James Comey and Kenneth Wainstein served in sensitive national security-related posts at the Justice Department in the Bush administration. That could make for interesting confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee if President Barack Obama selects either to succeed FBI Director Robert Mueller. His 10-year, nonrenewable term expires Sept. 4.

Their service as political appointees under a Republican president is a key factor in explaining the rise of Comey and Wainstein in the search. The Obama administration faces an expanded Republican minority in the Senate with the votes to seriously complicate the confirmation prospects of any nominee who draws their united opposition.

Full Story Here: 2 Bush officials in running to be next head of FBI.

OPS: Obama still hiring the Bush Crime Family Fascists.  Still think Obama is in control or that he is a Democrat?

Nano Aerial Vehicle will help soldiers fighting in crowded urban areas

Soldiers fighting future battles in crowded urban areas will be able to launch hummingbird-sized unmanned nano aerial vehicles — or NAVs — capable of carrying sophisticated sensors and flying through open windows in buildings to report back on enemy positions.

A new project partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA) called the Nano Aerial Vehicle (NAV) program aims to develop an extremely small, ultra-lightweight aerial vehicle for urban military missions that can fly both indoors and outdoors and that is capable of climbing and descending vertically as well as flying sideways left and right.

DARPA says the NAV program pushes the limits of aerodynamic and power conversion efficiency, endurance and maneuverability for very small air vehicle systems.

Full Story: Military plans hummingbird-sized spies – Technology & science – Innovation – msnbc.com.

The UK Ministry of Justice also uses IBM’s predictive software on its criminal population, to see which ones pose a greater threat to public safety upon release. IBM clearly plans to take SPSS beyond its former domain of market researchers and scientists and apply it to where the big money is — homeland security in these frightening times.

Full Story: Hmmm…Software That Predicts If You Will Do Crime & Time.

A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person’s mind, researchers said Thursday.

British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.

“We’ve been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory — to look at actual memory traces,” said senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire.

“We found that our memories are definitely represented in the hippocampus. Now that we’ve seen where they are, we have an opportunity to understand how memories are stored and how they may change through time.”

Full Story: Brain scan can read people’s thoughts: researchers – Yahoo! News.

Many American progressives don’t want to recognize how bad the U.S. mainstream news media has become. It’s easier to praise a few exceptions to the rule and to hope that some pendulum will swing than to undertake the challenging task of building a new and honest media infrastructure.

But the hard reality is that the U.S. news media is getting worse, with now both premier national newspapers – the New York Times and the Washington Post – decidedly sliding into the neocon camp, where the likes of the Wall Street Journal have long resided.

For the Post, this may already be an old story, given its enthusiastic cheerleading for the Iraq War. The Times, however, was a somewhat different story. Yes, it did let Judith Miller and other staff writers promote the fictions about Iraq’s WMD, but it hadn’t sunk to the depths of the Post.

That is now changing as the Times – behind executive editor Bill Keller and editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal – tosses aside all pretense of objectivity in the cause of seeking “regime change” in Iran, today’s top priority for the neoconservatives.

Full Story: Consortiumnews.com.

The admission by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair that the United States intelligence community is authorized to assassinate Americans working with terrorists overseas has raised serious questions of constitutionality.

“It’s troubling, Keith, because it’s not on the books,” constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Thursday.

“This is something that President Bush developed,” Turley explained. “We actually saw the Bush administration kill an American citizen named Kamal Derwish in 2002 with a Predator strike. … The Obama administration, once again, seems to be morphing into the Bush administration.”

Full Story Law professor: Assassinating US citizens raises ‘troubling’ issues | Raw Story.

OPS: Especially if you’re assassinated

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) yesterday wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder following news reports that Americans have been included on targeted assassination lists maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The reports indicate that the President has authorized military operations with the express understanding that Americans might be killed under this policy. In the letter, Kucinich requests the legal basis for revoking the constitutional rights of any American citizens.

“Due process of law is a fundamental principle in our Constitutional structure. Even the most superficial reading of Article XIV makes it clear that extrajudicial killings of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government or its agents are by definition outside the law,” wrote Kucinich.

“The government has the right and the obligation to protect the citizens of this country. However, I reject the notion that we can accomplish this goal only by violating international law and trampling on the Constitution. Protecting the constitutional rights of some citizens should not require revoking the constitutional rights of other citizens,” said Kucinich in the letter.

Read the full letter here.

Full Story Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

The February 29, 2004 Coup D’ Etat instigated by the Bush Administration

by David Swanson -

If a group of dedicated scholars, attorneys, journalists, and activists had tried to generate a comprehensive list of impeachable offenses committed by George W. Bush as president, and only 35 of them had been introduced into Congress, one of the many discarded ones, in rough and overly detailed form, might have read something like this:

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution  “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, caused the United States of America to kidnap, imprison, intimidate, coerce, threaten, confine, abduct, and carry away the elected, constitutional President of Haiti, and his wife, a U.S citizen, in violation of United States statutes, to wit:

a. The President, both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, prevented the security contractors working for Haiti’s elected, constitutional government led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from receiving reinforcements at a time when Haiti’s constitutional government was under attack. The removal of the security contractors facilitated the kidnapping of President Aristide:

Full Story What Bush did to Haiti.

“Basically we’re taking old fashioned parenting and bringing it into the mobile world,” Taser chairman and co-founder Tom Smith said at the Consumer Electronics Show here, where the Arizona company unveiled the new product.

“Because when you give your child his mobile phone you don’t know who they’re talking to, what they’re sending or texting, all of those things,” Smith told AFP.

Full Story Taser’s new weapon: mobile phone monitoring | Raw Story.

Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari of the University of Utah used so-called radio tomographic imaging (RTI), which can detect and track moving people or other objects in an area surrounded by inexpensive radio transceivers that send and receive signals, they announced today.

To test out the technique, the researchers placed a wireless network of 28 radio transceivers around a square-shaped portion of an atrium and a similar part of the lawn. The transceivers were placed on 4-foot-tall (1.2 m) stands made of plastic pipe so they would make measurements at a person’s torso level.

As a person walked around each area, measurements showed the radio signal strengths between all of the transceivers. The resulting processed data displayed a blob-like image of the moving target on a computer screen.

Full Story: Clever New Device Sees Through Walls | LiveScience.

BBC 

A planned Unique Identification (UID) number for Indian citizens will be backed by biometric authentication, the head of the project has told BBC.

Fingerprints and photographs of more than a billion people will be taken when they are registered for the identity number, Nandan Nilekani said.

The biometric evidence will be stored online in what will be the biggest such national database in the world.

The first UID numbers will be issued in about 12-18 months, he said.

Mr Nilekani said that the “technology challenge” in putting together a biometric record of one billion citizens was “immense”.

“Biometrics on this scale has not been carried out before. They will be stored online and help in instant online authentication of the identity of every Indian,” he said.

via BBC NEWS | South Asia | India in biggest biometric count.

The Home Office has refused to release data on the use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 against photographers. The news comes as BJP, as part of its campaign to protect photographers’ rights, files more than 46 new Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover where photography can be challenged in England and Wales. Olivier Laurent reports

The Home Office has rejected a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the BJP regarding the disclosure of the list of all areas where police officers are authorised to stop-and-search photographers under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The controversial Act of Parliament, put into force in 2001, allows Chief Constables to request authorisation from the Home Secretary to define an area in which any constable in uniform is able to stop and search any person or vehicle for the prevention of acts of terrorism. The authorisation, which can be given orally, must be renewed every 28 days and only covers the areas specified in the Chief Constables’ requests.

While it is common knowledge that the entire City of London, at the behest of the Metropolitan Police, is covered by the legislation, it remains unclear which other areas in England and Wales have requested the stop-and-search powers.

via British Journal of Photography – All quiet on the Westminster front.

You heard it here first: The next evolution of identity management in the U.S. will grow out of Facebook. So watch what you out in your profile.

Today U.S. President Obama announced plans for a “cyberspace strategy” that includes everything from possible offensive cyberwar strategies to education. It also contains a little-discussed “identity management” plan that makes me wonder if Facebook profiles are about to become the new Social Security cards.

The big news right now is who will be running Obama’s broad new cyberspace programs — in particular, who will manage the cybersecurity and cyberwarfare aspects. Right now, it appears that there will be a “cyberczar” (as yet unchosen) who will report to the National Security Council and National Economic Council (the latter because part of this role will involve bank security). The Pentagon may also be setting up its own cybersecurity division.

These are the immediate issues, but when I read through Obama’s Cyberspace Policy Review (released today with his announcements), I found an odd nugget of information buried at the bottom of his “near-term action plan”:

Build a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the Nation.

It sounds innocuous, but in fact it has profound implications that touch on security issues that have been giving the government (and industry) headaches for years.

via Does Obama Want to Replace Your Facebook Profile with Your Social Security Card? | Media and Technology | AlterNet.