Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Why Google Has Become Microsoft’s Evil Twin

Robert X. Cringely
PC World
February 15, 2010

Late yesterday afternoon, Google introduced some changes it was making to Buzz via its Official Google Blog. They didn’t really change much — they just made some of the privacy features more visible, made it easier to block people from following you, and made it easier to manage which followers show up on your public Google Profile.

What they didn’t do was change the requirement for you to create a Google Profile in order to use Buzz, or change the default URL for the profile, which is the first half of your Gmail address. That’s not good.

“When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow. … The problem is that — by default — the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile. In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see the people you email and chat with most …

“In my profession — where anonymous sourcing is a crucial tool — the implications of this flaw are terrifying. But it’s bad for others too.

READ FULL ARTICLE

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Internet Censorship Alert! Alex Jones exposes agenda to shut down the web

Aaron Dykes & Alex Jones
Infowars.com
February 9, 2010

The Western world, from Australia to the United States, UK and parts of Europe, are moving in a unified front toward dictatorial Internet censorship. Australia has led the way, despite outcry from its populace, by “filtering” out certain banned content. In the United States, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, in continuing his family’s tradition of oppressing free humanity, has pushed forward Cybersecurity legislation that has already passed the House. He has done so in the name of warding off ghastly cyber “attackers” conceivably fronting for al Qaeda while ushering in a means to restrict free speech and expression online for the general population.

With Obama’s support, most of the developed world has accepted plans for government-approved online activity and Pentagon-monitored internet traffic. The U.S. and UK are facilitating the hijacking of what has, until now, been a highly-democratic Internet. Overall, it has been a technological God-send for bringing together communication and strongly expressing thought outside of the mainstream information available on television and in print.

Now, people are being forced onto the corporate-dominated Internet2– once again, in the name of “security.” (Internet) Freedom sacrificed at the same false alter of (Internet) Security. Independent blogs, news sites and online businesses will all be financially disadvantaged by access fees not demanded of dominant entities. What is today outside the ‘norm’ but well within free speech will tomorrow be evaluated by politically-correct criteria that will be used to identify sites to block and users to deny access.

Already, government “blacklists” have been exposed. On its lists? The usual suspects– Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, Wikileaks.org and the like. Referrals to sites like Infowars.com and PrisonPlanet.com are being denied not only in Australia, but in places like New Zealand– who have not adopted the same policies, but do share ISPs who have ordered a block. All across the world, wherever internet “filtering” and outright censorship has been phased in– via libraries, businesses, airports, and so forth, sites that are critical of government are consistently blocked first. This has been true not only of Alex Jones’ several websites, but also of sites like Wikileaks, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Cryptome and etc, etc. The common theme is not operating outside of law or of speaking in extremities, but challenging the power establishment through distribution of information and/or shedding light on its otherwise little known unscrupulous activities.

This Orwellian scheme has already been branded by the outrages of Cass Sunstein, one of the Obama ‘Czars’, who has called for governments to ban “conspiratorial theories” and identified thought-crimes including a disbelief in man-made global warming and a belief in the basic goodness of “sunshine.” In considering how to eradicate ‘outlawed’ beliefs, Sunstein posits the benefits of using bloggers to engage and counter ‘disinformation.’ A very similar version of this strategy has already been adopted by the Pentagon in its “infowars” campaign. Further, campaigns are underway to convince the public to accept “driver’s licenses” for the once-free Internet.

Alex uses his most-recent experience in an outright ban to sound a warning that the enemy is already among us. Internet censorship threatens to stifle out a recent phenomenon of free thought and widespread information that has flourished on the Internet / world wide web. Only by standing up to undue constraints on our rights and by saying no to efforts to chill speech on the web can we save a stronghold of free humanity.

Frightening Taste Of Internet Censorship As Major Free Speech Websites Blocked

- Death Of The Internet: Censorship Bills In UK, Australia, U.S. Aim To Block “Undesirable” Websites

- Obama Information Czar Calls For Banning Free Speech

- Conspiracy Theories (Cass R. Sunstein, Harvard Law School; Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School — January 15, 2008)

- Proposed Web video restrictions cause outrage in Italy

- Joining China and Iran, Australia to Filter Internet

- Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites

- Internet Censorship: Major Truth-Providing Websites Blocked By Asia Netcom To New Zealand Users

- New Zealand blocks two websites selectively

- Online Kiwis maybe feeling Oz censor trickledown

- Australia’s compulsory internet filtering ‘costly, ineffective’

- Australia Censors Wikileaks Page

- WikiLeaks Exposes Australian Web Blacklist

- Gates backs China in Google censorship spat

- Gates calls China censorship ‘limited’

- Microsoft’s Mundie calls for ‘internet driving licence’

- UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users

- Internet ‘driver’s license’? Microsoft’s Mundie wants it

- House Passes Cybersecurity Bill

- S. 773: Cybersecurity Act of 2009

- Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

- Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’

- Lt. Col. Ralph Peters Calls For Military Killing Of War Journalists

- U.S. Web-Tracking Plan Stirs Privacy Fears

- AOL Time-Warner Censors Alex Jones Websites

- My ISP (Internode) has blocked infowars.com!!!

- MySpace Admits Censorship Of Prison Planet.com

- Major International Transport Hub Censors Political Websites

- ISPs to record all emails and calls

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Orwell’s “Memory Holes” are here… Screenshot & Save your 9/11 Sources

bsbray11
Above Top Secret Forum
January 1, 2010

In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth employs the protagonist of the novel for sending information that contradicts party lines down a chute into a “memory hole,” where it never seen again.

From Wikipedia:

A memory hole is the alteration or outright disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a web site or other archive. The Memory Hole is a website whose goal is to preserve those documents which are in danger of being lost, and there are a number of other websites with similar goals.

I suggest we start saving copies of internet websites that make hard points against conventional wisdom that is not in the best interests of the state, and even make efforts to spread around information that is subdued.

Some examples I’m personally aware of:

Engineer Society Accused of 911 Cover-Ups (Google purging its news articles, also many other sources)
Youtube Censoring Sheen’s Video to Obama (YouTube freezing views and preventing videos from making front page)
Neptune’s Mass Recalculated (Information sources being cut back to only a few)

The article featuring engineers accusing the ASCE of corruption was purged from many different news sites, despite being an Associated Press article, and now when even search for the article on Google, it only returns second-hand links to the article unless you search for specific quotes found in the original article. The article also never had a single follow-up article, and despite the ASCE saying it would do an investigation and release a report, I can’t find a damned thing about that, either.

Removed web story

It’s hard to prove any particular article removal is ever intentional “memory holing,” but I know Google holds on to all kinds of information.

Here Google still has scans of a newspaper from 1998, for example, related to Bill’s BJ in the oval office: news.google.com…,6033774&dq=sources&hl=en “Lewinsky, Currie accounts differ on gifts returned, sources say .”

Yet they can’t hold on to an AP article from 2008 that accuses the ASCE of corruption involving the WTC and Katrina investigations…

Did I mention Google owns YouTube now and is also tied to the CIA, FBI and NSA?

CIA enlists Google’s help for spy work

Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world. …

In the most innovative service, for which Google equipment provides the core search technology, agents are encouraged to post intelligence information on a secure forum, which other spies are free to read, edit, and tag – like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Depending on their clearance, agents can log on to Intellipedia and gain access to three levels of info – top secret, secret and sensitive, and sensitive but unclassified. So far 37,000 users have established accounts on the service, and the database now extends to 35,000 articles, according to Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA.

“Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge,” Mr Dennehy was quoted as saying. “They maintained it in a shared drive or Word document, but we’re encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit.”

The collection of articles is hosted by the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and is available only to the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies.

Google’s search technology usually rates a website’s importance by measuring the number of other sites that link to it – a method that is more problematic in a ‘closed’ network used by a limited numbr of people. In the case of Intellipedia, pages become more prominent depending on how they are tagged or added to by other contributors.

As well as working with the intelligence agencies, Google also provides services to other US public sector organisations, including the Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

I have also seen numerous video clips containing explosions at the WTC complex or witnesses providing testimony to explosions removed from YouTube such that I can no longer find a single copy of them, and searching Google for other copies of the video clips obviously doesn’t help. So I have started saving as many flv files and other hard-to-find video clips that I can, for fear that they will be permanently removed from the net the way I have seen them removed from YouTube.

If you’re going to save videos or other sources, maybe even change file names and make them hard to find, or store them on CDs or flash drives, because apparently it isn’t above them to send trojans onto your computer to delete your files:

In an ironic twist of fate, in 2009, Amazon.com’s electronic book, the Kindle, was purged of copies of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Customers who earlier downloaded those books, found them surreptitiously erased from their Kindles, in what some said was the books’ being “sent down a memory hole.”[4] The book retailer denied accusations of “Big Brother-like behavior”, and stated that the books were uploaded to the Kindle store by a publisher who did not have reproduction rights, thereby necessitating the deletion. “We removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” a spokesman said.[5] Some critics likened this to Barnes & Noble selling a book, then burglarizing a house to reclaim it whilst leaving a check. Amazon.com stated that they might not repeat the actions in the future.[6] A Shelby Township, Michigan student is the lead plaintiff in a proposed class action lawsuit, which claims that his annotated notes for a class were rendered “useless” when his Kindle’s copy of 1984 was purloined using secret technology to invade his computer via an undisclosed Trojan horse.[7]

BSBRA

Friday, January 1, 2010

PsyOp Internet Battle for Hearts, and Minds

Sancho Jones
SHTF411
January 1, 2010

The Internet revolution has changed the face of our planet. Over the last 20 years there’s been a complete transformation of the way we live, conduct business, and share information. In the same amount of time, information technology has helped bring countless atrocities committed by governments, and global corporations into view. We’ve seen the rise of groups like “We Are Change”, and birthing of the “Truth Movement”; which has kicked off a viral, and grassroots information wave. The Internet’s been in many regards a saving grace of mankind, and in the same likeness the greatest threat to the establishment!

featured stories   PsyOp Internet Battle for Hearts, and Minds

computer



The FBI now is installing super spyware on people’s personal computers.


Recently, we had the Global Warming talks in Copenhagen; they were a failure! What else could come from the exposure of emails showing fudged data on Global Warming? Nothing is what. Climate Gate[1] changed what would have been global “Cap, & Trade” agreements, and other carbon tax legislation from an assured victory at Copenhagen, to an embarrassment. Al Gore decided it’d be better not to show up at all, after having to run from angry mobs, and being pelted by snow balls due to the leaks. The only thing that came of the conference, was a poor attempt at “saving face” through a non binding resolution.

Those hiding behind governments, and global corporations have long known the necessity of owning the Hearts, and Minds[2] of the people; in order to further their agendas. We’ve learned catchy phrases which embody the techniques. Some of these would include; “Divide, and Conquer”, “Smoke, & Mirrors”, “Order out of Chaos”, “Problem, Reaction, Solution”. Through the usage of these tools, perceptions can be changed, and goals can be accomplished. The US Govt. has actively sought to win the Hearts, and Minds of people openly since the Cold War.

During the height of the Cold War, and Civil Rights movement, the FBI created COINTEL[3]; which is an acronym of various programs the US Govt. used to deal with both issues. The methods used in COINTEL were inline with the techniques mentioned above. The overall goal was to control the information, and/or distort it so as to crush all legitimate opposition to the US Policy, or Hegemony of the time. This propaganda machine officially ended, but from the information presented below, it looks as though it is going stronger than ever before; and the Internet is the new battle ground.

There is subversion being committed across the World Wide Web on an ever increasing basis. The mainstream media has been very active in the shaping of our feelings, and thoughts, from the bottom up to meet current policy. We’ have MSM Journalists self censoring for advancement, or towing the party line. We see corporate MSM censorship through management, Government censorship of the MSM, and all culminating into supporting policies, such as war[4]. A recent article regarding a book by Nick Davies called, “How the spooks took over the news”, delves into how the world governments will insert stories at the community level, several years before a given agenda is needed.

“For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.”

“The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I’ve spent the last two years researching books about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.”[4]

In the USA, we have several groups designated to shape, and alter perceptions. The U.S. Army Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne)[6], or USACAPOC(A), consists of 40 Army Reserve units, or around 10,000 soldiers, who are stationed across the USA, are among many leading the mission of COINTEL. They have two main components, Civil Affairs, which is largely made up of lawyers, judges, physicians, bankers, health inspectors, fire chiefs,[7] or other professionals who can deal directly with the Civil nature of shaping a communities perception. The other portion is Psychological Operations; both operate by sword, deed, and word to alter Hearts, and Minds.

Another tactic being used in the U.S. is to actually pay operatives to create havoc, or to further the fury of an average person, so they will attempt an act associated with a criminal, or terrorism element. Hal Turner is an example of an operative employed by the US Govt. to further agendas, and policies. In his own words,”I was not some street snitch”[8]; in fact in his own words,”I was a deep undercover intelligence operative”. According to the FBI,”Special Agent Stephen Haug wrote that “[Turner's] value outweighs the discomfort associated with source’s rhetoric. Source’s unique access provides important intelligence which, if lost, would be irreplaceable.” Another FBI memo cited that Turner “has proven highly reliable and is in a unique position to provide vital information on multiple subversive domestic organizations.”[8] Note the words subversive domestic organizations.

Do you feel left out, or would you like to get in on the gravy train; while at the same time selling out your fellow man? The US Govt. with 5 million US Dollars is promoting, and paying bloggers, texters, and building websites across the Middle East, and North Africa![9] The official purpose is to spread ideologies, and learning to embrace others ideas. Of course through the wreaking putrid of the rhetoric comes the truth; it’s to promote US Democracy through the Arab world. I can read the websites now,”Freedom is the freedom to comply with The Patriot Act!”

Countries like Israel implement direct subversion, or disinformation as well. [10]“Israel’s Foreign Ministry is hiring students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world…. presenting themselves as ordinary surfers…

This is in addition to the existing Israeli volunteer internet task forces & propaganda applications like Megaphone & GIYUS – a chief Israeli propagandist is interviewed below….

“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the policy-explanation department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis. They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the Foreign Ministry developed.”[10]

Amongst the many groups on the Net fighting the struggle for Israel, is the Jewish Internet Defense Forces[11]. From their homepage,”leading the fight against antisemitism, and terrorism on the web, coordinating concerned citizens around the globe, and promoting jewish pride, knowledge, and unity.” A striking quality about any of these different groups, or the controlled MSM, who are sent out to propagandize the Hearts, and Minds of the people, is that they always cite Anonymous sources, or don’t cite who the “officials” are who said “what”. These kinds of propaganda articles are now common place[12].

Other countries around the world are implementing strategies to combat the information wave of the Internet; which is destroying their hold on the Hearts, and Minds of people worldwide. Australia’s Government has instituted their new Cyber Security Strategy[13]. It’s goals are of course always painted in a nice shiny, and clean picture. They’ll be focusing on legitimate cyber crimes, and of course they’ll have to monitor *possible* terrorist activities. They have created their own Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT as the main crime fighter; the program will begin operation January 2010, and will coordinate their activities with other National CERT’s across the globe to combat Internet crimes, or as is becoming abundantly clear, to infiltrate, and use propaganda to halt the Information revolution.

The saying goes something like, if at first you don’t succeed, then try, try again; right? Well, that’s exactly what the US Govt. is doing. The FBI now is installing super spyware on people’s personal computers. They are using “Computer, and Internet Protocol Address Verifiers”, or CIPAV to infiltrate personal computers, or systems, download all files, and upload to government servers in Virginia[14] It sounds somewhat “1984ish”, but imagine with everything covered so far, and taking into context what COINTEL did by replacing words, or meanings, imagine what they can upload to your own computer without the users ever knowing.

It’s not just the FBI with their fancy CIPAV, but the actual giant Internet companies who’ve been bought out are complicit with this ever increasing war for our Hearts, and Minds; through information. Google is catering to the CIA, NSA, FBI, and to most other Government agencies by offering the tools necessary to scavenge stored data, and other electronic media. They are also offering a closed “Intellipedia, a Wikipedia knock off for spooks.[15] Not only Google, but most US social networks have been caught selling private chats, photos, and emails to Governments.

The Internet is proving to be a real hassle for the corporate, and government elites. Leaked evidence that Yahoo is selling all documents for a given user to the U.S. Government for between $30 to $80 has surfaced recently. Not only are they selling the contents of what we feel is our private area, but also the IP addresses of where we sign on.[16] This is not limited to Yahoo, and Google, but again spans the innertubes of the Internet. The U.S. Federal Government, and other government’s are actively trying to not only use subversive means to control information, but also to mark those who present a problem; apparently so as to isolate them in the future.

It’s a massive amount of data to be stored, and would almost seem impossible. However, we must remember the U.S. Govt., and the Federal Reserve print money 24 hours a day. They are building Fusion Centers across the country, and implementing computer systems such as Maincore. In Utah, the “National Security Agency is constructing a colossal $1.9 billion information storage center at Camp Williams which could be considered a power trip. But it’s not the sort of power trip that keeps civil libertarians lying awake at night. No, this power grab is for the stuff of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla — the juice needed to keep acres of NSA supercomputers humming and a cyber eye peeled for the world’s bad guys.”[17] The problem is, that what the government considers as the bad guys is becoming the average American people, and in a hurry!

The deal is that people behind, or in control of governments, and global corporations realize the Internet is the one single threat that can create over night awareness into their ominous plans. They are attacking it, and people who are spreading information at every turn. Besides the leaks of Climate Gate, or Personal Data Gate, now there is the Secret Copyright Gate![18] See exert below:

“* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This will be a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

*There will be mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)[/quote] Visit link for full text.”[18]

Welcome to the world of the DMCA’s, and censorship![19] They are creating these treaties in combination with other censorship policies designed to limit access to undesirable websites; of course the policy maker’s will decide what is “undesirable”[20], or which websites aren’t fit to help foster the correct environment for the people in their country. It goes back to the beginning of this article; it is about winning, controlling, or owning the Hearts, and Minds of the people. Without owning those, the people behind the corporations controlling the policy makers who run governments cannot succeed. The Internet will be turned shortly, or the attempt will be made to turn it into an Orwellian hell of pay per click, or pay by minute. Followed with skewed, and distorted information.

It will take all of us to stop these people from censoring the Internet in their battle to win control our hearts and minds.

[1] http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Climate+ … 32dbb01be6

[2] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 … ing_slogan

[3] http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm

[4] http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2 … ia-is.html

[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media … 80672.html

[6] http://www.usacapoc.army.mil/

[7] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ … -psyop.htm

[8] http://rawstory.com/2009/11/report-fbi- … placeable/

[9] http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/1 … ney-at-it/

[10] http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2009/07/14/t … overnment/

[10] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2f1_1247746861&c=1

[11] http://www.thejidf.org

[12] http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id … _article=1

[13] http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/327642 … hting_team

[14] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/0 … yware-pro/

[15] http://www.infowars.net/articles/march2 … Google.htm

[16] http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=622292

[17] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7053 … .html?pg=1

[18] http://dprogram.net/2009/11/04/secret-c … -very-bad/

[19] http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/le … rikes-and-

[20] http://www.infowars.com/death-of-the-in … -websites/

Thursday, December 31, 2009

TSA Agents Visit Travel Writers Who Posted Security Directive

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
December 30, 2009

featured stories   TSA Agents Visit Travel Writers Who Posted Security Directive
tsa agent featured stories   TSA Agents Visit Travel Writers Who Posted Security Directive


TSA Special Agent John Enright, left, speaks to Steven Frischling outside the blogger’s home in Niantic, Connecticut, after returning Frischling’s laptop Wednesday. Photo: Thomas Cain/Wired.com


Wired reports today that two bloggers who posted new airport search procedures in the wake of the exaggerated underwear bomber fiasco received home visits from Transportation Security Administration agents.

“Special agents from the TSA’s Office of Inspection interrogated two U.S. bloggers, one of them an established travel columnist, and served them each with a civil subpoena demanding information on the anonymous source that provided the TSA document.” writes Kim Zetter on the Threat Level section of the Wired website.

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” blogger Steven Frischling told Wired. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

TSA official Suzanne Trevino said security directives “are not for public disclosure.”

Frischling said the agents who showed up at his home were armed and threatened him with a criminal search warrant if he didn’t provide the name of his source. He said they threatened to get him fired from his KLM Royal Dutch Airlines job and also said they would get him designated as a security risk, which would make it difficult for him to travel. Frischling is a photographer and freelance writer.

Infowars posted the document on December 28 after it appeared on the Gizmodo website. The Department of Homeland Security memo instructs TSA employees to perform pat-downs “concentrating on upper legs and torso” of all passengers at airport boarding gates. “Physically inspect 100 percent of all passenger accessible property at the boarding gate prior to boarding, with focus on syringes being transported along with powders and/or liquids.” Heads of State or Heads of Government are exempt from the measures, according to the document.

TSA agents also visited Chris Elliot, a travel journalist who writes a regular column for The Washington Post. “Chris is the other journalist who received and published a copy of the TSA’s Security Directive SD-1544-09-06,” writes Frischling on his blog.

“Chris and I have conversed many times before, however this phone call began by him asking me if any Federal Agents had visited me from the Department of Homeland Security this evening, as he had just been visited by a TSA Special Agent,” Frischling explains. “Moments after my call with Chris ended a sedan pulled in front of my house and two US Transportation Security Administration Special Agents were at my door with some questions and paperwork for me. I sent two of my kids upstairs, and like Chris I was served a subpoena by the Department of Homeland Security to disclose who sent me the contents of SD-1544-09-06.”

“We had just put the kids in the bathtub when Special Agent Robert Flaherty knocked on my front door with a subpoena. He was very polite, and used ’sir’ a lot, and he said he just wanted a name: Who sent me the security directive?” explains Elliot on his blog.

The subpoena commands Elliot “to produce and permit inspection and copying of the records” in his possession related to “TSA Security Directive 1544-09-06 dated December 25, 2009.”

“Any person who neglects or refuses to produce records in obedience to this subpoena is subject to fines under Title 18, United States Code, imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, 49 U.S.C § 46313,” the subpoena concludes.

“So if I’m reading this correctly, the TSA wants me to tell them who gave me the security directive,” writes Elliot. “I told Flaherty I’d call my attorney and get back to him.”

“We are a free society, knowledge is power and informing the masses allows for public conversation and collective understanding,” Steven Frischling notes. “You can agree or disagree, but you need information to know if you want to agree or disagree. My goal is to inform and help people better understand what is happening, as well as allow them to form their own opinions.”

Monday, July 27, 2009

The Hamburg Declaration: Another ‘Big Brother’ to the Internet

John ‘J’ Trinckes
NewsWithViews
July 25, 2009

It appears that everyone is feeling the effects of the economy even news publishers. With the decrease of advertising dollars, the news industry needs to find ways to survive. The way in which these publishers feel they need to survive is by blaming the Internet for their troubles. A total of 166 European publishers as members of the European Publishers Council (EPC) have recently signed the “ Hamburg Declaration to Protect Intellectual Property Rights” in an attempt to enforce legislation that would somehow require readers to ‘pay’ for their news.

The Hamburg Declaration begins by saying: “The Internet offers immense opportunities to professional journalism – but only if the basis for profitability remains secure throughout the digital channels of distribution. This is currently not the case.” My interpretation of this is that to be a professional journalist you have to be a profit maker. Although I guess this would make sense, literarily, the declaration goes on to say that using works of others [authors, publishers, and broadcasters] without paying for it “threatens the production of high-quality content and the existence of independent journalism.” I don’t know about you, but I love reading the articles fromNewsWithViews.com and believe they are of very ‘high-quality content’ and from multiple ‘independent’ journalists. There is no profit motive for these writers; they love to write and to get information out in the public domain. Isn’t this what ‘true’ journalism is all about? Get the truth out?

The declaration continues with “universal access to websites does not necessarily mean access at no cost. We disagree with those who maintain that freedom of information is only established when everything is available at no cost.” I don’t know about you, but I do pay a substantial monthly fee to have access to the Internet and as such, I expect to visit any website I want. Are there sites out there that charge a membership fee to join? Absolutely, but I usually don’t bother since there is another site out there that may offer the same information that I’m looking for, but for ‘free’ or with minimal advertising. And as far as freedom of information is concerned, more times than not, the information that comes to us free of charge are often times better than the information that we may pay for. Besides, those individuals that have the money can influence what is said or how something is presented to other individuals. How many times or examples can I site on how our news media cover (or doesn’t cover) a certain story because of the advertising dollars that come in to the news station. We couldn’t possibly want to run a story that is negative against one of our sponsors just to get the ‘facts’ out about that particular story.

Read entire story

CEO Says Free Internet Content is a Myth

Brett Pulley and Andy Fixmer
Bloomberg
July 26, 2009

Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp, said Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, joining the refrain of media moguls who say an era of free Internet content is ending.

The media and technology executive, whose company runs the Ask.com search engine and the Match.com dating service, said it’s “mythology” to view the Internet as a system of free communications.

“It is not free, and is not going to be,” Diller said today at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Pasadena, California. In addition to IAC, he is chairman of Expedia Inc., the online travel service, and Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc.

Diller, 67, joined a group of media chiefs, from Liberty Media Corp.’s John Malone to Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger, who are challenging the accepted model that consumers pay for Internet access and then content is free. Diller predicted there will be three revenue streams: advertising, subscriptions and transactions.


Tuesday, May 12, 2009

No Room for Info Warriors in YouTube’s Hulu-ized Universe

Kurt Nimmo
infowars
May 12, 2009

It comes as no surprise YouTube has pulled the plug on Jason Bermas’ Infowarrior channel. In addition to clips from Jason’s show, the channel served as a replacement for the Alex Jones Channel, pulled earlier this month after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette allegedly filed a complaint with YouTube in response to Alex Jones showing a computer printout of a page from the newspaper’s website on his show. YouTube considers this a copyright violation, a rather absurd accusation considering Viacom filed suit against Google in March 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages for allowing users to upload clips of Viacom’s copyright material.

featured stories   No Room for Info Warriors in YouTubes Hulu ized Universe 
 Wilson
  
 YouTube’s emerging corporate model is Hulu, the spin-off site owned by NBC Universal and Fox Entertainment Group. HuluTube will be safe for transnational corporations and government, a universe where millions of channels exist but nothing is on.
  

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette incident was merely a pretense. YouTube no longer has any use for Alex Jones and thousands of other users who have contributed to the site and have made it what it is today. In fact, YouTube’s users are basically suckers for Google’s corporate vision of the future and they were shamelessly exploited in order to build the site up over the last few years.

According to Nielsen Online, YouTube is the 5th most popular website in the United States and had over 83 million unique visitors in February. It is estimated that 41% of all US video streams will go through YouTube in 2009 and the site will see 375 million unique viewers worldwide.

Even so, YouTube is a failed business model. It loses millions of dollars a year. In order to realize a profit, YouTube has penned deals with with CBS, Lions Gate, MGM, Disney, ESPN and other corporate leviathans. Last month YouTube announced a partnership with Universal Music to build VEVO, a premium music video website.

“Those overtures have led some observers to question YouTube’s long-term ability to serve both its homegrown community and Hollywood, with its emphasis on professionally produced content and tight copyright controls,” Chris Snyder wrote for Wired last month.

But is not simply the copyright issue. YouTube and its parent Google are in the process of “ghettoizing user-generated clips” and deliberately Hulu-izing the site in order to make it acceptable to its corporate partners. YouTube claims it can and will balance both interests.

Hulu is a YouTube spin-off produced by NBC Universal and Fox Entertainment Group. The Hulu venture was announced in March 2007 with AOL, MSN, Facebook, and Yahoo! as partners. Hulu offers commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox and many other networks and studios.

 

YouTube is in the process of a site redesign that “separates its premium and long-form programming from the user-posted videos that account for most of its activity,” Clickz reported in March. In other words, YouTube plans to ghettoize non-corporate content. In addition, YouTube plans to insert ads in the middle of user videos using new technology called Google TV Ads Online.

So-called “balance” is not in the equation when it comes to the videos of Alex Jones and other truthseekers, however. As radio host Jason Bermas discovered yesterday, YouTube will no longer use flimsy excuses in order to shut down accounts, they will simply — without warning or explanation — delete channels deemed unacceptable to their corporate masters and send terabytes of video content to the memory hole.

 

YouTube’s new business model is a microcosm of the brave new internet envisioned by corporations and government — not unlike corporate-dominated television, an electronic universe supporting millions of channels but with nothing of significance on. In this universe, there will be no space for democratic discussion untethered and micro-managed by government and mega-corporations.

The Hulu-ization of YouTube represents the beginning of this process. In the not too distant future, government will step in at the behest of corporations and impose regulations designed to domesticate the internet and exclude those who do not tote the company line. Jay Rockefeller’s so-called “cybersecurity” bill (allowing the president to shut down the internet on a whim) and the misnamed “Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act” represent the beginning of an orchestrated plan to make the internet safe for the ruling elite, government, and transnational corporations.

Jay Rockefeller wasn’t kidding when he said we’d be better off if the internet was never invented — that is to say government and corporations would be better off if an open and democratic internet was suffocated in its infancy.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Rupert Murdoch: “Internet Will Soon Be Over”

Corporate media forced to charged dwindling readership for news content as establishment propaganda organs wither and die while alternative media soars

Rupert Murdoch: Internet Will Soon Be Over 070509top 

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, May 7, 2009

Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave a strange response when asked about plans for mainstream news websites to charge for content, declaring, “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”

He was making reference to the fact that corporate media websites cannot continue to survive under their current failing business model.

The establishment media is dying and advertising revenue has plummeted as people turn to blogs and the alternative media for their news in an environment of corporate lies and spin.

This has forced sectors of the corporate media to charge the dwindling number of loyal readers they have left for news content, a practice which is set to become widespread according to Murdoch. This will only send more people over to the alternative media as the old organs of de facto state-controlled propaganda wither and die.

“Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, (Murdoch) replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that,” reports the Guardian. “Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”

Murdoch’s newspapers and TV networks, which include Fox News and the Asian Star Network, have seen profits plummet from $216m to just $7m year-on-year. MySpace.com is also floundering despite a recent move to replace the company’s entire management staff.

It was all but over for the Boston Globe this week, following a threat to close the 137-year-old publication after net losses of $85 million this year alone. Only a last minute cost-cutting agreement on behalf of its owner, The New York Times Company, and The Boston Newspaper Guild, saved the newspaper.

But it’s not just establishment newspapers that are struggling to survive - social networking websites like Twitter and corporate online video giant You Tube are also deep in the red. Apparently, paying out millions in server fees for half the population of the planet to watch clips of cute puppies isn’t a sustainable business model.

This is why You Tube is being forced to pursue lucrative partnerships with giant production studios and broadcasters, at the expense of user generated content which has been relegated to a sub-section of its website, taking the “You” out of You Tube altogether. Content that may be deemed harmful to You Tube’s corporate agenda and its multi-million dollar partnership deals, like The Alex Jones Channel, is being systematically erased from You Tube’s website under the pretext of flimsy copyright infringement claims.

The jig is up for the corporate media. If they continue to allow free access to their content they will go out of business because there’s not enough advertising revenue coming in, whereas if they charge for content they will lose a huge chunk of their audience and their influence in shaping the news agenda will wane completely.

This is the price the corporate media has paid for lying, spinning and obfuscating on behalf of the virulently corrupt power elite and expecting the population to eat it up without question.

The corporate media monopoly has terminal cancer and they are losing their power, which is why they are aggressively supporting moves to phase out the old Internet altogether and replace it with “Internet 2,” a highly regulated and controlled electronic Berlin wall, where alternative voices will be silenced and giant corporate propaganda organs will dominate once again.

This what Murdoch is really getting at when he assures us that, “The Internet will soon be over” and it’s down to us to stop that agenda from being realized.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Obama Deception Censored

This is actually good news. It means that the movie has an effect and is a solid piece of research.
If the film was not truthful, they would just sue Alex Jones before the release in order to stop it. -neilmcnasty

Video networking website claims documentary contains “slander and libel”

Christian You Tube Censors Obama Deception 180309top

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

A site that brands itself as a kind of ‘You Tube for Christians’ - Tangle.com, which was formally known as Godtube.com, has censored Alex Jones’ new film The Obama Deception after claiming the documentary contained “slander and libel”.

One of our readers tried to upload The Obama Deception to the Tangle website in four parts, but two of the sections never made it and the reader was subsequently contacted by Caitlin Reynolds, ‘Community Care’ administrator for Tangle.

“Hello and thank you for using tangle!,” stated the e mail. “Your video contains slander and liable (sic). We cannot allow this content on our site with out documented proof of the accusations. Please refer to our Terms of Use for additional information. http://www.tangle.com/support/legal Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns!”

Firstly, we would advise Tangle.com to try and learn to spell the word “libel” before they attempt to interpret it.

Christian You Tube Censors Obama Deception obamadecept_340x169

Secondly, Obama’s lies are exhaustively documented at every step of the way throughout the film. The content of the documentary itself disproves any claim of “libel” or “slander”.

Naturally, Tangle.com failed to cite a single example of defamation in the film but immediately banned it anyway, which is even more bizarre considering the fact that Obama has already put into action policies that should abhor Christians, some of which are touched upon in the film.

Perhaps Tangle.com is run by the same kind of phony ‘Christians’ as those that staff the Assembly of God church in Ohio, who recently released a pamphlet encouraging their congregation to all but obey Obama and not criticize his policies, citing a perversion of Romans 13.

This is the second example of large networking websites attempting to censor the Obama Deception within a week of its release.

Yesterday, we featured a story about how a user had his account terminated by Facebook for merely posting links to The Obama Deception video.

You can watch The Obama Deception for free at You Tube or subscribe to prison planet.tvand see the movie in high quality along with a plethora of other videos.

Research related articles:

  1. The Best Way To Wake Up The World To The Obama Deception
  2. Facebook Censors User For Promoting The Obama Deception
  3. The Obama Deception: Director Alex Jones Reaches Out To Obama Supporters
  4. Alex Jones Completes The Obama Deception
  5. Alex Jones’ The Obama Deception — Coming March 15
  6. Hope, Change, Progress & The Obama Deception
  7. Alex Jones’ Audio Blog: January 25, 2009 The Obama Deception & the on-going globalist agenda
  8. Sneak Peek: Scenes From ‘The Obama Deception’ - On DVD March 15
  9. The Obama Deception - Trailer #2
  10. The Obama Deception - Now Streaming For Prison Planet.tv Members!
  11. Fight Back Against the Banker Onslaught with The Obama Deception
  12. The Obama Deception – A Movie Review

Screenshot from Google Video when the film hit no.1 on the top 100.

MORE ON THE SUBJECT:

Alex Jones - FBI and ‘The Obama Deception’


A few days before the new documentary ‘The Obama Deception’ was to be released, Alex Jones started receiving calls from members of the FBI asking questions about where the servers were located and probing questions about the film, but they would not tell him why they were calling.  He told his radio listeners on March the 12th (NZT) that he believed chances were, the underlying reason for the harassment related to the imminent release of this documentary, and as a consequence Alex said he is seriously considering releasing the film earlier than planned, via the prisonplanet.tv servers.

It is not surprising he is being harassed by the FBI. ‘The Obama Deception’ will be the first hard-hitting film to expose Obama, his agenda and who his  handlers are.  It cuts through  the media hype,  the unimportant side-issues of no real relevance and the Left/Right rhetoric.

Alex has made several films exposing the New World Order agenda and in this film reveals the Obama Administration’s plans from the same non-partisan point of view– looking past the puppet in the White House to the real controllers on Wall Street, in the Bilderberg group and at the Federal Reserve.

Please help spread the word about this powerful new film.