How dare they do this! This is getting totally out of control. A contributor sent this to me today and it outraged me enough to give it top billing for the day. Google is planning to tap into our internal computer microphones to monitor and data mine what people listen to in the background, whatever that may be. Music, videos, conversations, Skype calls, TV and radio, and your dog barking. This is insanity. We deserve some modicum of privacy in our own homes. The first and fourth amendments still exists, after all! It also surprises me, considering that Google is a big proponent of net neutrality. How can they be so on the right side of something important and then on the wrong side of something just as important! There goes the last of our privacy… watch it fly out the window. From The Register:

“The first thing that came out of our mouths when we heard that Google is working on a system that listens to what’s on your TV playing in the background, and then serves you relevant adverts, was “that’s cool, but dangerous“.
The idea appeared in Technology Review citing Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, who says these ideas will show up eventually in real Google products - sooner rather than later.
The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.”

We have to do something, call Congressmen, splash this on your websites, yell out the window, something. We need to research how to stop this. Our equipment is bought and paid for by us to serve us and be useful tools, not to allow the government or Google to spy on us. It serves us and I will not pay for equipment or software that is going to spy on me. The government can go jump in a lake if they think we’re going to stand for this. How much money does Google need that it sells its soul in this way? I may have to dump my gmail and start using someone else for searches, etc. Google seems to be outgrowing its own conscience.

submitted by Shelly of Citizen Against Lies

I don’t know what to believe.. Yet.

When I heard about the recent terror threats thwarted by the British government it was on the car radio as I got back from a few days away in the sticks. The circus was in full swing with the tabloid news bigging things up almost to the level of an American TV news station. Comparisons with nine eleven were batted about as easy as delivering a weather report and still nothing was really known.

I thought I would reserve judgement for a few days and see what surfaced. Instead of watching the endless news reports say the same nothings, I looked around at how the British public were reacting.

Down my local shop people weren’t talking about it any more than the weather. The most concerned person I came into contact with was a member of the family that was due to fly to Spain and wanted the airports to get back to normal as they had been desperately looking forward to this break abroad.

Have we really gotten so use to all of this? Perhaps it only affects our subconscious now? The fear.. The feeling of a threat always lurking in the shadows..

I am hoping it’s that we just have retained a little perspective. There is some serious suffering going on in the middle east at the moment and maybe even the British public can see through the frantically scrawled sensationalism fed to us by our gutter press.

Yesterday I found myself momentarily thanking the powers that be for reading every electronic information transmission in the ‘civilised’ world. Thanking them for intercepting this threat and therefore keeping us safe.

But only for a moment.

Then I realised how convenient this all is. That we are to be reminded of another victory for the powers-that-be over the evil that lurks in our everyday lives. Just when our ‘war on terror’ was flagging and the common man joined together in condemnation of the atrocities occurring in the middle east.

A few small crumb like facts are slowly coming to light and things are once again beginning to look a little sinister.

Could this plot descovery be another well timed public release..?

Take a proper-gander at the news and decide for yourselves.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/august2006/130806liquidbomb.htm

THERE’S A PATTERN HERE
Here we go again.
With the latest revelation by the NY Times of a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, DICK Cheney once again says shoot the messenger. And if he had his way, we think, he’d pull the trigger. But would he?
“What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people,” Mr. Cheney said, in impromptu remarks at a fund-raising luncheon for a Republican Congressional candidate in Chicago. “That offends me.”

Well, it’s the onslaught on our privacy in the name of the so-called “war on terror” that offends me and everyone else who fears for the survival of our U.S. Constitution as a meaningful document. But is there something else going on here as well?

There seems to be a recurring pattern associated with these spying revelations.

As with all the other disclosures by the press, Cheney routinely reassures us that it is all perfectly legal and necessary for our protection. “The fact of the matter is that these are good, solid, sound programs,” the vice president said. “They are conducted in accordance with the laws of the land. They’re carried out in a manner that is fully consistent with the constitutional authority of the president of the United States. They are absolutely essential in terms of protecting us against attacks.”

When he evokes, as he always does, “the constitutional authority of the president” to justify the spying, he is really evoking the theory of the unitary executive. The theory argues that the power of Congress to divest the President of control of the executive branch is limited.

Then, of course,the next piece of the pattern is to make a show of this latest controversy in the Judiciary Committee of the Senate.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had sent letters on Friday to both Treasury Secretary John Snow and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the issue. While he declined to release the letters, he said he was concerned about the legal authority for the operation. “Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?” the senator asked. “That’s a big, important point.”

Yeah, a big important point that will, like all the other spying revelations, be briefly questioned then forgotten by Congress. Remember the other hearings held by the Judiciary Committee? Remember Alberto Gonzales telling them that Congress actually
gave the President the authority by passing the Iraq war resolution?

The pattern continues on the cable news shows with the media basically getting behind the Bush administration. In the end we will have lost another battle to protect our Constitution in the name of “the war on terror”.
But wait a minute. If this story hadn’t been revealed the surveillance of our bank records would still be going on. We just wouldn’t know about it. But now we do know about it. And that, my friends, is by design. Why have a secret program when you can go public? The purpose of this recurring spectacle is to in the end have us embrace our own loss of rights in the name of security and await the next startling revelation.

But we don’t embrace it. Everyone I talk to sees what is going on. The truth is these guys aren’t really very good at what they are trying to do. Their own sense of superiority prevents them from seeing how transparent their real agenda is.
These smug traitors, so pleased with themselves, who orchestrate this charade don’t even know that we are on to them.

Brian
Wake Up AM Podcast Join us for news and commentary you won’t find on the mainstream media.

The latest revelation in the Bush administration’s campaign to subvert our Constitution
was revealed in a New York Times article entitled
Bank Data Reviewed by U.S. to Fight Terror
Apparently our bank accounts are also part of the NSA’s spying program. The program relies on a Belgian cooperative known as Swift, a company exempt from American laws restricting government access to private information because it is considered a messenger, not a financial institution.

This “offshore” tactic is part of a pattern the White House and NSA has established to evade the Constitution until they can permanently change it. You can see it in the way
they use foreign prisons to “render” kidnapped victims to be held and tortured. You can
find evidence of our military bases in other countries, I’m thinking of a certain US Airforce base in England, where the technology for spying can be set up legally.
Why do you think we have a concentration camp for so-called terrorists set up in Guantanamo Bay and not within the country itself?

What are we to do when the laws of our country can be bypassed the way corporations bypass the tax laws? Short of some kind of meaningful oversight, don’t hold your breath, from the other branches of our government, we may need to look offshore also. In the end, international law may need to be empowered in a way the world has not seen before. The U.N., The World Court, or international committees may need to assert themselves and we need to support that. Of course, that may be a long way off.

In the meantime, we need to fight the good fight here at home to save our Constitution. Good luck to us all.

Brian
Wake Up AM

George Lakoff, linguist at UC Berkeley, wrote a book a few years ago called “Don’t think of an elephant. Know your values and frame the debate.” You can download the book highlights pdf here. Do you ever wonder why Republicans repeat themselves so much? Lately, you’ve probably heard “cut and run” about 50 times a day. They do this for a reason - it embeds this in the mind of the public. Then, when Democrats and others dispute this and repeat the phrase, it further embeds the accusation in the minds of the public. In that respect, by repeating anything Republicans say, we are doing their work for them. That is covered in the beginning of Lakoff’s book. He goes on to talk about further examples of framing and how Republicans use language to change how we talk and what we talk about. Defense of Marriage Act is another example. No one’s marriage really needs defending, but the public now thinks there is a threat to marriage that doesn’t exist - because the Republicans keep repeating it. Some Democrats are on that train too, unfortunately. Check out the book, it’s only 36 pages long.