Smart Grid: Big Brothers Eyes and Ears

Smart Grid is part of a global initiative to manage information, all information. This is not some dire fictional prediction; it exists right now, right here in the United States, and thanks to President Obama, the Secretary of the Treasury can lend the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), a division of the Department of Energy, $3.25 billion to implement Smart Grid.

Ostensibly, Smart Grid is about energy efficiency and climate change. This intelligent power grid gathers information about individual energy use via sensors embedded in the transmission lines and in homes and businesses. The government, via WAPA, will know what temperature at which you keep your home or business. If you keep your domicile warmer or cooler than the temperature approved by the federal government, you pay more. To some, this is an acceptable arrangement, until they discover what else Smart Grid can do.

This is another means by which the federal government can keep tabs on what you do and where you go. Think keeping track of thermostat settings is harmless? Think using your credit/debit card to make all of your purchases (travel destinations, pharmaceuticals, books, etc) is harmless? What about drivers licenses that now have electro-magnetic strips on them? How about OnStar, the emergency help system that will eventually be used to stop your vehicle on police command, or cellphone GPS so authorities can track where you are?. All of these seemingly harmless systems taken by themselves are just that, harmless. But, given this latest push to implement this Smart Grid plan within 60 days, a larger more sinister picture is developing.

IBM and GE will receive billions of dollars under the federal governments implementation of Smart Grid. Appliances, cars, home furnishings, even clothing are all becoming more intelligent and the devices that allow this intelligence will be able to be accessed by anyone with the proper equipment. In the wrong (or right) hands data collected from these many devices can tell the government everything about you and anyone who is in your house or place of business, at any time.

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interactions between all of these various systems will grow exponentially. A Smart Grid set up to capture and catalog all of those seemingly innocuous transactions can paint a very clear picture of you and your lifestyle. The dire vision as laid out in George Orwell’s book 1984 about our future is coming true, today.

Our political leaders are not the only ones who have been handed a mandate for change. Leaders of businesses and institutions everywhere have a unique opportunity to transform the way the world works.

Global integration is upon us. It is becoming an acceptable and necessary part of our everyday lives and is gently lulling us into a false sense of security. As the world becomes smarter through the integration of systems monitoring such diverse concerns as climate change, global supply chains, money transactions, and security, we are falling under the spell cast by a government that covets as much information as it can get on its citizens.

Homeland Security and the FBI have been obsessing over plans to document palm prints, eye scans and tattoo mapping of every U.S. citizen and anyone who crosses our borders. Will this information assist them in fulfilling their mandate to protect Americans? The vast majority of Americans will never consider committing a terrorist act against their neighbors, family or anyone else. How is collecting information on these people going to better serve the FBI and Homeland Security or us?

The final legal threshold preventing the FBI from monitoring Americans without probable cause was crossed when a special appeals court ruled that criminal prosecutors should be able to request the bugging of suspected terrorists. And the court system consistently sides with law enforcement, in all matters.

A computer system, developed under the Total Information Awareness System by the Bush Administration, was set up to monitor every American’s credit card transactions, phone calls and even borrowed library books in an anti-terrorist measure under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency is also funding the development of technologies to allow the Government to track e-mail, internet use, travel, and bank records, medical files and every type of accessible private and public data into what the Pentagon described as “one centralized grand database”.

This “grand database” was authorized under the scare of terrorism. But, who is terrorizing whom?

The Patriot Act increased powers for intelligence agents to monitor citizens.

Bureau of Prisons ordered by US Justice Department to alter its rules to allow the monitoring of lawyer-client conversations without court order or supervision.

A presidential executive order allowed military tribunals for anyone deemed by the Justice Department to be an “enemy combatant”, for which there is no legal definition.

We have already seen laws changed or flat out broken in order to spy on American citizens. We have learned of bills passed allowing data collection of American citizens. We have witnessed the growth of one the largest bureaucracies ever developed (Homeland Security) under the guise of preventing terrorism to reach America’s shores.

And now, the Smart Grid, set up to collect all information possible, is becoming a reality. Do you still need convincing that all of these ‘harmless’ single events does not mean that our government is bent on monitoring every aspect of our daily lives? Does there have to be nefarious reasons for someone to want to implement such an intrusive and all-inclusive system? Once this system is in place evil will find it easier to do as it wishes.

Amidst Increased Security, We Get Ripped Off

Securities fraud cases are down 87% since 2000. Great News! On the surface, it appears that Wall Street has finally turned away from the dark side and the free market system of letting the market take care of itself is working for the good of everyone.

Don’t bet your life savings on it. This ‘miraculous’ turn of events is simply another Ponzi scheme. Instead of shifting money around to cover other debts, as is the idea of the Ponzi scheme, the federal government has been shifting investigative resources towards preventing terrorism and away from preventing the U.S. economy from being ripped off.

As a result of spending less time ferreting out the con artists that everyone knows are there, the FBI and the SEC has allowed the American taxpayer to be ripped off to the tune of billions of dollars to bailout the economy. How did our government best serve our interests in this brilliant maneuver?

We now have armed security forces roaming our airports rummaging through our luggage forcing us to take off our shoes and empty our water bottles. They see through our clothing to view every personal detail of our bodies. When they see fit, they confiscate our electronic equipment and force us to sit in rooms designated as ‘international zones’ so that the ‘authorities’ are not encumbered with Americans’ civil rights while we await further investigation. All this so we can visit relatives and friends. We are subjected to this humiliation while our fellow Americans on Wall Street are allowed to rip us off of our savings and our government further rips us off to bail them out. What a country.

Have we even had any terrorist threat to our airline industry since 2001? Some will argue that its because of all the security that we haven’t had any threats. How about using that same logic on Wall Street? If we watched our money handlers as stringently as we scrutinize our ‘friendly skies’ we wouldn’t be in this financial mess.

Wall Street claims it doesn’t need to be regulated. Free market cheerleaders say the economy should handle itself. The current state of the economy, swirling down the toilet, is a great argument for more regulation and less ‘free’ market.

It always comes down to humans cannot be trusted with other people’s money.

We will never see an end to corporate abuse. Even if there was a regulatory investigator on every corporate staff, there would not be enough honest, un-corruptible individuals to rid the American people of this type of evil.

To these guys, money no longer represents a hard working individual trying to make a better living for himself and his family by buying into the stock market dream of having your money work for you. This money becomes nothing more than another commodity that can and should be controlled and used to make more money for the fund manager. The implied promise to protect the owners investment becomes secondary. And if they have to bend a few rules or make unethical decisions that could result in a quick profit for themselves while there is no one watching over his shoulder then he will take that chance.

Obama has promised an overhaul of the SEC, but this is just a matter of course for an incoming authority when the current system has failed. In the end, nothing will really change, as long as humans are handling other peoples money, unregulated and without the threat of severe punishment, there will be fraud and deception.

Iraq is learning lessons from a major player

Blackwater USA’s contract will be renewed. No big surprise here. We Americans knew it would be because we have learned how the U.S. government operates. Iraqi’s have more than likely learned that lesson too after five years of fighting alongside us. The renewal of this contract under suspicion of several incidents instigated by Blackwater should prove to the Iraqi’s once and for all that the U.S. government cannot be trusted.

Innocent Iraqi’s were murdered on September 16 by Blackwater guards when they did not get out of the way fast enough for Blackwater’s liking. Blackwater acted without regard for human life and property knowing full well they had 100% backing of the U.S. government and complete immunity from prosecution from the Iraqi government.

The Iraq police completed their investigation within two weeks. The FBI is still dragging its feet on their sham investigation, as is standard operating procedure. Another lesson the Iraqi people are learning from us, drag the investigation out until the uproar dies down, the citizens forget about it and the outcome no longer matters.

Blackwater attacked a vehicle they say was firing upon them yet no weapons were found in the burned out car. This lesson is directly out of George W. Bush’s play book. Lets not forget, he attacked this country saying they had weapons of mass destruction yet no weapons have ever been found. Another standard operating procedure that the Iraqi’s must surely be learning from us.

The State Department has installed ‘new rules’ concerning how the U.S. military coordinates with and supervises contractors such as Blackwater. Another lesson Iraq will soon learn. Tell the public that the situation is under control and reassure the public that incidents like this will never happen again. Democracy on the march.

Oh, another lesson, make sure the media is fed only positive information by a ‘trustworthy’ government spokesperson so the public can feel at ease in the knowledge that everything is being ‘taken care of’. Be sure to do it without promising anything.

‘We will get what we want, no matter the cost’. This has become the calling card of the U.S. government. It has been thus for many years. Allowing U.S. citizens to voice their opinion is nothing more than a tool in a game called democracy. Our opinions and protestations don’t mean anything to the U.S. government. Investigations are nothing more than a tool to ‘prove’ that they care. This government always gets what it wants. The final lesson the Iraqi government will learn in order to be just like us.

Blackwater USA on the insider fast track

The FBI is assisting the U.S. State Department probe into the September 16 Blackwater USA slaughter of 11 Iraqi citizens in Nisour Square.

One report that has already been completed is from the Iraqi National Police who have identified 12 eyewitnesses who label the shooting as unprovoked.

Edited: Oct 4, 2007:
Death toll, according to hospital records show 14 dead and 18 injured, a toll higher than most previous official tallies.

It will be interesting to see how the two separate findings will compare.

The hearing held today, by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, put Blackwater chairman Erik Prince on the defensive and, as expected, he vigorously rejected charges that his personnel did anything illegal.

So far the incident unfolds beginning when a U.S. State Department convoy, protected by a Blackwater security team, ordered a vehicle to stop to allow the convoy to pass through an intersection. When the vehicle did not stop, the convoy opened fire on it killing the driver, the drivers wife and their child. That seems to me an extremely high price to pay for not yielding the right of way to the convoy. It also sounds arrogant of the Blackwater security force to shoot to kill because they did not get the right of way. The Ugly American syndrome is alive and well in Iraq.

According to State Department policy, which governs private security force behavior, when an approaching vehicle fails to stop after being ordered by the convoy, the convoy is then allowed to fire one shot at the windshield as a warning shot. A question here, did Blackwater personnel actually verbally or symbolically warn the vehicle to stop or did they just fire into the vehicle instead?

No matter the answer, this ‘warning shot’ struck the driver instead of the windshield fatally wounding him. Another question, don’t these guys have better aim than this? Again, no matter the answer, this warning shot became a killing shot.

Since the driver was now dead the car continued to roll forward triggering the other Blackwater personnel to believe they were about to be attacked and so they opened fire on the vehicle.

It seems to me that three facts stand in the way of their defense of this being a righteous shooting. They were premature in opening fire, they reacted with way too much ferocity for not being fired upon and their field of fire was way too wide for attacking this one vehicle.

If they were shooting at this one ‘perceived’ threat, how is that so many other people, not in that vehicle, were killed? Many of the victims were shot in the back, because they were, obviously, trying to escape this onslaught.

How is it that, since the driver was dead, they believed they were being fired upon? If they are so jumpy that they all begin indiscriminately shooting into a crowd without a clear target at the sound of any gun fire, even their own, then they need to be taken out of combat because this is a sure sign that they have been there way too long. Or, they are just itching to kill, in which case they are much more dangerous.

There are a lot of questions raised by this incident, as expected. And these questions are painting a very clear picture of non-professionalism and a cowboy demeanor that true professionals will not allow themselves to be caught up in.

While this one incident is being investigated, there are other incidents involving Blackwater USA that are in question.

One incident alleges Blackwater guards threw frozen bottles of water at civilian cars, breaking windshields. No one was killed.

In December 2006, the State Department arranged for the company to pay $15,000 to the family of an Iraqi guard who was shot and killed by a drunken Blackwater employee.

In another shooting death, the payment was $5,000.

The State Department has counted 56 shooting incidents involving Blackwater guards in Iraq this year. All will be reviewed as part of a comprehensive inquiry ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Another case involving Blackwater is the alleged smuggling and selling of weapons on the black market.

Blackwater USA is the largest of three private companies contracted by the State Department to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq and has ties to the White House.

But its their ties to the CIA that are most troubling.

Is it any wonder that given Bush’s propensity for excusing his cronies behaviors that Erik Prince’s ‘problems’ will soon be over?

Given Blackwater’s CIA connections, any future investigations into possible wrongdoings should be swept away pretty quickly.