingoutevil.orgDavid Langille, Director of Public Affairs
CENTRE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE489 College Street, Suite 303Toronto, OntarioM6G 1A5
Tel: 416-927-0777 x225Fax: 416-927-7771Toll free: 1-888-803-8881
Email: langille@socialjustice.orgWebsite: http://www.socialjustice.org
Not interested in a war against Iraq?
Become a Weapons Inspector
Cheers,
Woot
John Poindexter August 8, 1936
Linda Poindexter July 24, 1938
Thank god that Pointdexter isn't a criminal or anything. .
Then the TIO would be rotten from the
start
Once again, life imitates humorous SciFi - the TIA project sounds amazingly like the Total Perspective Vortex.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I'm tired of hearing the "connect the dots" argument for two reasons.
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
If information like taxes, license plates and vehicle registration, purchase patterns, driving records, medical treatments, etc., were universally and publically available, I think we would have fewer problems than we have now. Most people would realize that their deep, dark secrets are not so deep and dark--that there are many other people with similar issues. It would keep politicians and regular folks more honest and polite--because nothing would be really anonymous anymore. And blackmail would be pretty much impossible--how can you blackmail someone if everybody can find out almost anything anyway? And, finally, people could negotiate their salaries sensibly--right now, chances are you don't know how much you are being paid relative to your co-workers--how can you ever get an efficient labor market if the prices are not known?
Of course, public access does not mean that things need to be as easy as Googling someone. I think Brin has captured a good balance between privacy and publically accessible information in his book "Kiln People" (it's incidental to the story): basically, you can find out, but the data is not aggregated in a single place, so if you do want to find out, it still costs you some time and money.
They can do this. You are correct. But this requires concent of something called a "judge". I like to think of this "judge" as an impartial third party with little interest besides the law. Under the TIA, they won't need a judge, they can just access all your information and profile you.
Ok... let's throw up a for instance. You make a large cash withdrawl to loan a friend money for rent. You have to do this every couple of months he's kind of down on his luck. Now you go to the book store to purchase a book for your English class, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. A couple months later you move to Chicago, so you buy a one way plane ticket. No big deal, you are not doing anything wrong.
Now, do the same things, for the same reasons, being a 26 year old Middle Eastern Male...... Now you have the FBI NSA ATF etc. grilling you. But you weren't being "naughty." just "Middle Eastern."
I am just trying to help you see the flaws in your logic. You are entitled to that opinion. Just as I am entitled to the opinion that if you seriously think a central repository of information will do so much good in catching terrorists, that you would waive your right to privacy and proper searches, I personally think you're a coward.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
How is it that Americans protesting their government's actions somehow amounts to their being apathetic? Seems QUITE the opposite to me.
Our founding fathers fought, and many of them died, just to avoid having a government that interfered too much. Perhaps this needs to happen again, but I'd rather see it not happen.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I'd make the observation that, by your logic, the idea of the FBI keeping files on say .... John Lennon, for instance, should just be accepted as all part of the effort to fight communism. And if an unnamed government source, ala Richard Jewel, accidently leaked, at the height of The Beatles popularity, that Lennon had a particular affinity for child porn, as long as the government prints an official appology on A23 in the smallest italics the intelligence community can afford, it's just part of the price we all must pay.
You sir, are a bonafide optimist. I, however, consider myself more pragmatic. I find myself unable to place my faith in a "higher power", and unwilling to place it, perhaps more precariously, in my fellow man.
Why would Kenneth Lay lie, he's a shareholder too! As an example.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
--in a reverse sort of way, poindexter and kissinger were great appointees to repectably TIA and one of the 9-11 "truth finding" commissions, they helped focus on the fact how BOGUS they are. The media and public reaction have been pretty good-almost universal condemnation. Much better this junta tips their hand to their true agenda by showing who they think are "good guys" that they pick, known past goons. Just their "goonishness" magnified the press coverage and contributes to the needed outrage. And that TIA logo? HAHAHAHA! Just about anyone can look at that and see it's just weird cult demonic, it looks terrible, it's scary looking to most sane adults. I'm glad the junta is being so stupid, more and more people are tumbling to their agendas.
My car has killed more animals than my gun has. Does that mean my car is bad too?
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
The Admiral Poindexter Aerial Webcam
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I have a different take on it. I think this event was allowed to happen, on purpose, for precisely the "bad" political agenda you can imagine. The most common analogy used for this is 9-11 was a "reichstagg fire" event.
Relevant link here, government prior knowledge
Just some of the biggees are high level people warned not to fly prior to 9-11, air force non-standard emergency measures in regards to hijacking information, stock market airlines stock short selling immediately prior to 9-11 by brokerages connected to the cia, high level officials ordering lower level to cease investigations, the bin laden family jet being allowed to leave the country when every single other private airplane was ordered grounded, thousands of "taliban" officials and fighters flown out of afghanistan on US military jets during a "time out" period in the war over there, and etc. Check out the link (anyone), there's many hours worth of reading there.
wait a few days and ring him again
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Can't say that I take all this at face value, but for the most part, tin-foil hats are not required at this site. If nothing else, the Bush/Skull and Bones connection is an interesting read.
TIA won't save us. If everyone had access to it, maybe. There will always be someone who can buy/legislate their way out.
"All animals are equal. Some are more equal than others." - Animal Farm (required reading for our present administration)
Justin Raimondo is bright enough to know the difference between totalitarianism and socialism.
That, or he's ready to "out" the Republican party as some crypto-Marxist fifth column. "Comrade Poindexter! Front and center!"
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
It's not like that's been a controversial topic that anyone has questioned at all until now.
Who the hell are you to say? Have you ever:
-Owned and worked on a large working farm range
-Lived in a ghetto
-Been a social worker
-Owned & lived on a boat
-Been somewhere where you COULDN'T shop at a grocery for your food
This assumption that guns are for amusement and that no one outside of the 'authorities' could possibly need one is small minded, or at least suburban minded. And as for disproportionate gun violence in the US--greater than greater-per-capita gun owning nations--welcome to a striated, diverse mix of cultures. You're beginning to see it in the UK with the Yardies, but for the most part, the UK is a VERY homogenous culture. There is no more culturally heterogeneous nation than the US--and the differences between all of these cultures manifest themselves in extremes. We have extreme victories, and extreme violence and suffering. Hopefully someday we'll all grow up. Until then, just taking away more of our priveledges, and adding more laws, is certainly not the answer.
Similarly, unless there are some interesting other factors (the person involved is politically important or has bribed the judge involved or ...) a prosecutor (or law enforcement group) seeking a warrant can often manage to get most any warrant signed. They often get to pick the judge, they get to present whatever subset of the information they have that will present their case te best and so on. Its not quite a rubber stamp.
take the responsibility to raise your own children.
Don't send them to "school." What? your afraid they wont develop social skills? There are all sorts of way to have you kids interact with other folks. In fact schools teach kids quite lossy social skills: They teach how to "fit in"; there social skills fall to the lowest common denomiator. You've got to give your kids a good example; other kids make bad examples; its like the prison system: a guy not so bad goes in to prison and comes out quite the hardened criminal. I propose instead that you take your kids out with you in various social conditions and let them see how you behave ( be on your best behaviour, of course).
What other animals hurd there young together to teach themselves social skills?
Of course, if your just too lazy, then continue to use the free day-care we call public school. Just realize all the "molestations" your kid endures. Sometime in there teens they will call you an "asshole."
The wrong is in the doing, not in the whom it is done to.
Later this afternoon I'm going to drive over to his house and take some pictures with my digital camera and put 'em on the web. So far we've got all of his info and even satellite pictures, but no actual pictures. And since I live so close I figure I might as well do what thousands of nerds in my position would do on their own. I'll be posting the link to the pics as a follow-up to this post as soon as I take them this afternoon.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
He makes a point even if the moderators don't realize it. Do the people who make our laws and policies, as well as implimentation suffer under them? Will the people who allow measures like the DMCA, TIA, Broadcast flag and other such, have to suffer under the effects of them? Or is the US being seperated into two classes? Those who suffer the effects of the bad laws, and those who don't. When will we read about senator so and so not being able to tape a program off cable because of the broadcast flag? Or a democrat being hauled away because he inadvertantly violated the DMCA?
It's very simple.
http://www.pgpi.org
Is good if your paraniod.
Or if you make everyone information avalable then because everyone can get anything on aynone no one has to wory about someone having power,because no one will. It's the cold war, or MAD scenariod (Mutualy Assured Destruction official acronnyme) In wich because everyone has the ability to destroy everyone and everything, no one dares take that step.
Of course this is not a garuntee
Poindexter is a convicted felon (two counts). He was given immunity against implicating himself with his testimony to congress, convicted of lying under oath, and his immunity was stretched to include lying to congress, not just confessing honestly.
Lots of Reaganite felons are getting jobs these days. How easy is it for a typical convicted felon to get a job? Hint: most jobs are not open to felons.
I know a lot of you out there are thinking that the liberals should be against the TIA thingy, but it really should be the Republicans that have a shitfit over this crap.
The good old Republican party used to be for less government and less government in your shit. What the hell happened to that? These fucking neo-cons that are running our country are scary mofos.
Yes the ACLU should be throwing a fit and they are, but everyone (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Greens) should be putting up their fists and fighting this blatant abuse of power.
Please write or fax your politicians and tell them what you think. Harassing some dork with phone calls is funny, but this aint Crank Yankers this is politics and prank phone calls are going to stop anything. The only hope is that the media stop sucking Bush's dick and start talking some smack.
LoRider
Seriously. Easy or not, do we really want everybody's personal information accessible?
Also, if information is difficult to access, but still present, who will be the most likely to search it out? We can see who right now - those who want to cause some form of embarrassment or harm to the person.
What happens to the woman who's husband was abusing her if he can track down where she now lives? What happens to the poor 68 year old single man who happens to use his credit card to buy a lot of lacey underwear and garters that happen to be his size? How about the head of the PTA or school principal who in her off hours frequents the fetish clubs?
Maybe you won't try to impose your morals on these people, but can you honestly say there's nobody out there who will?
Brin's arguments are nearly as flawed as Marx's in that they fail to take into account basic human nature, and give all the power to those people who have no sense of shame - usually those who believe their actions are the most righteous.
Also, when reading Brin's Transparent Society, he horribly glosses over the problems of inequitable power. He blithely assumes that if we can see all our bosses peccadillos we will have as much power over our boss as he does over us. Of course, this is ludicrous - we can't fire our boss if we don't like his choice of reading material.
If we all lived in a world where people used reason above all else to make their choices, maybe the fully transparent society would be a good one. Unfortunately, we don't. People tend to be reactionary, prejudiced, and frightened. Knowing something does not equate to understanding it, and as a whole, we tend to react violently to things we don't understand.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
The web bites back
From the story: His complaint caused glee on the Slashdot website which hatched the junk mail plan.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
So lets say as an example of the kind of gun used to shoot up an entire school, someone brings an AK into school, but it's not a REAL gun, just a SCALE MODEL, the FORM of a gun without the FUNCTION, and it wouldn't have bullets in it anyway so it's not dangerous, so you gotta just think of the risk to the children, and don't worry about it otherwise, and anyway why wouldn't they just sneak in a box cutter disguised as a nail clipper if they wanted to kill people? And anyway, objects aren't GOOD or BAD, cause you'd need an infinite list of objects, or you could just say "weapons" aren't allowed like most schools do.... christ man, off the caffeine and Plato, they don't mix. quit putting the "pretentious" in "pseudo-intellectual," ya know?
About an hour ago, I saw one of those commercials from the President's Ass...err...Ad Council. It was that commercial where you first see a neighborhood with no flags in it, then the commentator says something like, "Terrorists thought they could change America on nine-eleven...they did", and then you see the same neighborhood, only this time covered in American flags. The next message on the screen is, "Freedom. Cherish it, Protect It."
What a bunch of BS. Here they sit preaching freedom when, in fact, we are losing freedom with such questionable practices like the US Patriot Act, Homeland Security Act, TIPS, and now TIA.
I guess all it takes is a few airplanes hurtling from the sky to push the American people into submission and toss aside the rights that so many fought so hard for in the past.
Don't be a scared sheep, contact Congress and voice your opinion, for whatever it is worth. You can fax Congress and the President here -> www.truemajority.org
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
LOL, it's always funny to see people demonstrate that they've been brainwashed in public.
There is a greater chance of being shot in the allegedly gun-free UK than in gun-toting US states, but of course the politicians will never tell you that, it would be bad for their careers.
If you really want your eyes opened on this issue instead of being spoon-fed pleasing pap like the rest of the sheep in the country, do your own reading of the statistics published for both places (and other European countries too), by both pro- and anti-gun groups and by all the autonomous bodies you can find. Then talk.
But I guess you probably won't, as it sounds like your mind is made up already. Well, fine, there are other reasons why one may not want gun ownership to be legal. So quote them, don't use a "chance of getting shot" argument which is patently false. You may even have a great anti-gun argument, good for you --- but stamping "I have been brainwashed to believe that the UK has less gun crime than the US" on your forehead is not a good argument for your position.
But I need to be distracted with a blowjob. You make that happen, and I'll do the rest!
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Remember, only terrorists use slashdot to organize mass mailing campaigns against Alan Ralsky. Ashcroft is watching us.
If confining someone is a bad thing, then why is it okay to imprison criminals? Is it a question of degree? It's ok if governments do it but not individuals? How is it ok to do to a criminal what we would not want to happen to us?
This world is neither so black, nor so white, as you would assume.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
(emphasis added)
Truth maintenance, huh? I never knew "truth" degraded over time... Good thing we detected change in the story-telling so we could come in and do some ole-fashioned truth maintenance!
Who woulda doublethought...
--M
...this will be used to spy on the political opposition, not terrorists.
The Administration already knows full well the who, what, where, why, and how of the terrorists - but they can't say too much about Saudi Arabia, because they need the ruling family in power, to protect the oil.
This is about spying on US citizens, for political and commercial reasons. I'm sure the databases will be shared with corporate America for the right amount of campaign contributions.
There are two types of people; those who divide people into two types of people, and those who don't.
That's what I keep telling people. Man, is being a salesman for Child Shredding Machines, Inc., a tough job.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
You obviously did however.
Looks like their servers aren't l33t 'nuff for a slashdot effect..
There is a petition posted on Petition Online to have the Homeland Security bill amended to be less invasive of personal privacy, viz, disallowing the TIA initiative. Take a look at it.
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
We are trying to remove saddam and his regime from iraq who has total control of his people and is a evil dictator
" No, he's a member of the ruling elite. Do you not understand what a Plutocracy is yet?"
So, Poindexter is a member of the government of Pluto?
For your information, I didn't vote at all. I let someone else make my bed, now I'm going to whine at them for it.
(and if you want demopublican, you'll have to have recrat. or go for democan and republicrat. throwing in extra letters will cost ya.)
... laws break YOU.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
How come rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster John Poindexter gets a Pentagon job and a multimillion dollar program, while fellow rehabilitated convicted Iran-Contra dirty trickster Richard Secord is being investigated for alleged stock fraud? Whatever happened to equal protection under the law??
Consider what this MIGHT be useful for. Say there is another large scale war. Say the government needs to start drafting young adults to fight this war. Assume the war is very unpopular, and many of these young adults would prefer not to be drafted, in fact not to register for the draft after all. Wouldn't a database such as TIA be eminently useful for this purpose?
It was relatively easy to avoid registering for the draft in the Vietnam War era. It will be impossible in the next war.
Keep in mind avoiding conscription is a criminal act, and keep in mind those attempting to do so will easily be labeled terrorists.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
We have always been at war with Iraq.
We will always be at war with Iraq.
Until we get around to editing the old newspapers so that we can replace Iraq with North Korea.
Watch the movie.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
When both candidates are discovered to be aliens...
"You have to vote for one of us!"
(Voice in the crowd) "I'm going to vote for a third party!"
(Reply) "Go ahead...WASTE your vote!"
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Goddamnit, I often sign my emails with TIA, for "Thanks in advance". Now I'm probably in the friggin' gummints gun sights as a potential terrorist.
Two cases now of people stricking back at the power mongers/war pigs using their own weapons (somewhat). I've been questioning technology and its uses over the last few years, and I think I've finally found a reason why it's okay that computers exist: political defiance.
These bastards can track my defecation patterns and make rorschach analysis of the TP, but using our own tools and our own creativity, we can show them what it's like.
--"old time lefties"? I started my political career working on the AuH2O campaign, and also working for sane common sense conservation issues, how about you? I support personal and national soverignty, plain english laws, following the Constitution as it was written in english with the words defined by webster in the era when they were written, and reducing government down to the levels it was originally designed for. That ain't "left wing" friend.
--I'm a constitutional independent now, belong to no particular political party, and I for sure can recognize a dictatorship when I see one. The US in late 2002 is analogous to Germany circa 1936 or so. It's a junta, no other word fits. Corporate-slash-military dictatorship with high level bureaucrats and politicians and ranking military officers serving or retired being simultaneously "officers" in the corporations making the most profits, ergo, corporatism,ergo "fascism", so by definition, it's a "junta". It's not "left versus right" anymore, it's closer to say it's "right versus wrong".
---thanks, appreciate the links. I look at as much data as I can, from a variety of viewpoints.
--you are most welcome. I'm going to post a smidgen from the northwoods documents here for anyone's immediate gratification:
m l
...In [Joint Chief's chair] Lemnitzer's view, the country would be far better off if the generals could take over. [JFK assassination legend has it some general presided over the fudgy JFK autopsy. --Mk]
.n American neighbors. This would give the United States military an excuse to come in on the side of Cuba's adversary and get rid of "A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS [Organization of Americas] member could be set up," said one proposal, "and the attacked state could be urged to 'take measures of self-defense and request ice from the U.S. and OAS; the U.S. could almost certainly obtain necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for collective action against Cuba."
note, it is up to the researcher to investigate fuirther on this subject to satisfy themselves as to it's accuracy, this is presenterd "as is"
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/northwoods.ht
From _BODY OF SECRETS_, James Bamford, Doubleday, 2001, p.82 and following: scanned and edited by NY Transfer News.
For those military officers who were sitting on the fence, the Kennedy administration's botched Bay of Pigs invasion was the last straw. "The Bay of Pigs fiasco broke the dike," said one report at the time. "President Kennedy was pilloried by the super patriots as a 'no-win' chief . . . The Far Right became a fount of proposals born of frustration and put forward in the name of anti-Communism. . . Active-duty commanders played host to anti-Communist seminars on their bases and attended or addressed Right-wing meetings elsewhere."
Although no one in Congress could have known it at the time, Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.
According to secret and long-hidden documents obtained for Body of Secrets, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of antiCommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plan, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war.
The idea may actually have originated with President Eisenhower in the last days of his administration. With the Cold War hotter than ever and the recent U-2 scandal fresh in the public's memory, the old general wanted to go out with a win. He wanted desperately to invade Cuba in the weeks leading up to Kennedy's inauguration; indeed, on January 3 he told Lemnitzer and other aides in his Cabinet Room that he would move against Castro before the inauguration if only the Cubans gave him a really good excuse. Then, with time growing short, Eisenhower floated an idea. If Castro failed to provide that excuse, perhaps, he said, the United States "could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable." What he was suggesting was a pretext a bombing, an attack, an act of sabotage carried out secretly against the United States by the United States. Its purpose would be to justify the launching of a war. It was a dangerous suggestion by a desperate president.
Although no such war took place, the idea was not lost on General Lemnitzer But he and his colleagues were frustrated by Kennedy's failure to authorize their plan, and angry that Castro had not provided an excuse to invade.
The final straw may have come during a White House meeting on February 26, 1962. Concerned that General Lansdale's various covert action plans under Operation Mongoose were simply becoming more outrageous and going nowhere, Robert Kennedy told him to drop all anti-Castro efforts. Instead, Lansdale was ordered to concentrate for the next three months strictly on gathering intelligence about Cuba. It was a humiliating defeat for Lansdale, a man more accustomed to praise than to scorn.
As the Kennedy brothers appeared to suddenly "go soft" on Castro, Lemnitzer could see his opportunity to invade Cuba quickly slipping away. The attempts to provoke the Cuban public to revolt seemed dead and Castro, unfortunately, appeared to have no inclination to launch any attacks against Americans or their property Lemnitzer and the other Chiefs knew there was only one option left that would ensure their war. They would have to trick the American public and world opinion into hating Cuba so much that they would not only go along, but would insist that he and his generals launch their war against Castro. "World opinion, and the United Nations forum," said a secret JCS document, "should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere."
Operation Northwoods called for a war in which many patriotic Americans and innocent Cubans would die senseless deaths, all to satisfy the egos of twisted generals back in Washington, safe in their taxpayer financed homes and limousines.
One idea seriously considered involved the launch of John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. On February 20,1962, Glenn was to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on his historic journey. The flight was to carry the banner of America's virtues of truth, freedom, and democracy into orbit high over the planet. But Lemnitzer and his Chiefs had a different idea. They proposed to Lansdale that, should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, "the objective is to provide irrevocable proof that . . . the fault lies with the Communists et al Cuba [sic.]"
This would be accomplished, Lemnitzer continued, "by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference on the part of the Cubans." Thus, as NASA prepared to send the first American into space, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were preparing to use John Glenn's possible death as a pretext to launch a war.
Glenn lifted into history without mishap, leaving Lemnitzer and the Chiefs to begin devising new plots which they suggested be carried out "within the time frame of the next few months."
Among the actions recommended was "a series of well coordinated incidents to take place in and around" the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This included dressing "friendly" Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them "start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base with damage to installations."
The suggested operations grew progressively more outrageous. Another called for an action similar to the infamous incident in February 1898 when an explosion aboard the battleship Maine in Havana harbor killed 266 U.S. sailors. Although the exact cause of the explosion remained undetermined, it sparked the Spanish-American War with Cuba. Incited by the deadly blast, more than one million men volunteered for duty. Lemnitzer and his generals came up with a similar plan. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they proposed; "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
There seemed no limit to their fanaticism: "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," they wrote. "The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.
We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). . . . We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized."
Bombings were proposed, false arrests, hijackings:
*"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government."
*"Advantage can be taken of the sensitivity of the Dominican [Republic] Air Force to intrusions within their national air space. 'Cuban' B-26 or C-46 type aircraft could make cane burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found. This could be coupled with 'Cuban' messages to the Communist underground in the Dominican Republic and 'Cuban' shipments of arms which would be found, or intercepted, on the beach. Use of MiG type aircraft by U.S. pilots could provide additional provocation."
*"Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba."
Among the most elaborate schemes was to "create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela. The destination would be chosen only to cause the flight plan route to cross Cuba. The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight."
Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs worked out a complex deception:
An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.
From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a "May Day" message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.
Finally, there was a plan to "make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack." It was a particularly believable operation given the decade of shoot downs that had just taken place.
In the final sentence of his letter to Secretary McNamara recommending the operations, Lemnitzer made a grab for even more power asking that the Joint Chiefs be placed in charge of carrying out Operation Northwoods and the invasion. "It is recommended," he wrote, "that this responsibility for both oven and covert military operations be assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
At 2:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, 1962, Lemnitzer went over last-minute details of Operation Northwoods with his covert action chief, Brigadier General William H. Craig, and signed the document. He then went to a "special meeting" in McNamara's office. An hour later he met with Kennedy's military representative, General Maxwell Taylor. What happened during those meetings is unknown. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba.
Undeterred, Lemnitzer and the Chiefs persisted, virtually to the point of demanding that they be given authority to invade and take over Cuba. About a month after submitting Operation Northwoods, they met the "tank," as the JCS conference room was called, and agreed on the wording of a tough memorandum to McNamara. "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future," they wrote. "Further, they see no prospect of early success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime."
Lemnitzer was virtually rabid in his hatred of Communism in general and Castro in particular "The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of general war" he continued. "They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of UN action." However; what Lemnitzer was suggesting was not freeing the Cuban people, who were largely in support of Castro, but imprisoning them in a U.S. military-controlled police state. "Forces would assure rapid essential military control of Cuba," he wrote. "Continued police action would be required."
Concluding, Lemnitzer did not mince words: "[T]he Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that a national policy of early military intervention in Cuba be adopted by the United States. They also recommend that such intervention be undertaken as soon as possible and preferably before the release of National Guard and Reserve forces presently on active duty."
By then McNamara had virtually no confidence in his military chief and was rejecting nearly every proposal the general sent to him. The rejections became so routine, said one of Lemnitzer's former staff officers, that the staffer told the general that the situation was putting the military in an "embarrassing rut." But Lemnitzer replied, "I am the senior military office--it's my job to state what I believe and it's his [McNamara's] job to approve or disapprove." "McNamara's arrogance was astonishing," said Lemnitzer's aide, who knew nothing of Operation Northwoods. "He gave General Lemnitzer very short shrift and treated him like a schoolboy. The general almost stood at attention when he came into the room. Everything was 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir.'
Within months, Lemnitzer was denied a second term as JCS chairman and transferred to Europe as chief of NATO. Years later President Gerald Ford appointed Lemnitzer, a darling of the Republican right, to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Lemnitzer's Cuba chief, Brigadier General Craig, was also transferred. Promoted to major general, he spent three years as chief of the Army Security Agency, NSA's military arm.
Because of the secrecy and illegality of Operation Northwoods, all details remained hidden for forty years. Lemnitzer may have thought that all copies of the relevant documents had been destroyed; he was not one to leave compromising material lying around. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, for example, he ordered Brigadier General David W Gray, Craig's predecessor as chief of the Cuba project within the JCS, to destroy all his notes concerning Joint Chiefs actions and discussions during that period. Gray's meticulous notes were the only detailed official records of what happened within the JCS during that time. According to Gray, Lemnitzer feared a congressional investigation and therefore wanted any incriminating evidence destroyed.
With the evidence destroyed, Lemnitzer felt free to lie to Congress. When asked, during secret hearings before a Senate committee, if he knew of any Pentagon plans for a direct invasion of Cuba he said he did not. Yet detailed JCS invasion plans had been drawn up even before Kennedy was inaugurated. And additional plans had been developed since. The consummate planner and man of details also became evasive, suddenly encountering great difficulty in recalling key aspects of the operation, as if he had been out of the country during the period. It was a sorry spectacle. Senator Gore called for Lemnitzer to be fired. "We need a shake up of the Joint Chiefs of Staff" he said. "We direly need a new chairman, as well as new members." No one had any idea of Operation Northwoods.
Because so many documents were destroyed, it is difficult to determine how many senior officials were aware of Operation Northwoods. As has been described, the document was signed and fully approved by Lemnitzer and the rest of the Joint Chiefs and addressed to the Secretary of Defense for his signature. Whether it went beyond McNamara to the president and the attorney general is not known.
Even after Lemnitzer lost his job, the Joint Chiefs kept planning "pretext" operations at least into 1963. Among their proposals was a deliberately create a war between Cuba and any of a number of
Among the nations they suggested that the United States secretly were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Both were members of the Commonwealth; thus, by secretly attacking them and then blaming Cuba, the United States could lure England into the war Castro. The report noted, "Any of the contrived situations de above are inherently, extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty. If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation."
The report even suggested secretly paying someone in the Castro government to attack the United States: "The only area remaining for ration then would be to bribe one of Castro's subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on [the U.S. naval base at] Guantanamo." The act suggested--bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack American military installation--was treason.
In May 1963, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze sent a the White House proposing "a possible scenario whereby an attack on a United States reconnaissance aircraft could be exploited toward the end of effecting the removal of the Castro regime." In the event Cuba attacked a U-2, the plan proposed sending in additional American pilots, this time on dangerous, unnecessary low-level reconnaissance missions with the expectation that they would also be shot down, thus provoking a war "[T]he U.S. could undertake various measures designed to stimulate the Cubans to provoke a new incident," said the plan. Nitze, however, did not volunteer to be one of the pilots.
One idea involved sending fighters across the island on "harassing reconnaissance" and "show-off" missions "flaunting our freedom of action, hoping to stir the Cuban military to action." "Thus," said the plan, "depending above all on whether the Cubans were or could be made to be trigger-happy, the development of the initial downing of a reconnaissance plane could lead at best to the elimination of Castro, perhaps to the removal of Soviet troops and the installation of ground inspection in Cuba, or at the least to our demonstration of firmness on reconnaissance." About a month later, a low-level flight was made across Cuba, but unfortunately for the Pentagon, instead of bullets it produced only a protest.
Lemnitzer was a dangerous-perhaps even unbalanced-right-wing extremist in an extraordinarily sensitive position during a critical period. But Operation Northwoods also had the support of every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even senior Pentagon official Paul Nitze argued in favor of provoking a phony war with Cuba. The fact that the most senior members of all the services and the Pentagon could be so out of touch with reality and the meaning of democracy would be hidden for four decades.
In retrospect, the documents offer new insight into the thinking of the military's star-studded leadership. Although they never succeeded in launching America into a phony war with Cuba, they may have done so with Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese were eventually killed in that war.
It has long been suspected that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident-the spark that led to America's long war in Vietnam-was largely staged or provoked by U.S. officials in order to build up congressional and public support for American involvement. Over the years, serious questions have been raised about the alleged attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on two American destroyers in the Gulf But defenders of the Pentagon have always denied such charges, arguing that senior officials would never engage in such deceit.
Now, however, in light of the Operation Northwoods documents, it at deceiving the public and trumping up wars for Americans to fight and die in was standard, approved policy at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin seems right out of the Operation Northwoods playbook: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers cause a helpful wave of indignation." One need only replace "Guantanamo Bay" with "Tonkin Gulf," and "Cuba" with "North Vietnam" and the Gulf of Tonkin incident may or may not have been stage-managed, but the senior Pentagon leadership at the time was clearly capable of such deceit.
Book epigram:
"The public has a duty to watch its Government closely and keep it on the right track." --Lieutenant Gen. Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director, NSA, _NSA Newsletter_, June 1997
The eye in the pyramid scanning the earth.
This was just a bit to obv<FNORD><FNORD><FNORD>
http://www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm
Anyone play Metal Gear2??? This sure seems a lot like the device the majerstic 12(or whatever) use to collect data on everyone and then completely write themseves out of, so that their data is the only data that can't be manipulated.
The government is loving this...if they had known that all it would take is crashing a couple of planes into buildings to steal all of our freedoms from us, I'm sure they would have done it a long time ago.
More specifically, if you're into RSS (and if you're a geek, you are) - check out the Homeland Security Feed.
>>Americans protesting their government's actions somehow amounts to their being apathetic?
Let me restate that : American apathy for the liberties enjoyed daily.
People speeking freely for a cause deemed just is the cornerstone of america. We know that. Taking actions that endanger appointed officials of the govt(freely elected) is inexcusable.(exposing you and i's privacy is diffenet than openly exploiting Poindexters's privacy/position)
Arrogance toward the 'indignity' of the govt knowing what sites or countries visited or other information whose nature is only threatening if you are doing something wrong. Mocking the very freedom they are benefiting from while concurrently enjoying it's benefits. Pull these stunts in russia, or mexico or south africa and find yourelf in real hurt.
Ignorance to the fact that most of the worlds population would quite happily forgoe certain privacies for Democracy/Capitalism/Freedom enjoyed today by all americans.
Wait till something REALLY bad happens and watch the power of the govt escalate dramatically. Sniveling over insignificant privacy issues that MIGHT strengthen our ability to prevent hit and run massively destructive acts, belies the realities we face and underscores americans coddled nature and apathy for what they've got.
My view point is a utilitarian one - what is best for the most people - it's not ideal or utopic.
Times are different.
my other sig sucks less
if you ask me. I knew I had heard about the pyramid before (aside from the one on the dollar); here it is in a passage near the end of chapter two of 1984:
"The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs would not batter it down."
The fact is, the TIA is an open invitation to anybody with access to the database to abuse the information within for fun and profit.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Would it be legal for a friend of mine to "donate" an hour a week to follow Poindexter?
He would even where a big sign saying, "I am following Mr. Poindexter!"
I just wonder what sort of useful information could be gained by this affair. If there were round the clock (or atleast waking hours) of information retrieval...
Seems like something sort of fun for inherently obnoxious teenagers to do. Especially during winter break.
> If you buy a car, even for a dollar from a random
> stranger, your state has to know about it
No they don't.
You would be wise to find out if that car has been stolen, and there is a proper title to it. And you should get yourself a good receipt.
But if you're not taking it off your private property, you don't need a license, you don't need to register, you don't need to do jack-shit.
And you shouldn't have to anyways. Freedom to assemble requires you to use transportation, if all transportation is controlled (or a privilege) then there is no assembly, and there aren't a lot of other rights. Try and get to work without a car, without 'public' transportation, etc.
But the gun ... no, the gun is neither good nor bad.
i'm sorry but i am sick of seeing this pathetic argument put up and especially by ppl who seem to think that they are some kind of sophisticated philosopher - viz. yr So you calmly explained that her teachers are simpletons and don't understand the basics of philosophy.
where do you think guns come from? that they simply grow on trees? guns are invented, designed and manufactured by ppl, all of which are moral acts and hence the resulting technology can be judged as 'good or evil'
try reading (or rereading) 'the lord of the rings' one day and tell me whether you think jrr tolkien would have agreed with you that a manufactured (but inanimate) object ie the ring is evil or not.
to finish, yes a rock is neither good nor evil regardless of whether it has been used to kill a person - but an object that has been specifically created to inflict grievous bodily harm on a person can very easily be judged to be evil
1. Set a gun on a table and watch it. Let me know how many times it does something bad.
2. The action of making a gun can be judged good or bad, but the product of that action cannot. For instance, creating a gun that looks like a toy designed for little fingers could be considered bad, depending on the context. Giving it to a kid is sick. Putting it in an art show sounds is a provocative idea. The gun itself, though, is just a thing--it's only as bad as how its used.
3. If guns are bad, then someone who ordinarily does good things can be corrupted by having the gun and do something bad. Therefore, they can say they weren't bad, but rather "it was the gun." I say it's the person who did the bad act and you can type and yell for all of eternity and I will not believe it was the gun that was bad. It is always an action that is good or bad, and if that action is done by a person, they should be held accountable.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Wouldn't it be fun to toss a listening device
with Wi-Fi transmitter into the bushes by
his front door ? Don't you think we'd all be better off keeping track of what Poindexter is
up to if there all late-night brainstorming
sessions. Perhaps someone on the board could
offer advice on assembling a complete microphone to Web solution ?
Further honing where I'm going, I focused on the word "bad" when I should have been paying more attention to the whole statement: "guns are bad." I strongly stand by my decision to not use such a broad statement--that is, making unverifiable statements about everything of a particular kind. Use of the descriptive qualifier "bad" in a statement like "I'd like to see all bad guns destroyed" is okay, and is greatly strengthened if the author explains what a "bad gun" is.
The thing that's interesting about guns is that they're designed to kill, and people like to think of them as bad for that reason. However, they are designed to kill discriminantly, unlike, say, a terrorist's bomb which is designed to kill indiscriminantly. People who get guns for self defense are really looking for a way to make themselves stronger in a conflict. Guns are cheap, easy to use, and effective to that end. Personally I think they're overrated in that by the time you need a gun to defend yourself, you're in way too much trouble to effectively use it, but that's not relevant right now. Let's say there was a shirt that could boost the wearers strength tenfold. I'm sure that would be a pleasing alternative to people afraid of being mugged or raped. Currently your best bet is stun guns and pepper spray which are non-lethal, but in part because of that, are not as effective as a gun.
Anyway, I still stand by my avoidance of (put more generally) unverifiable statements applied to any general group--things like "[all] lawyers are evil," "[all] fruitcakes are hard and inedible," or "[all] guns are bad." However, I'll concede the colloquial qualifiers of general groups, like "bad software" or "bad arguments," which is really just shorthand for a more descriptive qualification.
I still believe that objects cannot be good or bad because there needs to be an action with which to measure morality. It wasn't until a hunter used his knife to kill another man that the knife "became bad." Likewise, a gun is just a tool--its creators rationale is irrelevant. It cannot be considered either good or bad, only the actions it is used for can.
I guess the heart of what I was getting at in the beginning was that the statement "guns are bad" does not make sense. Making a statement like "it's easy to kill people with guns and it's bad to kill people" is much better because it is a statement that can be explored and tested in a tangible way.
I'll just leave it at that rather than discuss how one can assess the "badness" of killing.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you
brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled-
up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and
repeat the sequence.
You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to
hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it
again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around
your own apartment?
-- William S. Burroughs
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