The FBI Has Secretly Gathered Millions Of “Faceprints” For Biometric Database For Years

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by Derrick Broze, Activist Post:

A representative of the FBI was grilled by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding the agency’s growing biometric database.

Washington D.C. – On Wednesday the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform questioned Kimberly Del Greco, Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, about why the bureau broke the law by failing to file a privacy impact statement acknowledging the collection of millions of Americans’ faces for the agency’s new biometric identification system. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is made up of fingerprints, iris scans, faceprints, and other facial recognition data. The NGI organizes Americans’ biometric data into a single file that includes personal and biographic data like name, home address, ID number, immigration status, age, race, etc.

The Committee reports that nearly half of all adult Americans’ photographs are in the database. The 2013 U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there are over 242 million adults living in the U.S. If the Committee’s numbers are correct, over 121 million adults are in the FBI’s database. Other revelations include that 18 states have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the FBI to share photos with the federal government, including from state departments of motor vehicles (DMV). According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center:

With NGI, the FBI will expand the number of uploaded photographs and provide investigators with ‘automated facial recognition search capability.’ The FBI intends to do this by eliminating restrictions on the number of submitted photographs (including photographs that are not accompanied by tenprint fingerprints) and allowing the submission of non-facial photographs (e.g. scars or tattoos).

The FBI also widely disseminates this NGI data. According to the FBI’s latest NGI fact sheet, 24,510 local, state, tribal, federal and international partners submitted queries to NGI in September 2016.

Committee Chairman Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R- Utah) scolded Ms. Del Greco for the FBI’s failures. “The failure here is years after you were supposed to make it public,” Chaffetz stated. “You were using it in real world circumstances, you were actually using it and didn’t issue the statement.” Chaffetz also asked Del Greco whether the FBI had plans to gather faceprints via social media. “Are you collecting that information that is available on social media?,” the chairman demanded. “We do not have any other photos in our repository.”

Alvaro Bedoya, Executive Director, Center on Privacy and Technology Georgetown Law, questioned the FBI’s claim, stating that the bureau has access to driver’s license photos. “We have access to that data but we do not use it,” Del Greco answered. Jennifer Lynch, Senior Staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation also stated that the FBI has access to “civil photos” in the NGI database.

Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-MI) also questioned Del Greco regarding the FBI’s activities. “I think the issue goes beyond the First Amendment concerns that were expressed. . .and is broader,” Mitchell stated during the panel. “I don’t want to just protect someone if they’re in a political protest from being identified, the reality is we should protect everybody unless there is a valid documented criminal justice action. Why should my photo. . .be subject because I get a driver’s license, to access?” Rep. John Duncan (R-TN) expressed similar fear regarding the possibility that the expectation of privacy is quickly fading. Duncan worried that Americans looking at the information, “would wonder if were ending up in a federal police state that’s gotten totally out of control, and has far too much power.”

Duncan is not far off. The databases include photos those of people who aren’t suspected of any criminal activity that come from driver’s license and passport and visa photos. Other issues with the FBI database include misidentifying females and blacks at a higher rate. The FBI is currently facing a lawsuit from EPIC regarding the database. EPIC is asking a judge to force the FBI to release records about its plan to share the biometric data with the U.S. Department of Defense. EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015, but the FBI has so far refused to release the 35 pages of responsive records.

Read More @ ActivistPost.com

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"They're Like The Praetorian Guard" - Whistleblower Confirms NSA Targeted Congress, The Supreme Court, & Trump

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Authored by Chris Menahan via InformationLiberation.com,

NSA whistleblower William Binney told Tucker Carlson on Friday that the NSA is spying on "all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House."

Binney, who served the NSA for 30 years before blowing the whistle on domestic spying in 2001, told Tucker he firmly believes that Trump was spied on.

"They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said.

 

"That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he said. "Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it."

"Inside NSA there are a set of people who are -- and we got this from another NSA whistleblower who witnessed some of this -- they're inside there, they are targeting and looking at all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House," Binney said.

 

"And all this data is inside the NSA in a small group where they're looking at it. The idea is to see what people in power over you are going to -- what they think, what they think you should be doing or planning to do to you, your budget, or whatever so you can try to counteract before it actually happens," he said.

"I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded.

Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually makes stopping attacks more difficult.

"This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said.

 

"Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count."

Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state...

"They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor is..."

Who's going to stop them?

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America's retail apocalypse: How 3,500 stores are set to close across the country in just the next two months

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Thousands of US retail stores are set to close across the country in the next two months.

More than 3,500 shops are expected to shut down due to the rise in online shopping, in what is becoming one of the biggest retail closures in decades.

Chains like Abercrombie & Fitch, American Apparel and Guess are shutting down branches, as well as major department stores like Macy's, JCPenney, Sears, and Kmart.

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Despite Ag Industry Efforts, First Bee Species Listed As Endangered

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The rusty-patched Bumble bee (Bombus affinis) has become the first bee species to be officially placed on the endangered species list (Photo: Dan Mullen/Flickr)

MINNEAPOLIS – While proposals to place honeybees on the endangered species list have been in speculation for months, some have argued that the population of the world’s most important pollinator could still make a comeback. However, that has proven not to be the case, as the first bee species has now been officially placed on the endangered species list by the United States Department of the Interior.

The rusty patched bumblebee, once one of the most prominent insects in the Midwest, has officially been recognized as endangered by the federal government, owing to a 90-percent decrease in its population in just the past few years. This rapid decline has sparked concern over the potential collapse of the entire national bee population – a collapse that would have drastic implications for both the U.S. economy and environment.

The decline has indeed been rapid, as well as drastic, with 40 to 60 percent of the U.S. honeybee population disappearing just in 2015. The situation has since worsened, with more than half of all bee species in decline and 347 species “spiraling toward extinction,” according to a recent report released by the Center for Biological Diversity.

But like all major environmental crises facing the U.S., there is plenty of disagreement as to what is responsible for the massive decrease in the bee population, which has an estimated economic value of 3.5 billion dollars. However, several studies has shown that the large-scale use of pesticides in the agricultural industry has played a major role in the pollinator’s worrisome decline.

Beginning in 2012, major studies began to reveal a link between certain classes of pesticides – neonicotinoids, specifically – and colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon in which bees abandon their hives and die as a result. These findings prompted the European Food Safety Authority to deem neonicotinoid use an “unacceptable” danger to bee populations.

Subsequent studies, including one conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2014, replicated these results. A year later, researchers at the University of St. Andrews found that neonicotinoids directly impair bee brain function, resulting in the poor performance of bee colonies. Last year, a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that neonicotinoids reduced male bee sperm counts by up to 40 percent.

Despite the growing scientific consensus linking the declining bee population to pesticide use, industry-funded scientists and agrochemical producers are evidently intent on defending the safety and usefulness of their products. It is in their economic interest to do so, as neonicotinoids represent 40 percent of the entire insecticide market, generating billions in global sales annually.

These same corporations and interest groups have strongly criticized the government’s decision to place the rusty patched bumblebee on the endangered species list, calling it a “hasty listing decision” with consequences that “are difficult to overstate.”

One group opposing the decision is the American Petroleum Institute, which is likely interested in the issue because petroleum derivatives are key ingredients in pesticides. The National Cotton Council in America has also voiced opposition – likely because the cotton industry accounts for 24 percent of global insecticide sales.

While defending their products may be in the short-term interest of pesticide companies and other industry beneficiaries, the disappearance of the bee population is a concern for the long-term survival of not just the agricultural industry, but entire ecosystems. It remains to be seen if official recognition of the dwindling bee population will be enough to override industry lobbying efforts among scientists and politicians.

The post Despite Ag Industry Efforts, First Bee Species Listed As Endangered appeared first on MintPress News.

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Wikileaks Releases “NightSkies 1.2”: Proof CIA Bugs “Factory Fresh” iPhones

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from ZeroHedge:

A new WikiLeaks Vault 7 leak titled “Dark Matter” claims that the Central Intelligence Agency has been bugging “factory fresh” iPhones since at least 2008 through suppliers. The documents are expected to be released after a 10 a.m. EDT “press briefing” that WikiLeaks promoted on its Twitter.

RELEASE: CIA #Vault7 "Dark Matter" https://t.co/pgnfeODXVB pic.twitter.com/vkI16f3vMD

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 23, 2017

Here is a live stream of the pending press briefing with Julian Assange:

LIVE: WikiLeaks press briefing in some minutes: CIA #Vault7 "darkmatter" ask questions with #AskWL https://t.co/ldG78exSsu

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 23, 2017

And here is the full press release from WikiLeaks:

Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 “Dark Matter”, which contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware (meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA’s Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents explain the techniques used by CIA to gain ‘persistence’ on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones and demonstrate their use of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware.

Among others, these documents reveal the “Sonic Screwdriver” project which, as explained by the CIA, is a “mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop is booting” allowing an attacker to boot its attack software for example from a USB stick “even when a firmware password is enabled”. The CIA’s “Sonic Screwdriver” infector is stored on the modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.

“DarkSeaSkies” is “an implant that persists in the EFI firmware of an Apple MacBook Air computer” and consists of “DarkMatter”, “SeaPea” and “NightSkies”, respectively EFI, kernel-space and user-space implants.

Documents on the “Triton” MacOSX malware, its infector “Dark Mallet” and its EFI-persistent version “DerStake” are also included in this release. While the DerStake1.4 manual released today dates to 2013, other Vault 7 documents show that as of 2016 the CIA continues to rely on and update these systems and is working on the production of DerStarke2.0.

Also included in this release is the manual for the CIA’s “NightSkies 1.2” a “beacon/loader/implant tool” for the Apple iPhone. Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached 1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones. i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone supply chain of its targets since at least 2008.

While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization’s supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and resending) leaving the United States or otherwise.

Read More @ ZeroHedge.com

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There Is Something Seriously Wrong With The World When…

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by Katherine Frisk, The International Reporter:

There is something seriously wrong with the world: 

When a country, a government as well as individuals from that country fund, arm and train terrorists who have murdered thousands, tortured them, rounded up women and children and sold them on sex slave markets or used their bodies to harvest organs and yet the king of that same country flies all over the world in a disgusting display of wealth and opulence and gets to ride on golden escalators.

Those who pander to Saudi Arabia, bow and scrap before them and their arrogant princes, accept millions into their private bank accounts and ensure a steady stream of military hardware to this country, are the same people who demand that a duly elected President by the people of that country, not someone who considers himself the ultimate, infallible and unquestionable ruler due to his birth, must go.

Assad throughout the last six years has stood by Syria and the people of Syria in their time of desperate need. Although he is not a Christian he has shown support for Christians and even attended their church services. Unlike Saudi Arabia where Christians are not allowed to set foot in that country. Assad, like everyone else in Syria is fully aware that at anytime he might lose his life. And yet he has not fled to another country and taken his wealth with him as so many so-called world leaders do after they have lined their own pockets and the going has got too rough for them.

There is something seriously wrong with the world:

When thousands of people die, their families are broken up and their lives ruined due to heroin addiction and yet Afghanistan which is the world’s largest producer of opium is guarded by American military and uses NATO bases to fly out their very lucrative cargo of illegal narcotics. There is no war on drugs, it is a war for drugs.

The same can be said for the CIA who for many years now has been neck-deep in shipping cocaine out of South American countries and has infested the whole of American society to the point where cocaine usage is now considered the norm as opposed to the exception. Between heroin and cocaine it is no wonder that Western Nations have completely lost their minds, their moral compass and any semblance of integrity and real justice has been replaced by mafia criminal gangs, going by the names of the Federal Reserve Bank, the Council On Foreign Relations, Open Society Foundations,  Davos, the Bilderberg Group, the P2 lodge and so many others that now control every sector of society.

There is something very wrong with the world:

When a proper investigation is done into the political situation in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza strip and the person who presents this report to the United Nations is forced to resign and the investigation is suppressed as opposed to being presented to the so-called world leaders whose job it is to prevent wars, human rights abuses and promote just and equitable political governance in all countries.

This, while at the same time condemning Russia, falsely accusing it of invading Eastern Ukraine and declaring the internationally observed referendum in Crimea to be null and void even though the large majority of people living in Crimea no longer wanted to be part of Ukraine, which they never were in the first place until only very recently in their history, and that decision was not of their choosing in the first place.

Glaringly obvious is the lack of reporting in Western media about the over 1 million people from Eastern Ukraine who have fled to Russia since the start of the civil war in 2014. Or that it is Russia who has continuously supplied humanitarian aid to the traumatized, starving and penniless people in the Donbass region ever since the Kiev Nazi junta has taken it upon themselves to constantly grad rocket the whole region, this because the people of Donetsk and Lughansk both voted in internationally observed referendums for independence from Ukraine and a government whose policies they neither voted for nor support thanks the coup in Ukraine engineered and directed by Victoria Nuland, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham, John McCain and George Soros’s “colour revolution” courtesy of yet another one of his Open Society foundations.

Read More @ Theinternationalreporter.org

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BOMBSHELL: CIA Whistleblower Leaked Proof Trump Under "Systematic Illegal" Surveillance Over Two Years Ago: FBI Sat On It

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The same day House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes gave a press conference disclosing that President Trump had been under "incidental surveillance," Attorney and FreedomWatch Chairman, Larry Klayman, sent a letter to the House Committee on Intelligence imploring them to pursue the claims and evidence presented under oath at a Washington DC FBI Field Office by his client - CIA / NSA Whistleblower Dennis Montgomery - who Klayman claims "holds the keys to disproving the false claims...   ...that there is no evidence that the president and his men were wiretapped"

When Montgomery attempted to deliver this information through the appropriate channels two years ago, the former CIA and NSA contractor wasn't given the time of day:

[W]hen Montgomery came forward as a whistleblower to congressional intelligence committees and various other congressmen and senators, including Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, like Comey, once had a reputation for integrity, he was “blown off;” no one wanted to even hear what he had to say.

As a result, Montgomery went to attorney and FreedomWatch founder Larry Klayman - who then approached the FBI: 

Under grants of immunity, which I obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia. There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration.

Montgomery left the NSA and CIA with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information, much of which is classified, and sought to come forward legally as a whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly. Working side by side with Obama's former Director of National Intelligence (DIA), James Clapper, and Obama's former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed “up close and personal” this “Orwellian Big Brother” intrusion on privacy, likely for potential coercion, blackmail or other nefarious purposes. 

 

He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election, which illegal tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House.

Given the fact that the FBI had Montgomery's testimony and evidence for over two years, Klayman traveled to Washington DC last Thursday to meet with Committee Chairman Devin Nunes in the hopes that he would ask FBI Director Comey why the FBI hadn't pursued Montgomery's evidence. When Klayman arrived to speak with Nunes, he was "blown off" and instead shared his information with committee attorney Allen R. Souza - who Klayman requested in turn brief Nunes on the situation.

During my meeting with House Intelligence Committee counsel Allen R. Sousa I politely warned him that if Chairman Nunes, who himself had that same day undercut President Trump by also claiming that there is no evidence of surveillance by the Obama administration, I would go public with what would appear to be the House Intelligence Committee’s complicity in keeping the truth from the American people and allowing the FBI to continue its apparent cover-up of the Montgomery “investigation.”

 

And, that is where it stands today. The big question: will House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes do his job and hold FBI Director Comey’s feet to the fire about the Montgomery investigation?

Klayman has detailed all of this in a NewsMax article, followed up with an official letter to Chairman Nunes today, requesting that he question Comey on Montgomery's evidence. Perhaps this explains Nunes' impromptu press conference today admitting that Trump's team was under "Incidental Surveillance" before making his way to the White House to discuss with the President.

So - we know that evidence exists from a CIA / NSA contractor turned whistleblower, detailing a massive spy operation on 156 judges, the Supreme Court, and high profile Americans including Donald Trump. See the letter below:

Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes1/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/NnKogSytSC

— ZeroPointNow(@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017

Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes2/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/6Ls9a9kXAQ

— ZeroPointNow(@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017

Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes3/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/90KUdW9eH1

— ZeroPointNow(@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017

Freedom Watch bombshell letter to Rep. Devin Nunes 4/4 https://t.co/CZ4haCVauK pic.twitter.com/l29p9JzBsU

— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) March 23, 2017

 

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com * Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow

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Emails between the EPA & Monsanto now revealed (The contents are sickening!)

Emails between the EPA & Monsanto now revealed (The contents are sickening!): "These documents show what many of us have known and suspected for quite some time… Monsanto is manipulating scientific research and has gotten some EPA officials on their side who seem to be helping them cover-up the health dangers of Roundup so they can keep it on the market."



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