From: Information Security <guy@panix.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 07:16:50 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  Fwd: Big Brother Sees through walls (from the spyking list)
Message-ID: <199802202304.SAA05606@panix2.panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



   >   From: sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
   >   
   >   1)From: "George Martin" <gmartin@kic.or.jp>
   >   Subject: News Release: High-Tech Surveillance
   >   
   >   Here's a sampling of how state and federal agencies are using this
   >   terrifying technology to spy on Americans:
   >   
   >   * In North Carolina, county governments use high-resolution spy satellite
   >   photographs to search for property improvements that might increase
   >   property tax assessments.

Was this cost authorized by taxpayers?

   >   * On the Mexican border, police use a "gamma ray scanner" to check
   >   tanker trucks for contraband, scanning right through the vehicle's metal
   >   sides.

Good!!!

CM excerpt:

#  Those rumor-level stories about our government encouraging
#  drugs to reach the inner cities were weird.
#   
#  Remember, we've been having a Drug War for four decades now.
#   
#  I guess there is a certain logic to it. Obviously the government is into
#  hysteria on the matter: it is then possible that they would want to continue
#  having a drug problem so they could continue the hysteria.
#   
#  Even the Attorney General was drooling over drug forfeiture dollars, to the
#  point of shunting aside other cases.
#   
#   
#  Recently...
#   
#  :   CBS 60 Minutes, Steve Croft reporting.
#  :
#  :   Remember that story of the hero customs agent snagging a tanker truck full
#  :   of cocaine? There is a strange twist to the story.
#  :
#  :   The Federal agent's manager repeatedly tried to interfere with him making
#  :   the bust.
#  :
#  :   The agent's dog had flagged the truck; the agent weighed it and found a
#  :   discrepancy. His manager said it must be in the tires. You can only check
#  :   the tires for drugs he was told.
#  :
#  :   But the agent persisted, and made the bust. His manager let the driver
#  :   of the truck leave. The driver literally fled on foot back to Mexico.
#   
#  What the hell was that about???
#   
#  Was it a single corrupt Federal agent?
#   
#  :   CBS 60 Minutes, Steve Croft reporting.
#  :
#  :   Standing at a fence about a hundred feet from the U.S. Customs lanes,
#  :   Steve Croft and an ex-agent with a walkie-talkie tuned to the right
#  :   frequency began videotaping the border crossings.
#  :
#  :   Truck after truck drove right through the individual Customs lanes,
#  :   not even stopping. "Nafta express lanes" explained the ex-agent.
#  :
#  :   Truck after truck drove straight into the U.S. unmonitored.
#  :
#  :   Then a message came through the walkie-talkie: "We got some cameras
#  :   watching, better get out there and cover traffic".
#  :
#  :   Suddenly several Customs agents came out of the booths and started
#  :   inspecting trucks.
#   
#  That makes at least five people at a minimum!
#   
#  What the hell is going on???
#  
#   
#  IF the rumor is true, THIS looks like it would be the smoking gun.
#   
#  How did our country get so twisted around that they can invade our
#  bodies to drug test, yet allow truck after truck after truck to
#  just wander right in knowing HUGE drug shipment after HUGE drug
#  shipment is crossing? Gosh, there's no drug problem with Mexican
#  police, military and even their president.
#   
#  *   The New York Times, February 19 1997
#  *
#  *   Brig. General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's top Military Drug War
#  *   point man, was arrested on charges of receiving payoffs from Jaurez
#  *   cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Defense Minister Enrique Cervantes
#  *   announced.
#  *
#  *   U.S. Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey had weeks earlier called General
#  *   Gutierrez "a guy of absolute unquestioned integrity."
#   
#   
#  And what if some terrorists wanted to sneak in an atom bomb?
#   
#  Put a NAFTA sticker on it and drive right on in, y'all. Welcome to the USA.
#   
#  If you want to really be certain, hide the A-bomb in a truck full of cocaine.
#   
#  If a terrorist nuclear bomb ever goes off in this country,
#  it drove in from Mexico.
#   
#  Meanwhile, Los Alamos National Laboratories developed technology that
#  allows an officer walking or driving down the street, as shown on MSNBC TV
#  6/9/97 www.TheSite.com, to determine whether anyone on the sidewalk is
#  carrying a gun.
#   
#  The priorities are all out of whack.
#   
#  Apply Military technology towards securing the border, not by spending
#  billions and billions and billions each year to secure each and every
#  one of us.
#   
#  We don't put governing-monitors on all car engines to control speeding.
#  Get an Operations Research clue.
#   
#   
#  Is our government perpetuating the availability of drugs?
#   
#  The 60 Minutes report sure makes it look like it is.
#   
#  How could letting unchecked Mexican truck after unchecked Mexican truck
#  through not be?
#   
#  !   FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, Senate Judiciary Committee, June 4, 1997
#  !
#  !   NEW CORRIDORS HAVE OPENED TO CONTINUE THE FLOOD OF DRUGS INTO AMERICA.
#   
#  No shit, Sherlock!   Ya don't nafta say another word.
#   
#  Every single truck can be checked using Military technology.
#   
#  But no, massive monitoring of people suspected of no crime is the
#  appropriate response.
#   
#  They were just warming us up for the CALEA telephone monitoring bill.
#   
#  ----
#   
#  Here is part of the story on why we let trucks full of cocaine and
#  heroin just roll right into the United States.
#   
#  *   "Diminished U.S. Role Below Border Plays Into Traffickers' Hands"
#  *
#  *   By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
#  *   Washington Post Foreign Service
#  *   Sunday, September 8 1996; Page A01
#  *   The Washington Post
#  *
#  *   Due to their new 'Mexicanization policy':
#  *   Mexico became the main gateway into the United States for illegal
#  *   narcotics, with the amount of cocaine making the journey climbing to
#  *   an estimated 210 tons last year.
#  *
#  *   Mexico's drug arrests plunged nearly 65 percent, from 27,369 the year
#  *   before the policy changes to 9,728 last year, according to data that
#  *   the Mexican government supplied to the State Department.
#  *
#  *   Cocaine seizures in Mexico were cut in half, dropping from more than
#  *   50 tons in 1993 to slightly more than 24 tons in each of the last two
#  *   years -- the smallest amounts since 1988, Mexican government figures
#  *   show.
#  *
#  *   The GAO report charges that Mexico's greatest problem is, in
#  *   fact, the "widespread, endemic corruption" throughout its law
#  *   enforcement agencies. Earlier this month, in an indictment of his own
#  *   department, Attorney General Lozano fired 737 members of his federal
#  *   police force -- 17 percent of his entire corps -- saying they did not
#  *   have "the ethical profile" required for the job. In a recent meeting
#  *   with foreign reporters, Lozano said it could take 15 years to clean up
#  *   the force.
#  *
#  *   In November 1993, President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive
#  *   No. 14, shifting U.S. anti-drug efforts away from intercepting cocaine as
#  *   it passed through Mexico and the Caribbean, and, instead, attacking the
#  *   drug supply at its sources in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.
#   
#  The President himself ordered them to stop checking!!! This is in the same
#  leadership vein as Reagan declaring himself a "Contra".
#   
#  And why did President Clinton change strategy?
[snip]


   >   * The Naval Surface Warfare Center has developed an "ion sniffer,"
   >   a metal box that analyzes the chemical makeup of the air -- and can detect,
   >   for example, traces of cocaine through the skin days after drug use.

Bad.

   >   * In Georgia, the state's Department of Revenue will start using
   >   NASA satellites to examine the state's 58,910 square miles for illegal
   >   timber cutting.

Good.

   >   * In New Jersey, California, and other states, police use thermal
   >   imaging devices to scan houses for unusual heat sources that could indicate
   >   indoor marijuana growing operations. Houses can be scanned while police sit
   >   in their cruisers on the street.

Bad.

CM excerpt:

#  Here is a more detailed example of how government expands surveillance
#  (and thus control) in a seemingly never-ending manner...consider this when
#  talking about a National ID Card:
#   
#  Is it okay for the government to look at your property while walking by and
#  if the officer spots marijuana plants growing to get a search warrant?
#   
#  Of course it is.
#   
#  *   "The Right To Privacy", ISBN 0-679-74434-7, 1997
#  *   By Attorneys Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy
#  *
#  *   ...then the Supreme Court ruled that if the yard was big enough that "An
#  *   individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted
#  *   out of doors in fields," the Court wrote, "except in the area immediately
#  *   surrounding the home."
#  *
#  *   ...then the Supreme Court ruled that a barn sixty yards from a farmhouse
#  *   was too far away from a house to expect privacy.
#  *
#  *   ...then the Supreme Court ruled that aerial surveillance did not constitute
#  *   a Fourth Amendment search.
#  *
#  *   ...then the Supreme Court ruled that a "precision aerial mapping camera"
#  *   that was able to capture objects as small as one-half inch in diameter did
#  *   not constitute a Fourth Amendment search.
#   
#  ...then courts ruled that infrared surveillance of homes was permissible.
#   
#   
#  What is this?
#   
#  *   Subject:      Re: Law Enforcement Aviation
#  *   From:         aufsj@imap2.asu.edu
#  *   Date:         1996/12/27
#  *   Newsgroups:   rec.aviation.military
#  *
#  *   What interests me is how new technologies will be interpreted. I recently
#  *   inquired at the local Law School about the courts views towards the use
#  *   of impulse radar, and they said "Impulse what the heck?"
#  *
#  *   Basically it is a radar that "sees through" things (like, say, your
#  *   house).
#  *
#  *   Their capabilities vary widely, but the feds are already using
#  *   them and I know that Hughes corp. is designing a low-cost set up
#  *   specifically for major police departments.
#  *
#  *   They are driving towards a unit that can be mounted on a police helicopter.
#  *
#  *   Will the police need a warrant? Who knows. Since they are allowed
#  *   to do airborne infra-red analysis of your house, why not an take an
#  *   airborne "x-ray" equivalent?
#  *
#  *   ---------------------------------------------------------------------
#  *   Steven J Forsberg   at  aufsj@imap2.asu.edu              Wizard 87-01


   >   * And in Arizona, the state's Department of Water Resources uses
   >   spy satellite photographs to monitor 750,000 acres of state farmland, and
   >   compares the images to a database to discover which farmers don't have
   >   irrigation permits.

Good, I guess.

   >   Even worse: The federal government will spend another $4.5 million
   >   this year to develop even more intrusive surveillance equipment.

Bad.

   >   Currently under development by the Justice Department: A "super
   >   x-ray" -- combining traditional x-ray technology, ultra-sound imaging, 
   >   and computer-aided metal detectors -- to reveal items hidden under clothes 
   >   from up to 60 feet away.

Bad.

   >   The courts are currently wrestling with the implications of the new
   >   technology, debating the limits of the government's power to "search"
   >   individuals from a distance with high-tech gadgets. Several contradictory
   >   court decisions have already emerged, for example, about whether
   >   thermal-imaging searches are Constitutional.
   >   
   >   Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic politicians continue to look
   >   for new uses of the technology -- with some government officials already
   >   talking about using satellite surveillance to track items as small as
   >   backyard porches to check for zoning violations and construction permits.

Smart cards are transponders.

Never forget that.

   >   "In the name of fighting crime, politicians seem eager to obliterate the
   >   protections against unreasonable search, with equipment that Americans used
   >   to only read about in Tom Clancy technothrillers," said Dasbach. "It's time
   >   for the American public to wake up and realize that Big Brother is here
   >   today -- and he's got a gamma ray scanner in his hand."

No amount of control over the population is enough for the U.S. Government.
---guy