Tag Archives: DHS

IRS Agents are Training with AR-15 “Assault Weapons”

Posted on by
3

Another day, another headline that must surely be “conspiracy theory,” but unfortunately for us all turns out to be conspiracy fact.  While Obama was rolling out intense anti-gun propaganda and demonizing “assault weapons” such as the AR-15, his Administration seems to have no problem with the political group targeting, corrupt beyond belief IRS using them in training.  It’s simply mind-boggling to think about this bureaucracy being armed with such weapons, and totally exposes what I wrote at length about earlier this year:  The Gun Control Hypocrite.  From Politico:

As chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, Duncan (R-S.C.) toured a federal law enforcement facility in late May and noticed agents training with the semi-automatic weapons at a firing range. They identified themselves as IRS, he said.

While Duncan acknowledges that the IRS has an enforcement division, he questions if that level of firepower is appropriate when they could coordinate operations with other agencies, like the FBI, especially in a time of austerity.

Continue reading →

Department of Homeland Security: We Can Search and Confiscate Electronic Devices Based on a “Hunch”

Posted on by
3

Regular readers know my complete and total disdain for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). An organization that is quite clearly gearing itself up for confrontation with the American public, rather than offering any meaningful protection from foreign “terrorists.” These folks think that because they have a big budget and a badge they do not have to abide by the Constitution.  They have such little respect for the supreme law of the land that they claim they can search through travelers’ electronic items, and even confiscate them, based on a “hunch.”  No, really.

Terrorists don’t take away freedoms.  Governments take away freedoms…and ours is doing a damn good job of it.

From CBS:

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — U.S. border agents should continue to be allowed to search a traveler’s laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal Homeland Security Department study. It contends limiting such searches would prevent the U.S. from detecting child pornographers or terrorists and expose the government to lawsuits.

The 23-page report, obtained by The Associated Press and the American Civil Liberties Union under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, provides a rare glimpse of the Obama administration’s thinking on the long-standing but controversial practice of border agents and immigration officers searching and in some cases holding for weeks or months the digital devices of anyone trying to enter the U.S.

Continue reading →

Department of Homeland Security: Selling Counterfeit Goods is Now “Terrorism”

Posted on by
9

If the IRS scandal wasn’t enough to convince you that bloated, corrupt, bureaucratic government institutions pose a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist attack ever could, this story should settle it once and for all. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not only wasteful, power hungry, and entirely unnecessary, it is also rapidly transforming itself into the Vampire Squid of government.  In light of the fact that pretty much every terrorist plot the U.S. government has “thwarted” since 9/11 has been either FBI or CIA hatched schemes rooted in entrapment, the DHS has a lot of spare time on its hands to hunt frightening acts of “domestic terrorism.”  You know, like fake Gucci bags.  This story is beyond unacceptable.  From WIVB Channel 4 News:

AMHERST, N.Y. (WIVB) – Federal agents swept through two shopping malls Monday, seizing fake merchandise and shutting down stores.

The Department of Homeland Security spearheaded the investigation that targeted mostly kiosks in the Walden Galleria and Boulevard Mall. Agents hauled bags and boxes out of the Boulevard Mall after stripping three kiosks of their merchandise.

Jim Spero, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Buffalo office of Homeland Security, says the sale of counterfeit goods – in Buffalo and beyond – poses a major security threat.

Oh please.  Get over yourself Jim.

“When you purchase counterfeit goods, when you sell counterfeit goods, you don’t know who you’re dealing with. You don’t know what kind of criminal activity you’re supporting,” Spero said. “It’s actually organized crime that is behind the distribution of these goods. It could be terrorists as well.”

9/11 was bad, but the government created “war on terror” and all that has come with it, is far, far worse.

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

Follow me on Twitter!

How the Boston Police Were Too Busy Monitoring “Occupy Boston” to Notice Tamerlan

Posted on by
5

After reading the article below, it’s almost impossible to think that the never-ending “war on terror” has anything to do with foreign radicals that “hate us for our freedoms.”  As I and many others have noted for years, the surveillance state being put in place is intended to deal with domestic unrest.  Unrest the oligarchs know is coming as a result of their unprecedented reign of theft and corruption. So now we discover that the Boston Police counter-terror intelligence unit was too busy monitoring anti-Wall Street demonstrations to notice Tamerlan Tsarnaev right under their noses.  From NBC:

In the fall of 2011, a key Boston police counterterror intelligence unit — funded with millions of dollars in U.S. homeland security grants — was closely monitoring anti-Wall Street demonstrations, including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of the protesters and writing reports on the potential impact on “commercial and financial sector assets” in downtown areas, according to internal police documents.

The police monitoring of the activities of Occupy Boston — an off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street protests that swept the country in 2011 — came during a period after the U.S. government received the second of two warnings from the Russian government about the radical Islamic ties of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Guess What’s Hidden in the Immigration Bill? A National Biometric Database for Citizens

Posted on by
1

Oh just another eight hundred page “bipartisan” bill that nobody will read,  mainstream media will refuse to cover, and that will merely further destroy any remnants of freedom left in these United States.  Never forget the George Carlin quote on bipartisanship:

“Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

From Wired:

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

Continue reading →

Advice from the Department of Homeland Security: If Attacked by a Shooter, Grab Some Scissors

Posted on by
20

I first heard about this from a New York Post article on the topic.  Then I watched the video for myself.  It’ll make you want to defund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immediately.  While the whole “grab scissors” to defend oneself during a mass shooting is pretty amusing, the more disturbing part is that 90% of the video just consists of people on their knees in cubicles cowering in fear or running panicked with their hands in the air.  All the while police in black uniforms and “assault weapons” race in to save the day!  The video is a great representation of how the DHS views the citizenry.  Feeble, helpless, pathetic little children.  You’ve gotta watch it for yourself!


In Liberty,
Mike

Department of Homeland Security to Purchase 7,000 “Assault Weapons”

Posted on by
15

The hypocrisy of the government knows no bounds.  I have said repeatedly, and continue to say, that I am against all gun control at the moment because our government is extremely violent and not only do I not expect it to protect the American people in general, I believe it is far more concerned with protecting the status quo from the people.  It has become crystal clear that the political and financial oligarchs are quite intentionally attempting to disarm the populace while arming themselves to the teeth in anticipation of some horrible economic event they know is inevitable.  From the Blaze:

The Department of Homeland Security is seeking to acquire 7,000 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” (PDW) — also known as “assault weapons” when owned by civilians. The solicitation, originally posted on June 7, 2012, comes to light as the Obama administration is calling for a ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines.

Citing a General Service Administration (GSA) request for proposal (RFP), Steve McGough of RadioViceOnline.com reports that DHS is asking for the 7,000 “select-fire” firearms because they are “suitable for personal defense use in close quarters.” The term select-fire means the weapon can be both semi-automatic and automatic. Civilians are prohibited from obtaining these kinds of weapons.

Continue reading →

It’s Official: The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists”

Posted on by
10

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), we have details for the first time of how government intelligence organizations and the corporate state worked together in secret to battle the Occupy Wall Street movement.  The best report I have read on this story comes from the PCJF themselves.  Here are some of their key findings:

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

“These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.  These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

Continue reading →

Ever Heard of the National Counterterrorism Center? Didn’t Think So

Posted on by
8

It’s very interesting that in recent weeks the mainstream press seems to be unveiling the surveillance state to the American sheeple.  I was shocked when I read the Wired article about how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was funding the placement of microphones and cameras on public buses to monitor innocent citizens’ behavior.  Now we have this information published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal:

Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.

Not everyone was on board. “This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public,” Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.

Thanks for the justice Holder.

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.

The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.

The National Counterterrorism Center’s ideas faced no similar public resistance. For one thing, the debate happened behind closed doors.

Continue reading →

The Kid Who Tweets Every Drone Strike

Posted on by
6

I have been reading about this kid Josh Begley for the past several days, but hadn’t looked more into it until now.  This article is really interesting in that it reveals that the U.S. Military (or CIA, who really knows anymore) is employing terrorist tactics in its drone strikes overseas.  From Business Insider:

NYU student Josh Begley is tweeting every reported U.S. drone strike since 2002, and the feed highlights a disturbing tactic employed by the U.S. that is widely considered a war crime.

Known as the “double tap,” the tactic involves bombing a target multiple times in relatively quick succession, meaning that the second strike often hits first responders.

Continue reading →