San Francisco Entertainment Commission reigned in by Mayor, locals for surveillance rules

4-13-2011

BTC- SAN FRANCISCO- The San Francisco Entertainment Commission announced a decision by Mayor Ed Lee to postpone continuance of new proposed rules during last night’s scheduled hearing.  The rules would require increased electronic surveillance and police presence for the city’s venues, drawing substantive local outrage and national scrutiny from civil liberty groups.

The Entertainment Commission intended to support law enforcement after an increase of violence was attributed to local entertainment venues.  The Commission was created, in part, as the City’s answer to appropriate local police policy towards clubs and venues.  The Entertainment Commission has since gained a reputation in the arts and entertainment community as an organization who serve’s the interests of the police over San Francisco’s entertainment culture.  California’s police policies continue to test the boundaries of privacy, technology and civil liberty.

According to attendees, the Entertainment Commission is merely continuing a trend in what some have called, “A war on fun.”  The San Francisco Bay Guardian maintains a series on the actions of the Entertainment Commission.  Local promoters present to give comment  at last night’s meeting complained the new rules would decimate their ability to profit from one time events.   One promoter stated customers are simply going elsewhere to be entertained because they don’t want to deal with the hassles currently present in the city.  Others gave account outside the meeting that in just a year’s time the Commission has marginalized clubs and venue businesses, enforced pat down requirements and has caused many clubs to shutter their doors.

However, the new rules are considered so offensive to privacy and due process by the Electronic  Frontier Foundation they have precipitated threat of suit, if continued.  KTVU 2, San Francisco reports.

“Enterainment Commission considers new saftey rules,” KPFA Pacifica Evening News, reports @ 35:14

The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – April 12, 2011 at 6:00pm
http://kpfaweb.kpfa.org/misc/utilities/players/1pixelout/player.swf
Click to listen (or download)

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
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identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
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iSnitch heads for LAX

c/o AP>> CLG

LOS ANGELES — Police are expanding a citizen terror watch program to include travelers at the Los Angeles International Airport.

The iWatch program was launched in October for residents to alert authorities to suspicious activity by phone or Internet. On Thursday, police and political leaders are using fliers and posters to enlist help from people at LAX.

iWatchers are asked to be on the lookout for possible terror activities such as people buying bomb-making supplies or unattended vehicles near loading zones around high-profile buildings.Tips are reviewed by anti-terror experts, then entered into a database designed to find patterns and trends.

The program was developed by LAPD and has been adopted by police departments across the country.

RELATED NEWS c/o Center for Investigative Reporting

Los Angeles instates iWatch program 
UK’s intelligence led policing
Militarization of US police forces 

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
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LAST HOPE: Real ID & RFID; Legal and privacy implications

Real ID & RFID
c/o LAST HOPE

Real ID, RFID &  Privacy and Legal Implications Pts 1-5
Part A
Part B
Part C

Privacy & Security Implications at Berkley  c/o Jennifer King

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
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identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
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BIG PICTURE: Placing anti-war in the right side of the light

BTC SOCIAL COMMENTARY – Anti-National ID advocates trip, and sometimes slip on the razors edge of frail terms of agreement between political scientists. We should pan out and look at the national dialogue about the Bush machinery institutionalized and perpetuated by the Obama administration. There is a whole lot of disallowance for the right-side of anti-war. This includes a great deal of Repubican veterans who undertstand what they hate because they lost a leg on Hamburger Hill. The established anti-war cliques on the left don’t talk to them.

Well… Houston, tell the ranks. It looks like the anti-war Left is ready to talk.

What to Do With the Anti-War Faction of the Tea Party?

Naomi Wolf who wrote The End of America: Letters to a Young Patriot and Give Me Liberty when Bush was in power thinks the Tea Party is helping America fight fascism. I’m not quite sure that is true especially when considering the media and government structures that bear down upon the people of this nation but I do think this quote from a recent interview is valuable:

JS: Why do you think the sides don’t understand each other?

NW: Frankly, liberals are out of the habit of communicating with anyone outside their own in cohort. We have a cultural problem with self-righteousness and elitism. Liberals roll their eyes about going on “Oprah” to reach a mass audience by using language that anyone can understand even if you majored in semiotics at Yale. We look down on people we don’t agree with. It doesn’t serve us well.

There is also a deliberate building up of two camps that benefits from whipping up home team spirit and demonizing the opposition. With the Internet there is even more fractioning since we are in echo chambers. With so much propaganda it is hard to calm down enough to listen.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Waking Up Orwell program pre-empted by aggressive online hack

BlogTalkRadio broadcasts repeatedly compromised, suffered from repeated DeLays

“This was by far, the most obvious outside attempt to maliciously pre-empt us in the program’s history. Based on where our program was rerouted it appears politically motivated by those entertained by neo-conservative talk.” – WakingUpOrwell

3/29/10 -11:00 PM PST – We’ve just discovered the copy of our lost program. The show sounds a lot like a recording of someone running on foot during the Blair Witch Project while reading news. It looks like the information available on BlogTalkRadio is consistent with what happened Thursday. We are still not going back… give today so we can keep the show alive.

BTC – Waking Up Orwell, BeatTheChip.org’s regular weekly radio news magazine, has been compromised for the 3rd time in its history of airing on BlogTalkRadio. The show was interrupted by an aggressive hack.

The hack preempted the airing of an interview with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s FOIA counsel, Lee Tien who explained their findings about FBI intrusions on social networks like Facebook and BlogTalkRadio.com. The hack consisted of successive browser crashing to interrupt media uploads, account episode deletions and disparity between the front end display of the episode and oustide interference with the host’s back end capability to view, acknowledge or operate the engineering ports of a rescheduled episode.

“We sincerely apologize to regular listeners who expected to hear the scheduled programming. Unfortunately, we cannot reconcile the repeated attempts to hack our accounts with BlogTalkRadio.com and are actively seeking a new radio home for our weekly program. I did all I could do today to air the program,” says Sheila Dean, host, producer and engineer for the dystopian news program.

What audience members witnessed at airtime was a non-aired episode scheduled late at 11AM CST featuring the EFF speaker. What the host-engineer saw was a prompt saying, “There are no shows that can be scheduled 3/25/10”. Dean published her technical difficulties using Twitter until the 11 AM CST airtime. She dialed into the BlogTalkRadio host mainframe using the caller code and later spoke for over 30 minutes. The broadcast was never heard. Operating browsers from her MacNotebook crashed repeatedly, interfering uploads of the pre-recorded media and back end access to host tools were rerouted to another webpage.

Dean first noticed problems with excessively slow access to her account. She restarted her computer and logged back into her user account. She then discovered her scheduled episode was deleted. BlogTalkRadio, in a reply to service the account said that only a person with access to the account could have deleted the program and that “it could not be done from our end.” The episode was submitted to BlogTalkRadio’s PR department for promotion earlier in the week.

In an EFFort to continue to air the radio program another episode was immediately scheduled to air at 11AM CST. Soon to follow Dean experienced interruptions and disparities consisting of successive browser crashes minutes before airtime after logging into her account. Dean mitigated this by switching to another PC right before airtime. She then logged into BlogTalkRadio.com’s online account to produce Waking Up Orwell as scheduled. The Internet Explorer browser then repeatedly rerouted Dean to another newscast featuring Tom DeLay on BlogTalkRadio.com and refusing her user access to her account.

“This was by far, the most obvious outside attempt to maliciously pre-empt us in the program’s history. Based on where our program was rerouted it appears politically motivated by those entertained by neo-conservative talk,” said Dean, producer of WakingUpOrwell.

WakingUpOrwell, often features controversial news specific to privacy and promotes involvement of citizens in affairs which directly affect American civil liberty. Dean’s broadcasts feature staunch criticisms of current government policies governing citizens rights and national security. While she was dissappointed in her inability to air the program, she is optimistic about funding for a new online and terrestrial home for her popularizing program.

BlogTalkRadio.com’s technical staff claim no culpability in the hacking attempts from their end.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Waking Up Orwell: Reconvenes discussion National ID, National Guard

Tomorrow on Waking Up Orwell

Waking Up Orwell reconvenes at it’s normal program time this week. News regarding National identity and more. There is a lot of buzz right now about repealing Real ID as a measure to answer back to the run on American identity through labor using biometrics.

A Citizen’s Story: Tangerine Giy

Special guest Tangerine Giy joins the program to talk about her experiences as a Iraq war veteran from the National Guard. She is a naturalized citizen who emmigrated with her family from Burma to avoid life in a fascist regime. Ms. Giy was raised in a very conservative, traditional Asian home. Her father became a self-made small business owner, a local community leader, and eventually a city politician. She joined the National Guard in her late teens, during peacetime. In 2003, she was deployed to Iraq in a bizzare application of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy to staff up armed services support in the middle east. She will retire from active duty soon and is very engaged with her college studies in Northern California. Unfortunately, she also suffers from the more persistent of battle traumas: PTSD. She has so generously decided to share her experiences in the Iraq war theater with us.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/BTRPlayer.swf

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

BTC’s BIG BROTHER AWARD NOMINEE 2010: i2

“Every year Privacy International and a growing number of affiliate human rights groups present the Big Brother Awards to government agencies, private companies and individuals who have excelled in the violation of our privacy.”

As it were… Beat The Chip is one blog who reports a lot of eye irritating news that points towards the simpatico symbiotics of the surveillance industrial complex.

Even if no one asked us or cares – our nominee for this years Big Brother Award goes to i2.

ANTIDOTE HERE:

Operation DeFuse : Fusion Centers and Information Sharing Pt 1
Operation DeFuse : Fusion Centers and Information Sharing Pt 2

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Military Blogger "thugged" by TSA over an income question

Military blogger Michael Yon, detained, handcuffed by TSA in Seattle Airport

c/o BigGovernment

Award winning war correspondent Michael Yon was detained and handcuffed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Yesterday by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel.

Yon was returning to the United States from Hong Kong to visit family when TSA officials stopped him during a routine security checkpoint. “Officials asked me what was in my bag—nothing wrong with this question,” Yon said in an interview with BigGovernment.com. “I told them it was normal stuff, clothes and toothbrushes.”

At this point the TSA officials escorted Yon to a designated screening area where they examined the contents of his bag. “Then they asked me how much money I make,” Yon said. Yon suggested to the TSA officials that the question was inappropriate and unrelated to transportation security. The award-winning blogger noted another TSA officer approached Yon: “he asked who do I work for.” ”I did not answer the question which clearly was upsetting to the TSA officers.”

Yon was escorted to a room elsewhere in the airport where he said he remained silent during much of the questioning. According to Yon, “they handcuffed me for failing to cooperate. They said I was impeding their ability to do their job.”
Yon described the TSA officials as noticeably frustrated by his refusal to answer their questions: “I always assume everything is being recorded. I was trying to be professional.”

Yon continued, “They said I wasn’t under arrest, but I’m handcuffed. In any other country, that qualifies as an arrest.”

Ultimately Port Authority police released Yon; according to Yon, the police were “completely professional.”

In January of 2009, Yon’s article “Border Bullies” detailed a Homeland Security officer coercing a friend to give up her e-mail password so that he could read private email correspondences between her and Yon.

Regarding the incident in Seattle, Yon was adamant the TSA agents had overstepped their bounds: “If I am the guy on that passport and I don’t have any contraband in my luggage, it is a matter for the FBI, not the TSA.”

“TSA people are out of control,” he said. “They are not doing their jobs, they are harassing people, creating animosity. They ask you ‘what time is your connective flight?’ and they bully you until you miss the flight.”

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

Improving upon reality; a better no fly list

c/o The Washington Post

In the wake of embarrassing stories a few years ago about members of Congress and babies appearing on the “no-fly” list, the government reduced the number of names drawing extra scrutiny at airports. Federal officials are right to worry about the civil-liberties ramifications of the no-fly list, but the facts surrounding the attempted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 underscore that the wrong approach has been taken. Rather than simply reducing the number of names on the no-fly list or raising the bar for a name to be listed, the government should make it easier for wrongly listed travelers to clear their names.

One of the lessons of Sept. 11, 2001, reaffirmed last month, is that it is difficult to keep dangerous items off planes. Watch lists will never replace metal detectors, but they may stop some people who would destroy planes with box cutters or liquid explosives. The no-fly list itself targets potentially dangerous people without the use of racial or religious profiling, and improving it does not require expensive scanning equipment or the hiring of additional screeners.

The problem with the no-fly list is not its size but that some individuals appear on it because they share the name of a dangerous person or as a result of bureaucratic accident or thinly sourced and inaccurate intelligence tips. Rather than require the government to be nearly certain that an individual is an actual security threat before initially listing him or her — and running the risk that the truly dangerous will be left unlisted — it would make more sense to facilitate the removal of wrongly listed people.

To begin, travelers should have a way to determine in advance of a flight whether their names are on the list. That way they won’t be surprised when they show up at the airport and are forced to miss a flight. Of course we don’t want to have a Web site where people can check their names; that would make it too easy for terrorists to check false identities against the list until they find one that works. A better approach would be to create a system where people can check — in person — whether they are on the list. Locations for such checks could be airport security offices, U.S. embassies or other federal buildings. Truly dangerous people are unlikely to identify themselves to security officials to ask whether they are on the list; if they do, they can be questioned or arrested. But people who should not be on the list would have the chance to clear their names before enduring delays or missing flights.

For individuals listed by accident or because they share a dangerous person’s name, the Transportation Security Administration’s ombudsman system could simply update the federal watch list (with more specific identifying data such as date of birth, if necessary). The bigger challenge is people who may well be dangerous but for whom the intelligence community has only a single, classified red flag, perhaps a warning from a concerned parent or intelligence asset. The question becomes whether that tip is an indication of real danger or the result of undue suspicion.

To resolve these difficult cases, listed individuals should be given the right to request an administrative hearing. If the government is concerned that sharing secret evidence might reveal intelligence sources and methods, it should provide these individuals with an attorney who has security clearance. These lawyers can review the evidence, clear up confusion and present the individual’s best case. (Providing representation would help compensate people for the inconvenience of an erroneous listing.) It is hard to imagine that actual terrorists would request such a hearing to attempt to remove their names from the list. If they did, the government would be able to learn more about them and would be in a position to arrest them when appropriate. But it should not be difficult for innocent people to clear their names with the help of an attorney who has access to secret evidence.

Because Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was listed in a government database but was not on the no-fly list, some have suggested making the revocation of travel privileges more automatic. We should know more soon about where our system broke down and why the warnings from Abdulmutallab’s father did not result in greater scrutiny. But whether or not the government expands the no-fly list, federal officials should incorporate ways for wrongly listed travelers to clear their names. This would help the no-fly list keep dangerous people out of our aviation system with minimal inconvenience to the rest of us.

The writer is an attorney at a Washington law firm and a fellow at the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law. He has previously published in the Yale Law Journal on the constitutionality of the no-fly list.

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
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identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org

States Say REAL ID Heading for Real Problems

Most states unprepared and unwilling to enact draconian ID rules

c/o Air America Blog

By Michelle Chen

If you plan on traveling home for the holidays, there might be more than long lines holding you up. A looming deadline for states to implement draconian ID rules may leave you grounded.

The National Governor’s Association issued a letter on Wednesday to Senate and House leaders asking Congress to revise the timetable for putting the REAL ID Act into effect. Some 36 states are reportedly set to miss the December 31 deadline, which could mean that by year’s end, the noncomplying states will leave countless people unable to use their licenses to board a flight.

REAL ID, passed in the midst of the post-9/11 national security hysteria, attempts to address identification fraud (since terrorists are so great at faking IDs) by imposing tighter federal standards for driver’s licenses. Civil libertarians and immigrant advocates see it as a stealth assault on civil rights. In a 2008 analysis of the law, the Electronic Privacy Information Center warned that it would allow “tracking, surveillance, and profiling of the American public.” Like other domestic policies enacted under the rubric of counterterrorism, REAL ID, EPIC says, could be a stepping stone toward a discriminatory national identification system, an Orwellian surveillance state, or at least a goldmine for identity thieves.

State lawmakers have argued that the regulations impose enormous costs without real safety benefits In fact, the NGA notes, many states have passed legislation that emphatically rejects REAL ID, turning an effort to harmonize state policies into an even more fractious regulatory patchwork:

Since REAL ID was enacted, states have maintained that its timelines and requirements are unrealistic and constitute a huge unfunded mandate with costs far outpacing federal funding. For these reasons, and as a result of privacy concerns, 13 states have enacted legislation prohibiting full compliance with the requirements of REAL ID, and several others have passed anti-REAL ID resolutions or have similar legislation pending. Without state participation, REAL ID falls far short of its promises, and the uncertainty of its future leaves us less secure.

With Congress and the Obama administration poised to revisit the law, the NGA is pushing for a lighter version of REAL ID known as PASS ID, which gives states more flexibility and funding to revamp their license systems.

But EPIC doesn’t think those tweaks address the core civil liberties threats. For example, the group says that following a six-year timetable for implementation, PASS ID would still threaten privacy by:

…prohibiting all federal agencies from accepting any non-compliant drivers license or state identification card for any official purpose (e.g. boarding an airplane, applying for Social Security benefits, student loans, opening a post office box, entering a federal building, etc). This raises questions regarding the rights of the physically challenged, children, poor, and the elderly who receive benefits or services from federal government agencies. There are reasons why each may not hold a federally sanctioned, state-issued identification document. The PASS ID Act does not specify limits on the requirement of an approved identification document to access federal government services, benefits, or meet with federal employees in official settings. In effect, individuals will lose some level of citizenship and rights should they not hold a PASS ID. :::MORE HERE:::

For more information to start your own local group to stop Real ID,
visit 511Campaign.org . The 5-11 Campaign helps the individual
connect with local organizers who oppose the U.S. plan for a national
identity. For more information visit: 511Campaign.org or
contact : 511@511Campaign.org