As revealed today by The Associated Press and CNN, the FBI has been operationg a secret fleet of planes and drones, kept off the offical books by a system of fake front companies.

While this was previously acknowledged in a DoJ IG report in 2012, the report was heavily redacted.  These planes are equipped with both visual survielance tools and cell phone tower spoofers which, while the FBI claims are only used against specific investigations, but the very nature of how they operate (sucking down all cell phone communications in a specific tower area) means they are bulk collection tools.

Additionally these flights are much more numerous than previously indicated, with the AP reporting as many as 30 in 30 days over 11 states.

These flights are routinely conducted without a warrant and under a supposed system of internal review that the DoJ claims is a “state secret”, meaning of course without any regulation at all at the whim of whoever.

Does the FBI have a secret surveillance air force?

By Pamela Brown, CNN

2:17 PM ET, Tue June 2, 2015

The FBI uses a fleet of planes registered under fictitious companies in order to conduct warrantless surveillance during federal, state and local investigations. The surveillance is conducted without a court order, but with oversight from within the Department of Justice, according to a senior law enforcement official.

…

The agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states over a 30 day period, according to the AP review, and their report also said planes was masked by the existence of at least 13 fictitious companies.

…

The senior law enforcement official confirmed the existence of the fleet of planes to the CNN and said they are registered under fictitious companies because the FBI wants to be as discreet as possible.

“Anytime you mask your activity for operational or safety reasons you use a front company,” said the official. “You don’t want to put people on to what you’re doing – we know we’re going to need air aviation support for cases.”

The planes, which are equipped for electronic surveillance, are used both for FBI investigations and also at the request of state and local officials, according to the FBI. During recent Baltimore riots, for instance, the FBI used the surveillance aircraft at the request of the Baltimore Police Department.

…

According to the senior law enforcement official, the FBI does not need a court issued warrant to fly these surveillance planes because of rules established by the Department of Justice.

Report: FBI behind spy planes flying over US cities

Associated Press

June 2, 2015 10:39AM ET

The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology – all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes’ surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge’s approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific ongoing investigations.

…

U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services.

Even basic aspects of the program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The FBI has been careful not to reveal its surveillance flights in court documents.

…

(T)he planes can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over for prosecutions.

Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they are not making a call or are not in public.

…

“These are not your grandparents’ surveillance aircraft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the flights significant “if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft.”

During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.

Evolving technology can record higher-quality video from long distances, even at night, and can capture certain identifying information from cellphones using a device known as a cell-site simulator – or StingRay, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick cellphones into revealing identification numbers of subscribers, including those not suspected of a crime.

Officials say cellphone surveillance is rare, although the AP found in recent weeks FBI flights circling large buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signal collection. Those sites included Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

FIFA

Women’s World Cup starting soon.  Just as with Basketball the ladies’ game is far more entertaining than the men’s pointless running about.

Tonightly your guess is as good as mine, but the panelists are Christian Finnegan, Jenny Loeffler, Christiane Amanpour, and Jordan Carlos.

Continuity

Sad when the only real Democrat isn’t

This week’s guests-

• Monday 6/1: Stanley McChrystal
• Tuesday 6/2: Bill de Blasio
• Wednesday 6/3: Melissa McCarthy
• Thursday 6/4: Steve Buscemi

Stanley McChrystal is just another failed Syraqistan General.  What makes him particularly odious is his direct involvement in the Pat Tillman scandal.  I can think of people with less demonstrated understanding of the Middle East and the United States military to put on the air, but not many of them.  He should be rotting in Spandau with the rest of the war criminals.  Yale students are wasting their trust funds if they listen to a single word he says because what is not a deliberate lie is an ignorant misunderstanding.

Special Matt Harvey web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

Every day is May Day which we here at The Stars Hollow Gazette and DocuDharma celebrate in the traditional way- with the clenched fist salute.

By thanatokephaloides

Note 1: This was supposed to be “Part 2” of a single Beltaine Diary of which my Diary entitled “Bringing In The May: The Heroes of Haymarket” was to be “Part 1”. (So I’m posting this now, even though the First of May 2015 is now long past.)

Note 2: Please allow me to express my deepest gratitude to the Marxists Internet Archive website, http://www.marxists.org, and Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/, for much of the material I am using in today’s Diary. Although in the public domain owing to its age, I would not have been able to gather this material had it not been for these websites and those who operate them. Therefore, I express my thanks for their assistance.

Most of my readers here on Anti-Capitalist Meetup recognize this image immediately; it was used in many of the Diaries and discussions here on Daily Kos on the subject which appeared around Beltaine (May 1) this year:

This classic portrayal of the Heroes of Haymarket Square in Chicago is the work of British illustrator Walter Crane (1845 – 1915).

                                      Walter Crane

It is not quite as well known today, a century after his death, that Mr. Crane was a Socialist; that he employed his not insignificant talents in the graphical arts in the service to the Socialist and Labor movements in Britain and America during his time; and that even today his graphics still strike a serious chord with those of us who believe that all wealth is created by Labor, and Labor is entitled to everything it creates.

For more details — and more Walter Crane images — follow me beyond the fold!

It galls me to write anything approving of a Republican let alone one named after Ayn Rand who is buckets full of crazy but sometimes, even in D.C., reality creeps in.

Folks, we live in a spy state culture that equals anything Orwell imagined and the Stasi implemented.  They spy on us not because we are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, but so they can blackmail us into snitches on our friends, neighbors, and family.

I have fought for several years now to end the illegal spying of the NSA on ordinary Americans.  The callous use of general warrants and the disregard for the Bill of Rights must end.  Forcing us to choose between our rights and our safety is a false choice and we are better than that as a nation and as a people.  That’s why two years ago, I sued the NSA.  It’s why I proposed the Fourth Amendment Protection Act. It’s why I have been seeking for months to have a full, open and honest debate on this issue- a debate that never came.

So last week, seeing proponents of this illegal spying rushing toward a deadline to wholesale renew this unconstitutional power, I filibustered the bill.  I spoke for over 10 hours to call attention to the vast expansion of the spy state and the corresponding erosion of our liberties.

Then, last week, I further blocked the extension of these powers and the Senate adjourned for recess rather than stay and debate them.

Tomorrow, we will come back with just hours left before the NSA illegal spying powers expire.  Let me be clear: I acknowledge the need for a robust intelligence agency and for a vigilant national security.

I believe we must fight terrorism, and I believe we must stand strong against our enemies.  But we do not need to give up who we are to defeat them. In fact, we must not.  There has to be another way.  We must find it together.

So tomorrow, I will force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program.

I am ready and willing to start the debate on how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty.

Sometimes when the problem is big enough, you just have to start over. The tax code and our regulatory burdens are two good examples.

Fighting against unconditional, illegal powers that take away our rights, taken by previous Congresses and administrations is just as important.

I do not do this to obstruct. I do it to build something better, more effective, more lasting, and more cognizant of who we are as Americans.

Ugh.  I stand with Rand.  I am now taking a very long shower, maybe two.

Link

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts and minds of men?

The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.  Crime does not pay.

The Shadow knows.

Pentagon accidentally sent live anthrax to as many as nine states, officials say

by Spencer Ackerman

Wednesday 27 May 2015 16.20 EDT

The Pentagon has conceded it accidentally shipped samples of a live bioweapon across nine states and to a US air base in South Korea.

In an extraordinary Wednesday admission, the Pentagon revealed what it called an “inadvertent transfer of samples containing live Bacillus anthracis,” or anthrax, took place at an unspecified time from a US defense department laboratory in Dugway, Utah.

Nine unspecified states received samples of the bioweapon, which can be fatal if untreated. One sample was also sent to Osan air base in Pyeongtaek, about 65km south of Seoul.

…

The Pentagon is aiding with a Centers for Disease Control investigation, Warren said, and “out of an abundance of caution” stopped additional anthrax shipments from its stockpiles. Such shipments are supposed to involve only inactive or dead bioweapons samples.

Pentagon officials would not say more about when the shipment occurred, who was the official responsible nor how inadvertent it was, given that the shipment appeared from Warren’s account to be part of a bioweapon detection initiative.

…

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that a facility in Georgia exposed staff to anthrax after conducting an experiment into the prospect for mass spectrometry providing “a faster way to detect anthrax compared to conventional methods.”

While it is unclear if the two incidents are related, the CDC placed a moratorium on facilities’ transfers of anthrax while it improved safety procedures.

The reason it’s secret is because it’s horrible.

Congress Can – and Should – Declassify the TPP

By Robert Naiman

Thursday, 28 May 2015

Although the other negotiating countries and “cleared” corporate advisers to the US Trade Representative have access to the draft TPP agreement, the American people haven’t been allowed to see it before Congress votes on fast track. Members of Congress can read the draft agreement under heavy restrictions, but they can’t publicly discuss or consult on what they have read.

…

In fact, the Iran nuclear negotiations have arguably been more transparent to Congress and the American people so far than the TPP negotiations. After all, there’s been a sustained public argument over the likely provisions of the Iran deal. It’s very clear now to anyone who cares that the current P5+1 negotiations with Iran, if they succeed, will result in an agreement that allows Iran to enrich uranium. There’s no mystery about that. For those who oppose any agreement that allows Iran to enrich uranium, there’s no need to wait and see what deal emerges before criticizing.

…

Therefore, a yes vote on fast track now would be a vote to accept that the TPP will have no enforceable provisions on currency manipulation. But this is the kind of transparency that the public has so far been denied by officials shrouding the text and claiming that we shouldn’t talk about the details until the text has been finalized.

This example shows that the question of transparency around the TPP isn’t just a question of administration transparency. As in so many other cases, it’s also a question of congressional transparency.

The two-step process of voting on fast track now and the TPP later – when the fast track vote is in fact the key vote to approve the agreement, and when key, knowable provisions of the TPP agreement are shrouded in public fog at the time of the fast track vote – is designed to allow swing members of Congress to vote yes on fast track while pretending that they are not thereby voting yes on the TPP. Later, some of these members will vote no on passage of the TPP, just as former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO) cast a key enabling vote for fast track in 1991 and then subsequently voted against NAFTA.

Stroking Out

You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

Thursday nightly mishmash.  The panel is Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, and Ricky Valez.

Continuity

The Great Green Arkleseizure

Next week’s guests-

• Monday 6/1: Stanley McChrystal
• Tuesday 6/2: Bill de Blasio
• Wednesday 6/3: Melissa McCarthy
• Thursday 6/4: Steve Buscemi

Matt Harvey pitches tomorrow.  The Mets (a passion I share with Jon) are doing surprisingly well in a bad division, one and a half games behind the Nats at 27 and 21 on a 3 game winning streak.

Putting on his most dismal Adam Rickman voice, I’m sure it will all end horribly.

The real news below.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

This is the essence of deductive reasoning, the elimination of the impossible.  Inductive reasoning (which is just as reasonable) argues from similarity- because the sun rises in the east every day it is not unreasonable to assume that this replicatable experiment (get up some morning and watch) also expresses truth in the sense that science understands it.  Testable conjecture, experimental evidence that confirms it, theory that relates it to what we already know to be true enough.

You know all that hype about a holographic universe?  What serious physicists mean when they say that is that their equations that predict the observable perfomance of the universe can be resolved using only two dimensions which really says more about the math than the universe.

And why is math the arbiter?  Well, because equations give predictions that should be testable by experiment and give duplicatable results.  No, Karl Rove does not get his own very special kind of math where one and two make five.  Brother Maynard, read us from the Holy Book of Armaments-

There you go. 5 is right out.

So this problem should be a piece of Π.  Expressed algebraicly-

Didn’t get that?  Well, you’re not alone because there are over 100 unique solutions.  Be careful about the maths because they are tricksy and in some cases (Economics anyone?) simply represent fictional concepts reduced to Cartesian curves (the Universe is a hologram!).

Today’s problem is deductive.  The solution is to eliminate the impossibilities one by one.

Albert, Bernard and Cheryl became friends with Denise, and they wanted to know when her birthday is. Denise gave them a list of 20 possible dates.

17 Feb 2001	16 Mar 2002	13 Jan 2003	19 Jan 2004
13 Mar 2001	15 Apr 2002	16 Feb 2003	18 Feb 2004
13 Apr 2001	14 May 2002	14 Mar 2003	19 May 2004
15 May 2001	12 Jun 2002	11 Apr 2003	14 Jul 2004
17 Jun 2001	16 Aug 2002	16 Jul 2003	18 Aug 2004

Denise then told Albert, Bernard and Cheryl separately the month, the day and the year of her birthday respectively.

The following conversation ensues:

Albert: I don’t know when Denise’s birthday is, but I know that Bernard does not know.

Bernard: I still don’t know when Denise’s birthday is, but I know that Cheryl still does not know.

Cheryl: I still don’t know when Denise’s birthday is, but I know that Albert still does not know.

Albert: Now I know when Denise’s birthday is.

Bernard: Now I know too.

Cheryl: Me too.

So, when is Denise’s birthday?

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Ben And Jerry’s Just Released A New Flavor, And It Could Help Save Our Planet, By Nick Visser, Huffington Post
• Planetary Society’s LightSail has gone silent, by Brooks Hays, UPI
• Unanswered questions leave ISS crews in holding pattern, By William Harwood, CBS
• Adding Branches to the Human Family Tree, by Carl Zimmer, The New York Times
• Ancient Skull Suggests an Early Murder, By SINDYA N. BHANOO, The New York Times
• Study of attitudes to same-sex marriage retracted over ‘fake data’, by Lauren Gambino and Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• King Henry I, like Richard III, could be buried in a car park, say archaeologists, by Robert Booth, The Guardian
• So you’re related to Charlemagne? You and every other living European…, by Adam Rutherford, The Guardian
• How fossil fuel burning nearly wiped out life on Earth – 250m years ago, by George Monbiot, The Guardian
• Beware Eurosceptic versions of history and science, by Rebekah Higgitt, The Guardian

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

This is the Cleveland Show

Yes, there actually is a land of the Cleves.

Tonightly- The Duggars! (well, maybe).  Our super secret guest Bobby Cannavale and our panel is Jermaine Fowler, Constance Zimmer, and Sabrina Jalees.

Continuity

No Such Agency

This week’s guests-

• Wednesday 5/27: Rosabeth Moss Kanter
• Thursday 5/28: Matt Harvey

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a Harvard professor of economics but maybe not as bad as most because her specialty is utopian communities where she finds that those that the demand the greatest sacrifice and discipline are the longest lasting.

I’d ask you maggots to drop and give me 20 except that’s fatiguing to even watch and requires too much commitment from your faithful bard who’s only spent 10 years educating.  Have a good time instead, go or stay, my job is not to transform but merely amuse or perhaps inspire.

Anyway she’ll be on talking about her latest book, Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead, which is unsurprisingly about public transportation, especially rail, but also covers our deteriorating roads and bridges.

Rand Paul’s surprisingly uncrazy 2 part web exclusive interview and the real news below.