Writers in a Surveillance State

Writers are ducking their calling in Surveillance State Amerika:

“A new report from the PEN Center and the FDR Group entitled “Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self-Censor” finds that 85 percent of surveyed writers are worried about government surveillance of Americans, and nearly three-quarters (73 percent) “have never been as worried about privacy rights and freedom of the press as they are today.”

“Sixteen percent of writers have avoided writing or speaking about certain topics due to threatening privacy concerns, and an additional 11 percent have seriously considered such avoidance.”

“Nearly a quarter of the writers surveyed (24 percent) reported deliberately avoiding certain topics in phone or email conversations, and an additional 9 percent have seriously considered such action. A small portion of respondents said they had even declined opportunities to meet with people deemed “security threats by the government” because of privacy fears.”

From: washington.cbslocal.com

Read the report: http://www.google.com/gwt/x?wsc=bf&u=http://www.pen.org/sites/default/files/Chilling%2520Effects_PEN%2520American.pdf&ei=zxCEUq2HF4PSwAKGpYDIBQ

Population Surveillance

What every regime, regardless of ideology, fears the most is the people. In this respect Uncle Sam is no different from North Korea or East Germany, as evidenced by actions taken against its population: targetting peace activists, labor unions, students, etc. Today American citizens are the most spied on in the world, but this massive surveillance operation is nothing new...

"In a secret program called HTLINGUAL, the CIA screened more than 28 million first-class letters and opened 215,000 of them between 1953 and 1973, even though the Supreme Court held as far back as 1878 in Ex parte Jackson and reaffirmed in 1970 in U.S. v. Van Leeuwen that the Fourth Amendment bars third parties from opening first-class mail without a warrant. The program's stated purpose was to obtain foreign intelligence, but it targeted domestic peace and civil rights activists as well. In a 1962 memo to the director of the CIA's Office of Security, the deputy chief of the counterintelligence staff warned that the program could lead 'to grave charges of criminal misuse of the mails' and therefore U.S. intelligence agencies must 'vigorously deny' HTLINGUAL, which should be "relatively easy to 'hush up.'"

From: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-CIA-Burglar-Who-Went-Rogue-169800816.html?c=y&page=2



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
Coming soon:


www.SpyWriter.com

Cell phone signal jamming

Polish Secret Service jammed cell phone signals from nurses protesting outside the prime minister’s office. Nurses were inundating the prime minister with calls to his office and disrupted his afternoon nap, so the solution was obvious - shut them up by disrupting their cell phone connections.

Today the scandal is out in full force - the opposition wants answers and the answer is... there is no such thing as targeted cell phone signal jamming.

Ha!

Signal jamming is a well established and important part of warfare and policing, and now everyone can participate in this game: portable, pocket-sized signal jammers can be purchased online.

Be aware that cell phone jamming may be illegal in your jurisdictions, except when used against you by the military and cops, naturally...

More:

How cell phone jammers work from How Stuff Works.

From Wikipedia:

As with other Radio jamming, cell phone jammers block cell phone use by sending out radio waves along the same frequencies that cellular phones use. This causes enough interference with the communication between cell phones and towers to render the phones unusable. On most retail phones, the network would simply appear out of range. Most cell phones use different bands to send and receive communications from towers (Called Full Duplexing). Jammers can work by either disrupting phone to tower frequencies or tower to phone frequencies. Smaller handheld models block all bands from 800MHz to 1900MHz within a 30 foot range. Small devices tend to use the former method, while larger more expensive models may interfere directly with the tower. The radius of cell phone jammers can range from a dozen feet for pocket models to kilometers for more dedicated units. The TRJ-89 jammer can block cellular communications for a 5-mile (8 km) radius.