Government Using Mobile Surveillance Units to Track Everyday Lives of Americans, Not International Terrorists
Homeland Security Looked into Covert Body Scans
March 4, 2011USA TODAY - The Homeland Security Department paid contractors millions of dollars to develop and study surveillance systems that could covertly track pedestrians and check under people's clothing with airport-style body scanners as they enter train stations, bus depots or major events, newly released documents show.
Two contracts the department signed in 2005 and 2006 were part of its effort to acquire technology to find suicide bombers in a crowd of moving people, according to documents given to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy-rights group that is suing Homeland Security.
The department dropped the projects in a "very early" phase after testing showed flaws, Homeland Security spokesman Bobby Whithorne says.
EPIC lawyer Ginger McCall says the project is disturbing nonetheless because it shows the department "obviously believed that this level of surveillance is acceptable when in fact it is not at all acceptable."
A $1.9 million contract with Rapiscan Systems, which makes airport body scanners, asked the company to develop similar machines for "covert inspection of moving subjects" and to find explosives on suicide bombers "through clothing, backpacks and other packages." The contract was signed in 2005.
Rapiscan's airport body scanners require subjects to stand still while the machines create an image of passengers underneath their clothing to reveal hidden weapons. EPIC has sued the department to stop their use, saying the machines violate privacy.
Rapiscan Vice President Peter Kant says the company gave Homeland Security a prototype machine designed "primarily for non-aviation settings" because it could scan people while they were moving.
Lab tests of the prototype resulted in the project being dropped, Whithorne says.
In 2006, the department signed a $1.3 million contract with Northeastern University in Boston to test systems that could potentially "monitor and track individuals in a crowd." Northeastern studied video cameras, imaging equipment similar to body scanners and radar, which can spot people at a distance.
After receiving Northeastern's reports, Homeland Security decided against trying to develop a prototype machine, Whithorne says.
Using systems to covertly scan pedestrians "would be a clear violation" of laws against unreasonable searches, McCall says.
"If you are walking down the street, this allows them to digitally strip-search you and rifle through your belongings without any sort of justification," she says.
Homeland Security studies privacy implications of technologies before they are used on the public.
The department dropped the two projects "before we even got to the privacy assessment phase," Whithorne says.
Homeland Security has sought for several years to develop technology that can scan moving people, and has publicly tested equipment at a New Jersey rail station and at airports in Denver and Minneapolis.
Body scanners typically require a controlled environment that eliminates outside light, security consultant Rich Roth says.
Homeland Security has spent billions of dollars to develop systems that detect everything from airborne pathogens to people illegally crossing into the U.S. from Mexico [see story below].
TSA, DHS Plan Massive Mobile Surveillance Rollout
March 6, 2011NaturalNews - Newly-released documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that the US Depart of Homeland Security has been working on plans to roll out a new wave of mobile surveillance technologies at train stations, stadiums and streets. These new technologies will track your eye movements, capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and even image your naked body using whole-body infrared images that were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the camera owners to take “nude” videos of people at the beach.
Most importantly, many of these technologies are designed to be completely hidden, allowing the government to implement “covert inspection of moving subjects.” You could be walking down a hallway at a sports stadium, in other words, never knowing that you’re being bathed in X-rays from the Department of Homeland Security, whose operators are covertly looking under your clothes to see if you’re carrying any weapons.
Roving vans to “track eye movements”
According to a Forbes.com article (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…), one project pursued by DHS using technology from Siemens would “mount backscatter x-ray scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians, assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements.”
Another project involved developing “a system of long range x-ray scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.”
We already know that the U.S. government has purchased 500 vans using covert backscatter technology to covertly scan people on the streets (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…). They’re called “Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs.”
This is all part of the U.S. government’s new wave of police state surveillance that aims to track and irradiate innocent civilians who have committed no crime. Under the new Janet Napolitano regime, all Americans are now considered potential terrorists, and anyone can be subjected to government-sanctioned radiation scanning at any time, without their knowledge or approval.
And don’t think these efforts will be limited merely to backscatter technology: The TSA is now testing full-power, deep-penetrating X-ray machines (like the ones that deliver chest X-rays in hospitals) in order to check people for bombs they may have swallowed. Yes, Janet Napolitano now wants to look inside your colon! And they’re willing to X-ray everyone — without their consent — in order to do that.
Read the documents yourself
If you have trouble believing the U.S. government is unleashing a new wave of police state covert scanning vans on to the streets of America, you can read the documents yourself — all 173 pages. They’re available on the EPIC website at: http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanne…
EPIC calls these vans “mobile strip search devices” because they give the federal government technology to look under your clothes without your permission or consent. It’s also being done without probable cause, so it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections that are guaranteed to Americans under the Bill of Rights.
“It’s a clear violation of the fourth amendment that’s very invasive, not necessarily effective, and poses all the same radiation risks as the airport scans,” said EPIC attorney Ginger McCall, in the Forbes article.
Huge health risks to the population
It’s not just the privacy issues that raise red flags here, of course: It’s also the fact that the U.S. government has no respect whatsoever for the health of its citizens who are being subjected to these radiation emitting devices. Even while the TSA refuses to release testing results from its own naked body scanners, DHS keeps buying more machines (and more powerful machines) that will only subject travelers to yet more radiation.
As we’ve already reported here on NaturalNews.com, numerous scientists are already on the record warning that the TSA’s backscatter “naked body scanners” could cause breast cancer, sperm mutation and other health problems (http://www.naturalnews.com/030607_n…).
But the U.S. government doesn’t seem to care what happens to your health. Their position is that their “right” to know what you’re carrying under your clothes or inside your body overrides your right to privacy or personal health. All they have to do is float a couple of fabricated terrorism scare stories every few months, and then use those “threats” as justification for violating the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens are very turn.
The real question in all this, of course, is how far will this go? The TSA is already reaching down your pants and feeling up peoples’ genitals as part of the “security” measures. Will DHS soon just start subjecting people to body cavity searches as a necessary security requirement before entering a football stadium, for example? Will Americans now be X-rayed with cancer-causing ionizing radiation — without their awareness or consent — merely because they are walking down the street or boarding a train?
That seems to be the case. And as you can readily tell from all this, it’s getting harder and harder for the fast-dwindling group of deniers to claim America isn’t already a police state. The USA is fast becoming a high-tech version of the very worst police state tyrannies witnessed throughout human history. The only difference is that now they have “science” on their side with the coolest new technology that can violate your rights and irradiate your body in a hundred different ways, with high-resolution images and digital storage devices.
I suppose if all this were being done to really stop international terrorists, that might be one thing. But what has become increasingly clear in observing the government’s behavior in this realm is that the U.S. government now considers Americans to be the enemy — especially those who have the gall to defend their Constitutionally-protected freedoms or question the unjustified centralization of power taking place right now in Washington.
The DHS is America’s new secret police. And their cameras are pointing inward, into the everyday lives of Americans; not outward, aimed at international terrorists.
When the price of security becomes forfeiting your liberty, the source of the “terror” is no longer the terrorists but your own government. Isn’t this the lesson that history has taught us well?
Watch the talk by Naomi Wolf, who explains all this extremely well:
Part 1: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=EEE6C…
Part 2: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=176F5…
This video will open your eyes to what’s really happening today. It has all happened before in recent history, and the patterns are undeniable. Watch the videos to learn more.
Small Mobile Surveillance Units Use Thermal Night Camera with GPS
May 16, 2010Arizona Daily Star - A U.S. Border Patrol mobile surveillance system sits atop a hill near the border at Naco. The unit combines radar, daytime camera and thermal night camera with GPS to help track illegal border traffic. It's a system that largely works well, agents say.
Border Patrol Agent Orlando Rocafort, whose flatbed truck sits atop a peak overlooking a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, leans in for a closer look. He slides his computer's mouse over the red dots near the border between Naco and Douglas, and clicks.
A whizzing sound comes from the bed of the truck. A pair of mounted cameras rotates, facing southeast. Inside the truck, black-and-white images come into focus on a monitor at Rocafort's right. The thermal night camera shows what appears to be several people carrying backpacks near the border fence.
Rocafort picks up his radio and tells agents where to find the suspected illegal immigrants.
On this windy and cool May evening in Southeastern Arizona, Rocafort is running one of 38 "mobile surveillance systems" the Border Patrol uses on the Southwest border. The truck-mounted systems give agents the ability to scan at least six miles of border using ground surveillance radar, Doppler radar and infrared day-night cameras.
The Doppler radar system alerts operators when something moves in the area covered, a key reason the technology is so valuable, Rocafort said.
"With these systems, we've pretty much shut down traffic in some areas," said Rocafort, who trains others on how to operate the systems. "If you have an experienced operator, I've seen guys work seven, eight groups at a time."These systems, which cost about $800,000 each, have gained widespread popularity in the past two years among agents, Border Patrol leaders and politicians, for two simple reasons -- they work, and they are available now.
The units give the agency a small-scale version of what officials hoped the SBInet "virtual fence" networks would offer -- the ability to detect and identify who is crossing the border, and where.
The Boeing Co.-led SBInet program has been plagued by glitches and delays since the program was launched in 2006. Despite allocations of $1.6 billion, the program's promised technology is still not available to the Border Patrol, a May report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found.
Two grids along 53 miles of border in Southwestern Arizona are up, but not yet working.
The problems prompted Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to order a reassessment of the program in January and freeze future funds in March. When she announced the freezing of funds, she also reallocated $50 million from stimulus funds to buy commercially available, stand-alone technology.
More than half of that -- $31.7 million -- is scheduled to buy mobile surveillance systems like the one Rocafort uses. It's unclear how many will be bought because federal officials are still acquiring them, said Steven Cribby, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, D.C.
But at $800,000 each, it should be enough to buy about 35 to 40. That would double the 38 already in use along the U.S.-Mexico border, 20 of which are in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.
Part of broader plan
The systems are part of Homeland Security's Secure Border Initiative, a multi-billion-dollar program launched in November 2005 to secure the borders and reduce illegal immigration, said Rich Stana, director of homeland security issues at the Government Accountability Office.
The initiative, which has been allocated $4.5 billion since it originated, has paid for border fencing, roads and lighting as well as the development of SBInet "virtual fences."
Up until now, the mobile surveillance systems have been a minor part of the plan, receiving only a fraction of the funds: $9,000 in 2007, $187,000 in 2008 and $130,000 in 2009, Stana said.
The plan was to link the truck units with the SBInet "virtual fence" systems, but that hasn't happened.
The mobile systems are the only technology agents have received from the initiative that actually works, said Brandon Judd, vice president of Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents' union.
Agents have been using more basic mobile surveillance systems for more than a decade, Judd said. The current systems are an advanced version of the original units.
Improving on technology that works is more useful to Border Patrol agents than spending time and money trying to create new, grandiose technology such as the virtual fences, Judd said.
"Technology is a good thing as long as we are spending money on what we know is going to work," Judd said. The mobile systems are nothing new, "but what they've done is make them a lot better than they used to be."Border Patrol figures show, the mobile surveillance systems have also led to:
- 29,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants, nearly 20 percent of the 148,283 apprehensions made sector-wide.
- 112,600 pounds of marijuana seized, 18 percent of the 622,530 pounds seized sector-wide.
In their 10-point border-security action plan released in April, Republican U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl called for the government to substantially increase the number of mobile surveillance systems along the Arizona-Mexico border.
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