Post-September 11, NSA ‘enemies’ include us & Homeland Security new Blacklist Policy

Post-September 11, NSA ‘enemies’ include us

Somewhere between Sept. 11 and today, the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large, leaving us nowhere to run and no place to hide.

Within weeks of the attacks, the giant ears of the National Security Agency, always pointed outward toward potential enemies, turned inward on the American public itself. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established 23 years before to ensure that only suspected foreign agents and terrorists were targeted by the NSA, would be bypassed. Telecom companies, required by law to keep the computerized phone records of their customers confidential unless presented with a warrant, would secretly turn them over in bulk to the NSA without ever asking for a warrant.

Around the country, in tall, windowless telecom company buildings known as switches, NSA technicians quietly began installing beam-splitters to redirect duplicate copies of all phone calls and email messages to secret rooms behind electronic cipher locks.

There, NSA software and hardware designed for “deep packet inspection” filtered through the billions of email messages looking for key names, words, phrases and addresses. The equipment also monitored phone conversations and even what pages people view on the Web — the porn sites they visit, the books they buy on Amazon, the social networks they interact with and the text messages they send and receive.

Because the information is collected in real time, attempting to delete history caches from a computer is useless.

At the NSA, thousands of analysts who once eavesdropped on troop movements of enemy soldiers in distant countries were now listening in on the bedroom conversations of innocent Americans in nearby states.

“We were told that we were to listen to all conversations that were intercepted, to include those of Americans,” Adrienne Kinne, a former NSA “voice interceptor,” told me. She was recalled to active duty after Sept. 11.

“Some of those conversations are personal,” she said. “Some even intimate. … I had a real problem with the fact that people were listening to it and that I was listening to it. … When I was on active duty in ’94 to ’98, we would never collect on an American.”

Despite his hollow campaign protests, President Barack Obama has greatly expanded what President George W. Bush began. And through amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress largely ratified the secret Bush program.

So much intercepted information is now being collected from “enemies” at home and abroad that, in order to store it all, the agency last year began constructing the ultimate monument to eavesdropping. Rising in a remote corner of Utah, the agency’s gargantuan data storage center will be 1 million square feet, cost nearly $2 billion and likely be capable of eventually holding more than a yottabyte of data — equal to about a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

Read more: ttp://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62999.html#ixzz1Xm6j0XgI  -  Source: Politico - JAMES BAMFORD

Homeland Security new Blacklist Policy

September 8, 2011

A new report issued by Homeland Security Policy Institute, a "think and do tank", entitled "Counterterrorism Intelligence Law Enforcement Perspectives" calls for further centralization of the anti-terror apparatus inside the United States.

The changing, converging nature of threats faced today — especially those from terrorism, transnational crime and the use of technology to carry out criminal behavior — make it imperative that intelligence-led policing be integrated into the decentralized police structures and community policing principles of the United States.

The report lists a hierarchy of threats that include an overall "evolutionary shift" toward "a blended terror threat that unites foreign directed or inspired attacks with homegrown elements and operators."
This policy paper forms the new narrative that could justify the continuing infiltration and crackdown upon peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and even the questioning of American foreign policy and Homeland Security directives, whether on the street or in cyberspace.
The report opens with quotes from the two most ideologically repressive representatives of the Homeland Security initiative: John Ashcroft and Janet Napolitano.  Both of their quotes speak to coordinating federal and local efforts in the "war on terror," which HSPI interpreted as "accepted wisdom that weaving together of national efforts at the local, state, and federal levels is critical to US counterterrorism."
The preface to the report suggests that the current status of intelligence gathering and local police work is in vast disarray, "there is a consensus that . . . intelligence capabilities are lacking, collection is haphazard, resources are underutilized, and the U.S. has a limited ability to develop anticipatory knowledge concerning future attacks, mitigate risks, or respond to emerging threats."
This statement is meant to obfuscate the fact that a vast counterintelligence apparatus has been in place for some time, which includes, but is not limited to:

• 72 Threat Assessment Fusion Centers
• Citizen spy network directly reporting to the above-mentioned Fusion Centers
• COINTELPRO-style infiltration, surveillance, and harassment of activist groups, even those promoting peace and anti-war.
• Social network and Internet surveillance including hackers and paid bloggers to infiltrate sites and/or disseminate propaganda.
• Identity databases, including biometrics, pre-crime detection, no-fly lists, no-buy lists.

From this faulty assessment of how taxpayer money has already been spent to create a massive prison system for both body and mind, the report presents its foundational findings via surveys that indicate the merging of terrorists foreign and domestic.  This hierarchy reads as follows, and is supported by graphs and charts that indicate the responses from "intelligence unit commanders of the US' major metropolitan areas (who) continue to perceive terrorism as a real threat to the safety of their communities."

1. Homegrown / Domestic Terrorists
2. al-Qaeda / International Terrorists
3. Transnational Gangs / Organized Crime
4. Terror Support Groups
5. Drug Trafficking Organizations
6. Traditional Criminals

This hierarchy of perceived threats is then merged into an overall assessment of capabilities and intentions, which reveals that the twin concerns are first to "Spread Narrative" and second "Fundraising / Money Laundering."  Here we can begin to see the future direction of Homeland Security counterterrorism operations: banking and the Internet.
This conclusion is supported by the rest of the document which cites the need for centralization, precisely because the "enemy" is decentralized:

Most likely AQAP due to their decentralized outreach capabilities and ability to recruit via social media campaigns (i.e. Inspire.)

Furthermore, the base of operations apparently has shifted from the sands of the Middle East to "using the United States as an environment for building support and raising recruits."

Strangely, the report goes on to refute the idea that the overall system is in disarray by citing evidence that there is already cohesion in information sharing regarding the threat landscape.  Respondents overwhelmingly reported that they "Often" send and receive information to and from their local fusion center, while a majority indicated that they currently participate in the "reporting, tracking, and accessing" of the nationwide suspicious activity reporting initiative (NSI) which is nothing more than a catalog of citizen spy information fed predominantly from the private sector to law enforcement and upward to Homeland Security. Sharing is further solidified online through participation in the eGuardian system.

These local respondents also seem dangerously (or curiously) eager to sacrifice their autonomy, as they "placed greater importance on the information provided by federal authorities." Despite a cursory concern for privacy protection "the vast majority of respondents indicated that their departments would be willing to go beyond the sharing of information and share the sources from which the information originates (including confidential informants)."  In short, whatever it takes, and by all means necessary.

Finally, it is clear that local law enforcement is comfortable with the new hierarchy dictated to them by the Federal apparatus.  When asked to cite how they go about their intelligence gathering they "indicated that they turn primarily to federal officials or agencies for guidance" such as the FBI -- most often cited -- with DHS, the CIA, and military intelligence rounding out the agencies our local police wish to emulate in "structures and efforts."

In so doing, local police are seeking the currently unnamed intelligence "products" of such information-gathering efforts, which will be the subject of future inquiry.

And what was the #1 source listed for the gathering and sharing of this information?  Information from citizens -- not federal agencies.  The reason for this conclusion is cited at the end of the report which acknowledges a "time of increasing austerity" that implies might hamper the development and implementation of surveillance and data collection technology.  But the citizens of a country remain a resource easily tapped.  We should keep this firmly in mind as we look outward for signs of oppression.  Are we willing to take equal responsibility for what America currently has become, and for the direction it is headed? We have been slated as "practioners" in the role of national security, and as the report's final statement makes clear:

How practitioners conceptualize and perceive of the threat is of vital importance, their perceptions affect which threats are detected and when.  Furthermore, their perceptions represent an empirical guide for targeting the tools needed to develop anticipatory intelligence.  Whether, and how well this is done depends on the perceptions of the practitioners themselves...

We encourage you to read the full 22-page PDF, which seems to provide the justification for the next phase of the control grid which will affect every American throughout the real and virtual landscape.  Please comment below with your analysis and conclusions, as well as ideas for preserving our liberty during a time of heightened suspicion and paranoia that is now clearly re-directing its efforts onto American soil as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches

Print Version

Source: Activist Post - http://www.blacklistednews.com/New_Homeland_Security_Report_Sees_%22Evolutionary_Shift%22_in_Terror_Threat_/15622/0/0/0/Y/M.html

FBI Told to Back Off Investigating 'Black Muslim Converts'!

Lone Wolf Lessons

June 3, 2009 | 1645 GMT

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

At approximately 10:30 a.m. on June 1, as two young U.S. soldiers stood in front of the Army Navy Career Center in west Little Rock, Ark., a black pickup pulled in front of the office and the driver opened fire on the two, killing one and critically wounding the other.

Eyewitnesses to the shooting immediately reported it to police, and authorities quickly located and arrested the suspect as he fled the scene. According to police, the suspect told the arresting officers that he had a bomb in his vehicle, but after an inspection by the police bomb squad, the only weapons police recovered from the vehicle were an SKS rifle and two pistols.

At a press conference, Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas identified the suspect as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a 23-year-old African-American man who had changed his name from Carlos Leon Bledsoe after converting to Islam. In Arabic, the word mujahid is the singular form of mujahideen, and it literally means one who engages in jihad. Although Mujahid is not an uncommon Muslim name, it is quite telling that a convert to Islam would choose such a name — one who engages in jihad — to define his new identity. Muhammad was originally from Memphis, Tenn., but according to news reports was living and working in Little Rock.

Chief Thomas said Muhammad admitted to the shootings and told police that he specifically targeted soldiers. During an interrogation with a Little Rock homicide detective, Muhammad reportedly said that he was angry at the U.S. Army because of their attacks against Muslims overseas, that he opened fire intending to kill the two soldiers and that he would have killed more if they had been in the parking lot. These statements are likely what Chief Thomas was referring to when he noted in his press conference that Muhammad appears to have had political and religious motives for the attack and that it was conducted in response to U.S. military operations.

Chief Thomas also stated that the initial police investigation has determined that Muhammad acted alone and was not part of a wider conspiracy, but given that the shooting was an act of domestic terrorism directed against U.S military personnel, a thorough investigation has been launched by the FBI to ensure that Muhammad was not part of a larger group planning other attacks.

ABC News has reported that Muhammad had traveled to Yemen after his conversion, though the date of that travel and its duration were not provided in those reports. ABC also reported that while in Yemen, Muhammad was apparently arrested for carrying a fraudulent Somali passport and that upon his return from Yemen, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation targeting him.

The fact that the FBI was investigating Muhammad but was unable to stop this attack illustrates the difficulties that lone wolf militants present to law enforcement and security personnel, and also highlights some of the vulnerabilities associated with using law enforcement as the primary counterterrorism tool.

Challenges of the Lone Wolf

STRATFOR has long discussed the threat posed by lone wolf militants and the unique challenges they pose to law enforcement and security personnel. Of course, the primary challenge is that, by definition, lone wolves are solitary actors and it can be very difficult to determine their intentions before they act because they do not work with others. When militants are operating in a cell consisting of more than one person, there is a larger chance that one of them will get cold feet and reveal the plot to authorities, that law enforcement and intelligence personnel will intercept a communication between conspirators, or that law enforcement authorities will be able to introduce an informant into the group, as was the case in the recently foiled plot to bomb two Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft at a Newburgh, N.Y., Air National Guard base.

Obviously, lone wolves do not need to communicate with others or include them in the planning or execution of their plots. This ability to fly solo and under the radar of law enforcement has meant that some lone wolf militants such as Joseph Paul Franklin, Theodore Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph were able to operate for years before being identified and captured.

Lone wolves also pose problems because they can come from a variety of backgrounds with a wide range of motivations. While some lone wolves are politically motivated, others are religiously motivated and some are mentally unstable. Even among the religiously motivated there is variety. In addition to Muslim lone wolves like Muhammad, Mir Amal Kansi, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet and John Allen Muhammad, we have also seen anti-Semitic/Christian-identity adherents like Buford Furrow and Eric Rudolph, radical Roman Catholics like James Kopp and radical Protestants like Paul Hill. Indeed, the day before the Little Rock attack, Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion lone wolf gunman, killed prominent abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kan.

In addition to the wide spectrum of ideologies and motivations among lone wolves, there is also the issue of geographic dispersal. As we’ve seen from the lone wolf cases listed above, they have occurred in many different locations and are not just confined to attacks in Manhattan or Washington, D.C. They can occur anywhere.

Moreover, it is extremely difficult to differentiate between those extremists who intend to commit attacks from those who simply preach hate or hold radical beliefs (things that are not in themselves illegal due to First Amendment protections in the United States). Therefore, to single out likely lone wolves before they strike, authorities must spend a great deal of time and resources looking at individuals who might be moving from radical beliefs to radical actions. With such a large universe of potential suspects, this is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Limitations on Both Sides

Due to the challenges lone wolf militants present, the concept of leaderless resistancehas been publicly and widely embraced in both the domestic terrorism and jihadist realms. However, despite this advocacy and the ease with which terrorist attacks can be conducted against soft targets, surprisingly few terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by lone wolf operatives. In fact, historically, we have seen more mentally disturbed lone gunmen than politically motivated lone wolf terrorists. A main reason for this is that it can be somewhat difficult to translate theory into action, and as STRATFOR has frequently noted, there is often a disconnect between intent and capability.

Because of the difficulty in obtaining the skills required to conduct a terrorist attack, many lone wolves do not totally operate in a vacuum, and many of them (like Muhammad) will usually come to somebody’s attention before they conduct an attack. Many times this occurs as they seek the skills or materials required to conduct a terrorist attack, which Muhammad appears to have been doing in Yemen.

However, in this case, it is important to remember that even though Muhammad had been brought to the FBI’s attention (probably through information obtained from the Yemeni authorities by the CIA in Yemen), he was only one of the thousands of such people the FBI opens a preliminary inquiry on each year. A preliminary inquiry is the basic level of investigation the FBI conducts, and it is usually opened for a limited period of time (though it can be extended with a supervisor’s approval). Unless the agents assigned to the inquiry turn up sufficient indication that a law has been violated, the inquiry will be closed.

If the inquiry indicates that there is the likelihood that a U.S. law has been violated, the FBI will open a full-field investigation into the matter. This will allow the bureau to exert significantly more investigative effort on the case and devote more investigative resources toward solving it. Out of the many preliminary inquiries opened on suspected militants, the FBI opens full-field investigations only on a handful of them. So, if the information reported by ABC News is correct, the FBI was not conducting surveillance on Muhammad because to do so it would have had to have opened a full-field investigation.

Of course, now that Muhammad has attacked, it is easy to say that the FBI should have paid more attention to him. Prior to an attack, however, intelligence is seldom, if ever, so black and white. Sorting out the individuals who intend to conduct attacks from the larger universe of people who hold radical thoughts and beliefs and assigning law enforcement and intelligence resources to monitor the activities of the really dangerous people has long been one of the very difficult tasks faced by counterterrorism authorities.

This difficulty is magnified when the FBI is looking at a lone wolf target because there is no organization, chain of command or specific communications channel on which to focus intelligence resources and gather information. Lacking information that would have tied Muhammad to other militant individuals or cells, or that would have indicated he was inclined to commit a crime, the FBI had little basis for opening a full-field investigation into his activities. These limitations, and the FBI’s notorious bureaucracy (as seen in its investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui and the 9/11 hijackers), are the longstanding shortfalls of the law-enforcement element of counterterrorism policy (the other elements are diplomacy, financial sanctions, intelligence and military).

However, politics have proved obstructive to all facets of counterterrorism policy. And politics may have been at play in the Muhammad case as well as in other cases involving Black Muslim converts. Several weeks ago, STRATFOR heard from sources that the FBI and other law enforcement organizations had been ordered to “back off” of counterterrorism investigations into the activities of Black Muslim converts. At this point, it is unclear to us if that guidance was given by the White House or the Department of Justice, or if it was promulgated by the agencies themselves, anticipating the wishes of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

As STRATFOR has previously noted, the FBI has a culture that is very conservative and risk-averse. Many FBI supervisors are reluctant to authorize investigations that they believe may have negative blow-back on their career advancement. In light of this institutional culture, and the order to be careful in investigations relating to Black Muslim converts, it would not be at all surprising to us if a supervisor refused to authorize a full-field investigation of Muhammad that would have included surveillance of his activities. Though in practical terms, even if a full-field investigation had been authorized, due to the caution being exercised in cases related to Black Muslim converts, the case would most likely have been micromanaged to the point of inaction by the special agent in charge of the office involved or by FBI headquarters.

Even though lone wolves operate alone, they are still constrained by the terrorist attack cycle, and because they are working alone, they have to conduct each step of the cycle by themselves. This means that they are vulnerable to detection at several different junctures as they plan their attacks, the most critical of which is the surveillance stage of the operation. Muhammad did not just select that recruiting center at random and attack on the spot. He had cased it prior to the attack just as he had been taught in the militant training camps he attended in Yemen. Law enforcement officials have reported that Muhammad may also have researched potential government and Jewish targets in Little Rock, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York, Louisville and Memphis.

Had the FBI opened a full-field investigation on Muhammad, and had it conducted surveillance on him, it would have been able to watch him participate in preoperational activities such as conducting surveillance of potential targets and obtaining weapons.

There is certainly going to be an internal inquiry at the FBI and Department of Justice — and perhaps even in Congress — to determine where the points of failure were in this case. We will be watching with interest to see what really transpired. The details will be extremely interesting, especially coming at a time when the Obama administration appears to be following the Clinton-era policy of stressing the primacy of the FBI and the law enforcement aspect of counterterrorism policy at the expense of intelligence and other elements.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com

Source:  Fox Nation

Related Articles: 

• Obama condemns Muslim attack on Arkansas Army recruiters… “NOT”
• Finally:  Obama's Limp Statement On the Jihadi Attack in Arkansas

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

Obama condemns Muslim attack on Arkansas Army recruiters… “NOT”

By Michelle Malkin  •  June 2, 2009 12:47 PM

President Obama announced his choice for Army Secretary this afternoon.

The news isn’t what he said in his statement about GOP Rep. John McHugh:

“As Secretary of the Army, he will ensure that our soldiers are trained and equipped to meet the full spectrum of challenges and threats of our time. And John [McHugh] shares my belief that a sustainable national security strategy must include a bipartisan consensus at home, and he brings patriotism and a pragmatism that has won him respect on both sides of the aisle. I look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead.”

The news is what he left out.

Not a word about the jihadi attack on the two Army recruiters in Arkansas. No condemnation of the heinous attack and senseless violence. No condolences for the families of the targeted men or praise for the military recruiters who have been under increasing attack on U.S. soil.No statements from the DOJ or Pentagon, either.

Nothing.

***

Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic notices similar whitewashing by government-funded NPR, which failed to report the name and religion of recruiter-murdering suspect Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad:

Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? We saw this a couple of weeks ago, when the press only gingerly acknowledged that the malevolent though incompetent suspects in the synagogue bombing-conspiracy case in New York were converts to Islam. How is the public served by this kind of silence? The extremist Christian beliefs of George Tiller’s alleged murderer are certainly relevant to that case, and no one in my profession is hesitant to discuss them. Why the hesitancy to talk about the motivations of the man who allegedly killed Pvt. William Long?

Amy Ridenour: Some murders matter more than others.

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Trackbacks

1. Blue Collar Republican » Blog Archive » The Silence Is Deafening
2. One Arkansas Army recruiter shot dead, another wounded by muslim Carlos Bledsoe aka Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad - HUSSEIN Obama STILL has not condemned this jihadist! | Fire Andrea Mitchell!
3. Muslim Extremist Murders U.S. Serviceman on American Streets « The Political Inquirer
4. Muslim Extremist Kills Military Recruiter vs. Abortion Doctor Killed « Trust, But Verify
5. Some murders matter more than others | Right Voices
6. Cassy Fiano » Soldier killed in Arkansas by Muslim convert; media too busy with George Tiller murder to notice
7. Obama Silent on Recruitment Center Shooting : The American Pundit
8. Michelle Malkin » And now this: Shooting at military recruiting center; 1 dead, 1 wounded; suspect is anti-military Muslim convert
9. Mudville Gazette
10. Jihadi Kills US Army Recruiter at Arkansas Recruitment Center — The Dana Report
11. Obama condemns Muslim attack on Arkansas Army recruiters…not | The 2008 Elections
12. EXAMINER.COM: Recent extremist shootings raise questions about responsible speech | Unequal Time
13. Obama Quick to Decry Abortionist’s Murder… Why Is He Still Mute on Soldier’s Murder by Black Muslim Terrorist? « Frugal Café Blog Zone
14. This, that, and the other « Lindy’s Blog: Where Mom is Always Right
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16. Obama’s actions speak louder than his words « Garnette’s View
17. What was missing from Obama today « The Daley Gator
18. Turning The Tables:The Left Culpable In Death Of The Arkansas Military Recruiter « Nice Deb
19. Hell no we don’t apologize | BitsBlog
20. Playing Catch-Up « Obi’s Sister
21. ma condemns murder of child killer; Mum on murder of soldier | The TIW Blog
22. Leaning Straight Up » Palin not afraid to speak the truth about the Long and Tiller killings
23. Five « The Reluctant Optimist
24. Jesus is Lord, A Worshipping Christian’s Blog » Blog Archive » Obama Vocal on Tiller - Silent on Muslim Terrorist Attack on Recruiters
25. Vocal Minority
26. Climate Of Liberal Hate « Vets On The Watch
27. Michelle Malkin » Mapping the “climate of hate”
28. The Crazy Continues… « Around The Sphere
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Comments

Comment pages: « 1 [2]

1. #101

   On June 3rd, 2009 at 9:01 am, happyscrapper said:

   Obama’s true feelings and agenda are becoming clearer every passing hour. He is Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces, yet feels the murder of an abortion doctor is more tragic and more worthy of his condolences than the murder of a soldier. Now, he is over kissing the a$$ of the Saudi King. Next, on to Egypt to spout off about his Muslim roots. Interesting that no one heard about those “roots” when he was campaigning for Pres. In fact, his opponent, Juan McAmnesty, forbid anyone to even mention that Obama’s middle name was Hussein! Everything was covered up by the complicit MSM…his associations, his Muslim background, his socialist agenda…everything. And now we are stuck with him. Chicago thug, black supremacist, socialist, Muslim, America-basher, and our president. It doesn’t get any sicker than that.

2. #102

   On June 3rd, 2009 at 9:09 am, jangar said:

   Interesting that no one heard about those “roots” when he was campaigning for Pres. (the info was all out there to be found, read and researched!!).

   
   

 

Source:  FOX NATION

Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• FBI Told to Back Off Investigating 'Black Muslim Converts'!
  
• Finally:  Obama's Limp Statement On the Jihadi Attack in Arkansas