April 2012 – Page 32 – Public Intelligence Blog

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Sounds like good idea as long as everybody knows the rules of game.

Garbage Collectors Around the U.S. Trained to Report Suspicious Activity

Public Intelligence

Several newspapers in southern Florida are reporting that trash collectors are receiving training from their employer Waste Management to work with local law enforcement to report crimes and other suspicious activities. The training is part of a program called Waste Watch that is designed to leverage the fact that “drivers are familiar with their routes and are in the same neighborhoods every day” which “puts them in the unique position to spot unusual activity and anything out of the ordinary.” Press releases from Waste Management describe the program as a way of opening “channels of communication with the authorities to help keep them informed and alert of what’s happening in their city’s streets and alleys.”

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Your Garbage Man is Watching You – Do Not Yawn”

2012/04/012012/04/01

DefDog: Cell Phone is Your Leash – Police Own You

Corruption, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement

Who needs NSA when the phone companies are doing it for revenue streams?

Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool

Eric Lichtbau

New York Times, 31 March 2012

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show.

The practice has become big business for cellphone companies, too, with a handful of carriers marketing a catalog of “surveillance fees” to police departments to determine a suspect’s location, trace phone calls and texts or provide other services. Some departments log dozens of traces a month for both emergencies and routine investigations.

With cellphones ubiquitous, the police call phone tracing a valuable weapon in emergencies like child abductions and suicide calls and investigations in drug cases and murders. One police training manual describes cellphones as “the virtual biographer of our daily activities,” providing a hunting ground for learning contacts and travels.

Read rest of article.

2012/04/01

DefDog: Verizon 2012 Report on Hactivism & Data Breaches

Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military

A useful report that ignores the obvious: the internal errors and omissions as well as the “legal” penetrations and outside-of-legal warrant exploitation.

Talking to some IC insiders who simply do not get it, am forced to conclude that there is regressive de-evolution, and the US IC is the poster child for going backwards.

2012-03-31 Verizon Data Breach Report

Phi Beta Iota: The National Security Agency (NSA) was directed by the President many many years ago to be responsible for commercial security. NSA chose to leave commercial security exposed for its own convenience–NSA, in other words, has been criminally irresponsible with respect to the public interest, for decades.

2012/04/012012/04/01

Chuck Spinney: Cancer of Careerism – Final Word on Colin Powell’s Moral Suicide

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Military

There is not much new here, other than Curveball's public admission, but note Colonel Wilkerson’s comment below. One the one hand, Wilkerson admits he was a party to the “sexed up” intelligence; on the other, he wants us to believe Powell (and by extension himself) was being used. Given that “Curveball” was suspected of being a liar by the German intelligence (BND) as well as the CIA, the most charitable interpretation of Powell’s enthusiastic imitation of Adlai Stevenson's speech to the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis is that once the decision to attack Iraq was made, neither Powell nor Wilkerson had the courage to resign on principle, and both chose instead to be a party to the fabrication — or as we used to say in the Pentagon he chose to be “used” by going along to get along.

Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up' his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion

JONATHAN OWEN, Independent, 1 APRIL 2012

A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

“Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Cancer of Careerism – Final Word on Colin Powell's Moral Suicide”