September Newsletter Notes & Additional Information

A Spy In Your Home

¹To highlight this point, in December 2005 The New York Times revealed warrantless surveillance of Americans via an illegal program called Total Information Awareness.

²Cell phones are radio transceivers connected to both a speaker and a microphone. It is the perfect bugging device and a technique called roving taps enables a cell phone, even when turned off, to be a government listening device. Most cell phones can be signaled by the cell phone provider or US government to go into diagnostic mode and broadcast all audio reaching the microphone. The only way to prevent this is to take the battery out of the cell phone. The details of how this works were in the Just How Secure Is Your Cellular Phone? article published in a 1997 National Reconnaissance Organization newsletter. In 2004 the BBC reported that intelligence agencies routinely employ the remote-activation method.

Three ways to know if a cell phone is being tapped include a faster depletion of the phone battery, an increase in phone temperature, and a buzzing sound when Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) phones are put next to a separate phone speaker. GSM phones will make a buzzing noise when next to a speaker and simultaneously transmitting.

In addition to providing audio information, all new cell phones have GPS devices in them. This means your location can be tracked and paired with other people you meet who are carrying a cell phone.

We only need to remember history to know that none of this is new. During the Cold War, actor Charleston Heston worked for the CIA and narrated CIA training films. In one film, Heston showed how by dialing a special number on an ordinary phone the phone would become a listening device. Britain's intelligence service revealed that all mail sent during World War II was reviewed by intelligence officers. What is different now is the intensity of domestic surveillance is far greater than at any other time in US history. This makes sense when you consider the lies told by the Bush administration are also far more frequent and harmful than at any other time in US history.

³See PC World at www.pcworld.com/article/id,118664-page,1/article.html.

Also, the American Hiroshima book offers details on domestic surveillance using home computers and cell phones. Microsoft's Vista product was developed in partnership with the National Security Agency. The article NSA helped Microsoft make Vista secure on January 10, 2007 in Info World provides the details. The NSA created 'back-door' access to data and twisted this as a security enhancement (see http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/10/HNnsamadevistasecure_1.html).

Info World reported "The U.S. agency best known for eavesdropping on telephone calls had a hand in the development of Microsoft's Vista operating system, Microsoft confirmed Tuesday (January 9, 2007). The National Security Agency (NSA) stepped in to help Microsoft develop a configuration of its next-generation operating system that would meet U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) requirements, said NSA Spokesman Ken White. This is not the first time the secretive agency has been brought in to consult with private industry on operating system security, White said, but it is the first time the NSA has worked with a vendor prior to the release of an operating system."

The Arctic Race

¹Scramble for the Arctic at http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0821/p08s01-comv.html.

Save Iraq's CItizens

²Just Foreign Policy Iraq Deaths Due To US Foreign Policy report as of August 22, 2007 available online at http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/counterexplanation.html. The post invasion deaths are estimated at 1,018,263. This daily estimate is not scientific as was the Lancet study. To update the Lancet study, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) midpoint estimates were used. The Iraq Body Count is the most reliable and frequently updated database of deaths in Iraq.

³Since 1990, the United Nations estimated that at least 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five and over 1 million Iraqis have died because of US and British led economic sanctions. Dr. Joy Gordon, author of Cool War: Economic Sanctions as Weapons of Mass Destruction in the November 2002 Harper's Magazine explains the killing. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported the half-million children and toddlers killed were a direct result of the sanctions. Richard Garfield, a critic of the 500,000 number, concluded the rise in the mortality rate was between a minimum of 100,000 and a more likely estimate of 227,000 excess deaths among young children from August 1991 through March 1998. He attributed one-quarter of the deaths to the Gulf war and the remaining excess deaths as primarily associated with economic sanctions. His work is available at www.cam-ac-uk.com/societies/casi/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html.

Education To Save Our Democracy

Links to the laws mentioned in the article are below.

• the 2001 Patriot Act (reauthorized on March 9, 2006). See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060309-4.html.

• over one thousand “signing statements” issued by President Bush. See http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=11300.

• the John Warner Act and Military Commissions Act of 2006 (both signed into law on October 17, 2006). See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061017-9.html and http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061017-1.html.

• the National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (both signed into law on May 9, 2007. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html.

• the Executive Order titled Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq (signed on July 17, 2007). See http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/print/20070717-3.html.

Granddaddy Of Embedded Reporters

William L. Laurence role as a US intelligence officer Common Courage Press, November 30, 2004. Available at http://www.amazon.com/News-Zero-York-Times-Bomb/dp/1567512836/ref=sr_1_5/002-2138742-9744048?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187157152&sr=8-5.

Book Description
How did a world class newspaper become little more than a propaganda outlet for the U.S. government in its drive to cover up the dangers of radioactivity emanating from the testing of nuclear weapons? And why is it still offering warped coverage of the issues 40 years after the end of nuclear tests above ground? Hiding nearly half of the tests from public view, The New York Times' stories predated by more than 40 years its recent crisis of made-up stories by reporter Jayson Blair. Reporter Beverly Keever takes you inside our most prestigious propaganda machine to show just how the Times covered up the reality to a complete alternative framework to manufacture consent.

William Leonard Laurence worked with The New York Times since 1930 and he was the only journalist to witness the Trinity atomic explosion. He was a covert intelligence agent and misled the public as instructed by the US government.

Please contact us at contact@teachpeace.com for additional information.

Home | Articles | Movies | Programs | 21 Plus | 12 to 20 | Under 12 | Did You Know | Newsletters | Meetings & Events | Donate & Store

Copyright 2008 Teach Peace Foundation, 539 J Street, Davis, California, 95616. We are an open source peace model, to access resources for your organization, just ask.
 

Successful Server Requests