The U.S. Army's iWATCH spy on your neighbor program is expanding to Florida

iWATCH was started by the U.S. Army and is being touted as a community awareness (spying) program the U. S. army created, to allegedly educate the public about behaviors and activities that may have a connection to terrorism.

"This program is a community program to help your neighborhood stay safe from terrorist activities."  http://mdwhome.mdw.army.mil/iwatch

The iWATCH community (spying) program has spread across the country from Boston to LA.

DHS's "If You See Something Say Something" spy program apparently isn't good enough, Big Brother claims we need a second one!

Florida - A program in Palm Beach County intended to encourage residents to report suspicious behavior is attracting resistance from around the state.

Under the proposed "Violence Prevention Program," anyone who sees a potentially dangerous situation — a schizophrenic person with weapons, a war veteran making threats to passersby — could call a 24-hour hotline. Legitimate-sounding calls would trigger a visit by specially trained deputies in plain clothes or by mental health professionals.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff says a violence prevention unit could thwart would-be killers like the recent mass shooters in Connecticut and Colorado. The program will cost $3.2 million in the first year. The Florida Legislature agreed to pay $1 million of it.

Despite Sheriff Ric Bradshaw's ostensibly good-willed intent, the plan has been compared to Big Brother, the KGB, Castro's Cuba and Nazi Germany.

"This proposed policy is reminiscent of the police state in George Orwell's 1984," one local resident, Milton Smith, wrote in an email to Scott. "Palm Beach County should not be allowed to turn into 1939 Nazi Germany."

Dmitry Levin, of Boca Raton, grew up in the Soviet Union, where he said the government encouraged neighbors to "snitch on everybody."

"It's a specific telephone line to report your neighbor who doesn't like the government," Levin said. "When I read that, my jaw dropped. That's KGB in its finest form. The next step would be, what, bonuses for reporting?"

Already there are call lines, including the 211 crisis line, which offers support over the phone and serves as a kind of dispatch center for two "mobile crisis teams." The South County Mental Health Center runs one of these teams of specialized therapists who make house calls on dangerously unstable people. They have agreements with all the local law enforcement agencies, a 211 spokeswoman said.

All of these receive state funding.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/fl-palm-big-brother-20130514,0,6126817.story

The iWATCH program is being used in 13 Florida counties:

Florida - Sheriffs in 13 Northeast Florida counties announced an online system Thursday for residents to report suspicious activity they think may be terrorism-related.

Individuals can make reports online to any one of the counties from Nassau to Alachua that are part of the iWATCH program.

The site provides examples of red flags to watch for, such as people with an unusual interest in building plans or who are purchasing materials useful in bomb making. Important places to watch include hobby stores and dive shops.

Those making reports must provide their name and contact information.

Reports entered in the iWATCH system are sent to the individual counties through a central clearing house. It is also passed to other counties, in case the information can be connected to something similar or related. The program was set up using a $150,000 state grant and piggybacks on an existing information-sharing system law enforcement uses now.

The sites combine iWATCH with the county name, or in Jacksonville’s case the city, to direct the report. The site for Jacksonville is www.iwatchjax.com.

Other counties in the program are: Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Clay, Flagler, Gilchrist, Levy, Marion, Nassau, Putnam, St. Johns and Union.

“The majority of citizens want to do what’s right,” Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell said at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement offices in Jacksonville where the program was announced.
http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2013-05-16/story/tipping-law-enforcement-possible-terrorist-activity-purpose-13-county

Florida's crime rate lowest in 42 years:

Florida - Crime statewide reached its lowest rate in 42 years, with Broward and Palm Beach counties following the downward trend, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's "Uniform Crime Report" reported Thursday.''

Broward's overall crime rate dropped by nearly 4 percent in 2012 compared with 2011, and Palm Beach County's rate was down by more than 3 percent during the same period, according to the agency's annual statistics.

Both counties showed declines in the types of crimes that affect most people: burglaries, larcenies and auto thefts. Robberies and rapes also were down in Broward, while aggravated assaults dipped in Palm Beach County, the statistics showed.

"I'm happy," Broward Sheriff's Col. Al Pollock said. "Can we do better? Absolutely, and we want to drive it down even more."

The decreases mirror a national trend of declining violence and crime over the past two decades. Florida's rate in 2012 decreased by more than 6 percent compared with the previous year, with property crimes dropping by nearly 6 percent. Violent crimes — such as murder, sexual offenses, robbery, and aggravated assault — also dipped by more than 4 percent overall. (if crime is down nationally why is DHS & the U.S. army pushing its spy on citizens programs?)
 
For more read:
 http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-obama-administration-media-want-to_16.html 

Gov. Rick Scott credited the work of police across the state for the lower crime rate.

"It's because of the hard work of Florida's law enforcement community that we can celebrate today's great news about Florida's crime rate," he said.

Burglaries dropped 7 percent in Broward, after several years of increases in that county, and 10 percent in Palm Beach County. Larceny was down 3 percent in Broward, 2 percent in Palm. Auto thefts were down 3 percent in Broward and 7 percent in Palm.

There were 404 people raped in Broward in 2012, compared with 473 in 2011. There were 381 rapes in Palm Beach County, up from 340 the prior year.

Fort Lauderdale saw a drop of more than 2 percent in its crime rate, but Police Chief Frank Adderley said he thinks the number doesn't tell the full story. Adderley called the FDLE statistics "favorable," but said they weren't an accurate reflection of crime in the city.

"The report is based on a population of 168,615. We provide service to non-city residents that work in and visit our city, causing a daily population increase of nearly 300,000," Adderley said in a statement. "If the report showed the true number, the results would show a higher decrease of crime."

In South Florida, agencies' combining investigative efforts has seemed to pay off, officials said.

The crime-rate decrease reached double digits in several Broward cities. Pembroke Pines showed a nearly 15 percent drop, Plantation had a more than 11 percent decrease and Margate was down more than 11 percent, records showed.

Statewide, crimes committed with firearms continued to drop in 2012, down 2 percent from the prior year with 489 fewer such crimes committed. Agencies have programs aimed at lowering gun-related attacks.

FDLE began tracking crime statistics in 1971. After a rise in crime in the 1980s, the state's crime rate improved in recent decades, and now is consistently lower than figures from the 1970s.

FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey pointed out that while Florida's population grew by 17,937 last year there were 43,536 fewer crimes. "This report is good news for Florida families, businesses and visitors," he said.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-05-16/news/fl-state-2012-crime-report-broward-20130516_1_crime-rate-palm-beach-county-3-percent

Obama officials openly admit the war on terror is permanent

Washington, D.C. - Senior Obama officials anonymously unveiled to the Washington Post their newly minted "disposition matrix", a complex computer system that will be used to determine how a terrorist suspect will be "disposed of": indefinite detention, prosecution in a real court, assassination-by-CIA-drones, etc. Their rationale for why this was needed now, a full 12 years after the 9/11 attack:

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism."

On Thursday, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether the statutory basis for this "war" - the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) - should be revised (meaning: expanded). This is how Wired's Spencer Ackerman (soon to be the Guardian US's national security editor) described the most significant exchange:

"Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, 'At least 10 to 20 years.' . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today - atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America's Thirty Years War."

That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the "war on terror" will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week's big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of "endless war".

Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.

In January, former Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson delivered a highly-touted speech suggesting that the war on terror will eventually end; he advocated that outcome, arguing:

'War' must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. We must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the 'new normal.'"

In response, I wrote that the "war on terror" cannot and will not end on its own for two reasons: (1) it is designed by its very terms to be permanent, incapable of ending, since the war itself ironically ensures that there will never come a time when people stop wanting to bring violence back to the US (the operational definition of "terrorism"), and (2) the nation's most powerful political and economic factions reap a bonanza of benefits from its continuation. Whatever else is true, it is now beyond doubt that ending this war is the last thing on the mind of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and those who work at the highest levels of his administration. Is there any way they can make that clearer beyond declaring that it will continue for "at least" another 10-20 years?

The most intangible yet most significant cost: each year of endless war that passes further normalizes the endless rights erosions justified in its name. The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere.

They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

Each year that passes, millions of young Americans come of age having spent their entire lives, literally, with these powers and this climate fixed in place: to them, there is nothing radical or aberrational about any of it. The post-9/11 era is all they have been trained to know. That is how a state of permanent war not only devastates its foreign targets but also degrades the population of the nation that prosecutes it. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/17/endless-war-on-terror-obama

US suspends Constitution in permanent world war on terror:
 
Two disturbing developments have occurred in the last couple of days that have gone relatively unnoticed compared to the recent IRS, AP, and Benghazi scandals.

First, the senate is debating an expansion of the already broad powers of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) so the U.S. can essentially engage any area in the world in the war on terror, including America. Which brings us to the second development: the Pentagon has recently granted itself police powers on American soil.
 
Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Sheehan told Congress yesterday that the AUMF authorized the US military to operate on a worldwide battlefield from Boston to Pakistan. Sheehan emphasized that the Administration is authorized to put boots on the ground wherever the enemy chooses to base themselves, essentially ignoring the declaration of war clause in the US Constitution.

Senator Angus King said this interpretation of the AUMF is a "nullity" to the Constitution because it ignores Congress' role to declare war. King called it the "most astoundingly disturbing hearing" he's been to in the Senate.

Jeff Morey of AlterNet writes:

By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.”

According to the rule:

“Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.”

This follows a recent West Point study “Challengers From The Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right" that sought to define the American people as "domestic enemies" in order to justify soldiers breaking their oath to corral pesky citizens.

The West Point Terrorism Center wrote that "conspiracy theorists" who worry that local law enforcement will be steadily replaced by federally-controlled law enforcement could potentially be a domestic enemy:

Some groups are driven by a strong conviction that the American political system and its proxies were hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a “New World Order,” (NWO) in which the United States will be embedded in the UN or another version of global government. The NWO will be advanced, they believe, via steady transition of powers from local to federal law-enforcement agencies, i.e., the transformation of local police and law-enforcement agencies into a federally controlled “National Police” agency that will in turn merge with a “Multi-National Peace Keeping Force.” The latter deployment on US soil will be justified via a domestic campaign implemented by interested parties that will emphasize American society’s deficiencies and US government incompetency.
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/05/us-suspends-constitution-in-permanent.html

U. S. military grants itself authority over ‘civil disturbances’

The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects offered the nation a window into the stunning military-style capabilities of our local law enforcement agencies. For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefitted from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “War on Drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.

The lines blurred even further Monday as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

Click here to read the new rule

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.” According to the rule:

Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.

Bruce Afran, a civil liberties attorney and constitutional law professor at Rutgers University, calls the rule, “a wanton power grab by the military,” and says, “It’s quite shocking actually because it violates the long-standing presumption that the military is under civilian control.”

One of the more disturbing aspects of the new procedures that govern military command on the ground in the event of a civil disturbance relates to authority. Not only does it fail to define what circumstances would be so severe that the president’s authorization is “impossible,” it grants full presidential authority to “Federal military commanders.” According to the defense official, a commander is defined as follows: “Somebody who’s in the position of command, has the title commander. And most of the time they are centrally selected by a board, they’ve gone through additional schooling to exercise command authority.”

As it is written, this “commander” has the same power to authorize military force as the president in the event the president is somehow unable to access a telephone. (The rule doesn’t address the statutory chain of authority that already exists in the event a sitting president is unavailable.) In doing so, this commander must exercise judgment in determining what constitutes, “wanton destruction of property,” “adequate protection for Federal property,” “domestic violence,” or “conspiracy that hinders the execution of State or Federal law,” as these are the circumstances that might be considered an “emergency.”

“These phrases don’t have any legal meaning,” says Afran. “It’s no different than the emergency powers clause in the Weimar constitution [of the German Reich]. It’s a grant of emergency power to the military to rule over parts of the country at their own discretion.”

Afran also expresses apprehension over the government’s authority “to engage temporarily in activities necessary to quell large-scale disturbances.”
http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/05/14/u-s-military-power-grab-goes-into-effect/ 

Big brother forcing citizens to show their immigration papers for a doctor's visit

Some Alabama physicians and physician assistants were surprised this week to receive a letter with a new demand from the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners: Show us your papers. 

Under the state's 2011 immigration law, these medical professionals are now required to prove they are U.S. citizens or in the country legally to maintain their licenses to practice, according to the letter, dated May 16. 

The immigration law, H.B. 56, was signed into law two years ago. Based on the the much-contested S.B. 1070 in Arizona, Alabama's law is considered the toughest in the country, in part due to its "papers, please" provision that requires police to ask for an individual's immigration status if they have "reasonable suspicion" the person is undocumented. It was designed specifically to drive undocumented immigrants out of the state, but much of it has since been blocked by the courts.

The medical license component did not kick in until this year. Already-licensed physicians and physician assistants now have only two weeks to get their information to the Medical Licensure Commission. Those applying for a license for the first time will be required to either demonstrate they are in the country legally or sign a declaration of U.S. citizenship and give proof, according to the letter. If they don't provide the information, they will not be able to receive or renew their licenses. 

From the letter, signed by Alabama Board of Medical Examiners Executive Director Larry D. Dixon:

A person applying for or renewing a professional license is required to sign a declaration of U. S. citizenship and demonstrate U. S. citizenship or demonstrate lawful presence in the U. S., which is then verified by the federal government. After initial demonstration and verification of U. S. citizenship or lawful permanent residence in the U. S. is made, further demonstration of such status is not required.

H.B. 56 initially made it a crime for undocumented immigrants to engage in business transactions with the state, creating problems for people who wanted to buy utilities or register their mobile homes, among other things. Civil rights groups sued the state on behalf of mobile-home owners, and the provision was blocked by a federal judge in November 2011.

Karen Tumlin, a managing attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, said the license requirement seems to susceptible to the same legal problem as the provision affecting mobile-home owners: The federal government, not the state, has the responsibility to verify immigration status. 

"We're deeply troubled by what the board is doing here, because once again it raises the constitutional problem with localities determining who has permission to remain in the United States and who does not," said Tumlin, who has worked to block H.B. 56. "And as a practical matter, we're concerned it would lead to duly licensed individuals in the state of Alabama not being able to contribute to Alabama society and pursue their profession."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/alabama-immigration-law_n_3295255.html

(Video) A Face in the crowd: Say goodbye to anonymity

60 Minutes: Even if your picture isn't on the Internet, computerized facial recognition makes it virtually impossible to keep your "faceprint" private.

Over the last 10 years, the ability of computers to identify faces has gotten 100 times better, a million times faster, and exponentially cheaper.

Yet facial recognition technology is still a work in progress. While investigators in the Boston marathon bombing had multiple images of both suspects, the technology did not come up with a match. They were not identified by their faces, but by their fingerprints! Authorities won't say what went wrong. One possibility is that government data banks - through which the photos would've been searched - are not big enough.

As we discovered, the FBI is working on expanding its database. Businesses are tapping facial recognition to sell us stuff and computer scientists are upgrading the technology.
Watch the video: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50147158n

DHS, HSEEP training program exposed: How to manipulate elected officials, the media & public

Exercises play a vital role in national preparedness by enabling whole community stakeholders to test and validate plans and capabilities, and identify both capability gaps and areas for improvement. A well-designed exercise provides a low-risk environment to test capabilities, familiarize personnel with roles and responsibilities, and foster meaningful interaction and communication across organizations. The Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) provides a set of guiding principles for exercise programs, as well as a common approach to planning and conducting individual exercises. This methodology applies to exercises in support of all national preparedness mission areas and ensures a consistent and interoperable approach to exercise design and development, conduct, evaluation, and improvement planning.

The Training and Exercise Planning Workshop (TEPW)
 
Role of Exercises:
 
Exercises play a vital role in national preparedness by enabling whole community stakeholders to test and validate plans and capabilities, and identify both capability gaps and areas for improvement. A well- designed exercise provides a low-risk environment to test capabilities, familiarize personnel with roles and responsibilities, and foster meaningful interaction and communication across organizations. Exercises bring together and strengthen the whole community in its efforts to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from all hazards. Overall, exercises are cost-effective and useful tools that help the nation practice and refine our collective capacity to achieve the core capabilities in the National Preparedness Goal.  

Participation

When identifying stakeholders, exercise program managers should consider individuals from
organizations throughout the whole community, including but not limited to:

• Elected and appointed officials responsible for providing direction and guidance for exercise program priorities and those responsible for providing resources to support exercises;
• Representatives from relevant disciplines that would be part of the exercises or any real-world events, including appropriate regional or local Federal department/agency representatives;
• Individuals with administrative responsibility relevant to exercise conduct; and
• Representatives from volunteer, nongovernmental, nonprofit, or social support organizations, including advocates for children, seniors, individuals with disabilities, those with access and functional needs, racially and ethnically diverse communities, people with limited English proficiency, and animals. Once a comprehensive set of stakeholders has been identified, exercise program managers can include them in the exercise program by having them regularly participate in TEPWs.


The HSEEP 2013 Document:

This document serves as a description of HSEEP doctrine. It includes an overview of HSEEP fundamentals that describes core HSEEP principles and overall methodology. This overview is followed by several chapters that provide exercise practitioners with more detailed guidance on putting the program’s principles and methodology into practice. 

The doctrine is organized as follows:

• Chapter 1: HSEEP Fundamentals describes the basic principles and methodology of HSEEP.
• Chapter 2: Exercise Program Management provides guidance for conducting a Training and Exercise Planning Workshop (TEPW) and developing a Multi-year Training and Exercise Plan (TEP). (Engage Elected and Appointed Officials: Engaging elected and appointed officials in the exercise process is critical because they provide both the strategic direction for the exercise program, as well as specific guidance for individual exercises. As representatives of the public, elected and appointed officials ensure that exercise program priorities are supported at the highest level and align to whole community needs and priorities. Elected and appointed officials should be engaged early and often in an exercise program, starting with the development of exercise program priorities at the TEPW. In developing individual exercises, the exercise planning team should continue to engage their appropriate elected and appointed officials throughout the exercise planning cycle in order to ensure the leaders vision for the exercise is achieved. Routine engagement with elected and appointed officials ensures that exercises have the support necessary for success.)
• Chapter 3: Exercise Design and Development describes the methodology for developing exercise objectives, conducting planning meetings, developing exercise documentation, and planning for exercise logistics, control, and evaluation.
• Chapter 4: Exercise Conduct provides guidance on setup, exercise play, and wrap-up activities.
• Chapter 5: Evaluation provides the approach to exercise evaluation planning and conduct through data collection, analysis, and development of an AAR.
• Chapter 6: Improvement Planning addresses corrective actions identified in the exercise IP and the process of tracking corrective actions to resolution. https://hseep.dhs.gov/support/HSEEP_Revision_Apr13_Final.pdf

https://hseep.dhs.gov/pages/1001_HSEEP10.aspx

Watch more HSEEP videos on Youtube:
  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Homeland+Security+Exercise+and+Evaluation+Program&oq=Homeland+Security+Exercise+and+Evaluation+Program&gs_l=youtube.12...1842.1842.0.2993.1.1.0.0.0.0.60.60.1.1.0...0.0...1ac.2.11.youtube.1njY-Bgxu5U

EPA routinely denies FOIA requests from conservative groups

A Republican senator says allegations that the Environmental Protection Agency has made it more difficult for conservative groups to obtain information is no different from the burgeoning scandal at the IRS.

Shortly after the IRS admitted to targeting conservative groups, it was reported that the EPA has routinely denied fee waiver requests from conservative groups seeking government records, while at the same time, approving such requests to environmental groups.

“We know the Obama EPA has completely mismanaged FOIA, but granting fee waivers for their friends in the far-left environmental community, while simultaneously blocking conservative leaning groups from gaining access to information; is really no different than the IRS disaster,” Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an emailed statement.

The free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute revealed that since January 2012 the EPA granted fee waivers for 75 out of 82 Freedom of Information Act requests sent by major environmental groups and only denied seven of them — a 92 percent success rate for green groups. However, the agency rejected or ignored 21 out of 26 fee waiver requests from conservative groups — an 81 percent rejection rate.

“Their practice is to take care of their friends and impose ridiculous obstacles to deny problematic parties’ requests for information,” said CEI senior fellow Chris Horner.

When a fee waiver is denied, it generally stops the FOIA request as many groups don’t have the resources to pay the fees associated to get the FOIA.

In advance of EPA nominee Gina McCarthy’s hearing Senate Republicans, led by Vitter, sent her five requests on transparency in the EPA. In one request, Republicans asked the EPA general counsel to issue new guidelines to ensure that all EPA business is done on official government email accounts.

The senators also requested that the general counsel establish “standards and procedures for responding fully, truthfully, and timely to FOIA requests and Congressional inquiries.” Lawmaker specified that the EPA “establish training regimes in these areas for all appropriate EPA staff, as well as penalties and procedures for dealing with deviations from the guidance.”

Vitter has previously hit the EPA over mismanaging FOIA requests, sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on the failure of the agency to properly process FOIA requests.

“We have learned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has struggled to observe the President’s commitment to transparency: their staff is poorly trained, does not place a priority on responding to FOIA requests, and appears to be more interested in erecting barriers than in ensuring requests are promptly and properly fulfilled,” the letter reads.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/17/vitter-epa-foia-scandal-no-different-than-the-irs-disaster/

Verizon secretly turned over AP phone records to gov't

 

Verizon wireless handed over private data belonging to journalists with the Associated Press last year without any hesitation or questions asked.

Interestingly, the Associated Press said the decision to publish the article that reportedly sparked the investigation was only made after consulting the White House and the CIA.

This latest news came as congressional critics said the investigation damaged press freedom and the White House claimed they were ignorant of the investigation. The Justice Department acknowledged the surveillance of AP journalists earlier this week.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that at least two AP reporters’ personal cellphone records “were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena,” citing an AP employee.

“But Verizon—like AT&T, Facebook, and Comcast—has been criticized in the past for its lack of willingness to stand up for users’ privacy rights, which suggests its decision to hand over AP reporters’ records is true to form,” Gallagher writes.

In 2013, Verizon continued to get a horrible rating from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), receiving zero stars for helping protect user data from the government. Verizon also got zero stars in 2011 and 2012.

Unsurprisingly, Verizon Wireless would not comment on specific cases, including this one. Spokesman Debra Lewis said she was “not going to speculate on what may or may not happen in the future,” speaking of a possible change to the company’s policy on responding to government requests.
http://endthelie.com/2013/05/16/verizon-secretly-handed-over-phone-records-of-ap-reporters-to-the-federal-government/#axzz2TYYJoB6l 
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/wireless-carriers-privacy-associated-press_n_3281995.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/us/politics/attorney-general-defends-seizure-of-journalists-phone-records.html?_r=0