Project SHAMROCK, considered to be the sister project for Project MINARET, was an espionage exercise that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) and its successor NSA were given direct access to daily microfilm copies of all incoming, outgoing, and transiting telegraphs via the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT. Operation Shamrock lasted well into the 1960s when computerized operations (HARVEST) made it possible to search for keywords rather than read through all communications.

Project SHAMROCK became so successful that in 1966 the NSA and CIA set up a front company in Lower Manhattan (where the offices of the telegraph companies were located) under the codename LPMEDLEY. At the height of Project SHAMROCK, 150,000 messages a month were printed and analyzed by NSA agents. In May 1975 however, congressional critics began to investigate and expose the program. As a result, NSA director Lew Allen terminated it. The testimony of both the representatives from the cable companies and of director Allen at the hearings prompted Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Frank Church to conclude that Project SHAMROCK was “probably the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken.”

One result of these investigations was the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which limited the powers of the NSA and put in place a process of warrants and judicial review.
“Operation Shamrock” was also the name of a plan to bring chidren to Ireland from post World War II Germany

• ECHELON: America’s Secret Global Surveillance Network
• The NSA’s Global Spying Network | by By Patrick S. Poole
• The National Security Agency: The Secret Unveiled
• Development of Surveillance Technology & Risk of Abuse of Economic Information | PDF
• Schneier on Security: Project Shamrock
• House report on Project Minaret and Project Shamrock

[…]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_SHAMROCK

Associated Press 09:30 AM May, 11, 2006

WASHINGTON — The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax Wednesday to Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York saying it was closing its inquiry because without clearance it could not examine department lawyers’ role in the program.

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

Jarrett wrote that beginning in January his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.

“Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation,” […]

I’m not making this up. Clearly all bets are off, and next, the gloves have to come off.

This message has been received by ‘Love England’. We hope you will all respond positively and send messages of support to a brave Englishwoman fighting for her rights!

Hi, my daughter Jane is mounting a one woman campaign against the authorities refusing to accept cash payments for council tax and other payments. It is a matter of principle bearing in mind that all card transaction etc can be traced and big brother is trying to turn us into a cashless society.

In our area they have refused her cash and consequently she is facing Magistrates – today – in court.

In fact it is an illegal act to refuse cash which is the legal tender of the realm however she is placing her neck on the block over this.she has also just taken out litigation against Ken Livingstone in his official capacity because they have refused to accept her cash to pay a fine on the congestion charge. They have threatened her with the bailiffs and all sorts of things. She is now counter-suing for malicious prosecution.

She has no fancy lawyers – she is acting for herself with the written law of the land in her hands to present in her defence. Could anyone out there like to send a message of support to her.

Jane Sutherland

http://www.loveengland.org/campaigns.html

Astonishing isnt it? She wants to pay her bills with legal tender, but they are refusing to accept, and are taking HER to court!

This is just the beginning. All of these agencies will claim that they cannot accept cash because it is inneficcient, and costs them money to process. No one will argue that it is better to have a system that costs less to run….you see? Like the convenience of CD, where you give up quality for convenience, with the abolition of cash as a means of settling with government agencies, people will be willing to give up privacy for efficiency and ease of use.

But if the coin of the realm is not acceptable to the very government who issues it, why should anyone else accept it?

You can’t make this stuff up!

An IRS Privacy Nightmare

April 11, 2006

This column was written by Peter Rothberg.

The IRS has quietly proposed astounding new rules which would allow tax preparers to sell the contents of their client’s tax returns to third-party businesses, as long as a requisite form is signed. Historically, tax returns were a strictly private affair, with both tax preparers and IRS agents forbidden to share the info with anyone for any reason. But this could all change if the IRS’s blatant corporate giveaway is passed. That’s great news for “data-brokers” like Choicepoint that make tens of millions of dollars selling personal information to corporate marketers.

Here’s how the new rules would work: When you visit your accountant or a tax-preparation firm like H&R Block, your tax preparer would ask you to sign a form authorizing them to release your information at their discretion. Once you sign that form, your tax preparer has permission to sell or share the information contained in your tax filings. You have no control over how that data will be used, who will get it, or whether it will be adequately safeguarded from identity thieves.

[…]

I assume your SSN is on US tax returns and this would be replaced by a RealID number and these can be cross referenced to health care provision, your driver’s license, credit card company, real estate. It’s almost as if they want your personal information to be insecure – so they can develop a ‘solution’ to their imposed problem.

Total Insanity!!!!!!

Water cannon could be used to quash street protests (Guardian)

Water cannon could soon be used to quell serious civil disturbances on British streets after a successful display of their effectiveness to senior police officers. […]

What are the government going to do next that they feel is BEYOND DOUBT that people will protest against?

It could be an attack on Iran – the US talk has shifted from recent events to a so called 20 year history of nuclear activity (the ‘ we’ve tried for yars and this is our last resort excuse’).

Quite why a government with the backing of 20% of the population (max) feels it needs to pursue policies that it obviously knows the country does no want is beyond me, especially when most people want to just get on with their lives and do something useful rather than need to be bothered with whatever treachery and piracy the government is up to.

*They* obviously want a fight. But I still can’t understand why they want to go to such lengths to do it.

Talking of riots and such, the French riots are being somewhat underreported by UK press don’t you think?

Alex Jones provides another belly laugh:

Virginia Training Manual Lists Property Rights Activists As Terrorists
Says video cameras, binoculars, sketch pads are terrorist tools

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | March 28 2006

A Virginia training manual used to help state employees recognize terrorists lists anti-government and property rights activists as terrorists and includes binoculars, video cameras, pads and notebooks in a compendium of terrorist tools.

The manual, discovered by the Virginia News Source, is keen to emphasize that terrorists are not only Middle Eastern in scope and the main focus is afforded to domestic terrorism.

Included with Hamas, Al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, the following groups are identified as terrorist organizations.

In any anti-government and militia movements
Are property-rights activists
Are in any racist, separatist and hate groups
Are an environmental and animal rights activist
Are a religious extremist
Are in a street gang

Presumably, tourists, journalists, hikers, bird-watchers, scuba divers, artists, painters, and anyone who takes a photograph is also now a terrorists according to the official list of terrorist paraphernalia provided.

– sketch pads or notebooks
– maps or charts
– still or video camera
– hand held tape recorder
– binoculars
– SCUBA equipment
– disguises

Reading further into the manual, associations between domestic terrorists and the supporting the American Revolution are subtly made. In Alex Jones’ 2001 documentary 9/11: The Road To Tyranny, FEMA officials give a seminar in which they identify George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers as terrorists.

The manual encourages people to report any suspicious activity to an authority figure. Presumably, if property rights activism is deemed suspicious then anyone protesting or communicating about the recent eminent domain issue will be reported and investigated on grounds of terrorism.

The manual concludes by encouraging state employees to seek more information from FEMA and Homeland Security.

Shortly after 9/11 a Phoenix FBI manual that was disseminated amongst federal employees at the end of the Clinton term caused waves on the Internet after it was revealed that potential terrorists included, “defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN, ” and individuals who “make numerous references to the US Constitution.” Lawyers everywhere cowered in fear at being shipped off to Gitmo.

This manual is another surreal and frightening reminder that government officials are being trained to embrace a Gestapo like mentality whereby any political activism or even individualistic outdoor leisure activity is deemed to be suspicious and a possible indication of terrorism.

Click here to read the Virginia manual in full.

This manual is interesting for another reason. First of all, there is an image of a man in a gas mask that looks just like Booji Boy:

and more seriously, there is this:

Where this ‘anit-terror’ manual tells people how to avoid identity theft.

I wonder if the people who wrote this and the people who read it and take it seriously made the intuitive leap that it would be better if eveyone did not have a unique government assigned SSN for thieves to use.

If the REALID cards are rolled out in the USA, how is anyone going to take the precaution of removign their card from their wallet, when they will need it do anything and everything?

As for the British, we are in a very good position right now. There is no centrally stored unique number assigned to anyone, all the government databases are separate; in fact, we are in a very secure situation right now, that will only be made worse by the introduction of an ID card and the joining of all government databases into a monolithic system.

Note how they tell you to change your drivers licence number to one that is not your SSN. Translation: one different number for each different service; compartmentalization of your key documents and accounts is the answer to identity theft, the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what shit headed computer illiterate labour monsters are pushing to introduce.

They also fail to mention what ‘dumpster diving’ really is; it means going through someone’s garbage to find their utility bills, credit card recipts and other useful tidbits so that you can sucessfully become the person you are trying to impersonate. By buying a $20 dollar cross shredder, you can make your garbage unintelligible to dumpster divers. They don’t mention what dumpster diving really is because the people who authored this (and using the word author is an insult to authors) are totally clueless fear spreading morons, who use any unfamiliar word or phrase to instill fear in their ignorant readers.

Sickening and vile behaviour.

Dutch coffee shops introduce fingerprint ID

Jan Libbenga / The Register | March 21 2006

Some Dutch coffee shops, which sell marijuana in small quantities for personal use, are introducing fingerprinting technology to check the age of customers.

The shops are not allowed to sell to anyone under the age of 18. Coffee shops currently require photographic ID for proof of age.

The first coffee shops to use turnstiles with built-in fingerprint sensors are Inpetto in Rotterdam, Birdy in Haarlem, and ‘t Rotterdammertje in Doetinchem in the east of the country. Customers must first register with the shops, but personal details will not be stored.

The technology has been developed by FingerIdent, a company owned by Gerrie Mansur, one of the members of legendary Dutch hacking group Hit2000. According to Mansur, the system can match 35,000 fingerprints in less than a second. […]

http://infowars.com/articles/bb/biometric_id_dutch_coffee_shops_fingerprint_id.htm

Heh…’I couldn’t resist’: the new catchphrase!

Here are just a few Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.

* EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.

[…]

http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/FEMAsecretgovt1995.shtml

MPs back identity card proposals

Government plans to force all passport applicants to get an identity card have been backed by MPs, overturning an earlier defeat in the House of Lords. Peers have twice defeated the plans, which they say break Labour’s election promise that the initial ID scheme would be voluntary.

But Home Secretary Charles Clarke said passports were “voluntary documents” that no-one was forced to renew.

The Identity Cards Bill will return to the House of Lords on Wednesday.

The vote, which Labour won by 310 votes to 277, sets the stage for a constitutional clash between the Commons and the Lords. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4803930.stm

Charles Clarke is a beast of a man. He knows you cannot travel on an expired passport. He knows that if you loose your passport, that you must replace it if you want to travel.

This is a perfect example of how ID cards will be used to control you. You are not obliged to have one, but if you refuse, you cannot open a bank account, post a package, travel on the underground with a pass, etc etc.

This is pure evil, and this statement about passports being voluntary documents just shows how evil the whole proposal is. It is based on lies at its very foundation, and lies are being used to force through its introduction.

This is why people say that democracy is broken; with monsters, murderers, liars and enslavers at the helm every single time, no one in their right mind thinks that democracy in its current form is a good thing.

‘UFO sighting really took my breath away’

By Carron Taylor

WAS it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it was a shining silver pyramid, according to two colleagues who spotted a UFO in the skies of Putney last week.

Michelle Medhat was sitting at her office desk last Wednesday morning when she glanced out of the window and spotted a glimmering silver object in the sky.

“I thought what the hell is that?’ There were no clouds in the sky at all and 100 per cent visibility.

“The sun was hitting the object and you could see it was turning very slowly.

“I did get a feeling there was something strange about the thing,” she said.

Entranced, Michelle signalled to her colleague Peter Gardiner, 53, to take a look.

He said: “At first I thought it was a big piece of rubbish or a clear tarpaulin sheet.

“But then it glistened and it was shiny. It had a strange pattern of movement. It was a significant size, possibly the size of a roof or even a house.”

The pair watched it for a couple of minutes, rotating in the distance and heading towards Wandsworth Town. Then, as soon as it had appeared it vanished.

Michelle said if it was a piece of rubbish it would have caused severe damage when it came down, because of its size and density.

“I can’t explain it and therefore I’m calling it a UFO. It took my breath away. It did feel weird.

“The more I looked at it I realised there was something not quite right. It wasn’t moving like anything I’ve ever seen before,” she said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it had not been notified of any sighting of the pyramid.

“The MoD does not have any expertise or role in respect of UFO/flying saucer’ matters or to the question of the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial lifeforms, about which it remains totally open-minded.”

He said it examined the reports of UFO sightings it received solely to establish whether what was seen might have some defence significance, namely whether there was any evidence the UK’s airspace might have been compromised by hostile or unauthorised air activity.

Michelle and Peter said there has been a lot of activity in the skies over Putney recently.

Michelle said they had seen several Chinook helicopters over the past week and believes something must be happening.

Chinooks are used to transport troops, artillery, supplies and equipment, but also used for operations such as medical evacuation, disaster relief and search and rescue.

When travelling to Putney, our reporter saw what looked to be three Apache helicopters travelling east.

A spokesman for the MoD said the helicopters were probably part of general aviation traffic over London and there was no specific activity or event they were involved in. He added such movements were “not unusual”.

Did you see the flying silver pyramid? Call the newsdesk on 020 8254 5409.

ctaylor@london.newsquest.co.uk

[…]
This is London Local

Chinooks are flying over that part of London regularly. They make a very distinctive sound, and you can tell they are coming when they are miles away.

As for this pyramid account, well, when I saw that logo above whilst trawling around (as one does) I just couldnt resist!

Shoppers can pay by fingerprint

Not only is the whole idea of this horrific, but the fact that the article mentions nothing of the multitude of possible downsides to this just baffles me. This isn’t journalism, this is just reprinting press releases.

An audio recording made on November 18, 1978, at the Peoples Temple compound in Jonestown, Guyana immediately preceding and during the mass suicide or murder of over 900 members of the cult.

Author: The Rev. Jim Jones, et al. (The Peoples Temple cult)
Date: 1978-11-18 00:00:00
Source: ? > cassette > CD-R > Sound Forge > FLAC Frontend > FLAC
Recorded by: Unknown; FLAC’ed by Olen Sluder (olenATacmDOTorg)
Keywords: Spoken Word; Historical

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

Notes

I acquired the source cassette tape c. 1979 from a high school friend whose father was an FBI agent.

The sound levels were increased as close as possible to clipping when I transferred to CD-R from cassette and then normalized to -18 dB average RMS power (loudness) in Sound Forge after extracting from CD-R

An interesting web site for further research is the Jonestown Institute (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/), which contains transcripts as well as commentary on this and other recordings recovered by the FBI from Jonestown

Individual Files

Wow.

I came across this whilst checking up on the TCP stats at Archive.org, which are over 45,000 now.

The 1972 installment “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” then picked up the action in the year 1991. Since the events of the prior film, much has changed on Earth. A space-borne plague has killed all cats and dogs on the planet, while also stimulating mental development of the lower primates. At first, humans use primates to replace their lost pets, but eventually they find them useful for menial labor, which ultimately creates a slave class. Zira’s baby, now 18 and named Caesar (played again by McDowall) initiates a rebellion after seeing the cruel and inhumane treatment of his primate brethren at the hands of their human masters. The rise of the “Planet of the Apes” had begun, using images that spoke to the racial intolerance and violence that plagued modern-day American society. […]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4761024.stm 

???!!!

Who could possibly be upset with the Mozilla Foundation for giving away its Firefox browser?

One of my roles at the Mozilla Foundation relates to copyright licensing. I’m responsible for making sure that the software we distribute respects the conditions of the free software licences of the underlying code. I’m also the first point of contact for licensing questions.

Most of the time, this job involves helping people who want to use our code in their own products understand the terms, or advising project members who want to integrate code from another project into our codebase. Occasionally, however, something a little more unusual comes along.

A little while ago, I received an e-mail from a lady in the Trading Standards department of a large northern town. They had encountered businesses which were selling copies of Firefox, and wanted to confirm that this was in violation of our licence agreements before taking action against them.

I wrote back, politely explaining the principles of copyleft – that the software was free, both as in speech and as in price, and that people copying and redistributing it was a feature, not a bug. I said that selling verbatim copies of Firefox on physical media was absolutely fine with us, and we would like her to return any confiscated CDs and allow us to continue with our plan for world domination (or words to that effect).

Unfortunately, this was not well received. Her reply was incredulous:

“I can’t believe that your company would allow people to make money from something that you allow people to have free access to. Is this really the case?” she asked.

“If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted.”

I felt somewhat unnerved at being held responsible for the disintegration of the UK anti-piracy system. Who would have thought giving away software could cause such difficulties?

However, given that the free software movement is unlikely collectively to decide to go proprietary in order to make her life easier, I had another go, using examples like Linux and the OpenOffice office suite to show that it’s not just Firefox which is throwing a spanner in the works.

She then asked me to identify myself, so that she could confirm that I was authorised to speak for the Mozilla Foundation on this matter. I wondered if she was imagining nefarious copyright-infringing street traders taking a few moments off from shouting about the price of bananas to pop into an internet cafe, crack a router and intercept her e-mail. […]

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2051196,00.html

And there you have it!!!!!!