In 2006, when the British police -- using (among other things)
electronic surveillance conducted by both the U.S.
Tools of mass communication that were once the province of governments and corporations now fit in your pocket. Cell phones can capture video and send it wirelessly to the Internet. People can send eyewitness accounts, photos and videos, with a few keystrokes, to thousands or even millions via social networking sites. As these technologies have developed, so too has the ability to monitor, filter, censor and block them.
Ever since The New York Times revealed in December, 2005 that the Bush administration had spent the last four years illegally
spying on Americans' communications without warrants, there have been
numerous additional revelations of various types of massive illegal
government spying. Yesterday's New York Times article
by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau -- reporting that "recent intercepts
of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of
He was very well dressed. He claimed he'd been in the military. But
he said when he was ordered to go to Iraq, he refused and was granted
conscientious objector status.
That's how activists in Iowa City are now recalling a person they believe was working undercover for the FBI.
He went by the name of "Jason," and later changed his name to "Val," they say.
And he joined their group as they were planning protests for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last year.
An FBI informant and an
undercover Minnesota sheriff's deputy spied on political activists in
Iowa City last year before the Republican National Convention in St.
Paul, Minn.
Confidential FBI documents obtained by The Des
Moines Register show an FBI informant was planted among a group
described as an "anarchist collective" that met regularly last year in
Iowa City. One of the group's goals was to organize street blockades to
disrupt the Republican convention, held Sept. 1-4, 2008, where U.S.
Sen. John McCain was nominated for president.
I've always wondered: What was the guy who invented bagpipes really trying to make?
Well, at least that wheezing, whining invention turned out to be
merely irritating, not actually dangerous. Leave it to the Dr.
Strangelovian schemers at the Pentagon, however, to come up with an
invention that is both irritating and truly dangerous, as well as being
a galloping rip-off of us taxpayers.
When her baby girl takes an afternoon nap, or on those nights when she just can't sleep, Sarah Andrews, 32, tosses off her identity as a suburban stay-at-home mom and becomes something more exotic: a "virtual deputy" patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border.
From her house in a suburb of Rochester, New York, Andrews spends at least four hours a day watching a site called BlueServo.net.
