Tag: surveillance

Bombshell evidence shows Biden White House directly aided Jack Smith’s J6 probe

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson published new emails from FBI whistleblowers showing that President Joe Biden’s then-Deputy White House Counsel Jonathan Su personally assisted the FBI in securing President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s cell phones to assist the nascent “Arctic Frost” investigation over January 6.

The new whistleblower emails also show that a future member of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team and an anti-Trump FBI agent were closely involved in the origins of the FBI probe. Operation Arctic Frost formed the basis of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s false elector case under which former President Donald Trump was later charged with a conspiracy to defraud the United States for his campaign’s attempts to assemble alternate slates of electors under claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.

The new emails are contained in a letter the senators sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel urging cooperation with their requests for all information related to the FBI probe.

“Overall, these newly disclosed emails show the extensive collaboration between and among select FBI agents from the Washington Field Office and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office – Washington D.C. to plan, approve and execute Arctic Frost,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “The emails also provide further support that ASAC Thibault played a central role in advancing its approval to a full field criminal investigation when other agents had concerns the supporting evidence only allowed for a preliminary investigation.”

“Lastly, the emails illustrate the Biden White House’s personal involvement in providing former President Trump and former Vice President Pence’s phones to the FBI at their request when neither of them was a subject of the investigation at that point in time,” they added.

The emails turned over to the committee by whistleblowers show that the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Chief John Crabb emailed Su at the White House on May 2, 2022 and copied Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault.

“Jonathan, Would you please coordinate with Tim Thibault (who’s copied on this email) about picking up the telephones,” Crabb wrote.

“Thanks John. Tim, it is good to meet you, and please let me know what works for you in terms of timing the next couple days,” Su replied.

By May 4, other committee records show, the FBI had successfully obtained both President Trump and Vice President Pence’s official phones from the Biden White House, even though then-former President Trump had not yet become a criminal subject of the Arctic Frost probe.

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Woke Employees’ Worst Nightmare: Google Plays Pivotal Role in CBP’s AI-Powered Border Surveillance Upgrade

Google Cloud is at the center of a Customs and Border Protection plan to modernize video surveillance towers that involves deploying machine learning along the southern border, despite previous assurances from the woke Silicon Valley giant to its leftist employees that it was not involved in such projects.

Federal contract documents reviewed by the Intercept reveal that Google Cloud is playing a critical role in upgrading the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) so-called “virtual wall” along the Mexican border. This comes five years after Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian assured employees that the company was not working on any projects related to immigration enforcement at the southern border.

The CBP’s plan involves modernizing older video surveillance towers in Arizona, which provide the agency with continuous monitoring of the border. A key aspect of this effort is the integration of machine learning capabilities into CBP cameras, enabling automatic detection of humans and vehicles approaching the border without the need for constant human monitoring.

According to the documents, CBP is purchasing computer vision technology from two vendors: IBM and Equitus. Google’s role is to stitch these services together by operating a central repository for video surveillance data through its ModulAr Google Cloud Platform Environment (MAGE).

The project focuses on upgrading 50 towers with up to 100 cameras across six sites in the Tucson Sector. IBM will provide its Maximo Visual Inspection software, typically marketed for industrial quality control inspections, while Equitus will offer its Video Sentinel, a video surveillance analytics program designed for border surveillance.

A technical diagram within the document shows that every camera in CBP’s Tucson Sector will feed data into Google’s servers. The resulting metadata and keyframes will be sent to CBP’s Google Cloud, with the document stating, “This project will focus initially on 100 simultaneous video streams from the data source for processing.”

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WHOA: Tucker Carlson Reveals He “Immediately” Sold His Truck After Spotting a ‘Disturbing’ Message on Vehicle’s Infotainment Screen

Tucker Carlson caused a stir in a recent interview that may cause some Americans to do a double take on the vehicles they are driving.

During an interview with automotive designer and internet personality Casey Putsch last week, Tucker mentioned that he is a lifelong fan of Chevrolet trucks but felt he had to “immediately” sell his latest one after spotting a disturbing message on the car’s dashboard.

“I bought a truck last year…A Chevy truck, which I’ve always had, and I was at a gas station, he said. “And all of a sudden at a gas station, it says, ‘Stop, we’re downloading information from the internet.’”

“While you were driving?” Putsch asked.

“No, I was stopped,” Tucker replied. “I sold the car immediately. I brought it back and sold it.”

“They want all your data to provide to insurance companies to wreck your life, I’m sure,” Putsch responded.

“Insurance companies will be the downfall of cars and driving. I can guarantee it.”

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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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