Unlicensed advocates disagree

Have a Wi-Fi router? If you do — and it uses an unlicensed frequency — you could be subject to a warrantless search of your home.

Federal Communications Commission guidelines stipulate that the agency can enter property when it suspects radio frequency energy is being abused. The provision, which was originally intended to aid the monitoring of unlicensed radio and tv stations, now has a broader range of application as more consumers join the wi-fi ranks.

“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” FCC spokesman David Fiske told Wired for an article Thursday. The FCC spokesman said the scope included Wi-Fi routers.

“The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts,” Wired’s Ryan Singer wrote. “That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.”

The Electronic Frontier foundation, an online privacy group, called the FCC’s interpretation a “major stretch.”

“It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien was quoted as saying. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.”

“The rules came to attention this month when an FCC agent investigating a pirate radio station in Boulder, Colorado, left a copy of a 2005 FCC inspection policy on the door of a residence hosting the unlicensed 100-watt transmitter,” Singer writes.

“Whether you operate an amateur station or any other radio device, your authorization from the Commission comes with the obligation to allow inspection,” the statement said.

Boulder Free Radio simply moved the transmitter to a new location. They say they’ll continue to do so in the future.

KBFR Boulder Free Radio offers a glimpse into the troubles encountered by pirate radio stations. It aired from 2000 to 2005 using an unlicensed broadband radio frequency. During that time, the station’s founders mounted a transmitter in a tree while connecting it to the station in a van and parked it in various locations in an effort to frustrate FCC inspectors.

Ultimately, the station shut down. It was reincarnated, however, in 2006 and again in 2008.

Not everyone agrees with the FCC’s interpretation of the 1934 law. Rogue Radio Research, a company that promotes unlicensed broadcasters, says on its website that agents of the FCC don’t have the right to search homes.

“If FCC agents knock on my door and say they want to talk with me, do I have to answer their questions?” the site asks rhetorically on its “Pamphlets and Practical Guides” page.

“No,” they say. “You have a right to say that you want a lawyer present when and if you speak with them, and that if they will give you their names, you will be back in touch with them. Unless you have been licensed to broadcast, the FCC has no right to ‘inspect’ your home.

“If they say they have a right to enter my house without a warrant to see if I have broadcasting equipment, do I have to let them in?” they continue.

“No,” the site replies. “Under Section 303(n) of Title 47 U.S.C., the FCC has a right to inspect any transmitting devices that must be licensed under the Act. Nonetheless, they must have permission to enter your home, or some other basis for entering beyond their mere supervisorial powers. With proper notice, they do have a right to inspect your communications devices. If they have given you notice of a pending investigation, contact a lawyer immediately.”

Source: Raw Story

House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri may have prematurely applauded reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened a criminal investigation into whether the left-wing advocacy group the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a/k/a ACORN, has violated federal election law by fostering and promoting a national program of voter registration fraud in the 2008 Presidential Election and local races throughout the nation.

When the Associated Press reported that the FBI is actively pursuing leads in the investigation of ACORN, many political observers took a “wait and see” position since several roadblocks have been placed by those who are believed to have benefited from ACORN activities.

Word of the investigation came less than a week after Blunt joined Reps. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) in sending a letter to the Department of Justice urging it to act. However, as reported by radio and television talk show host Glenn Beck, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said he did not believe there was evidence of fraud by ACORN in spite of reports of voter fraud.

Blunt, a former secretary of state in Missouri, joined other House leaders in urging the Bureau to “take all active and appropriate measures” to ensure the civil rights of legitimate voting Americans aren’t diluted by systemic voter fraud.

“I was proud to join three former secretaries of state now serving in Congress, as well as our ranking members on the Judiciary and Administration committees, in calling on the Justice Department to stand up in defense of the sanctity of Americans’ right to vote — and, as important, their right to be assured that vote counts,” said the Missouri congressman.

“News that the Department has heeded that call and begun the process of unraveling ACORN’s widespread program of alleged voter registration fraud is a heartening development — and one all Americans ought to take notice of as they prepare to exercise their most basic civic duty in the upcoming 2010 election cycle.

“I want to applaud the Department of Justice for taking this important step, and associate myself with the efforts of Leader Boehner to ensure not one more dime of taxpayer money is diverted into the coffers of this organization until Justice completes its review and determines whether ACORN’s actions merit criminal prosecution,” said Rep. Blunt.

President Barack Obama’s spokespersons claim he had a limited relationship with ACORN. However, the record shows that “[Obama] says he is drawn to politics, despite its superficialities, as a means to advance his real passion and calling: community organization. … In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter-registration campaign in recent city history.” Obama also — according to Real Clear Politics — was hired by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott to train her staff.

In the past, ACORN officials admitted to submitting fraudulent voter registration forms in Ohio and press reports confirmed that ACORN submitted hundreds of fraudulent voter registration forms in Kansas City, forcing local officials to wade through fraudulent voter registrations, potentially disenfranchising legitimate voters.

However, there appears to be continued hesitation on the part of the Obama Administration, the Justice Department and the US Congress to investigate and adjudicate cases of voter fraud by ACORN. In fact, if anything the group is being rewarded with its proposed participation in the 2010 Census, a process in which the stakes are high.

Source: RBN

The US dollar is not Russia’s basic reserve currency anymore. The euro-based share of reserve assets of Russia’s Central Bank increased to the level of 47.5 percent as of January 1, 2009 and exceeded the investments in dollar assets, which made up 41.5 percent, The Vedomosti newspaper wrote.

The dollar has thus lost the status of the basic reserve currency for the Russian Central Bank, the annual report, which the bank provided to the State Duma, said.

In accordance with the report, about 47.5 percent of the currency assets of the Russian Central Bank were based on the euro, whereas the dollar-based assets made up 41.5 percent as of the beginning of the current year. The situation was totally different at the beginning of the previous year: 47 percent of investments were made in US dollars, while the euro investments were evaluated at 42 percent.

The dollar share had increased to 49 percent and remained so as of October 1. The euro share made up 40 percent. The rest of investments were based on the British pound, the Japanese yen and the Swiss frank.

The report also said that the reserve currency assets of the Russian Central Bank were cut by $56.6 billion. The losses mostly occurred at the end of the year, when the Central Bank was forced to conduct massive interventions to curb the run of traders who rushed to buy up foreign currencies. The currency assets of the Central Bank had grown to $537.6 billion by October 2008. Therefore, the index dropped by almost $133 billion within the recent three months.

The majority of Russian companies, banks and most of the Russian population started to purchase enormous amounts of foreign currencies at the end of 2008. The dollar gained 16 percent and the euro 13.5 percent over the fourth quarter. The demand on the US dollar was extremely high, and the Central Bank was forced to spend a big part of its dollar assets, experts say.

The change of the structure of the currency portfolio of the Bank of Russia has not affected the official peg of the dual currency basket, which includes $0.55 and 0.45 EUR.

The investments of the Bank of Russia in state securities of foreign issuers have been considerably increased, the report said. About a third of Russia’s international reserves are based on US Treasury bonds.

Russia became one of the largest creditors of the US administration last year, the US Department of the Treasury said. Russia increased its investments in the debt securities of the US Treasury from $32.7 billion as of December 2007 to $116.4 billion as of December 2008.

Source: The Market Oracle

President Obama’s greatest foreign policy successes are found in the reports of the mass media. His greatest failures go unreported, but are of great consequence. A survey of the major foreign policy priorities of the White House reveals a continuous series of major setbacks, which call into question the principal objectives and methods pursued by the Obama regime.

These are in order of importance:

1) Washington’s attempt to push for a joint economic stimulus program among the 20 biggest economies at the G-20 meeting in April 2009;

2) Calls for a major military commitment from NATO to increase the number of combat troops in conflict zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan to complement the additional 21,000 US troop buildup (Financial Times April 12, 2009 p.7);

3) Plans to forge closer political and diplomatic relations among the countries of the Americas based on the pursuit of a common agenda, including the continued exclusion of Cuba and isolation of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador (La Jornada (Mex. D.F.) April 20, 2009);

4) Weakening, isolating and pressuring Iran through a mixture of diplomatic gestures and tightening economic sanctions to surrender its nuclear energy program (Financial Times, April 16/17, 2009 p. 7);

5) The application of pressure on North Korea to suspend its satellite and missile testing program in addition to dismantling its nuclear weapons program. (Financial Times, April 13, 2009 p.4);

6) Securing an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a ‘two state solution’, in which Israel agrees to end and dismantle its illegal settlements in exchange for recognition of Israel as a ‘Jewish State’ (Financial Times, April 13, 2009, p.5);

7) Pressuring the government of Pakistan to increase its military role in attacking the autonomous Northwest provinces and territories along the Pakistan-Afghan border insupport of the US war against Islamic resistance movements, especially among the Pashtun people (over 40 million strong), in both Afghanistan and Pakistan (FT April 23, 2009 p.3); and

Securing a stable pro-US regime in Iraq capable of remaining in power after a withdrawal of the majority of US occupation troops (FT April 8, 2009).

What is striking about Obama’s objectives is the continuities with the previous administration of GW Bush, even as the mass media proclaims ‘significant changes’. (American Conservative April 14, 2009)
Policy Continuities: Failures of Stimulus Proposals at the April 2009 G20 Summit.

Like his predecessor Bush, Obama’s first economic priority is to pour trillions of borrowed dollars into the financial system as opposed to directing state resources toward reviving popular demand, reconstructing the manufacturing sector, creating a universal health system and directly employing the 5 million workers unemployed in the last year. Obama’s economic regime is totally dominated by Wall Street bankers and completely devoid of any representatives from labor, manufacturing and the health sector (FT April 2, 2009 p11). In essence, Obama has reinforced and deepened the ‘finance-centered’ model of capitalist development, which demands that the G20 countries follow financial stimulus plans – ignoring job creation through the financing of public investments focused on manufacturing. For Obama, ‘economic stimulus’ means reconstructing the power of finance capital, even if it means running hung budget deficits, which undermine other public investments. The ‘theory’ justifying the finance-centered focus is based on the belief that the US world empire is built on the recovery of the supremacy of finance capital – to which the industrial powers should submit (FT April 15, 2009, p.9). The conflicts at the G20 summit and the ultimate failure of Obama to secure support for his so-called ‘stimulus’ proposal was that he was promoting a financial centered ‘stimulus’ while the rest of the economic powers – with the exception of the UK – were concerned with ‘stimulating’ manufacturing, employment and commodity exports (FT April 2, 2009 p.4). The pressures of labor and manufacturers in Europe – especially in Germany and France – have far more weight in shaping economic policy than in the United States (FT March 26, 2009 p. 1).

The incompatibility of the finance-dominated regime of Obama and European, Asian and Latin American regimes reflect the latter’s more economically diversified ruling class, has led to the White House failure to secure a ‘coordinated’ stimulus policy.

Summit of the Americas: Isolation and Divergences

Conflicts of interest prevented Washington from securing any favorable economic agreements at the ‘Summit of the Americas’ Conference in April. The breakdown of the US finance-centered empire and its negative impact on all of the countries of the Americas undermined Obama’s efforts for reassert US hegemonic leadership (see Economic Commission for Latin America – Report to Summit April 17-19, 2009). The White House already knew the futility of any effort to revive a regional free trade agreement. Worse still, Washington’s argument for the advantages of ‘globalization’ were seriously undermined by Obama’s promotion of ‘financial protectionism’ in which US subsidiary banks in Latin America were directed to channel their financial resources back to the home office, drying up financing and credit for Latin American exporters. In other words, under the stress of the economic depression, ‘globalization’ led to the reverse flow of financial resources out of Latin America, prejudicing US influence and leverage while increasing regional ties and economic nationalism among the Latin American countries.

Continued at Global Research

Officials seize upon arrests with glee to propagandize for the police state and justify targeting American citizens in war on terror

The corporate media and the authorities are having a field day lavishing saturation coverage on the so-called New York “terror plot” in which four men, three of them U.S. citizens, supposedly planned to blow up a Jewish temple and shoot down military planes, feverishly citing it as another example of why we should accept police state measures in major cities and the targeting of American citizens as “domestic terrorists”.

The only problem with this premise, mirroring just about every other major terror plot and terror bust that we have ever studied, is that the men were radicalized and provocateured by an FBI informant, who provided the group with the fake weapons that led to their arrest.

Just as in every other case, the men will likely turn out to be semi-retarded dropouts who eagerly followed the fed’s lead in the pursuit of a promise of massive cash gifts and a way out of their miserable poverty-stricken lives. However, this won’t be reported with one iota of the gusto that the corporate media are pushing this story today.

What we already know for sure is that the men had been under FBI surveillance for nearly a year. The fact that it took the feds nearly 12 months to get the men to accept fake weapons in order for them to be charged with “conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States” is evidence in and of itself that this was a case of entrapment, which is only confirmed when we learn that, “The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants.”

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that “the group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early and not connected to any outside group.”

Once again, the FBI identified a disparate group of men that shared the majority of the country’s opinion that the war on terror was wrong, radicalized them, offered them cash incentives for following the lead of the FBI informant and then finally, after a year, got them to accept fake weapons. As in every other case, Without the involvement of the FBI informant, there would have been no “terror plot” to speak of.

The feds cooked up a phony terror plot and pinned it on these poor suckers so that they could launch a new PR assault for the flagging war on terror and get Americans to submit to increased surveillance, bag searches and checkpoints that are now commonplace in New York City.

This whole PR stunt in another psychological trick designed to enlist public support for the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as well as a police state at home to deal with “domestic terrorists.” We learn that the suspects were upset about “Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military forces,” according to officials, the implication being that anyone who opposes the “war on terror” is a potential terrorist themselves.

Officials have seized upon the arrests to propagandize for the police state with glee, as well as refocusing the apparatus of the war on terror to target U.S. citizens as “homegrown terrorists”.

“This latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.

“This was a long, well-planned investigation, and it shows how real the threat is from homegrown terrorists,” said Rep. Peter King, of New York.

“The shocking plan to blow up a Jewish house of prayer with what the jihadist terrorists thought were C-4 explosives is dramatic proof that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jews must maintain their vigilance,” said a statement released by the infamous Simon Wiesenthal Center, which routinely cites the threat of federally-provocateured extremists as a reason to crush everyone’s free speech and virtually outlaw criticism of the government Israel and Zionist policies.

Of course it’s no coincidence that this arrives on the heels of widespread fury surrounding the MIAC report and other similar federal documents that equate gun owners, people knowledgeable about the Constitution and people who display political bumper stickers, with dangerous “domestic terrorists”. Officials have seized upon these arrests as a means of reinforcing the notion that “domestic terrorism” is a real threat when in reality we have never come across a “domestic terrorist” that didn’t have a fed standing behind him pulling the strings.

The last such major “domestic terror plot” in America involved a group out of Miami that supposedly planned to “wage a full ground war against the United States” and bomb the Sears Tower, but who actually turned out to be “a bunch of dipshits living in a warehouse,” as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart described them.

As in every other case we have studied, the men turned out to be a semi-retarded street gang that were provocateured by FBI agents into spewing violent rhetoric yet barely had the capability to make a cheese sandwich, never mind bring down the tallest building in America. What they were interested in was a promise of $50,000 in cash from the government informants who were sent in to radicalize them and create a phony victory for the war on terror.

As the Miami New Times newspaper described it, the “ragtag group couldn’t wage a ground war on a jar of peppercorns.” The whole case descended into a farce as judges repeatedly declared a mistrial while the government tried to save face. After three trials, three juries and nearly three years, the government finally managed to convict the men despite there being “little concrete evidence of an evolving plot,” as in one that was not wholly provocateured by the FBI informant.

While you watch today’s incessant government fearmongering and celebration of their latest “terror bust,” recall how last time they pulled this stunt, and the reality of the “dipshits in a warehouse” farce unfolded, it blew up in their faces and only exposed the entire “war on terror” for what it really is – a manufactured hoax designed purely around enlisting support for bombing brown people in broken-backed third world countries while convincing Americans to accept their own enslavement at home.

Source: Prison Planet