FEMA Puts Out Contract For Emergency Camps to House “Displaced Citizens”

Solicitation calls for camps to be ready for occupancy within 72 hours

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, February 27, 2012

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is looking for contractors to construct temporary emergency camps inside the United States which can be ready for occupancy within a 72 hour time period and used to house emergency responders as well as “displaced citizens”.

The National Responder Support Camp contract, posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, calls on contractors to “provide all necessary supervision, professional staff, labor support, material, supplies and equipment as necessary to make a RSC within a disaster-impacted area anywhere within the CONUS (Continental United States) within 72 hours after notification.”

The camps are primarily designed to house emergency responders, but will also be utilized to shelter “displaced citizens,” who will be “given the first opportunities for employment within the camp,” according to the solicitation. The camps will be able to service up to 2,000 people at one time.

As well as natural disasters, the 72-hour camps are designed to deal with terrorist attacks, National Response Framework activities of federal agencies, National Special Security Events, “or any other situation where FEMA or an agency working through FEMA needs a RSC.”

The camps will be secured with fencing and barricades that will also serve to create areas that are “off limits” to certain occupants. Entry to the camp will be controlled through a photo ID system for all occupants and visitors.

Medical treatment facilities, dining facilities, mobile showers and “morale welfare and recreation” facilities are all required as part of the contract.

FEMA’s latest efforts to satisfy the demand for emergency camps represents a continuation of preparations on behalf of the federal government to prepare for civil emergencies and potential social disorder.

Last December, Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano directed ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States, calling for the plan to deal with the “shelter” and “processing” of large numbers of people.

In 2006, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root was contracted by Homeland Security to build detention centers designed to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S,” or the rapid development of unspecified “new programs” that would require large numbers of people to be interned.

Last year we received a leaked memo from a state government employee detailing KBR’s efforts to hire subcontractors to provide services required for temporary “emergency environment” camps located in five regions of the United States, indicating that many of the camps have now been constructed and are ready for use.

The construction of new detention camps inside the United States has provoked fears that the facilities could also be used to intern American citizens in the aftermath of a national emergency.

Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was established under the pretext of a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border, the same pretense used in the language of the KBR request for services.

During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, however, it was revealed that the program was a secretive “scenario and drill” developed by the federal government to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, assign military commanders to take over state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens determined by the government to be “national security threats.”

A provision within the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Obama on New Years Eve, hands the government power to have American citizens arrested and detained without trial.

 

Document Proves DHS Is Monitoring Social Media For Government Criticism

Keywords agency is tracking include “body scanner,” “nationalist” , “police,” and “immigration”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, February 23, 2012

A Homeland Security training manual belies claims made by DHS representatives during a Congressional hearing last week that the federal agency is only monitoring social media outlets for “situational awareness,” and proves the fact that Bis Sis is also tracking online criticism of government, including discussion of airport body scanners.

“Analysts for a Department of Homeland Security program that monitors social networks like Twitter and Facebook have been instructed to produce reports on policy debates related to the department, a newly disclosed manual shows,” reports the New York Times.

The manual, entitled Department of Homeland Security National Operations Center Media Monitoring Capability Desktop Reference Binder, was obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center via a FOIA request.

The controversy over DHS spying on social media erupted last month following the release of 300 documents which detailed how DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security.”

During a subsequent Congressional hearing on the matter, DHS representatives Mary Callahan and Richard Chávez denied the fact that tracking criticism of government agencies formed any part of the program, and that the effort was merely aimed at developing “situational awareness” of potential threats, mostly related to extreme weather events.

However, the 2011 manual makes it abundantly clear that the program was a backdoor effort to keep tabs on what the American people were saying about not just the DHS, but a whole host of federal agencies, including the CIA, the ATF, the TSA, FEMA, as well as organizations outside of the U.S. government such as the United Nations and the Red Cross.

The ‘items of interest’ listed in the document which require monitoring of social media include, “policy directives, debates and implementations related to DHS.”

In addition, the list of keywords the DHS is tasked with monitoring include terms that have little to do with “situational awareness.”

During last week’s hearing, Callaham claimed that such keywords were restricted to “you know, flood, tornado and things like that.” In reality, the manual also directs DHS analysts to search for terms such as “China, cops, hacking, illegal immigrants, Iran, Iraq, marijuana, organized crime, police, pork and radicals.”

The words “militia,” “riot,” “body scanner,” and “nationalist” are also included in the list of keywords the DHS is tasked with monitoring.

The fact that Homeland Security is monitoring what people say about airport body scanners, in the aftermath of a wider national basklash against the TSA as a whole, dovetails with how the TSA has subjected people who refuse to use them to undue suspicion and questioning.

“The D.H.S. continues to monitor the Internet for criticism of the government,” EPIC’s Ginger McCall said in reference to the document. “This suspicionless, overbroad monitoring quells legitimate First Amendment activity and exceeds the agency’s legal authority.”

FBI To Spy on Goldbugs Via ‘Suspicious Comments’ App?

Paying cash for a cup of coffee? Don’t let Twitter know…

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, February 17, 2012

Given the fact that the FBI has characterized the view that the U.S. should return to the gold standard as an extremist belief held by potential domestic terrorists, should goldbugs be concerned about the agency’s efforts to create a new app that tracks ‘suspicious comments’ made on social media websites?

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A document posted online recently by the Federal Bureau of Investigation seeks developers to create an app that will have the capability to “rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence … to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats.”

Critics of this new form of data mining fear that the FBI could follow the example of the Department of Homeland Security in monitoring social media websites for comments critical of the federal government.

“Information pulled from sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs could be cross referenced with other databases to identify potential threats,” the ACLU told Fox News.

Prime amongst those potential threats, according to the FBI’s counterterrorism division, are Americans who “believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard”. People who hold this political viewpoint should be treated as “extremists” who “pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers,” the FBI warned earlier this month.

In addition, as part of the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism program, under which businesses are being recruited to spot potential terrorists, the agency characterizes paying cash for a cup of coffee, buying supplies of food in bulk, showing an interest in online privacy, and a myriad of other banal activities, as potential indications of terrorism.

Former FBI agent Mike German said comments made on a Twitter account deemed suspect by the FBI could create a “cloud of suspicion” over people merely using social media to express their First Amendment rights, warning that the feds could use the data to “increase video surveillance in a neighborhood.”

“Part of what we want to protect is the freedom to speak your mind, to criticize government policies without fear that the government will take it the wrong way and start treating you as if you’re a threat,” German told Fox News.

That chilling effect of Americans refraining from criticizing their government in online forums due to fears over reprisals was the subject of a congressional hearing yesterday.

A Department of Homeland Security monitoring effort similar to the FBI’s proposal stoked controversy after it emerged that the DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department.”

This included monitoring remarks by residents of Standish, Michigan in “newspaper comment talkbacks, local blogs, Twitter posts, and publicly available Facebook posts,” to gage the response to a plan to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to a local prison.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also recently announced a plan to hire a private contractor to track news coverage of its activities in order to help “Monitor the effectiveness of public affairs messaging.”

 

DHS To Launch Insurgent-Tracking Drones Inside America

Technology used to hunt enemy combatants in Afghanistan will be used for “non-emergency incidents” within the U.S.

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Department of Homeland Security plans to spend up to $50 million dollars on a spy system that has been used to hunt insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan for the purposes of “emergency and non-emergency incidents” within the United States.

The DHS is seeking four contractors to provide “aerial remote sensing” services, using LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) technology fitted to drones or manned aircraft that will provide surveillance capability for “homeland security missions,” as well as “management of emergency incidents by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regional offices, joint field offices and by state and local government.”

“DHS believes these airborne images are essential for homeland defense missions, such as planning for National Special Security Events (Super Bowls or a national political conventions come to mind); enhancing border, port and airport security; as well as performing critical infrastructure inventories and assessments,” reports Government Security News, adding that the technology will be used for “emergency and non-emergency incidents nationwide.”

The DHS expects successful contractors to “ensure imagery can be acquired, processed and delivered in 48 hours or less and the ability to support simultaneous missions in multiple geographic locations.”

LIDAR spy technology, which uses ultraviolet, visible, or near infrared light to track objects or people from the sky, has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan to track insurgents. The US military has praised the technology for its proficiency in providing “battlefield surveillance” and being able to easily locate enemy combatants due to it being “especially useful at seeing through foliage.” LIDAR can be deployed using both manned and unmanned aircraft.

The U.S. Air Force “has already deployed an unknown number of LIDAR aircraft to map all of Afghanistan,” reports MSNBC, with the 3-D laser mapping technology also being adapted to work aboard U.S. Special Forces helicopters such as the Blackhawk or Chinook to help hunt insurgents.

According to Raytheon, one of the companies that develops LIDAR, the technology is adept at tracking “people in crowded environments for safety and security,” because unlike traditional surveillance methods, LIDAR is honed to measure characteristics of individuals and keep them tracked within a “grid cell” so they cannot evade detection.

Under the terms of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, the whole of America has been defined as a battlefield, with the government reserving the power to have “belligerents,” including American citizens, arrested and detained indefinitely without trial.

US law enforcement bodies are already using drone technology to spy on Americans. In December, a Predator B drone was called in to conduct surveillance over a family farm in North Dakota as part of a SWAT raid on the Brossart family, who were suspects in the egregious crime of stealing six missing cows. Local police in this one area have already used the drone on two dozen occasions since June last year.

Last summer, the Department of Homeland Security gave the green light for police departments in the United States to deploy the ShadowHawk mini drone drone helicopter that has the ability to taze suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchers. The drone, also used against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, is already being used by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s office in Texas.

The DHS has also provided drone surveillance for foreign countries, aiding Jamaican authorities in a botched drug raid that led to the massacre of 73 civilians last year.

A bill passed in by Congress this week paves the way for the use of surveillance drones in US skies on a widespread basis. The FAA predicts that by 2020 there could be up to 30,000 drones in operation nationwide.

Senate To Vote On Bill That Could Kick TSA Out Of Airports

Federal agency would be forced to consider applications to remove TSA screeners

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, February 6, 2012

Following House approval of the measure on Friday, the Senate is set to vote today on legislation that would allow U.S. airports to replace TSA workers with screeners from private companies, a move that could spell the beginning of the end for the highly unpopular federal agency’s role in airport security.

“The U.S. agency must allow airports to switch to private companies for screeners unless it can show the move wouldn’t be cost-effective and would be detrimental to security, according to the legislation, which if passed will go to President Barack Obama for his signature,” reports Businessweek.

“They’ve been trying to force the door open for several years,” Jeff Price, a Denver-based consultant who has written a textbook on aviation security, said of U.S. lawmakers. “It reverses the burden of proof. It is definitely trying to checkmate the TSA.”

At the height of the anti-TSA drive in late 2010, which coincided with a national full body scanner opt out day, a growing number of airports such as Orlando Sanford International began to exercise their right to replace TSA workers with private screeners.

The TSA soon put a stop to this in January 2011 by freezing the number of airports that could use private screeners, a figure that had climbed to 16. Orlando Sanford is one of the airports whose vetoed application to remove TSA screeners will have to be reconsidered under the new legislation.

More private security companies are expected to start up if the legislation passes, providing the additional benefit of adding tens of thousands of private sector jobs to the economy.

“You’ll see companies make themselves known,” said Price. “They’ll make sure every airport operator knows the rules have changed.”

The TSA’s involvement in airport security has become highly unpopular over the last two years, with the federal agency mired in one controversy after another, from its agents constantly caught stealing from travelers, to its mistreatment of children and the elderly, to its habitual lies about the safety of naked body scanners.

In September last year, a petition on the White House website that called for abolishing the TSA received almost 32,000 signatures, forcing TSA chief John Pistole to issue a response.

When Texas lawmakers attempted to pass a bill that would have outlawed the TSA’s “advanced pat down” procedures last year, the feds threatened to impose a no fly zone over the state and the measure was ultimately defeated.

Congress recently gave the green light for $24 million dollars in extra funding for the TSA’s VIPR program, which was responsible for conducting 9,300 unannounced checkpoints last year alone.

For anti-TSA activists, kicking the federal agency out of the nation’s airports will merely be the first step given that TSA workers have now been deployed to staff a network of internal checkpoints. The TSA is now conducting searches of Americans at train stations, bus depots, ferry ports, on highways and even at high school prom nights.

The federal agency was also responsible for training hot dog sellers and other vendors to spot terrorists at the recent Super Bowl, a story that attracted yet more derision from the national media.

 

Breaking: Rand Paul Held by TSA at Nashville Airport

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
January 23, 2012

Ron Paul’s Facebook page reports that his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, is being held by authorities at the airport in Nashville.

“My son Rand is currently being detained by the TSA at the Nashville Airport. I’ll share more details as the situation unfolds,” Ron Paul posted this morning on his Facebook page.

Paul has called for an investigation of the Department of Homeland Security. The Transportation Security Administration is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

In June of 2011, in response to the apprehension of two suspected terrorists in his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Rand Paul insisted on an investigation into what procedures and safeguards broke down, allowing the men into the United States.

Update: 9:45 AM CST

According to WLWT New 5 in Cincinnati, Ohio, CNN has reported that Paul was detained after refusing to allow a patdown after a body scanner went off.

9:55 AM CST

Ron Paul has tweeted about the incident. He said that there had been an “anomaly” with a body scanner.

“I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely,” Rand Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said, according to Politico. “The image scan went off, he refused patdown.”

See Bagley’s initial tweet here.

10:00 AM CST

The establishment media is now chiming in on the story.

ABC News reports that a “spokesman for TSA said the agency was looking into the matter but could not immediately comment.”

Paul staffer said TSA agents would not let Paul walk back through the body scanner and were demanding, according to the staffer, a full body pat-down.

The Paul spokesman said his office had called TSA administrator John Pistole about the incident this morning.

The Senate is back in session today at 2 p.m., with votes scheduled at 4:30 p.m.

The issue of pat-downs has been an important one to Paul, the son of libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Sen. Paul brought this issue up at a hearing earlier this year.

Paul questioned TSA boss John Pistole on June 22, 2011, about the use of intrusive patdowns after a girl from Bowling Green, Kentucky was subjected to the procedure.

 

Homeland Security Is Monitoring The Drudge Report, The New York Times

theatlanticwire.com

Adam Clark Estes

It’s unclear exactly why, but the Department of Homeland has been operating a “Social Networking/Media Capability” program to monitor the top blogs, forums and social networks online for at least the past 18 months.

Read Full Story

Congress To Fund Massive Expansion Of TSA Checkpoints

Fears over burgeoning police state increase after passage of NDAA

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, December 23, 2011

Congress is set to give the green light on funding for a massive expansion of TSA checkpoints, with the federal agency already responsible for over 9,000 such checkpoints in the last year amidst increased fears America is turning into a police state following the passage of the ‘indefinite detention’ bill.

The increase in funding has nothing to do with the TSA’s role in airports – this is about creating 12 more VIPR teams to add the federal agency’s 25 units that are already scattered across the country and responsible for manning checkpoints on highways, in bus and train terminals, at sports events and even high school prom nights.

“The TSA’s 25 “viper” teams — for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response — have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams next year,” reports the L.A. Times.

The demand for $24 million in extra funding is in addition to the $110 million spent in fiscal year 2011. The figures are completely independent from the federal agency’s role inside the nation’s airports, which costs taxpayers $5 billion a year.

The extra money is being demanded despite the fact that there is “no proof that the roving viper teams have foiled any terrorist plots or thwarted any major threat to public safety,” according to the L.A. Times report, which also highlights how the TSA’s sniffer dogs are used to single out people for questioning if the dog smells the scent of the owner’s pets on their clothing.

The appearance of thousands more checkpoints on America’s highways and at key transport hubs will only heighten concerns that the country is headed towards a Soviet-style police state.

Such fears were again expressed last week following the passage of the National Authorization Defense Act, a provision of which empowers the government to arrest Americans and hold them in a detention camp with no legal recourse.

With the federal government now seeking contractors to provide staff and supplies for “emergency camps” located around the country, the possibility of innocent Americans being swept up in a dragnet following a declaration of a national emergency has never been more of a threat.

The TSA is being used as a literal occupying army to ensure Americans who travel anywhere are constantly under the scrutiny of Big Brother.

Back in October we reported on how Tennessee’s Homeland Security Commissioner announced that a raft of new “security checkpoints” would be in place over the Halloween period to “keep roadways safe for trick-or-treaters”.

Earlier that same month it was announced that Transportation Security Administration officials would be manning highway checkpoints in Tennessee targeting truck drivers.

After public outrage, the TSA attempted to neutralize the controversy by claiming that the inspections were carried out by State Troopers (the TSA agents were there to try to recruit truck drivers into becoming snitches for the ‘See Something, Say Something’ campaign), and that the checkpoints were merely temporary.

In reality, the program was the latest phase of the TSA’s rapidly expanding VIPR program, under which TSA agents have been deployed to shake down Americans at everywhere from bus depots, to ferry terminals, to train stations, in one instance conducting pat downs of passengers, including children, who had already completed their journey when arriving in Savannah.

 

DHS Aircraft Aided In Massacre Of 73 Civilians

Homeland Security surveillance plane helped Jamaican police carry out atrocity

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Friday, December 16, 2011

If you thought that the use of a Predator drone to target a family in rural North Dakota was overkill, wait until you hear what happened in Jamaica. The Department of Homeland Security aided Jamaican authorities in massacring 73 civilians as part of a botched drug raid conducted with the help of a DHS surveillance aircraft – before attempting to cover up the atrocity by refusing to release the footage.

“At the DEA’s insistence, Jamaican authorities reluctantly raided Tivoli Gardens, the West Kingston slum (Christopher) Coke ran as a de facto governor, two years ago. Coke didn’t turn up, but Jamaican police officers killed 73 civilians, many of them allegedly in cold blood. A Department of Homeland Security surveillance plane was overhead the whole time,” reports Gawker.

Writing for the New Yorker, Mattathias Schwartz reveals how most of Coke’s gunmen disappeared almost instantly, before police proceeded to go door to door carrying out summary executions of innocent villagers.

Amidst the massacre, a Homeland Security surveillance plane circled overhead, providing Jamaican authorities withy real-time intelligence and surveillance footage.

After the Jamaican government claimed the DHS played no role in the atrocity, Schwartz filed a Freedom of Information Act Request which revealed that the U.S. had played a role, forcing the Jamaican government to retract the claim.

“PRIME MINISTER and Minister of Defence, Andrew Holness, has revealed that the United States Government provided surveillance assistance to the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) through the presence of an aircraft over Tivoli Gardens during the May 24, 2010 operations in the West Kingston community to serve a warrant on convicted drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke,” reported the Jamaica Gleaner.

A DHS U.S. Customs and Border Protection letter confirms that video records of the massacre were made “from a Department of Homeland Security P-3 Orion aircraft that was flying over Kingston that day” which ensured that, “all scenes were continuously recorded.”

However, despite the fact that the video made by the plane could contain evidence of atrocities committed by Jamaican police, the DHS has refused to release the footage.

Should we be concerned that the same technology now being used to spy on American citizens is also being used in foreign countries to aid in the slaughter of innocent people?

As part of the accelerating program to target American citizens as terrorists, military hardware used in places like Afghanistan to hunt down insurgents is now becoming a routine tool of law enforcement.

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reported on how a Predator B drone was called in to conduct surveillance over a family farm in North Dakota as part of a SWAT raid on the Brossart family, who were suspects in the egregious crime of stealing six missing cows. Local police in this one area have already used the drone on two dozen occasions since June.

Unannounced Verizon Emergency Alert Causes Panic In New Jersey

Scared citizens flood 911 boards with anxious calls

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, December 12, 2011

An unannounced test of a soon to be mandatory emergency alert system caused panic in New Jersey today after Verizon customers received text messages warning them that a “civil emergency” was in progress and to “take shelter,” prompting alarmed citizens to flood 911 lines with anxious calls.

However, media reports concerning the alarm completely ignore the fact that Verizon was almost certainly running a test for the federal government’s soon to be mandatory PLAN alert program, which the company has signed up for.

“A mass text message warning New Jersey cell phone users of a “civil emergency” was sent out by Verizon Wireless earlier today,” reports the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Verizon Wireless later apologized to its customers for causing alarm.

The alert message included the text “U.S. Govern,” suggesting to customers the text had come from the federal government itself, which undoubtedly fueled the panic.

Residents in three different counties received the message, titled “Emergency alert seek shelter by 1:24 p.m,” which was not labeled as a test. Police departments and country authorities fielded four times the usual number of calls, many of them from distressed citizens who wanted to know whether a real emergency was in progress. “There is no reason to panic here,” said Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden. “It is a false text done maliciously today at 12:27 p.m.”

The Department of Homeland Security was also forced to put out a tweet confirming that there was no emergency after concerned citizens also turned to Twitter for advice, saying they were, “scared and didn’t know how to react.”

Verizon company spokesman David Samberg told the Star-Ledger that the message was part of a “test emergency notification,” apologizing “for any inconvenience or concern this message may have caused.” The messages were received by Verizon customers with, “Droid-operated phones in Monmouth and Ocean counties and other parts of central New Jersey.”

Though completely absent from reports concerning the scare, the unannounced test was almost certainly conducted in preparation for FEMA’s PLAN program (Personal Localized Alerting Network), which will broadcast emergency alert messages directly to Americans’ cell phones using a new chip embedded in the receiver. The system is scheduled to be operational across the country by the end of next year.

Verizon are one of the ‘big four’ wireless carriers that have agreed to sign up for the program, which will use a “special chip” embedded in all newly produced cellphones to send emergency alerts directly from the federal government. Customers will not be able to opt out of messages labeled ‘presidential alerts’, meaning they will be forced to read what some construe as government propaganda.

As we have documented, the PLAN program is part of the wider move on behalf of Homeland Security to create a public environment dominated by a pervasive sense of fear and paranoia, a context in which the safe exercise of constitutional freedoms doesn’t normally thrive.

For the first time ever the feds will have a direct line to the millions of Americans who use cell phones and be able to use the messages to transmit whatever they like, whether that be genuine safety information, fearmongering about spurious terror alerts, or political propaganda.

Judging by today’s response, the overwhelming majority of Americans will simply react by panicking, which in a real emergency situation could only make the crisis worse.