White House Science Expert Withholds Public Documents In The Name of Transparency

 



[From article]
The most transparent administration in American history is at it again — dodging sunlight and evading public disclosure.
Joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her secret servers, former IRS witch hunt queen Lois Lerner and her secret email accounts, former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her Internet alter egos, and former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and his non-public email account is White House science czar John Holdren.


 
President Obama’s top climate change adviser is defending his hide-and-seek game in federal court. Earlier this month, the Washington, D.C.-based Competitive Enterprise Institute appealed a D.C. district court ruling protecting Holdren’s personal email communications from Freedom of Information Act requests.
CEI argues that federal transparency law “applies to the work-related records of agency employees regardless of where they are stored. Many agencies routinely instruct their staff to preserve any such documents that they might have on their personal email accounts.” Yet, as head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Holdren has placed himself above the law and spirit of transparency that Obama fraudulently vowed to uphold.
[. . .]
The White House science czar’s private email account–which was uncovered when CEI unmasked former EPA head Lisa Jackson’s private email aliases, which were used to conduct government business–resides with his former employer, the Woods Hole Research Center. It’s a far-left eco-alarmist group that pushes radical anti-capitalist interventions (Remember “cap and trade”?) to eliminate the decades-long hyped “global climatic catastrophe.” Their ultimate goal? Establishing government rule by eco-technocrats who detest humanity.
[. . .]



Holdren [co-authored] “Ecoscience,” a creepy tome that called for saving the planet by proposing that:
–Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not.
–The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or food.
–Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise.
–People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
[. . .]



Holdren’s mentor likened the global population to a “pulsating mass of maggots.” These are not harmless dalliances of the past. Holdren’s insidious ideology — and his hidden policy communications — now have an untold impact on American taxpayers.
http://michellemalkin.com/2015/08/26/what-is-obamas-top-population-control-freak-hiding/

What is Obama’s top population control freak hiding?
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2015

Big Business Contributions Influenced Secret Trade Agreement Votes

[From article]
Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. The US Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – the fast-tracking bill – by a 65-33 margin on 14 May. Last Thursday, the Senate voted 62-38 to bring the debate on TPA to a close.
Those impressive majorities follow months of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing by the world’s most well-heeled multinational corporations with just a handful of holdouts.
Using data from the Federal Election Commission, this chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate:
Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes.
The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.
The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.
The amounts given rise dramatically when looking at how much each senator running for re-election received.
[. . .]
In just 24 hours, Wyden and five of those Democratic holdouts – Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, and Bill Nelson of Florida – caved and voted for fast-track.
Bennet, Murray, and Wyden – all running for re-election in 2016 – received $105,900 between the three of them. Bennet, who comes from the more purple state of Colorado, got $53,700 in corporate campaign donations between January and March 2015, according to Channing’s research.
[. . .]
“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp

Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill
Critics of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle
C Robert Gibson and Taylor Channing
Wednesday 27 May 2015 08.30 EDT

FBI Operating Secret Low Altitude Flights Over U.S. Cities For Surveillance

Is this part of the business model for the FBI? First the U.S. government relaxed border enforcement allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter the US for whatever reasons. Then the police and the FBI began watching them to see what they do. Maybe some of them are, Gasp! terrorists, or criminals. Gasp! Gasp! That is like the Savings and Loan scandal (see, e.g., The Daisy Chain, by James O'Shea) Congress repealed laws protecting small banks from fraud and theft of funds. Criminal lawyers and accountants take advantage of the re-opened loop holes and steal millions bankrupting small banks. The FDIC covers the losses and Congress hires the same lawyers and accountants to restore the banks to their former healthy status. Or the feds allowing illegal drugs to flow over borders from South America and Europe. Then they use taxpayer funds fighting the drug wars which they created and sustained.

[From article]
The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.
The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.
[. . .]
U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Even basic aspects of the program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department's inspector general.
"The FBI's aviation program is not secret," spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement.
[. . .]
The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights since late April orbiting both major cities and rural areas.
One of the planes, photographed in flight last week by the AP in northern Virginia, bristled with unusual antennas under its fuselage and a camera on its left side.
[. . .]
The surveillance flights comply with agency rules, an FBI spokesman said.
[. . .]
During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI's fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.
[. . .]
Officials say cellphone surveillance is rare, although the AP found in recent weeks FBI flights orbiting large, enclosed buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signals collection. Those included above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.
[. . .]
After The Washington Post revealed flights by two planes circling over Baltimore in early May, the AP began analyzing detailed flight data and aircraft-ownership registrations that shared similar addresses and flight patterns. That review found some FBI missions circled above at least 40,000 residents during a single flight over Anaheim, California, in late May, according to Census data and records provided by the website FlightRadar24.com.
[. . .]
The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government's involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI's request because the companies' names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.
At least 13 front companies that AP identified being actively used by the FBI are registered to post office boxes in Bristow, Virginia, which is near a regional airport used for private and charter flights. Only one of them appears in state business records.
[. . .]
Included on most aircraft registrations is a mysterious name, Robert Lindley. He is listed as chief executive and has at least three distinct signatures among the companies. Two documents include a signature for Robert Taylor, which is strikingly similar to one of Lindley's three handwriting patterns.
[Does that mean the FBI is filing false documents to government agencies? Perjury? Felonies?]
[. . .]
The FBI does not generally obtain warrants to record video from its planes of people moving outside in the open, but it also said that under a new policy it has recently begun obtaining court orders to use cell-site simulators. The Obama administration had until recently been directing local authorities through secret agreements not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encouraging prosecutors to drop cases rather than disclose the technology's use in open court.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150602/us--fbi_surveillance_flights-e2320f0d2a.html

FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over US cities
Jun 2, 3:27 AM (ET)
By JACK GILLUM, EILEEN SULLIVAN and ERIC TUCKER

Police Use Secret Technology For Surveillance, Refuse to Admit It Exists and To Identify It

This is one of numerous high tech devices used by government for surveillance and for harassment. if this technology is for sale you can be certain that criminals have access to it, along with their government protectors. In recent months I have been unable to reach several government agencies to complain about police harassment and harassment by criminals. (Not that they will act or anything, but just so they cannot say I did not complain.) I suspect that technology is available and being used not only to listen in, to track and to gather meta data, but also to divert the calls. Land line calls can be diverted using computers, hacking into telephone company switches. This was reported several years ago by the New York Times. Criminals diverted calls to steal business from competitors. Over many years I would call a government agency and end up speaking to a Harvard University student. I suspect it is happening again. On occasion it is a Harvard University campus police employee. Other times it is an attorney employed by the university. And still others by persons pretending to be doctors. This is an area that most people can understand. But there are many other areas of technology used to inflict pain and to manipulate thought and human emotions. It is not written about and as in this case the government will deny it exists, do what it can to hide its existence, and its use. The ACLU is doing some work in this area. Their web site is at ACLU.org  

[From article]
But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.
Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.
[. . .]
McKenzie’s case is emblematic of the growing, but hidden, use by local law enforcement of a sophisticated surveillance technology borrowed from the national security world. It shows how a gag order imposed by the FBI — on grounds that discussing the device’s operation would compromise its effectiveness — has left judges, the public and criminal defendants in the dark on how the tool works.
[. . .]
The Tallahassee police used the StingRay or a similar device in more than 250 investigations over a six-year period, from mid-2007 through early 2014, according to a list of cases compiled by the Tallahassee Police Department and provided to the American Civil Liberties Union.
[. . .]
In Baltimore, a judge is pushing back against the refusal of police officers to answer questions while testifying. In Charlotte, following a newspaper investigation, the state’s attorney is reviewing whether prosecutors ­illegally withheld information about the device’s use from defendants.
In Tacoma, Wash., after a separate newspaper investigation found that judges in almost 200 cases had no idea they were issuing orders for the StingRay, the courts set new rules requiring police to disclose the tool’s use. The state legislature is weighing a bill to regulate police use of the equipment.
[. . .]
The FBI and Tallahassee police say that the device is used only with an appropriate court order and that they do not collect the content of calls or text messages. The FBI also said it retains only location data that is relevant to an investigation and immediately discards all other data.
So far, there is virtually no case law on how the Fourth Amendment — which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures — should apply to this technology.
[. . .]
In March, the defense team deposed police investigator Robert Newberry. The lawyers tried to get Newberry to explain how the police zeroed in on 3197 Springhill Rd. He mentioned the cell-tower records and then, under probing, acknowledged that they had not been sufficient on their own to locate the suspect.
He said a “Sergeant Corbitt” in the department’s technical operations unit had identified the phone’s location. “He would have to tell you how he got to that,” Newberry said, referring to Christopher Corbitt, who handles electronic surveillance operations.
[. . .]
Newberry could not fully explain how Corbitt determined the phone’s location. “I can’t address it because I don’t know the magic behind it,” he said.
[. . .]
But how did he know that the phone was in the house at 6 in the morning? The phone was a “burner” — one not registered under McKenzie’s name.
“We do have specific equipment that allows us to . . . direction-find on the handset, if necessary,” Corbitt said.
“What is that, and how does that work?” McMullen asked.
“I can’t go into that,” he said. “Due to [a] nondisclosure agreement with the FBI, we’re not able to get into the details of how the equipment operates.”
He acknowledged that the device was a cell-tower simulator.
[. . .]
He said that if the defense wanted more specific information, then he had “a specific protocol” to follow requiring him to notify the FBI and the Justice Department.
[. . .]
In June, in response to a motion for public access by the ACLU, the state released a transcript from a closed court hearing in 2010 relating to a Tallahassee rape case in which Corbitt testified that he had used a cell-site simulator to identify a suspect in an apartment complex. “In essence, we emulate a cellphone tower,” he said. “We force that handset to register with us. We identify that we have the correct handset and then we’re able to — by just merely direction-finding on the signal emanating from that handset — we’re able to determine a location.”
[. . .]
“Using portable equipment,” he said, “we were able to actually basically stand at every door and every window in that complex and determine, with relative certainty . . . the particular area of the apartment that that handset was emanating from.”
He said the Tallahassee police began using the device in the spring of 2007. From that point until August 2010, he said, the police had used it “200 or more times” to locate a cellphone.
How reliable was it? “Truthfully,” he said, “100 percent.”
[. . .]
The state’s attorney, Courtney Frazier, argued that details of the equipment’s operation were protected from disclosure under a law enforcement exception to the state open-records law.
Sheffield broke in. “What right does law enforcement have to hide behind the rules and to listen in and take people’s information like the NSA?” he said.
Frazier protested that the information about the device was sensitive and that disclosure could inhibit the police’s ability to catch criminals.
“Inhibiting law enforcement’s rights are second to protecting mine!” Sheffield thundered, gesturing with both hands and fixing his gaze on the prosecutor.
[. . .]
On Dec. 2, Sheffield signed the subpoena forcing Tallahassee police to show the device they used.
Two days before Corbitt was due to show up with the device, McMullen received notice of the plea deal from the prosecutor. She had never gotten such a sweet deal on a case.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/secrecy-around-police-surveillance-equipment-proves-a-cases-undoing/2015/02/22/ce72308a-b7ac-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html?hpid=z1

Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case’s undoing
By Ellen Nakashima

February 22, 2015

Computer Security Experts Say NSA Can Hide Surveillance Code in Firmware Deep in Hard Drives

Kaspersky Labs Equation infection: Kaspersky Labs says the highest number of machines infected with Equation programs were in Iran, Russia and Pakistan.
From article]
The US National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.
That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.
Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said
[* * *]
According to Kaspersky, the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to lodge malicious software in the obscure code called firmware that launches every time a computer is turned on.
Disk drive firmware is viewed by spies and cybersecurity experts as the second-most valuable real estate on a PC for a hacker, second only to the BIOS code invoked automatically as a computer boots up.
"The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over," lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu said in an intervi
[. . .]
According to former intelligence operatives, the NSA has multiple ways of obtaining source code from tech companies, including asking directly and posing as a software developer. If a company wants to sell products to the Pentagon or another sensitive US agency, the government can request a security audit to make sure the source code is safe.
"They don't admit it, but they do say, 'We're going to do an evaluation, we need the source code,'" said Vincent Liu, a partner at security consulting firm Bishop Fox and former NSA analyst. "It's usually the NSA doing the evaluation, and it's a pretty small leap to say they're going to keep that source code."ew..

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/66279485/nsa-hiding-equation-spy-program-on-hard-drives

NSA hiding Equation spy program on hard drives
JOSEPH MENN
Last updated 10:01, February 17 2015

Spin Doctors Rule Reality

The desire to keep unpleasant facts from the public to protect an institution is now institutionalized in the Public Relations Industry. Locally Harvard University has its own police. The White House has enough influence to keep secret or to spin major blunders into positive perspectives.

[From article]
"The instinct to protect a reputation is nothing new.
At the height of the scandal in the Catholic Church, when Cardinal Law was featured in the role Joe Paterno now plays, a young priest named Bryan Parrish offered an interesting theory.
“I think part of this stems from the history of Irish Catholics in this part of the country, back to a time when protecting the institution was necessary,” he suggested. “That mindset of dealing with our problems internally has been perpetuated to this day, a ‘let’s keep it all in the house’ approach that led to a lack of openness.”

http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1380277&srvc=news&position=3

Joe Paterno’s failing all too common
Boston Herald
By Joe Fitzgerald
Saturday, November 12, 2011

Government Surveillance

[From article]
"After 9/11, the White House promised to build a super computer that would track every email, cell phone call and bank transaction in order to prevent the next attack.

But when the details of the new program -- called "Total Information Awareness (TIA)" -- leaked out, Congress was forced to cancel the program because it seemed so Orwellian and ripe for abuse."

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/paranoid_state_9HdQiqEq9qyshQ9ro56B5I

Paranoid state
Post-9/11, 'Person of Interest' set to be first series about brighter side of gov't surveillance
By MICHAEL BLAUSTEIN
New York Post
Last Updated: 10:32 AM, July 27, 2011
Posted: 10:43 PM, July 26, 2011

Meeting on Gov't Transparency Closed to Public

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/11/joe-biden-transparency.html

Joe Biden update: The VP meets on government transparency today. But that meeting is closed
Andrew Malcolm
Los Angeles Times
November 9, 2010 | 2:16 am

New Law Keeps Information Secret

[From editorial]
" It turns out that the same bill that dramatically expands the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigative powers also dramatically expands its ability to keep the information it obtains away from the prying eyes of journalists"

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/darkness_at_the_sec_znrdNIl80KSgwBo5w5hfRN

Darkness at the SEC
Editorial
New York Post

Last Updated: 5:18 AM, July 30, 2010

Posted: July 30, 2010