Tag: surveillance

Operation Midnight Climax: A CIA Sex, Drugs and Surveillance Program

Key Takeaways

  • Operation Midnight Climax was a CIA experiment in San Francisco from the 1950s to 1960s testing the effects of LSD and sex on men’s behavior.
  • The experiment was part of the larger MKULTRA program aimed at developing mind-control capabilities.
  • The CIA used prostitutes to lure men to a wired bordello for surveillance, but the unethical program was terminated in 1967.

From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, men in San Francisco who patronized prostitutes ran the risk of becoming unwitting participants in a clandestine CIA experiment. It was designed to test whether the combination of sex and the hallucinogenic drug LSD might influence the men to reveal information that the government wanted. What information, nobody is really sure.

The experiment, known as Operation Midnight Climax inside the CIA, was part of a larger research program code-named MKULTRA. The agency launched MKULTRA out of worries that the Soviet Union had developed a mind-control drug.

CIA officials had observed the vacant gaze and trance-like behavior of Hungarian cleric Cardinal József Mindszenty at a show trial in Budapest in 1949. They were convinced that his confession had been extracted with chemicals, according to a 1977 New York Times article and decided that the U.S. needed to have similar capabilities.

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Trump Treasury Expands Financial Surveillance

More than one million Americans are about to face a new level of financial surveillance. The Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that the threshold for currency transaction reports has been lowered from $10,000 to $200 for Americans living in 30 zip codes in California and Texas. Financial surveillance in the United States has long needed reform, but this move is in the wrong direction.

FinCEN officially announced the temporary policy change as an effort “to further combat the illicit activities and money laundering of Mexico-based cartels and other criminal actors along the southwest border of the United States.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “As part of a whole-of-government approach to combatting the threat, [the] Treasury remains focused on leveraging all our available tools and authorities to better identify and counter these criminal activities.”

While this announcement is disappointing, it is not surprising. Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies, warned people in February that President Trump’s decision to designate cartels as terrorists could have repercussions for civil liberties and the economy at large. Specifically, Nowrasteh noted that the designation would allow the government to freeze assets, enact secondary sanctions, and take greater control of the financial system generally.

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FOIA Requests Target Biden Administration’s Financial Surveillance

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has proceeded with filing a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Treasury Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The goal is to receive relevant information regarding the Biden administration’s alleged weaponization of government and censorship.

This is yet another attempt to shed light on how third-party groups and organizations were used to circumvent a number of constitutional prohibitions.

ADF’s focus this time is on the previous administration’s policy of using the issue of domestic extremism to, in fact, negatively affect its political opponents – in the cases brought up in these FOIA requests, via access to financial records of US conservatives.

An iteration of the Big Government-Big Tech collusion, which has been investigated by Congress, this one is about Big Governments and Big Banks suspected of having worked together to achieve political goals. But not always by collaborating directly – and this is one of the aspects ADF wants to understand better.

Namely – the involvement of private organizations and businesses hired (“outsourced”) in one way or another, to help banks identify what were designated to be purveyors of misinformation, and domestic extremism.

The FOIAs also aim to reveal the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) role in flagging what are said to be “conservative-coded” transactions (the keywords here are reported to be, “Trump,” “MAGA”, etc.)

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France’s Encryption Crackdown Could Break Secure Messaging for Everyone

France is attempting to pass a new surveillance law requiring the inclusion of secret encryption backdoors by providers, to serve intelligence agencies and police.

Critics say this attack on secure communications is the worst of its kind in the European Union (EU) and are urging citizens to put pressure on lawmakers to prevent the adoption of the so-called Narcotrafic law, which has cleared the country’s Senate and is now in the National Assembly.

Among those raising the alarm over the law is the well-known end-to-end encrypted email service Tuta, which reiterates the fundamental argument against building any backdoors into any encrypted app – something that French legislators now need to hear: once broken for one, encryption is broken for all.

“A backdoor for the good guys only is not possible,” says a blog post on Tuta’s site.

It adds that the idea to give law enforcement the ability to remotely activate cameras and microphones, expand “black boxes” authorization, and further facilitate online censorship (allegedly only related to the use and sale of drugs) might be presented by those behind the proposed law as needed to fight organized crime – but that, at the same time, it goes against a number of existing laws.

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Red alert in New Jersey! China could be spying on your tolls through E-ZPass.

Did you think paying tolls in New Jersey was just a routine task? Think again! The New Jersey Turnpike Authority, in a move reeking of leftist negligence, just handed out an 11-year lawsuit contract for the E-ZPass system to a Singapore-based company with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Yes, you read that right: while you’re shelling out cash to cross a bridge, Beijing might be spying on your license plate. Thanks, incompetent progressives!

The company in question is ST Electronics, a subsidiary of the Singaporean giant ST Kinetics, and several conservative lawmakers have already sounded the alarm.

Why? Because behind this facade of modern technology lurks suspicious connections to the CCP, a dictatorship that not only oppresses its own people but has tentacles in every corner of the globe.

While the left embraces their fantasy of a borderless world, China is rubbing its hands with glee over our data.https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/1889661565512667263

Let’s be real: this isn’t some tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory from lunatics. Republican Senator Tom Cotton has already warned that Asian companies like this are often puppets of the Chinese regime, collecting data for its global surveillance machine.

And here in New Jersey, the Turnpike Authority handed them the keys to the highway—literally—without batting an eye. Where were the Democrats? Probably whining about climate change while ignoring this very real threat.

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Some drones over US bases may have been conducting surveillance: NORTHCOM general

A senior U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) official told members of the Senate that some of the 350 drones that flew over military installations and sensitive areas last year may have been conducting surveillance.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, who is commander of NORTHCOM and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), was questioned about the drones during a Senate Armed Services Committee Budget hearing on Thursday.

Drones were spotted flying all over the country last year, though most notably in New Jersey. They were also flying over military installations, including Joint Base Langley, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Guillot about the threat the unmanned aircraft pose to military operations, facilities and personnel.

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The Secret History of American Surveillance

From cellphone spying to facial scanning technology to massive data farms, it’s no secret that the U.S. government is gathering loads of personal information on its citizens.

But few remember the origins of our modern surveillance state. Some argue that it was forged over 115 years ago, half a world away in the Philippine Islands.

The story begins in the mid-1870s, when a technological renaissance catapulted America into its first information revolution. Thomas Edison’s quadruplex telegraph and Philo Remington’s typewriter allowed data to be recorded accurately and transmitted quickly. Inventions such as the electrical tabulating machine and the Dewey Decimal System could count, catalog and retrieve huge amounts of information efficiently. Photography was becoming widely accessible, thanks to George Eastman’s roll film, and biometric criminal identification systems such as fingerprinting were adopted from Europe. Our ability to manage, store and transmit data grew by leaps and bounds.

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RC-135 Rivet Joint Surveillance Jet Just Flew Unprecedented Mission Off Mexico

AU.S. Air Force RC-135V Rivet Joint conducted a highly unusual flight in the Gulf of California between Mexico’s Baja Peninsula and the rest of that country yesterday, according to online flight tracking data. The strategic intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) plane looks to have done the same today.

The Rivet Joint is one of America’s most capable intelligence-gathering assets and the appearance of one off the Mexican coast is a significant development. This comes amid a major increase in U.S. military support to operations along the border with Mexico under President Donald Trump and talk of unprecedented direct action by American forces against drug cartels, which you can read more about in this separate TWZ feature.

Flight tracking software shows RC-135V serial number 64-14845 flew southwest from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska to the skies over southern California on February 3. Offutt is home to the 55th Wing, which oversees the bulk of the Air Force’s Rivet Joint fleet along with an array of other ISR and highly specialized command and control aircraft. The jet then hooked south along the Pacific coast of the Baja Peninsula before flying up into the Gulf of California. The aircraft subsequently returned to Offutt following the same route, but in reverse.

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US Launches Reconnaissance Aerial Monitoring Aircraft Over Mexican Border in Run-up to Potential Cartel Strike

This ought to scare the hell out of the cartel drug lords on the ground.
The US is allegedly flying reconnaissance planes inside Mexico.

On his second day in office President Trump officially designated drug cartels on the southern border as terrorist organizations.

Last week Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that “all options are on the table” regarding the Mexican cartels.

President Trump is not fooling around with the Mexican cartels.

Aviacionline reported Monday (in Spanish) that US authorities are using high-tech aircraft over the border to strengthen surveillance over possible illicit activities.

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FBI Nominee Kash Patel Vows to End Censorship Collusion, Slams Wiretaps, and Pledges Section 230 Work

FBI Director nominee Kash Patel’s Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday was a chance to learn about the direction the agency would take after a number of years filled with controversies linked to online censorship.

Patel addressed several of these issues, including the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop stories and the FBI’s role in the scandal – which he said would not repeat going forward.

Patel also spoke against the FBI attempting to pressure Big Tech to get these companies to censor content, as well as against wiretapping political candidates and their staff – but also pledged to work with Senator Richard Blumenthal in order to bring potentially controversial changes to Section 230 that could jeopardize end-to-end encryption.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, was on the confirmation hearing panel and recalled that in October 2020 – a month before the election – the FBI was among those who worked to falsely present Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.”

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