Surplus Repression and the Self-Defeating Deep State

The nation is wallowing self-piteously in a fetid trough of denial and adolescent rage/magical thinking now that the nation's bogus, debt-based "prosperity" has crashed and cannot be restored.

If you type Deep State into the custom search window in the right sidebar, the search results fill 10 pages. I think it is fair to say I have long had a deep interest in the Deep State.

The Deep State is generally assumed to be monolithic: of one mind, so to speak, unified in worldview, strategy and goals.

In my view, this is an over-simplification of a constantly shifting battleground of paradigms and power between a number of factions and alliances within the Deep State.Disagreements are not publicized, of course, but they become apparent years or decades after the conflict was resolved, usually by one faction consolidating the Deep State's group-think around their worldview and strategy.

History suggests that this low-intensity conflict within the ruling Elite is generally a healthy characteristic of leadership in good times. As times grow more troubled, however, the unity of the ruling Elite fractures into irreconcilable political disunity, which becomes a proximate cause of the dissolution of the Empire if it continues.

Many consider it "impossible" that Wall Street could possibly lose its political grip on the nation's throat, but I suggest that Wall Street has over-reached, and is now teetering at the top of the S-Curve, i.e. it has reached Peak Wall Street.

Consider what the extremes of Wall Street/Federal Reserve predation, parasitism, avarice and power have done to the nation, and then ask if other factions within the Deep State are blind to the destructive consequences.

Frequent contributor B.C. recently submitted two working papers from the Deep State network that suggested rampant financialization was harming the real economy. This is powerful evidence that the corrosive consequences of financialization on the stability of the real economy is filtering into the group-think hive of the Deep State Network:

Why does financial sector growth crowd out real economic growth? (Bank for International Settlements) After studying how financial development affects aggregate productivity growth, we concluded that the level of financial development is good only up to a point, after which it becomes a drag on growth, and that a fast-growing financial sector is detrimental to aggregate productivity growth.

Here is a sketch of The Deep State Network, which includes not only the nodes of centralized power but of the institutions that feed and support the Deep State's decisions and policies. These include Ivy League and federally funded research universities, the Mainstream Media, think-tanks, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and the spectrum of institutions that influence the public's ability to frame and contextualize events, i.e. the institutions of propaganda.

A recent interview with Deep State scholar Peter Dale Scott made me wonder if the increasingly repressive policies of the visible state are also being recognized as destabilizing and therefore a threat to the entire American Imperial Project.

Scott's key phrase is surplus repression, which I interpret to mean repression that exceeds the practical needs of the Deep State to maintain public order.

We can anticipate the Deep State fracturing over the question of how much repression is enough: those who believe there is no upper limit on the effectiveness of repression, and those who understand that at some point, unlimited policing and financial repression will unleash a social destabilization that will threaten the integrity of the Empire and the Deep State itself.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

Peter Phillips: We’re really happy to have you here. I’ve just finished reading your book, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. DemocracyIn your new book you talk about the egalitarian mindset culture of America. We believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, open government, transparency. And then you say also that there’s a dark side, or a deep side inside America that’s repressive, that is looking to be able to detain people without warrants, warrantless wire tapping and all of that – there’s a repressive side. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you frame this understanding of this culture of repression?

Peter Dale Scott: Actually, I think there’s always been a deep state in America and there have been times when it has been very repressive. We’re in a period of, you might say, surplus repression – repression that doesn’t serve anyone’s interests, not even the interests of the ruling class. (emphasis by CHS)

But it’s not in its essence repressive; it’s just repressive when it wants to be. I think a lot of the trouble we’re in now, actually is – and I say this in my book – that in the 1970s the deep state – the bankers, the lawyers, the people in foundations, all kinds of people – were really quite terrified at the forces in America calling for revolution – the African-Americans, but also, equally and perhaps ultimately even more, the anti-war movement because if you had a successful anti-war movement that would mean America would have to get out of the business of war. And that was, I think, an intolerable thought for them.

I think the Deep State was terrified of more than the anti-war movement--it was terrified of the counter-culture, which threatened the entire status quo of mindless consumerism and obedience to authority.

The Counterculture, which included the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement and the birth/expansion of the feminist movement, Eastern spirituality in the U.S., back-to-the-land self-sufficiency, rock music as a cultural force, the nonviolent anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, experimentation with communal living and drugs, Futurist concepts, and a widespread expansion of freedom of self-expression and experimentation. Many observers believe this era also launched a Fourth Awakening as evangelical denominations expanded and "Jesus freaks" found religious inspiration outside mainline churches.

Which changed the world, of course. Those darn hippies!

The nation is wallowing self-piteously in a fetid trough of denial and adolescent rage/magical thinking now that the nation's bogus, debt-based "prosperity" has crashed and cannot be restored, though the visible state (Federal Reserve and elected officials) keep trying to glue Humpty Dumpty back back together again.

The Deep State has been busy powering up the immense machinery of full spectrum repression to contain the inevitable disarray that will follow the collapse of the nation's bogus, debt-based "prosperity."

Our best hope for a productive outcome is that the cadre of those inside the Deep State Network who grasp the self-defeating nature of repression will gain influence over their repression-obsessed peers.

Read More

The Latest In Terrifying Ways To Die: DARPA’s Airborne ‘Death Ray’

An endless sea of money flowing into the field of military technology creates constant advancements in new and terrifying ways to die, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is on the front lines in that mission. DARPA’s latest defense system, HELLADS, is one step closer to arming aircraft and drones with an exceptionally powerful and destructive, weaponized laser beam.

Set to begin testing at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico this summer, the High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System program has been developing an electrically and optically efficient laser for output from a lighter and more compact platform through DARPA contractor, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA ASI). The Gen 3 High Energy Laser System (HEL) measures just 4.26 x 1.31 x 1.64 feet, and uses a compact lithium-ion battery to produce a beam of between 150-300 kW for “deployable tactical platforms.”

To understand how alarming this latest technology actually is, a comparison to current laser weaponry is in order. Already in use on board the USS Ponce, the Navy’s Laser Weapon System produces a beam of light capable of destroying the electronics systems and overheating the engines of drones, small boats, and small aircraft — and can even explode warheads. And those lasers are just 30 kW. Lasers to be used with the HELLADS system are up to ten times more powerful, and even when tested at 50 kW, were able to deliver a consistently high-quality beam for up to 30 seconds at a time, and then only limited in scope by battery life.

But there’s more. Remember the goal of putting this framework in the air? Well, the same contractor that streamlined the laser has also developed the jet-powered Avenger drone which generates enough energy in flight to continually recharge that battery — giving the weapon unlimited ammunition from an agile, unmanned aircraft, capable of speeds around 450 mph, that can stay aloft for up to 18 hours at a time. But not yet.

HELLADS will first be tested on the ground against “rockets, mortars, vehicles and surrogate surface-to-air missiles,” according to a DARPA statement. “The technical hurdles were daunting, but it is extremely gratifying to have produced a new type of solid-state laser with unprecedented power and beam quality for its size,” said program manager Rick Bagnell. “The HELLADS laser is now ready to be put to the test on the range against some of the toughest tactical threats our warfighters face.”

Though marketed primarily as a defense system, the statement adds, “Laser weapon systems provide additional capability for offensive missions as well—adding precise targeting with low probability of collateral damage […] Following the field-testing phase, the goal is to make the system available to the military services for further refinement, testing or transition to operational use.”

So, the question must be posed: When so many fight simply to survive, how gratifying can perfecting an obscenely destructive weapon of war really be?

Read More

Fire hits China nursing home killing 38

The blaze was put out in less than an hour but not before dozens had died

    

Bodies were burned beyond recognition and wheelchairs reduced to charred frames at the privately-run home in Henan province.

A fire has swept through an old people's home in China, leaving 38 residents dead.

Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition and wheelchairs were reduced to charred frames at the privately-owned home in Pingdingshan.

The fire broke out on Monday evening at one of the home's apartments, according to the state news agency Xinhua, and photos posted online showed a thick column of black smoke coming from behind a petrol station nearby.

The blaze was extinguished less than an hour after it broke out but 38 of the home's 51 residents were killed. Two of the injured were in a critical condition in hospital.

"The bodies were so badly burned, we couldn't tell who was who," Xinhua quoted one victim's relative saying of the identification process.

"Only myself and one other roommate managed to get out," survivor Zhao Yulan, 82, who shared her room with 11 other people, told Xinhua.

Wheelchairs were reduced to charred frames by the fire

    

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged rescue personnel to urgently help the injured and victims' families and determine the cause of the fire as well as who was responsible, state broadcaster CCTV said.

The cause of the fire is unclear but industrial accidents and fires are common in China, where safety standards can be poor.

A fire at a poultry plant in the country's northeast killed 119 people in 2013, with reports at the time saying that managers had locked doors inside the factory to stop the workers from going to the toilet, leading to the high death toll.

Nursing homes in the country, which are often under-staffed, are also prone to accidents and safety abuses.

In 2013, 11 nursing home patients burned to death in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang after one of them set the facility on fire in a row over money.

In February this year, a worker in Hunan province killed three people and injured another 15 when he attacked residents and staff at a nursing home after a row with its owner.

Read More

Putin signs bill on 'undesirable foreign groups' into law

© RIA Novosti / Sergey Guneev
Russian President Vladimir Putin

    

The Russian president has signed a bill banning the activities of foreign groups that pose a threat to national security or defense capability, and to punish those who continue to cooperate with such groups.

The bill, initially drafted by two opposition MPs, was passed by both chambers of the Russian parliament last week. It tasks the Prosecutor General's Office and the Foreign Ministry with creating a proscribed list of "undesirable foreign organizations" and to outlaw their activities in the country. The main criterion for putting a foreign or international NGO on the list is a "threat to the constitutional order and defense capability, or the security of the Russian state."

Once the group is recognized as undesirable, all its assets in Russia must be frozen, its offices closed and distribution of any of its information materials must be banned.

If the group does not comply with the ban, its leaders and members would face punishments ranging from administrative fines to prison sentences of up to six years for repeated and aggravated offenses. Russian citizens and organizations that continue to work with banned groups would face administrative fines only.

The new law faced criticism from foreign NGOs and the Russian rights community when it was first drafted. The chairman of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, described the new law as "," and said that many foreign groups were "" by it. Another member of the council, lawyer Aleksandr Brod, said in comments to the media that the new law was redundant, as there were enough ways in existing legislation to ensure national security and prevent foreign interference with Russian domestic politics.

The European Union and the United States have officially expressed their concern over the new Russian law. The US State Department said in a statement that the move banning cooperation with various foreign groups could bring about the isolation of the Russian people from the outside world.

Russian officials have not yet reacted to these accusations. Previously, the sponsors of the bill, however, have described it as a preventive measure and denied that it was targeting any specific foreign organizations.

The new law is in line with the "Foreign Agents Law" introduced in Russia in late 2012. That law specifies that all NGOs who receive funding from abroad, and that are even partially engaged in political activities, must register as foreign agents or risk substantial fines. Groups with "foreign agent" status are banned from sponsoring Russian political parties, but otherwise their activities are not restricted.

Read More

Pathological blindness: The secret country again wages war on its own people

JohnPilger.com

    

Australia has again declared war on its Indigenous people, reminiscent of the brutality that brought universal condemnation on apartheid South Africa. Aboriginal people are to be driven from homelands where their communities have lived for thousands of years. In Western Australia, where mining companies make billion dollar profits exploiting Aboriginal land, the state government says it can no longer afford to "support" the homelands.

Vulnerable populations, already denied the basic services most Australians take for granted, are on notice of dispossession without consultation, and eviction at gunpoint. Yet again, Aboriginal leaders have warned of "a new generation of displaced people" and "cultural genocide".

Genocide is a word Australians hate to hear. Genocide happens in other countries, not the "lucky" society that per capita is the second richest on earth. When "act of genocide" was used in the 1997 landmark report 'Bringing Them Home', which revealed that thousands of Indigenous children had been stolen from their communities by white institutions and systematically abused, a campaign of denial was launched by a far-right clique around the then prime minister John Howard. It included those who called themselves the Galatians Group, then Quadrant, then the Bennelong Society; the Murdoch press was their voice.

The Stolen Generation was exaggerated, they said, if it had happened at all. Colonial Australia was a benign place; there were no massacres. The First Australians were victims of their own cultural inferiority, or they were noble savages. Suitable euphemisms were deployed.

The government of the current prime minister, Tony Abbott, a conservative zealot, has revived this assault on a people who represent Australia's singular uniqueness. Soon after coming to office, Abbott's government cut $534 million in indigenous social programmes, including $160 million from the indigenous health budget and $13.4 million from indigenous legal aid.

In the 2014 report 'Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Key Indicators', the devastation is clear. The number of Aboriginal people hospitalised for self-harm has leapt, as have suicides among those as young as eleven. The indicators show a people impoverished, traumatised and abandoned. Read the classic expose of apartheid South Africa, The Discarded People by Cosmas Desmond, who told me he could write a similar account of Australia.

Having insulted indigenous Australians by declaring (at a G20 breakfast for David Cameron) that there was "nothing but bush" before the white man, Abbott announced that his government would no longer honour the longstanding commitment to Aboriginal homelands. He sneered, "It's not the job of the taxpayers to subsidise lifestyle choices."

The weapon used by Abbott and his redneck state and territorial counterparts is dispossession by abuse and propaganda, coercion and blackmail, such as his demand for a 99-year leasehold of Indigenous land in the Northern Territory in return for basic services: a land grab in all but name. The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, refutes this, claiming "this is about communities and what communities want". In fact, there has been no real consultation, only the co-option of a few.

Both conservative and Labor governments have already withdrawn the national jobs programme, CDEP, from the homelands, ending opportunities for employment, and prohibited investment in infrastructure: housing, generators, sanitation. The saving is peanuts.

    

The reason is an extreme doctrine that evokes the punitive campaigns of the early 20th century "chief protector of Aborigines", such as the fanatic A.O. Neville who decreed that the first Australians "assimilate" to extinction. Influenced by the same eugenics movement that inspired the Nazis, Queensland's "protection acts" were a model for South African apartheid. Today, the same dogma and racism are threaded through anthropology, politics, the bureaucracy and the media. "We are civilised, they are not," wrote the acclaimed Australian historian Russel Ward two generations ago. The spirit is unchanged.

Having reported on Aboriginal communities since the 1960s, I have watched a seasonal routine whereby the Australian elite interrupts its "normal" mistreatment and neglect of the people of the First Nations, and attacks them outright. This happens when an election approaches, or a prime minister's ratings are low. Kicking the blackfella is deemed popular, although grabbing minerals-rich land by stealth serves a more prosaic purpose. Driving people into the fringe slums of "economic hub towns" satisfies the social engineering urges of racists.

The last frontal attack was in 2007 when Prime Minister Howard sent the army into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to "rescue children" who, said his minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mal Brough, were being abused by paedophile gangs in "unthinkable numbers".

Known as "the intervention", the media played a vital role. In 2006, the national TV current affairs programme, the ABC's 'Lateline', broadcast a sensational interview with a man whose face was concealed. Described as a "youth worker" who had lived in the Aboriginal community of Mutitjulu, he made a series of lurid allegations. Subsequently exposed as a senior government official who reported directly to the minister, his claims were discredited by the Australian Crime Commission, the Northern Territory Police and a damning report by child medical specialists. The community received no apology.

The 2007 "intervention" allowed the federal government to destroy many of the vestiges of self-determination in the Northern Territory, the only part of Australia where Aboriginal people had won federally-legislated land rights. Here, they had administered their homelands in ways with the dignity of self-determination and connection to land and culture and, as Amnesty reported, a 40 per cent lower mortality rate.

It is this "traditional life" that is anathema to a parasitic white industry of civil servants, contractors, lawyers and consultants that controls and often profits from Aboriginal Australia, if indirectly through the corporate structures imposed on Indigenous organisations. The homelands are seen as a threat, for they express a communalism at odds with the neo-conservatism that rules Australia. It is as if the enduring existence of a people who have survived and resisted more than two colonial centuries of massacre and theft remains a spectre on white Australia: a reminder of whose land this really is.

The current political attack was launched in the richest state, Western Australia. Last October, the state premier, Colin Barnett, announced that his government could not afford the $90 million budget for basic municipal services to 282 homelands: water, power, sanitation, schools, road maintenance, rubbish collection. It was the equivalent of informing the white suburbs of Perth that their lawn sprinklers would no longer sprinkle and their toilets no longer flush; and they had to move; and if they refused, the police would evict them.

Where would the dispossessed go? Where would they live? In six years, Barnett's government has built few houses for Indigenous people in remote areas. In the Kimberley region, Indigenous homelessness - aside from natural disaster and civil strife - is one of the highest anywhere, in a state renowned for its conspicuous wealth, golf courses and prisons overflowing with impoverished black people. Western Australia jails Aboriginal males at more than eight times the rate of apartheid South Africa. It has one of the highest incarceration rates of juveniles in the world, almost all of them indigenous, including children kept in solitary confinement in adult prisons, with their mothers keeping vigil outside..

In 2013, the former prisons minister, Margaret Quirk, told me that the state was "racking and stacking" Aboriginal prisoners. When I asked what she meant, she said, "It's warehousing."

In March, Barnett changed his story. There was "emerging evidence", he said, "of appalling mistreatment of little kids" in the homelands. What evidence? Barnett claimed that gonorrhoea had been found in children younger than 14, then conceded he did not know if these were in the homelands. His police commissioner, Karl O'Callaghan, chimed in that child sexual abuse was "rife". He quoted a 15-year-old study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. What he failed to say was that the report highlighted poverty as the overwhelming cause of "neglect" and that sexual abuse accounted for less than 10 per cent.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, a federal agency, recently released a report on what it calls the "Fatal Burden" of Third World disease and trauma borne by Indigenous people "resulting in almost 100,000 years of life lost due to premature death". This "fatal burden" is the product of extreme poverty imposed in Western Australia, as in the rest of Australia, by the denial of human rights.

In Barnett's vast rich Western Australia, barely a fraction of mining, oil and gas revenue has benefited communities for which his government has a duty of care. In the town of Roeburne, in the midst of the booming minerals-rich Pilbara, 80 per cent of the indigenous children suffer from an ear infection called otitis media that causes deafness.

In 2011, the Barnett government displayed a brutality in the community of Oombulgurri the other homelands can expect. "First, the government closed the services," wrote Tammy Solonec of Amnesty International, "It closed the shop, so people could not buy food and essentials. It closed the clinic, so the sick and the elderly had to move, and the school, so families with children had to leave, or face having their children taken away from them. The police station was the last service to close, then eventually the electricity and water were turned off. Finally, the ten residents who resolutely stayed to the end were forcibly evicted [leaving behind] personal possessions. [Then] the bulldozers rolled into Oombulgurri. The WA government has literally dug a hole and in it buried the rubble of people's homes and personal belongings."

In South Australia, the state and federal governments launched a similar attack on the 60 remote Indigenous communities. South Australia has a long-established Aboriginal Lands Trust, so people were able to defend their rights - up to a point. On 12 April, the federal government offered $15 million over five years. That such a miserly sum is considered enough to fund proper services in the great expanse of the state's homelands is a measure of the value placed on Indigenous lives by white politicians who unhesitatingly spend $28 billion annually on armaments and the military. Haydn Bromley, chair of the Aboriginal Lands Trust told me, "The $15 million doesn't include most of the homelands, and it will only cover bare essentials - power, water. Community development? Infrastructure? Forget it."

The current distraction from these national dirty secrets is the approaching "celebrations" of the centenary of an Edwardian military disaster at Gallipoli in 1915 when 8,709 Australian and 2,779 New Zealand troops - the Anzacs - were sent to their death in a futile assault on a beach in Turkey. In recent years, governments in Canberra have promoted this imperial waste of life as an historical deity to mask the militarism that underpins Australia's role as America's "deputy sheriff" in the Pacific.

In bookshops, "Australian non-fiction" shelves are full of opportunistic tomes about wartime derring-do, heroes and jingoism. Suddenly, Aboriginal people who fought for the white man are fashionable, whereas those who fought against the white man in defence of their own country, Australia, are unfashionable. Indeed, they are officially non-people. The Australian War Memorial refuses to recognise their remarkable resistance to the British invasion. In a country littered with Anzac memorials, not one official memorial stands for the thousands of native Australians who fought and fell defending their homeland.

This is part of the "great Australian silence", as W.E.H. Stanner in 1968 called his lecture in which he described a "cult of forgetfulness on a national scale". He was referring to the Indigenous people. Today, the silence is ubiquitous. In Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales currently has an exhibition, 'The Photograph and Australia', in which the timeline of this ancient country begins, incredibly, with Captain Cook.

The same silence covers another enduring, epic resistance. Extraordinary demonstrations of Indigenous women protesting the removal of their children and grandchildren by he state, some of them at gunpoint, are ignored by journalists and patronised by politicians. More Indigenous children are being wrenched from their homes and communities today than during the worst years of the Stolen Generation. A record 15,000 are presently detained "in care"; many are given to white families and will never return to their communities.

Last year, the West Australian Police Minister, Liza Harvey, attended a screening in Perth of my film, 'Utopia', which documented the racism and thuggery of police towards black Australians, and the multiple deaths of young Aboriginal men in custody. The minister cried.

On her watch, 50 City of Perth armed police raided an Indigenous homeless camp at Matagarup, and drove off mostly elderly women and young mothers with children. The people in the camp described themselves as "refugees... seeking safety in our own country". They called for the help of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees.

Australian politicians are nervous of the United Nations. Abbott's response has been abuse. When Professor James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous People, described the racism of the "intervention", Abbott told him to, "get a life" and "not listen to the old victim brigade".

The planned closure of Indigenous homelands breaches Article 5 of the International Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). Australia is committed to "provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for... any action which has the aim of dispossessing [Indigenous people] of their lands, territories or resources". The Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is blunt. "Forced evictions" are against the law.

An international momentum is building. In 2013, Pope Francis urged the world to act against racism and on behalf of "indigenous people who are increasingly isolated and abandoned". It was South Africa's defiance of such a basic principle of human rights that ignited the international opprobrium and campaign that brought down apartheid. Australia beware.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Read More

Fighter jets scramble following at least 6 reports of threats to passenger planes inbound to the United States

Air France Flight 22, from Charles De Gaulle Airport, was escorted by fighter jets to JFK airport after an anonymous threat was made against the flight.

    

At least six flights were impacted by threats at airports in New York, New Jersey and Boston today, according to airlines and law enforcement.

JFK Airport:

An Air France plane was escorted to JFK Airport in New York City this morning after an anonymous threat was made against the flight, law enforcement officials told ABC News. The FBI said the plane has since been checked and cleared with "no incidents or hazards reported on board the flight by either the passengers or its crew."

Authorities said that the decision to have the plane escorted by two fighter jets was done "out of an abundance of caution" after the Maryland State Police McHenry Barrack, in Garrett County, received an anonymous call of a "chemical weapons threat" aboard Air France Flight 22, which was en route from Paris to the New York City airport.

The tip was called in at 6:45 a.m. on an untraceable line and the caller did not identify himself, a senior federal official told ABC News. Two F-15 planes were scrambled and followed the plane into U.S. airspace, but they flew in a way so that the passengers and crew would not be able to see the military planes, sources said.

© ABC News

    

The Airbus A-330 has since landed and was taken between two runways and locked down while the threat is investigated. A police dispatch that was sent out after the jets were scrambled noted that the area where the plane was taken is generally known as the "hijack site" because it is the area used in such scenarios. During an initial investigation, nothing dangerous has been found on board, the federal official told ABC News.

A Saudi Airlines flight from Saudi Arabia was also escorted to a remote area at JFK. It was cleared and passengers were brought back to the terminal, officials said.

For an American Airlines flight from Birmingham, England, to JFK, the pilot was initially instructed to taxi to a remote area, but the threat was determined not credible and the plane was cleared to go to the terminal.

Newark Airport:

Two flights to Newark, New Jersey, were also affected -- a Delta Air Lines flight from London and a United Airlines flight from Madrid, authorities said.

Logan Airport:

A threat also turned up negative for a Delta flight from Paris to Logan Airport in Boston, authorities said.

Read More

StingRay - the cellphone tracking tech police won't talk about

© Noah MacMillan

    

There were some very bad vibes in downtown St. Louis on the night of October 28, 2013. The Cardinals had just lost Game 5 in the World Series, and the Rams had a pathetic showing against the Seahawks at Edward Jones Stadium. The streets were jammed bumper to bumper with disgruntled fans trying to make it home, and so Brandon Pavelich and Julia Fischer — two college friends on a kinda-sorta first date — decided to walk around a bit before attempting to leave the area.

Then they heard fast footsteps, and the next thing they knew, two men had guns pointed at their heads. They demanded money and cell phones.

Pavelich paused.

"Show him we're serious and shoot him," he remembers one of the men saying.

Instead, a gun smashed into Pavelich's face, opening a gash in his forehead and chin, and chipping a tooth. One of the men reached into Pavelich's pockets as he was reeling, and grabbed his iPhone and cash. They took Fischer's iPhone as well, and ran.

Luckily, Pavelich and Fischer found a St. Louis police officer nearby. They soon learned theirs was the last in a string of muggings that evening. In total, seven victims had their phones taken, though Pavelich was the only one who had to spend the night in a hospital getting stitches.

Fischer recalls that the police behaved as if they were hot on the trail of the stolen phones.

"They did say that they're tracking it," she says. She assumed that meant they were using the phones' GPS or something like the Find My iPhone app.

By the next day, four suspects were in custody, including a supposed lookout and a getaway driver. They were found in a hotel room in Caseyville, Illinois, allegedly with the stolen phones. Among the recovered property, Pavelich was able to identify the case he'd had on his phone. It seemed like a done deal.

© Brandon Pavelich
Brandon Pavelich just after the attack, and a few days afterward.

    

But a year and a half later, as the trial date for three of the men got closer, Fischer called the prosecutor to find out when she needed to be in court. That's when he told her they'd dropped the charges.

"The reasoning was, there came up some legal issues that would cause insurmountable issues so that they wouldn't be able to continue with the case," says Fischer. "That's really all that they told me."

Two weeks later a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch helped shed some light on what happened. Titled "Controversial secret phone tracker figured in dropped St. Louis case," it explained that investigators had used a relatively new tracking device called a cell site simulator to trace one of the stolen phones. It was so accurate — more accurate than GPS — that it was able to pinpoint the exact hotel room where the accused thieves were holed up.

The technology is often referred to by a brand name: StingRay. When deployed, StingRay forces any cell phones in the area to send it a signal, the same way that a phone normally sends a signal to cell towers. Even if a cell phone is not in use, it still transmits its phone number and electronic serial number to the device.

Once a tool used by federal officials for combating terrorism, in the last decade StingRay-type devices have been approved for use by local law-enforcement agencies. Officers have been using the technology under the purview of the FBI — and only under strict orders not to disclose anything about it, even in court.

The Post-Dispatch story about Pavelich and Fischer's case hypothesized that authorities were backing away from the charges because they did not want to be forced to put a police intelligence officer on the stand and reveal how StingRay works — that government secrecy was essentially more important than a conviction. That did not sit well with Pavelich.

"I got hurt by these guys pretty bad, and they're just walking free now. It pissed me off a little bit," he says.

It may not be quite as simple as that. The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office has insisted repeatedly that the use of a StingRay is not why they dropped the case against the four suspected robbers.

"Contrary to the opinion of defense attorneys and to recent reports in the media, the dismissal of the cases was not related in any way to any technology used in the investigation," Lauren Trager, a public information officer for the circuit attorney, said in a statement. She declined to answer further questions about the case, as it is now considered a closed record.

Regardless of why the case was thrown out, it shows that one thing long suspected by local activists is now certain: St. Louis police are using StingRay devices or ones with similar data-capturing capabilities in their investigations.

Until recently, First Amendment watchdog groups like the ACLU said only that it was "probable" that StingRays were being used in St. Louis. But this case, along with documents obtained by Riverfront Times, are beginning to shed some light on the practice locally.

And now that StingRay is here, privacy advocates have a host of concerns: that innocent people's data may be collected without their knowledge, that merely deploying the device is equivalent to unconstitutional search and seizure, and that it may be used to spy on those simply exercising their legal right to free speech.

Local attorneys, journalists and citizens have joined those in other American cities (at least 51 state and local jurisdictions by the ACLU's count) who are struggling to understand StingRay, and are finding a wall of law-enforcement silence on the other side of their questions.

"It's ridiculous," says Hanni Fakhoury, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties advocacy nonprofit. "It's secrecy for the sake of secrecy. It's not actually a public-safety issue now."

© Reuters/ Lucas Jackson

    

In the dizziest days following Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, it was common to hear someone in a protest on West Florissant or out in front of the police station complaining that her cell phone was acting up — dropped calls, weird tones and clicks. Thomas Harvey, an attorney and executive director of the ArchCity Defenders, remembers many of his activist clients fretting that they were being electronically monitored.

"The night of the non-indictment, everyone's phone was shutting off or turning on. They couldn't use Google Maps. I had the same thing happen to me," he recalls. "There's no way for me to know what caused that."

(St. Louis County Police spokesman Brian Schellman says his department does not have a StingRay unit, but plenty of other law-enforcement agencies were on the scene in north county, including St. Louis and the FBI.)

While StingRay provides many benefits to law enforcement, how its capabilities will affect the general populace isn't as clear. Many people, like the protesters in Ferguson, worry their phones are being monitored while simply exercising First Amendment rights. They have some reason to be paranoid — federal authorities have admitted that StingRay can cause nearby phones to act glitchy, and in at least one instance, a law-enforcement agency has been open about wanting to monitor protesters: The Miami-Dade Police Department requested an emergency purchase of a StingRay just prior to the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference in 2003.

"Based on the history of these conferences, the department anticipated criminal activities directed at attendees and conference sites facilitated by the use of cellular phones," the request reads. "Wireless phone tracking systems utilized by law enforcement have proven to be an invaluable tool in both the prevention of these offenses and the apprehension of individuals attempting to carry out criminal activities."

There's also documented use of StingRay to track alleged perpetrators' movements, which civil-liberties advocates call a violation of the suspect's Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure — because the signal travels into private spaces, through walls.

© Daniel Rigmaiden
Daniel Rigmaiden in Arizona.

    

The first court case where the government acknowledged the existence of StingRay technology came out of a tax-fraud prosecution in Arizona in 2008, in which police used the tracker to locate the wireless broadband modem or "AirCard" of a man named Daniel Rigmaiden. Rigmaiden had been using it to access the Internet and submit fake tax returns, netting about $500,000 over the course of three years.

"I knew the instant I was arrested that they had to track down my AirCard," Rigmaiden says now. "There wasn't any other flaw in my methods."

The "flaw," as he puts it, was assuming that law enforcement would reserve the use of high-tech tracking technology for terrorism or kidnapping cases — not a lowly tax frauder. Turns out police use StingRay for a wide range of cases — which left Rigmaiden and his AirCard a sitting duck for the investigators hot on his trail.

As Rigmaiden mounted a pro se defense, he compelled federal investigators to produce tens of thousands of pages of documents. That paperwork, along with the testimony he obtained, gave the world its first glimpse at how the technology works.

Rigmaiden was unsuccessful in his argument that the StingRay sweep was unconstitutional. However, rather than getting more than twenty years in prison, prosecutors offered him time served in exchange for a guilty plea. The Arizona man got out of prison a year ago and now works to combat StingRay secrecy.

"Every citizen has a duty to make sure the Constitution is upheld," he says. "I have the opportunity to do it in this particular area."

Since Rigmaiden's case, dribs and drabs of information about the technology have come out of other criminal cases, but government secrecy has ruled the day. That may be about to change. Earlier this month the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would review use of the technology by all arms of federal law enforcement including the FBI, the DEA and the U.S. Marshals.

"I wouldn't call it an investigation. It seems to be a reevaluation of their policy," says Nathan Wessler, staff attorney for the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's crucial that local law enforcement follow suit immediately, including in St. Louis."

In St. Louis, former Division 16 Circuit Court Judge Jack Garvey says the first he heard of the "magical" technology that could track phones was during his regular Wednesday meeting with former police chief Dan Isom and Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce in 2011. At the time, he says, the cell site simulator belonged to the local branch of the U.S. Secret Service (apparently St. Louis has one of those, too).

"Isom says, 'We can use this device that is sitting in the back of a parking garage at police headquarters,'" recalls Garvey.

In those early days, Garvey agreed to sign off on warrants allowing the police to use the Secret Service's device to look for phones taken from crime victims. They had to provide the serial number for the phone and the cell service provider.

The police and the prosecutors kept this new-fangled tactic tightly under wraps. But Garvey says he spoke openly about the warrants and was astonished no defense attorney ever followed up with questions during the year he was signing them.

"It was a joke," he says. "We were yukking it up back then."

At some point after Garvey moved to the 17th Division and was no longer the primary judge signing the warrants, the way cell site simulator technology was used at the department changed. The same month that Isom announced his retirement, the board of commissioners for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department put out an invitation for bids for a "Stingray II System" and the installation of the system in a Chevrolet Tahoe. StingRay units are relatively portable — some are about the size of a suitcase, and can be installed in vehicles and taken on the road.

At this point, StingRay deployment is more like an old-fashioned game of cops-and-robbers than an omniscient Big Brother seeing and knowing all. According to the ACLU the device is often hooked up to a laptop in a police car, and officers drive around as the laptop display shows them whether the signal is getting hotter or colder. Some authorities have even described walking with handheld units through large apartment buildings until they were certain which room had the phone inside.

Although several companies produce this type of product for law enforcement, the leader is Florida-based Harris Corporation, which is also the only company that calls its devices "StingRay."

"Harris is kind of like the Apple corporation of the surveillance world. It's really easy to use their stuff," says Rigmaiden. "The other stuff is more complicated."

Prices for these types of devices range from $16,000 to $400,000 for a suite of technology.

It's not clear whether the St. Louis Police Department successfully purchased the StingRay, or decided to continue using loaners from some other federal jurisdiction. An attorney for the city denied a Sunshine Request for any purchasing paperwork, saying the documents would "reveal trade secrets and commercial or financial information." Isom wouldn't comment on where the purchase stood at the time of his departure, and Police Chief Sam Dotson has not responded to interview requests.

But the department did respond to RFT's request for applications for search warrants or orders authorizing the use of cell site simulators. That request yielded two examples. To Garvey, they're unrecognizable from the orders he signed four years ago.

"It's more of a broad thing. My search warrants that we were doing were, 'This is the phone of this person, this is the serial number of this phone,'" he says. "Something happened. Either the cops got a new machine, or they're running it from a new machine."

The two example applications given to RFT are called "pen register applications," more commonly understood as applications to install a device that reads which numbers are being dialed — and which are incoming — on a landline. But the new application paperwork broadens the language to include "cell site activations," "call detail records in an electronic format" and, most densely, "24-hour a day assistance to include switch based solutions including precision location pursuant to probable cause based information queries and all reasonable assistance to permit the aforementioned Agencies to triangulate target location."

That last, almost inscrutable paragraph is the closest the documents come to referring directly to StingRay usage.

"The secrecy in cities across the country has been so extraordinary," says Nathan Wessler, staff attorney for the ACLU.

To Wessler of the ACLU, the very vagueness of that language makes it unconstitutional.

"This violates the Fourth Amendment," he concludes after reviewing RFT's documents. "Nothing in the applications suggests that police will be using cell site simulators. Nor do the applications explain to the judge the capabilities of cell site simulators."

It's also simply too easy for police to obtain pen register application approval, Wessler says, as opposed to the higher burden of proving probable cause for a warrant. To obtain a warrant, police have to show there's a preponderance of evidence — as spelled out in the Fourth Amendment — that makes their search necessary.

For a pen register application, all cops have to show is that it could help the investigation. And because of the extremely vague and/or technical language in the applications, judges may have no idea they're authorizing use of a StingRay — the term simply never appears in the document.

Privacy advocates are also concerned about what happens to the data from innocent bystanders in the area who may have their phones swept.

A good analogy, says the ACLU's Nathan Wessler, is a game of Marco Polo: "The device yells 'Marco!' and all the [nearby] phones are forced to yell back 'Polo!' The StingRay can then be used to hone in on the signal from the suspect's phone and locate him/her based on the strength and direction of the signal. But all the while, every other phone is still being forced to yell 'Polo!' over and over, letting the StingRay know that they are in the area too."

It's those other phones that have some activists worried.

"What is done with all that data that's irrelevant? Are they keeping that information, or are they deleting it?" asks Electronic Frontier Forum attorney Fakhoury. "These things identify phones in the area; they don't necessarily listen in on phone conversations or capture data. But that is a technical limitation. What that means is, they are configured not to do that, but we don't know how they're not doing that."

One thing appears to be similar from the days when Garvey was signing off on the StingRay warrants: the ones obtained by RFT show that, locally, the device has only been used to track the phones of victims, rather than perpetrators or activists.

The two heavily redacted pen register applications provided by the police department are both from homicide cases in which the alleged murderer is thought to have stolen the victim's phone.

"Victim ____ registered a hotel room on ______ and prepaid through ______. Witnesses at the scene reported hearing a loud argument near the victim's room earlier in the week," reads one of the applications. "Detective _____ stated an _____ wall charger located in ______ hotel room; however no _______ was located in his room or on his person."

The second application describes a drug deal gone bad, with one fatality. "A suspect pulled a long barreled firearm and began firing shots at the victims. ________ was able to flee the residence through a second floor window and later discovered the other victims had been shot. During this incident victim ______ disclosed his cellular phone had been stolen."

Both applications were approved for 60 days, and the judge — whose name is also redacted — agreed that the orders be sealed.

Garvey says at least one StingRay warrant he signed off on caught a murderer, a guy who was strolling out of a Walmart with the stolen phone in his pocket.

"I'm telling you, it's doing miracle work," he says.

St. Louis Pen Register Applications and Orders

For assistant public defender Megan Beesley,her journey down the StingRay rabbit hole began with five little words: "A proven law enforcement technique."

Beesley, who works out of the Carnahan Courthouse downtown, remembers the phrase leaping out at her when she read the police report from the post-Game 5 robberies on October 28, 2013. Her client was one of the men arrested for his role in the string of muggings, and the line was used as the only explanation for how authorities managed to find him and his alleged accomplices in the hotel room in Caseyville.

"A proven law enforcement technique" seemed almost like the cop-speak equivalent of Seinfeld's "yadda yadda yadda."

"It seemed like a very odd sentence to me," she says.

Beesley got the chance to ask about the phrase at a November 7, 2014, deposition of St. Louis police detective John Anderson.

"I just said, 'What does this mean?' The detective acted really weird, looks at the prosecutor, who acts really weird," she recalls. "They go outside and talk. He comes back in and awkwardly refuses to answer."

At a subsequent hearing, Anderson again said he could not answer, Beesley recalls, because of a "non-disclosure agreement that had to do with the FBI. So that confirmed to me that this was probably a StingRay."

In order to use the technology, sheriffs and police chiefs have historically had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the FBI and the Harris Corporation agreeing not to provide the public with any information about how it works. According to an affidavit given by a supervisory FBI agent in a 2014 case in Virginia, if a prosecutor were to disseminate technical information about StingRay to media with international readership, it could constitute a violation of the Arms Control Export Act, which is a felony. That blanket of silence also covers court proceedings.

St. Louis police refused even to allow the Riverfront Times to view any non-disclosure agreement it may have with its cell site simulator provider or the FBI, declining our Sunshine Act request.

One such agreement, obtained from the Erie County Sheriff's Office in New York State, reads: "If the Erie County Sheriff's Office learns that a District Attorney, prosecutor, or a court is considering or intends to use or provide any information concerning the Harris Corporation wireless collection equipment...the Erie County Sheriff's Office will immediately notify the FBI in order to allow sufficient time for the FBI to intervene to protect the equipment/technology and information from disclosure and potential compromise."

In a handful of incidents around the country, prosecutors have dropped cases, offered plea deals or withdrawn evidence rather than disclose information about StingRay. That happened in Baltimore, Maryland; Tacoma, Washington; and Tallahassee, Florida — and even in homicide cases.

"It is troubling that their use of this extraordinary secrecy is getting in the way of proper government functions," says Wessler. "I suspect part of what this secrecy is protecting is constitutional violations."

Christopher Allen, a spokesman for the FBI Office of Public Affairs, says that the purpose of the non-disclosure agreements is to prevent criminals from learning how the technology works and figuring out a way to avoid it.

"Specific capabilities of certain equipment used by law enforcement agencies are considered Law Enforcement Sensitive, since their public release could harm law enforcement efforts by compromising future use of the equipment," he said in a statement. "As a last resort, after exhausting all other legal means to protect LES information, the NDA does require state and local law enforcement to drop a criminal case rather than compromising the future use of the technique by disclosing LES information."

He insists, however, that the FBI has never forced any jurisdiction to dismiss a case because of the agreement.

Regardless, Beesley is convinced that by dropping charges against her client, the St. Louis circuit attorney is helping honor a non-disclosure agreement signed by the city police. She and her colleagues scoured their current caseload and found the phrase "a proven law enforcement technique" in four different police reports.

"I think that's the closest we've come to the cops acknowledging this," she says.

Riverfront Times contacted several defense attorneys and only found one additional case with the "proven law enforcement technique" verbiage in the police report. Nick Williams, a criminal defense lawyer whose client was arrested and charged in a different robbery case, says he noticed the phrase even before the Post-Dispatch piece and has alerted the prosecutor at the circuit attorney's office to his concerns. His client's next court date is in June.

"It begs the question of whether or not there is an official policy in place, and if so, what is that policy?" says Williams. "The way in which this is being used on a local level is certainly an infringement on an individual's Fourth Amendment rights.

"A person has a right to privacy, and an infringement on that privacy should be protected against."

Although St. Louisans are just waking up to the fact that StingRay is swimming in their back yards, the secrecy surrounding the technology is beginning to drop away across the country. That's starting with increased willingness by local law enforcement to simply admit that they are using the devices.

For example, Baltimore disclosed recently that it deployed the technology 4,300 times since 2007. In Tallahassee, a police investigator admitted they'd used it 200 times. (The Post-Dispatch puts the number of approved pen register applications locally at 80.)

Legislators are showing increasing discomfort with StingRay. Ten states, including Illinois, Florida and Maryland, have passed some kind of legislation designed to force local law enforcement to obtain a warrant before using cell-phone-tracking technology. A bill Daniel Rigmaiden helped to shaped just passed in Washington State.

Even the federal government is paying more than lip service to the idea that its warrantless deployment of StingRay technology may be unconstitutional. Soon after, to the announcement by the DOJ that they will review the usage of the technology, the FBI went even further in a May 14 article in the Washington Post. The agency told the newspaper that its officers will now apply for a warrant before using StingRay, and that it's OK for local law enforcement to acknowledge the use of the technology, as long as details about how it works are kept secret.

"It's kind of throwing local agencies under the bus a little bit," says Wessler. "Now the FBI's saying, 'No, no, no, that's not what we really meant,' which is a helpful clarification now, but there are years' worth of cases where defense attorneys were kept completely in the dark, as well as judges, and that needs to be remedied right now."

Not everyone in the criminal justice system may be on board with the technology's black-box status either. Judge Garvey, who has praised the usage of StingRay, does not agree with the secrecy imposed by the nondisclosure agreements.

"I think the FBI — they're kind of dumb," he says. "They're being overly federal about the whole thing."

When the last of the four alleged Game 5 muggers had her case dropped in a St. Louis courtroom on April 27, Assistant Circuit Attorney Tanja Engelhardt made an interesting statement as reported by the Post-Dispatch. She let slip that though StingRay practices in St. Louis haven't been litigated yet, "They will be. This isn't the case."

In a statement to Riverfront Times, Trager nudged the sentiment slightly further: "The technology has been used around the country and has withstood challenges in the past. The legality of this technology has recently been challenged in this jurisdiction, and we anticipate it will be litigated in a court of law."

As for Brandon Pavelich, he's more confused than ever about his case. If it wasn't dismissed because of StingRay, what happened?

"If that's the big controversial issue, and that's not it, what the heck could it be?" he says. "That feels super sketchy. What are these guys doing?"

Then again, Pavelich says, it's not as though he just had his eyes opened to the fact that the criminal justice system doesn't always function properly. He has two brothers who've been in and out of the prison for years, he says, mostly for non-violent drug offenses and parole violations. He's not naïve.

"I really see the system as being stupid anyway," he sighs. "I'm not entirely surprised these things are happening."

Additional (and crucial) reporting by Chris McDaniel.

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.

Read More