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Australian /
Secret Contracts Top $168 Million By IAN McPHEDRAN, Defence Reporter Source: Herald Sun - Melbourne, Victoria DEFENCE has a giant $168 million worth of secret contracts on its books - and taxpayers have no idea what the money is for. All defence contracts worth more than $2000 are supposed to be made public in the Commonwealth Gazette, which documents spending by government. But defence has 301 contracts with private companies, valued at $168 million, that it refuses to provide details for on the grounds of national security. The only way taxpayers can try to uncover these details is by using Freedom of Information laws. But inquiries under those laws can cost thousands of dollars in search and administrative fees. The secretary of defence, or a delegated official, can direct that any contract he or she considers "exempt" not be included in the gazette. At present, that exemption applies to 235 contracts, worth $138.4 million, with the military's purchasing body, known as the Defence Materiel Organisation. The shadowy intelligence and security group holds 37 secret contracts worth $19.4 million and the navy holds 28 valued at $4.5 million. The Chief Finance Officer, the official responsible for managing defence's $18 billion total annual budget, has just one secret contract worth $5.5 million. The 2001-2002 Defence annual report justifies the secret contracts, saying: "It was determined that publication could cause damage to the national security, defence or international relations of the Commonwealth." Source: John W. AUCHETTL Phenomena Research Australia [PRA] P.O. Box 523, Mulgrave, Victoria, Australia, 3170 Australian & Asia UFO 1961-2003 - 42 YEARS OF RESEARCH SERVICE |
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FBI Acknowledges Mystery Flights
BLOOMINGTON, Indiana (AP) -- The FBI acknowledged that a small plane
whose frequent, unexplained flights over the city had raised fears among
some residents is being used by the agency to monitor people who might have
terrorist connections. |
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Broad
Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN ASHINGTON, May 1 — The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said. The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas — known as "national security letters" — requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval. The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said. After raising objections, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other Democrats succeeded in getting the provision pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, Congressional officials said. In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea, officials said. There was some disagreement over exactly how the provision originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Senator Roberts had included it in the authorization bill. But a senior Congressional official said the Bush administration had initiated the proposal and that Senator Roberts had not objected. A C.I.A. official said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget signed off on it. The official said that Congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers needed to help combat terrorism. The administration responded with the proposal to give the C.I.A. and military the power to use the national security letters, the official said. Another Congressional official said the move came at the urging of the C.I.A. The White House had no comment last night. Because the F.B.I. now has primary responsibility for domestic intelligence operations, the C.I.A. and the military must currently go to the F.B.I. to request that it issue a national security letter to get access to financial and electronic records. The Bush administration believes that giving the C.I.A. and the military direct authority to demand the records would cut down on the lag time in the process and give those organizations more flexibility to combat terrorism, according to the senior Congressional official. Administration officials played down the significance of the proposal, maintaining that it would not give the C.I.A. or the military access to any information that they cannot already get through the F.B.I. But Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were alarmed by the idea that the C.I.A. and the military could begin prying into Americans' personal and financial records. They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight. Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American." Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens." A Congressional Democratic aide said the measure appeared to go well beyond even hotly debated antiterrorism measures that the Justice Department has been considering in past months. "This is a very odd and very far-reaching idea that came out of nowhere," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It raises a whole series of questions about what the C.I.A.'s mission has really become." Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. and the military have assumed greater authority overseas over what were once law enforcement terrorism investigations, and the traditional lines between domestic and overseas operations have become increasingly blurred. A new terrorism center, led by the C.I.A., started operation today in an effort to better coordinate the activities of different federal agencies. Civil liberties groups said they were worried it would give the C.I.A. authority to conduct domestic operations. The proposal to allow the C.I.A. and the Pentagon authority to demand domestic records comes at a time when both Democrats and Republicans have voiced growing concerns about the government's expanded powers to fight terrorism. New figures released today also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the officials to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in an annual report that the Justice Department used secret warrants a record 1,228 times last year, — an increase of more than 30 percent over the year before. The court that governs the warrants did not turn down any of the Justice Department's applications, officials said. |
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Document
Extends Secrecy on Area 51 in Southern Nevada 09/19/2003 CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) -- Invoking national security, President Bush has renewed an exemption allowing the Air Force to keep mum about top-secret operations at a southern Nevada base. Bush's memorandum said it was of "paramount interest" to exempt the Groom Lake base about 90 miles north of Las Vegas from disclosing classified information. Also known as Area 51, the mysterious base sits on a dry lake bed and is heavily patrolled. The area is in a no-fly zone. The secrecy has fueled speculation about UFOs, aliens and other strange occurrences around Area 51. Residents of the nearby town of Rachel say the UFO talk began years ago when a Nevada Test Site worker claimed he saw alien ships there. President Clinton first issued the base's exemption in 1995 in response to two lawsuits filed by injured workers seeking information about the military's environmental practices at the site. It has been renewed yearly. In renewing the order Tuesday, Bush cited the suits brought by injured workers and the widows of two workers who alleged in 1994 that their husbands were exposed to hazardous and toxic materials at Groom Lake. Attorney Jonathan Turley, who represents the families, said the presidential directive keeps secret documents and testimony that he believes would link Area 51 to the men's deaths. "It is baffling to see the government continue to cover up what went on at Area 51," said Turley, a George Washington University law professor. Bush's memo exempts the Air Force from following federal, state or local solid waste and hazardous waste laws if classified information would be disclosed. The government has acknowledged the existence of the installation but has not disclosed what it does there, further fueling the UFO lore. The state got in the act in 1996, officially naming a 98-mile stretch of state Route 375, which runs through Rachel, the Extraterrestrial Highway and erecting green highway signs with images of spaceships |
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What’s the Joint Terrorism Task Force Doing in the Tiny Town of Rachel? George Knapp, I-Team Exclusive (June 20) -- FBI agents have confirmed that a search warrant was served Thursday night on the home of a self-described military watchdog in the tiny town of Rachel, near the mysterious Area 51 military base. We've learned this action was initiated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The search warrant remains sealed and the FBI won’t say what was seized from the home of Rachel resident Chuck Clark. We believe the action was taken because Chuck Clark escorted the I-Team on a tour of the roads surrounding the base. During the visit, he showed us the location of military sensors, hidden on public land. Here's our story. Retired astronomer and desert rat Chuck Clark has a new hobby. He's prowled the hills and deserts of Lincoln County for several years now, has photographed exotic aircraft in the skies, and keeps an eye on the top secret base known as Area 51. He's even written a book about the place. Over the past few months, he's discovered that the military has been installing secret sensor devices on public lands surrounding the base. Using a frequency counter device, he can tell when his vehicle trips a sensor. When that happens, he looks for the hard-to-spot wire atop the device, and then he digs them up, takes pictures, and puts them back. Clark isn’t a terrorist or spy but is angered that hikers, four wheelers, or photographers are being monitored by the military on public land, miles from the boundary of the base, which is clearly marked by signs. Chuck Clark says, “It's overkill in my opinion. They have a 25-mile buffer zone around the base. Why they have to put stuff outside the line really escapes me.” During the I-Team visit last week, two sensors were located and base security wrote down the plate numbers of our vehicles. We returned five days ago and drove to the rear entrance of Area 51. Two days later, FBI agents, working with Air Force intelligence and the Joint Terrorism Task Force [http://www.fbi.gov/terrorinfo/counterrorism/partnership.htm], raided Clark’s home and seized photos, records and his computer. Is it legal for anyone to touch military sensors hidden on public land? The government doesn’t think so, although Clark hasn’t been charged with anything, is the military trying to silence this outback gadfly? "They’re paranoid about this location and I don’t see why?" asks Clark. We asked the BLM if it's legal for the military to put sensing devices out on public land but a spokesman couldn’t answer our question? Law enforcement sources say that by handling the sensors, the devices are disabled. So it amounts to destruction of government property. As we mentioned, Clark hasn’t been charged. He was out of the state when the warrant was served. Our investigation of the issues involved will continue. |
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Plan for UN to Run Internet 'will be shelved' By Frances Williams in Geneva Published: November 9, 2003 An attempt by developing countries to put management of the internet under United Nations auspices is likely to be shelved at next month's world information summit in Geneva - but the issue is now firmly on the international agenda, summit sources say. It will be one of the main bones of contention this week as government negotiators and non-governmental organisations descend on Geneva for the final round of preparatory talks on the draft declaration and plan of action due to be endorsed by heads of state and government at the summit on December 10-12. However, UN officials say they see no compromise emerging. They expect governments to decide instead to continue talks on internet governance with the aim of reaching accord by 2005, when the second stage of the two-part summit is due to take place in Tunisia. "They're no longer going to try to agree on this," a UN official said last week. Poorer nations such as Brazil, India, South Africa, China and Saudi Arabia, as well as some richer ones, are growing dissatisfied with the workings of California-based Icann (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the semi-private internet address regulator set up five years ago. The critics argue that the internet is a public resource that should be managed by national governments and, at an international level, by an intergovernmental body such as the International Telecommunications Union, the UN agency that is organising the information summit. However, the US and the European Commission are staunchly defending the Icann model, which is based on minimal regulation and commercial principles. Icann members are predominantly drawn from industrialised countries and the established internet community. Defenders of the status quo say handing over power to governments could threaten the untrammelled flow of information and ideas that many see as the very essence of the borderless internet. But these arguments appear to be losing force against the emergence of new challenges such as unwanted advertising ("spam"), privacy and security worries, hate speech and child pornography, which have convinced many governments of the need for international regulation and enforcement. The question of internet governance, which erupted at a relatively late stage in the preparatory summit negotiations, is just one of many issues negotiators must try to resolve this week. Rich and poor countries are also at odds over creation of a "digital solidarity fund" that would finance investment to bridge the "digital divide" in access to information and communications technologies. Other unresolved disputes concern the balance between intellectual property protection and access to information, the role of the media, and acceptable boundaries to freedom of expression. |
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Valley has
keyless encounters of the weird kind
Saturday, February 21, 2004
By JULIET V.
CASEY, J.M. KALIL and KEITH ROGERS
Was it the storm clouds, sun spots or Area 51? By late Friday afternoon, some locksmiths, car dealerships and towing companies had been flooded with calls about mysteriously malfunctioning keyless vehicle entry devices. There were nearly as many theories as there were lockouts. But there were no firm answers as to why the remote devices stopped working. "Maybe it's those little green men up north," said Nellis Air Force Base spokesman Mike Estrada, whose own keyless entry system failed. "Are there sun spots? I've been trying to figure it out. It happened to me right after lunch." Estrada resorted to using his key to unlock his car door, but that set off his alarm. ABC Locksmiths received 30 calls from drivers stumped by the failure of the key systems. Quality Towing received about 25 calls, and two Ford dealerships reported receiving scores of calls about the problem. But ABC dispatcher Milo Ferguson didn't need to field any calls to know something was amiss. "My car is one of them," Ferguson said. "It's some kind of electrical disturbance. Either that or a nuclear bomb went off a few miles from here." Jerry Bussell, Gov. Kenny Guinn's adviser on homeland security, ruled out terrorism and described the phenomenon as a "frequency problem." "This is an anomaly that we're going to check out," Bussell said. The Country Ford dealership in Henderson, which had handled more than 100 calls by late Friday afternoon, contacted the national Ford headquarters for an explanation. Katie Baumann, service operator for the dealership, said the Ford company headquarters informed her that "a lot of static electricity in the air could be messing up the radio waves" the devices use. Local forecasters said they doubted the widespread failures could be attributed to any strange weather patterns. "We've heard about it, and we don't think so," said Steve Johnson of the National Weather Service in Las Vegas. Friday's cloudy weather made Bill O'Donnell doubt the theory of static interference. O'Donnell, a research associate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Physics Department and an electrical engineer, said that in "damp weather like we're having today, there won't be much of a static charge in the air. The charge just won't build up in these conditions." Another possible source of the problem: the sun. "Solar flares can produce and eject large numbers of charge particles, and usually the Earth's magnetic field deflects them before they enter the atmosphere," said chemistry and physics Professor Malcolm Nicol, the director of the High Pressure Science and Engineering Center at UNLV. "But if they are very large, they have been known to destroy the electronics systems in satellites and cause other problems down here." However, the Big Bear Solar Observatory in Big Bear, Calif., reported low solar activity Friday. According to the Federal Communications Commission, the low-power radio frequency transmitters inside keyless entry devices are similar to those found in other everyday items such as garage door openers, remote-controlled toys, cordless telephones, building alarm systems and the rapidly spreading wireless fidelity computer networks, which are commonly referred to as "wi-fi." Paul Oei, an electronics engineer with the Los Angeles office of the FCC, said keyless entry systems operate on unlicensed frequencies. The devices can fail when they are near an antenna emitting high radio frequency energy. But that scenario would affect only vehicles in a limited area, he said. Oei said he has never investigated a problem similar to Friday's phenomenon, but he recalled hearing about an incident years ago in which garage-door openers stopped working in an area when Air Force One was nearby. "Who knows what the military could be using at any given time?" he said. At least some Ford and General Motors keyless entry systems use the same radio spectrum bands that are used in military operations, according to the Web site of the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. "These bands are heavily used worldwide for critical military air-traffic control and tactical training communications," the site states. John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a defense and intelligence policy organization based near Washington, D.C., said military technology could easily be responsible for Friday's phenomenon. One such operation is jamming, which involves the release of electromagnetic energy to interfere with an enemy's radar detection capability. Pike noted that particularly in Nevada, the military has a number of unacknowledged programs in jamming and radar and high-powered microwave weapons, any of which might have the potential to bring chaos to certain frequencies. Estrada said Nellis officials checked into the possibility that military aircraft capable of sending out electronic jamming signals were involved, but they didn't believe that was the case. "We've got a jammer in the inventory, but I don't think we've got any out here, let alone flying," he said. Even if electronic warfare aircraft were flying, they operate at much different frequencies than commercial devices, such as garage-door openers and remote keyless entry systems, Estrada explained. "The military is certainly capable of fibbing about these things," Pike said. "But, for the military to have done it, they would have to have seriously miscalculated the effects of some test." Friday's phenomenon occurred as Nellis officials were preparing for next week's Red Flag air combat training exercise. The exercise, which involves dozens of fighter jets, bombers and other military aircraft from around the world, begins Monday and runs through March. Chuck Clark, of the rural Lincoln County community of Rachel, is an Area 51 watchdog and researcher who monitors the government's classified installation near the dry lake bed of Groom Lake, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. Clark said some of the high-tech equipment that he and other Area 51 buffs believe exists at the installation routinely cause odd occurrences in Rachel similar to what many people in Clark County experienced Friday. "We get electronic jamming all the time," he said by telephone. News reports of a similar phenomenon several years ago in Washington state suggested the outages were linked to the arrival of military aircraft carriers to Bremerton. In March 2001, the keyless entry failures began at the same time the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson returned to Bremerton. Then in April of that year, the outages began one day after the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Review-Journal writers Omar Sofradzija and Carri Geer Thevenot contributed to this report.
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Tape of 9/11
Controllers Was Destroyed By LESLIE MILLER Associated Press Writer May 6, 2004, 3:53 PM EDT WASHINGTON -- Air traffic controllers who handled two of the hijacked flights on Sept. 11, 2001, recorded their experiences shortly after the planes crashed, but a supervisor destroyed the tape, the government said Thursday. A report by Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead said the manager for the New York air traffic control center asked the controllers to record their experiences a few hours after the crashes, believing they would be important for law enforcement. Sometime between December 2001 and February 2002, an unidentified Federal Aviation Administration quality assurance manager crushed the cassette case in his hand, cut the tape into small pieces and threw them away in multiple trash cans, the report said. The manager said he destroyed the tape because he felt it violated FAA policy calling for written statements from controllers who have handled a plane involved in an accident or other serious incident. He also said he felt the controllers weren't in the right frame of mind to have consented to the taping, the report said. "We were told that nobody ever listened to, transcribed or duplicated the tape," Mead said in the report sent to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who asked the inspector general to look into how well the FAA was cooperating with the independent panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. That panel learned of the tape during interviews with New York air traffic control center personnel between September and October. Mead said his office referred the case to federal prosecutors in New York, but they declined to prosecute because of lack of criminal intent. The report did not characterize the tape's destruction as an attempted cover-up but said it could have been valuable in providing the public with a full explanation of what happened on Sept. 11. "What those six controllers recounted in a group setting on Sept. 11, in their own voices, about what transpired that morning, are no longer available to assist any investigation or inform the public," the letter said. Federal Aviation Administration: http://www.faa.gov Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press |
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US Wants to be
Able to Access Britons' ID cards
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Military's Energy-Beam
Weapons Delayed
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Apparel Maker Tags
RFID For Kids' Sleepwear July 13, 2005
Lauren Scott of California will launch a line
of kid's pajamas sewn with RFID tags. Readers placed in a house will be
able to scan the tags within a 30-foot radius and trigger an alarm if
boundaries are breached. |
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Details of US
Microwave-Weapon Tests Revealed
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Data At Your Fingertips
July 18, 2005 |
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Officials Test
Radio Tags at Canada Border By WILLIAM KATES The Associated Press Tuesday, August 9, 2005; 9:37 AM ALEXANDRIA BAY, N.Y. -- Security officials gathered Monday at a Canadian border crossing to mark the first test of a radio frequency identification system to be used by foreign visitors. If successful, radio "tags" carried by travelers will be part of the standard registration process for those entering the United States. The technology is like that used to speed passage at toll booths on many highways, said P.T. Wright, the operations director for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT Program. Testing began last week at the Thousand Islands Bridge crossing from Canada. It also is being done at the Peace Arch and Pacific Highway crossings in Blaine, Wash., and two crossings in Nogales, Ariz. The new technology could help relieve congestion at border crossings, while also helping authorities weed out potential terrorists, drug dealers and other criminals, officials say. This is the second phase of US-VISIT, the screening system launched in 2004 at busy airports, sea ports and land crossings. The system requires scanning fingerprints and photographs of the visitor's face into a computer when someone who wants to enter the U.S. applies for a visa. All foreign travelers using visas will also obtain their radio tags from U.S. Customs officials when they first register to enter the United States. The tag is embedded into a document, which the traveler presents to enter or leave the United States. The crossing points are equipped with antennas that read the tags for a secured and coded serial number linked to a database with the information provided by the traveler. The antennas can read the tags up to 30 feet away and recognize many tags simultaneously, Wright said. Ideally, travelers will be able to flash them going by at highway speeds, he said. The first phase of testing will have a simple focus _ to make sure the antennas can read each chip, that the system correctly relays that information and successfully matches it with the government's databases. In the second phase, which will begin next spring, border agents will use the system at their checkpoints to identify travelers. © 2005 The Associated Press |