Fear Of TSA Harassment Is Killing Thousands of Americans Steve Watson 1. Prisonplanet.com November 23, 2011 Travelers taking to highways are exponentially more at risk According to a 1. report in the New York Times this week, owing to opposition to the TSA, The Air Transport Association expects 2 percent fewer people will fly this Thanksgiving week compared with last year, while AAA projects a 4 percent increase in automobile travel. This raises a serious issue – the fact that many thousands more Americans die in road traffic accidents every year than they do in air accidents. A new study by The US Travel Association also notes that complaints regarding the TSA’s heavy handed policies and procedures are increasing amongst frequent fliers. In addition to concerns over pat-downs and radiation-firing body scanners, an increase in waiting times, having to remove clothing and generally unfriendly TSA agents are all contributing factors that are causing more and more Americans to boycott flying and take to their cars. Although road accident fatalities are decreasing, due to the improvement of safety in vehicles, last year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, close to 33, 000 people were killed in car accidents in the US. Compare that to the 828 people who were killed WORLDWIDE in plane crashes, and the difference is stark. Timothy Taylor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives has recently noted:
“Researchers have estimated that the 9/11 attacks generated nearly 2,200 additional road traffic deaths in the United States through mid-2003 from a relative increase in driving and reduction in flying resulting from fear of additional terrorist attacks and associated reductions in the convenience of flying.” “If the new security measures are generating similar, or even smaller, substitutions and the driving risk has grown as hypothesized, the new methods could be contributing to more deaths annually on U.S. roads than have been experienced cumulatively since 9/11 from terrorism against air transportation targets around the world.” Similar research dovetails with this analysis: In 2005, researchers at Cornell University found that because more people drove instead of taking a plane in the three months after 9/11, there were an additional 725 fatalities from car crashes than during the same period in the previous year. A study by Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute in 2004 concluded that an even higher figure of fatalities were recorded -1,018 more than would have been expected based on earlier trends. We have previously noted that more Americans die From intestinal illnesses, drowning in baths and eating peanuts than they do from terrorist attacks. Yet it is the perpetual fear that the Department of Homeland Security continues to instill in people that they are likely to be attacked, in addition to the grossly heavy handed security theatre, that is keeping people off planes and on highways. The TSA and Homeland Security in general are the biggest scams of the decade. The massive expanse of the surveillance state that has come in the guise of securing the nation is not only killing liberty, but also adding billions onto the national deficit and taking away from programs and departments that are much in need of extra funding. A new Congressional Report released last week, entitled “A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform” concluded that the TSA is a “bloated” and “ineffective” federal agency that is doing nothing to make airports and air travel more secure. If The Department of Homeland Security was serious about protecting the lives of Americans, it would remove the TSA from the nation’s airports and allow people to fly without the fear of being treated like cattle, being irradiated in next to useless body scanners and being sexually harassed and groped by overly authoritative goons in uniform.
Malls track shoppers' cell phones on Black Friday NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year. Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. While the data that's collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers' paths from store to store. The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria's Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren't being visited? While U.S. malls have long tracked how first time they've used cell phones.
crowds move throughout their stores, this is the
But obtaining that information comes with privacy concerns. The management company of both malls, Forest City Commercial Management, says personal data is not being tracked. "We won't be looking at singular shoppers," said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. "The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to." Still, the company is preemptively notifying customers by hanging small signs around the shopping centers. Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones. The tracking system, called FootPath Technology, works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center that capture the unique
identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer's IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores. The system can't take photos or collect data on what shoppers have purchased. And it doesn't collect any personal details associated with the ID, like the user's name or phone number. That information is fiercely protected by mobile carriers, and often can be legally obtained only through a court order. "We don't need to know who it is and we don't need to know anyone's cell phone number, nor do we want that," ShriverEngdahl said. Manufactured by a British company, Path Intelligence, this technology has already been used in shopping centers in Europe and Australia. And according to Path Intelligence CEO Sharon Biggar, hardly any shoppers decide to opt out. "It's just not invasive of privacy," she said. "There are no risks to privacy, so I don't see why anyone would opt out." Now, U.S. retailers including JCPenney (JCP, Fortune 500) and Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500) are also working with Path Intelligence to use their technology, Biggar said. Home Depot has considered implementing the technology but is not currently using it any stores, a company spokesman said. JCPenney declined to comment on its relationship with the vendor.
Why Apple and Google need to stalk you Some retail analysts say the new technology is nothing to be worried about. Malls have been tracking shoppers for years through people counters, security cameras, heat maps and even undercover researchers who follow shoppers around. And some even say websites that track online shoppers are more invasive, recording not only a user's name and purchases, but then targeting them with ads even after they've left a site. "It's important for shoppers to realize this sort of data is being collected anyway," Biggar said.
Whereas a website can track a customer who doesn't make a purchase, physical stores have been struggling to perfect this kind of research, Biggar said. By combining the data from FootPath with their own sales figures, stores will have better measurements to help them improve the shopping experience. "We can now say, you had 100 people come to this product, but no one purchased it," Biggar said. "From there, we can help a retailer narrow down what's going wrong." But some industry analysts worry about the broader implications of this kind of technology. "Most of this information is harmless and nobody ever does anything nefarious with it," said Sucharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at Forrester Research. "But the reality is, what happens when you start having hackers potentially having access to this information and being able to track your movements?" Last year, hackers hit AT&T, exposing the unique ID numbers and e-mail addresses of more than 100,000 iPad 3G owners. To make it harder for hackers to get at this information, Path Intelligence scrambles those numbers twice. "I'm sure as more people get more cell phones, it's probably inevitable that it will continue as a resource," Mulpuru said. "But I think the future is going to have to be opt in, not opt out." SOURCE:http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/22/technology/malls_track_cell_phones_black_friday/ index.htm
20 Signs That America Is Going Crazy 1. The American Dream November 23, 2011 Has anyone else noticed that America seems to be going crazy? I’m not talking about the “woo hoo – let go out and have some fun” kind of crazy. I’m talking about the “lock them up in the looney bin” kind of crazy. Our society is rapidly coming apart at the seams and people are seriously starting to lose it. Criminals are going crazy, young people are going crazy, children are going crazy, law enforcement authorities are going crazy and the federal government is most certainly going crazy. Way too many Americans seem to be losing all sense of what is right and what is wrong. Way too many Americans seem to be losing all sense of what it means to treat others with dignity and respect. Yes, the economy is falling apart and people are feeling the stress of hard times, but it goes much deeper than that. It is almost as if some sort of mental illness is spreading throughout our society that is expressing itself in thousands of different ways. We are seeing anger, rage, malice and brutality rise to very dangerous levels. Our population has become way too greedy, proud, selfish and hateful. America is on a very dangerous road and we need to wake up. The following list could contain thousands of examples, but hopefully the 20 signs listed below will be enough to convince you that America is rapidly going crazy…. #1 We are continuing to see mobs of criminals looting retail stores all over the United States. For example, last Saturday night a “flash mob” of approximately 50 young people looted a 7-11 in Silver Spring, Maryland. You can see video of this crime in progress right here. #2 Respect for the elderly has totally gone out the window in America. For example, down in Georgia two “caregivers” were recently charged with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman
that they were supposed to be taking care of…. Police charge two caregivers at a Jonesboro facility with waterboarding an 89-year-old woman. Clayton County police said Jermeller Steed and Cicely Reed held down Anna Foley after an argument that started over ice cream. #3 When the federal government first began putting naked body scanners into airports and began implementing “enhanced pat-downs” of travelers, many warned that hordes of sicko perverts would start applying for jobs with the TSA. Well, it turns out that one TSA employee is now being charged with a nightmarish sexual assault. The following is how WJLA in Washington D.C. describes what he is being charged with…. The suspect, Harold Glen Rodman, 52, allegedly was wearing his uniform and displayed a badge to the victim, a 37-year-old woman. Police arrested Rodman on Nov. 20. He is charged with aggravated sexual battery, object sexual penetration, forcible sodomy and abduction with intent to defile. #4 We have been seeing some really bizarre sexual crimes all over the country lately. The following examples comes from a town where I once lived…. Multiple male victims have reported being sexually assaulted by a male suspect in a series of nighttime incidents at residences near the University of Virginia, according to police and university officials. Larceny is not a motive, and in each case victims reported awakening to find themselves being groped, officials said. #5 Sadly, our society has become so “sexualized” that now even little children are raping each other. Just check out the following recent example from Ohio…. Authorities in southwest Ohio have charged a 13-year-old boy with raping a 5-year-old girl at a McDonald’s play area. The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the alleged assault occurred Oct. 29 at a McDonald’s in the Cincinnati suburb of Anderson Township. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Barnett says the girl’s grandmother was nearby in the restaurant at the time. #6 Today, there are millions of Americans with STDs that are running around thoughtlessly passing them on to others.
According to the CDC, there are 19 million new cases of STD infection in the United States every single year. #7 As I wrote about the other day, all over the United States law enforcement authorities are spraying pepper spray directly into the faces of unarmed protesters. Pepper spray can kill you. According to Wikipedia, the use of pepper spray by police has been associated with dozens of deaths in the United States…. For those with asthma, taking other drugs, or subject to restraining techniques which restrict the breathing passages, there is a risk of death. The Los Angeles Times has reported at least 61 deaths associated with police use of pepper spray since 1990 in the USA. #8 Predators are increasingly using websites such as Craigslist to find victims for their next crimes. The following comes from a recent article in the Columbus Dispatch…. Lost, covered in his own blood and unsure if the men who hunted him were still nearby, a man from South Carolina hid in the forested hills outside Caldwell until after dark on Nov. 6. Deciding it was safe, he then made a painful 2-mile journey to the nearest farmhouse to call for help. Investigators say he was the lucky one. On Tuesday, they found the body of a man buried in a shallow grave near the site where the other man was attacked. By surviving his ordeal two weeks ago in Noble County, the victim, whose name authorities haven’t released, helped uncover an elaborate scheme by at least two men to lure people with the promise of work from across the country to Ohio. Authorities say the real plan was to rob and kill them. #9 With all of the other problems we are having all over the nation, you would think that authorities would not be too concerned about little kids that are trying to sell cups of lemonade. But sadly, over the past year police have been sent in to shut down lemonade stands run by children all over the nation. #10 The family unit continues to crumble in America. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 68% of all twenty-somethings were married in 1960. By 2008, that number had fallen to 26%. #11 Many Americans would rather not deal with all of the problems in society and would rather “check out” instead. For example, a recent Gallup poll found that alcohol consumption in the United States is now at a 25 year high.
#12 The federal government has become so paranoid that they have been putting GPS tracking devices on the vehicles of thousands of people that have not even been charged with committing any crimes. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Wired magazine article about this issue…. The 25-year-old resident of San Jose, California, says he found the first one about three weeks ago on his Volvo SUV while visiting his mother in Modesto, about 80 miles northeast of San Jose. After contacting Wired and allowing a photographer to snap pictures of the device, it was swapped out and replaced with a second tracking device. A witness also reported seeing a strange man looking beneath the vehicle of the young man’s girlfriend while her car was parked at work, suggesting that a tracking device may have been retrieved from her car. Then things got really weird when police showed up during a Wired interview with the man. The young man, who asked to be identified only as Greg, is one among an increasing number of U.S. citizens who are finding themselves tracked with the high-tech devices. The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crimefighting tool with “great frequency,”and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds. #13 Many Americans are so frustrated right now that even the smallest things will make them go crazy. For example, one man down in Georgia recentlyfirebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa. #14 All over the state of California, copper thieves are ripping the wire right out of thousands of streetlights and are leaving huge areas completely dark at night. For example, just check out what is happening in the Sacramento area…. Sacramento County officials said 1,000 street lights have been affected by wire theft in recent weeks, and the county has already spent $160,000 repairing street lights this year. #15 The way that our government has treated those that have served in the military has been absolutely shameful. For example, according to the Washington Post between 2003 and 2008 the remains of large numbers of our war dead were actually dumped into a Virginia landfill…. The Dover Air Force Base mortuary for years disposed of portions of troops’ remains by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill, a practice that officials have since abandoned in favor of burial at sea. #16 Nothing is too big for thieves to steal these days. In the San Francisco area, thieves recently took off with a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons. #17 Some thieves have become so bold that they will literally steal thousands of animals at a time from ranchers. All over the United States, livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The following is from a recent Associated Press article….
While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn’t. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches. Authorities say today’s thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it’s then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns. #18 The federal government is way too large and is interfering way too much in our lives. All of us should be horrified that the feds are spending a significant amount of time and energy on raiding organic farms. The following examplecomes from Natural News…. It is the latest case of extreme government food tyranny, and one that is sure to have you reeling in anger and disgust. Health department officials recently conducted a raid of Quail Hollow Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in southern Nevada, during its special “farm to fork” picnic dinner put on for guests — and the agent who arrived on the scene ordered that all the fresh, local produce and pasturebased meat that was intended for the meal be destroyed with bleach. #19 Most of the big regulatory agencies of the federal government have totally gone crazy. For example, the EPA is now specifically targeting Americans that use traditional wood-burning stoves. #20 Large numbers of Americans simply do not seem to care what happens to those around them any longer. As I discussed in another recent article, some of the things that we are now seeing young people do are almost unbelievable. For example, just check out this video of a young punk walking up to a defenseless elderly man in a Chicago subway station and knocking him out cold. What makes this incident far worse is that the friends of the young thug are cheering him on and laughing at how easy it was to knock the old man out cold. It is so very sad to watch what is happening to this country. Things could have been so much different. But now we are watching the consequences of decades of really bad decisions unfold right in front of our eyes. So what do you all think?