Spying on Americans: 64 Drone Bases on US Soil

 

By: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

Source: Global Research

http://www.globalresearch.ca/spying-on-americans-64-drone-bases-on-us-soil/

We like to think of the drone war as something far away, fought in the deserts of Yemen or the mountains of Afghanistan. But we now know it’s closer than we thought. There are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed.

Public Intelligence, a non-profit that advocates for free access to information, released a map of military UAV activities in the United States on Tuesday. Assembled from military sources — especially this little-known June 2011 Air Force presentation (.pdf) – it is arguably the most comprehensive map so far of the spread of the Pentagon’s unmanned fleet. What exact missions are performed at those locations, however, is not clear. Some bases might be used as remote cockpits to control the robotic aircraft overseas, some for drone pilot training. Others may also serve as imagery analysis depots.

The medium-size Shadow is used in 22 bases, the smaller Raven in 20 and the miniature Waspin 11. California and Texas lead the pack, with 10 and six sites, respectively, and there are also 22 planned locations for future bases. ”It is very likely that there are more domestic drone activities not included in the map, but it is designed to provide an approximate overview of the widespread nature of Department of Defense activities throughout the US,” Michael Haynes from Public Intelligence tells Danger Room.

The possibility of military drones (as well as those controlled by police departments and universities) flying over American skies have raised concerns among privacy activists. As the American Civil Liberties Union explained in its December 2011 report, the machines potentially could be used to spy on American citizens. The drones’ presence in our skies “threatens to eradicate existing practical limits on aerial monitoring and allow for pervasive surveillance, police fishing expeditions, and abusive use of these tools in a way that could eventually eliminate the privacy Americans have traditionally enjoyed in their movements and activities.”

As Danger Room reported last month, even military drones, which are prohibited from spying on Americans, may “accidentally” conduct such surveillance — and keep the data for months afterwards while they figure out what to do with it. The material they collect without a warrant, as scholar Steven Aftergood revealed, could then be used to open an investigation.

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. military from operating on American soil, and there’s no evidence that drones have violated it so far.

This new map comes almost two months after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) revealed another one, this time of public agencies – including police departments and universities – that have a permit issued by the Federal Aviation Agency to use UAVs in American airspace.

“It goes to show you how entrenched drones already are,” said Trevor Timm, an EFF activist, when asked about the new map. “It’s clear that the drone industry is expanding rapidly and this map is just another example of that. And if people are worried about military technology coming back and being sold in the US, this is just another example how drone technology is probably going to proliferate in the US very soon.”

Domestic proliferation isn’t the same as domestic spying, however. Most — if not all — of these military bases would make poor surveillance centers. Many of the locations are isolated, far from civilian populations. Almost half of the bases on the map work only with the relatively small Raven and Shadow drones; their limited range and endurance make them imperfect spying tools, at best. It’s safe to assume that most of the bases are just used for military training.

Privacy concerns aside, the biggest issue might be safety, as we were been reminded on Monday when a giant Navy drone crashed in Maryland

 

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White House doesnt address privacy concerns in cybersecurity executive order draft

 

Reuters / Lucas Jackson

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/cybersecurity-executive-order-sharing-362/

A copy of the cybersecurity executive order currently being written by the Obama administration has been leaked to the Web, and the contents do little to calm the fears of those who suspected their privacy concerns wouldn’t be considered.

Only days after journalists with both Federal News Radio and TechDirt.com claimed to have come into possession with a copy of a cybersecurity executive order being readied by the White House, a draft assumed to be authored for the president has been leaked, and in it the Obama administration lays down the groundwork for interim cybersecurity measures following Congress’ failure to come to agreement on legislation of their own. But while the alleged executive order does not discuss the specifics of what the White House has in mind for protecting the country’s e-grid, it also fails to provide any safe guards for making sure that any sharing of personal information does not raise privacy concerns or cause any civil rights violations.

“It is therefore essential that a mutually beneficial arrangement for public-private collaboration be further developed,” the introduction of the draft declares. Over the course of the 18 pages that follow, the Obama administration authors repeatedly remark about the necessity for streamlining the sharing of information held by private sector companies with the federal government. Nowhere, however, has the White House explained how it plans to protect the rights of Americans.

Under earlier cyber legislation considered by Congress, private-sector entities, including businesses and telecom providers, would be offered federal incentives for openly providing the government with personal details offered up by their customers — the American public. Although the leaked copy does not describe any specific-handouts, it heavy handedly avoids explaining anything that will be done to handle the privacy concerns that were caused by earlier attempts at cyber bills.

In one excerpt of the draft, the establishment of a “risk management framework” is discussed, explaining it as something that would “facilitate streamlined collaboration and information sharing mechanisms,” as well as “address interdependencies among critical infrastructure sectors.”

“Because the majority of the Nation’s crucial infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector, efforts to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning and resilient critical infrastructure required effective and routine collaboration and information exchange between all levels of government and critical infrastructure owners and operators,” it continues.

Elsewhere in the draft, “information sharing”between private and federal entities is considered imperative and a call to arms it made to “facilitate an optimization of resources to advance our collective ability to act when a threat is present or an incident occurs.” Not only does the vague wordage included in the draft leave the possibility of information collection and sharing open-ended, but suggests that this act is only the starting point of what sort of cyber-sharing protocols are yet to be put to use.

The draft, according to the copy released by TechDirt, also calls for the establishment of a “24/7 situational awareness and crisis monitor” system managed by the US Department of Homeland Security, which will “facilitate information sharing, interaction and collaboration among and between SSAs and other Federal department agencies, critical infrastructure, owners and operators and international partners.” In another section, the White House rallies for a National Cybersecurity Center to exist with “the ability to enable and support situational awareness and a common operating picture for cyberspace across private sector, Federal, SLTT and international entities y integrating information obtained from such entities and providing cyber information to support the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

The process, writes the White House, will include “an institutionalized capability to facilitate information sharing.” Nowhere, though, do they discuss how they will facilitate the civil liberties concerns raised by the sharing of sensitive intelligence.

Although the White House has not yet weighed in on the authenticity of the alleged draft, the Obama administration does admit to be at work on readying a copy for release.

"Following congressional inaction, the President is determined to use existing executive branch authorities to protect our nation against cyber threats," National Security Adviser John Brennan confirmed in a letter sent from the White House on Friday. "Specifically, we are exploring an Executive Order to direct executive branch departments and agencies to secure our nation's critical infrastructure by working with the private sector."

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White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA

 

The White House Logo.(Reuters / Adrees Latif)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/ndaa-hedges-appeal-obama-339/

The White House has asked the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to place an emergency stay on a ruling made last week by a federal judge so that the president’s power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge is reaffirmed immediately.

On Wednesday, September 12, US District Court Judge Katherine Forrest made permanent a temporary injunction she issued in May that bars the federal government from abiding by the indefinite detention provision in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA. Judge Forrest ruled that a clause that gives the government the power to arrest US citizens suspected of maintaining alliances with terrorists and hold them without due process violated the Constitution and that the White House would be stripped of that ability immediately.

Only hours after Judge Forrest issued last week’s ruling, the Obama administration threatened to appeal the decision, and on Monday morning they followed through.

At around 9 a.m. Monday, September 17, the White House filed an emergency stay in federal appeals court in an effort to have the Second Circuit strip away Judge Forrest’s ruling from the week earlier.

“Almost immediately after Judge Forrest ruled, the Obama administration challenged the decision,” writes Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist that is listed as the lead plaintiff in the case. According to Hedges, the government called Judge Forrest’s most recent ruling an “extraordinary injunction of worldwide scope,” and Executive Branch attorneys worked into the weekend to find a way to file their stay.

“The Justice Department sent a letter to Forrest and the Second Circuit late Friday night informing them that at 9 a.m. Monday the Obama administration would ask the Second Circuit for an emergency stay that would lift Forrest’s injunction,” Hedges writes. “This would allow Obama to continue to operate with indefinite detention authority until a formal appeal was heard. The government’s decision has triggered a constitutional showdown between the president and the judiciary.”

Attorney Carl Mayer, a counsel for Hedges and his co-plaintiffs, confirmed to RT early Monday that the stay was in fact filed with the Second Circuit.

“This may be the most significant constitutional standoff since the Pentagon Papers case,” Carl Mayer says in a separate statement posted on Mr. Hedge’s blog.

Bruce Afran, who serves as co-lead counsel along with Mayer, tells Hedges that the White House could be waging a war against the injunction to ensure that the Obama administration has ample time to turn the NDAA against any protesters participating in domestic demonstrations.

“A Department of Homeland Security bulletin was issued Friday claiming that the riots [in the Middle East] are likely to come to the US and saying that DHS is looking for the Islamic leaders of these likely riots,” Afran tells Hedges. “It is my view that this is why the government wants to reopen the NDAA — so it has a tool to round up would-be Islamic protesters before they can launch any protest, violent or otherwise. Right now there are no legal tools to arrest would-be protesters. The NDAA would give the government such power. Since the request to vacate the injunction only comes about on the day of the riots, and following the DHS bulletin, it seems to me that the two are connected. The government wants to reopen the NDAA injunction so that they can use it to block protests.”

Hedges, who has previously reported for papers including the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, argued that his job as a journalist requires him to routinely interact and converse with persons that may be considered terrorists in the eyes of the US government.

Under the NDAA, Americans “who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners" can be held in prison cells “until the end of hostilities,” vague verbiage that essentially allows for those suspect of such associations to be decided under the discretion of US President Barack Obama or any federal agent underneath him.

“Because the language is so vague in this law,” Mr. Mayer explains to RT, “if any journalist or activist is seen as reporting or offering opinions about groups that could somehow be linked not just to al-Qaeda but to any opponent of the United States or even opponents of our allies”

“I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge,” Hedges wrote when he first filed his suit in January. “I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have ‘disappeared’ into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.”

Monday morning, Hedges once more responded to the White House’s relentless attempts to reauthorize powers granted under the NDAA, asking, “If the administration is this anxious to restore this section of the NDAA, is it because the Obama government has already used it? Or does it have plans to use the section in the immediate future?”

“The decision to vigorously fight Forrest’s ruling is a further example of the Obama White House’s steady and relentless assault against civil liberties, an assault that is more severe than that carried out by George W. Bush,” writes Hedges. “Obama has refused to restore habeas corpus. He supports the FISA Amendment Act, which retroactively makes legal what under our Constitution has traditionally been illegal — warrantless wire tapping, eavesdropping and monitoring directed against US citizens. He has used the Espionage Act six times against whistle-blowers who have exposed government crimes, including war crimes, to the public. He interprets the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act as giving him the authority to assassinate US citizens, as he did the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And now he wants the right to use the armed forces to throw U.S. citizens into military prisons, where they will have no right to a trial and no defined length of detention.”

In his latest blog post, Hedges acknowledges, “The government has now lost four times in a litigation that has gone on almost nine months.”

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