Robotic Bees One Step Closer To Reality

Rise Of The Robotic Bees

Polish protesters send up ‘Robokopter’ drone to spy on police
Defense Tech / November 18, 2011

The video below showing a civilian operated drone chopper filming riots in Warsaw, Poland last Friday is a great example of the democratization of what was until very recently, military-grade tech. This is a straight up ISR drone that’s flying high above the streets of a major city taking camera footage that was once the exclusive domain of high-priced news choppers and government helos.

Read full article here:
defensetech.org/2011/11/16/video … rom-above/
www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/17/w … on-police/

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC).

Obama moves forward with Internet ID plan
news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20054342-281.html

Terrorism Analysis.

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Texas: Red Light Camera Tickets a Man Running a Green Light
Port Lavaca, Texas issues $75 ticket to man who ran a green light.

Cities that use automated ticketing machines at intersections routinely assert two things: The camera does not lie, and at least three humans review each citation before it is dropped in the mail. That did not happen in Port Lavaca, Texas. On September 12, Port Lavaca Police Sergeant Kelly Flood signed a ticket accusing Dale Price of running a red light and demanding he pay $75 by October 12, but the light was green.

“Based upon my review and inspection of the recorded images, I state that a violation of ordinance #S-1-08 did occur,” the ticket stated just above Flood’s signature. “I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the state of Texas the foregoing is true and correct.”

On September 6 at 12:04pm, Price drove his grey 2009 GMC pickup through the intersection of US 35 and Travis Street. He was making a left-hand turn, with turn signal active, at 17 MPH. According to the red light camera, the light had been red for more than a minute. According to the photographs (view first photo, view second photo), and the video evidence, the light remained green throughout his turn. After being notified of the citation, local officials scrambled to order Redflex Traffic Systems, the Australian company in charge of the program, to cancel the ticket (view ticket). That is not good enough for Port Lavaca Citizens Against Red Light Cameras, a group working on a petition that would allow voters to decide the camera program’s future.

“This is one of the reasons that we’d want to shut down the program,” group co-founder Dwayne Buehring told The Newspaper. “We don’t know how many people have paid tickets without looking at the video. Because of the scare tactics they use, some people are just going to pay. This cop down there is just mailing them out to everyone.”

The group is looking to collect the 200 signatures needed to place a ban on red light cameras before voters. Earlier this year, the group succeeded in gathering those signatures, but the city cited the court case in Houston as a reason not to place the measure on the ballot. With a new petition, activists are say the law is now firmly on their side. They cite the very ruling of federal Judge Lynn Hughes that attempted to save Houston’s red light cameras as a reason why the Port Lavaca vote must proceed (view ruling).

“Clearly the city was in error when they rejected placing our petition on the ballot,” Carl Baugh and Dwayne Buehring wrote in a June 20 letter to the city council. “The case you were waiting on for vindication of denying a vote has not gone your way. While the judge did rule that Houston was in error for placing the issue on the ballot it was merely because it was untimely as Houston has a thirty-day limit on referendums. The Port Lavaca charter has no such restriction. By your own statements as well as your ministerial duty to the citizens of Port Lavaca you have an obligation to immediately proceed with the process to place our petition on the next legal election.”

Buehring, who recently moved to Houston, is still helping to collect signatures.

“We know the 500 people who signed it last time, we just have to go see them,” he said.

View the video of the green light camera ticket:

Red light camera ticket on a green light.

Senate stirs pot with TSA groping bill, sanctuary cities
By Mike Ward / AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 11:02 p.m. Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Protesters led by radio host Alex Jones, center, gathered outside the doors to the Senate gallery Wednesday, upset that the upper chamber sunk a bill that would have prohibited ‘intrusive touching’ by airport screeners. Bill sponsor Sen. Dan Patrick is upset, too.
Larry Kolvoord / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
www.statesman.com/news/texas-pol … 98725.html

“Protestors try to storm senate” – Texas vs TSA

REPORT: US to store passenger data for 15 years…

TSA Threatens To Cancel All Flights Out Of Texas If ‘Groping Bill’ Passed…

TEXAS CAVES IN…

Boisterous protest over airport-groping bill
By Mike Ward | Wednesday, May 25, 2011, 03:16 PM
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2011/05/25/protestors_try_to_storm_senate.html

Protesters at the Capitol
KXAN.com – ‎5 hours ago‎
Crowds spoke out loudly in protest of the failure of the anti-groping bill in the Texas Capitol Wednesday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esW0mCkChxQ

Alex Jones Storms The Capitol
Texas Tribune – ‎6 hours ago‎
May 25, 2011 Talk show host Alex Jones gathered a group to protest the Texas Senates so-called TSA “groping” bill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42kDecHQjdo

KXAN: Protesters loud at Texas Capitol – 6 pm News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EE4WJ6vk4c

KXAN.com – Web Extra: Protesters at Texas Capitol, May 25, 2011
A crowd of people yell “criminals” inside the Capitol in protest of the failure of the anti-groping bill which is about TSA body checks at airports.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdETlZDDvEE

Texas Legislature, Federal Government Clash Over Airport Pat-Down Bill
NPR (blog) - Eyder Peralta – ‎7 hours ago‎
A Transportation Security Administration agent performs a pat-down check on an airline passenger at a security checkpoint at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. A Transportation Security Administration agent performs a pat-down …
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 … -down-bill

9/11 Truther, Radio Host Leads Mob to Capitol
Houston Chronicle (blog) – Gary Scharrer – ‎7 hours ago‎
Alex Jones — a man best known for claiming the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks were an inside job and hosting Charlie Sheen’s phone-in program of choice — led a group of about 100 people, initially, to the wrong chamber as they protested the failure of … http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/201 … o-capitol/

The TSA war appears over and Dan Patrick lost
Houston Chronicle (blog) – ‎7 hours ago‎
The headlines out on the Internet about the death of Houston Sen. Dan Patrick’s anti-groping TSA bill sound so dramatic: Yesterday, Patrick accused Dewhurst of undermining his anti-pat down bill on the Senate floor. Today, he took his complaints a step …
http://blog.chron.com/newswatch/2011/05 … rick-lost/

Anti-TSA protesters storm through Capitol halls
Dallas Morning News (blog) – Kelley Shannon – ‎8 hours ago‎
Protesters shouting “cowards, cowards” and “treason, treason” marched through the Capitol halls on Wednesday protesting the reluctance of the Senate to take up a bill banning routine invasive pat-downs by the Transportation Security Administration. …
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/ … -thro.html

TSA Threatens To Cancel All Flights Out Of Texas If ‘Groping Bill’ Passed
Forbes (blog) – Kashmir Hill – ‎14 hours ago‎

Upset about invasive screening techniques at the airport, the Lone Star State was considering a bill that would make a TSA patdown that involves touching “the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person including through …
http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/201 … ll-passed/

www.rabbit-hole.org

• Dutch Troublemakers Turn Surplus Army Target Drone Into Autonomous Wi-Fi Sniffer (Video)
  www.popsci.com/diy/article/2010-08/diy-wi-fi-drone-finds-wireless-hotspots-raises-privacy-questions
• Wi-Fi Aerial Surveillance Platform, WASP drone
  www.suasnews.com/2010/08/587/wi-fi-aerial-surveillance-platform-wasp/

4th Amendment Violating Mobile X-Ray Scanners Hit The Streets

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, August 25, 2010

As we warned at the beginning of the year, X-ray body scanners currently being used and abused in airports across the world are set to hit the streets as American Science & Engineering reveals that “more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents” have been sold to government agencies.

In January, we divulged how the ultimate end use of the body scanners would not be limited to airports, and that they were going to be rolled out on the streets as mobile units that would scan vehicles at checkpoints as well as individuals and crowds attending public events.

Dutch police announced that they were developing a mobile scanner that would “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons” and that it would be used “as an alternative to random body searches in high risk areas”.

The device would also be used from a distance on groups of people “and mass scans on crowds at events such as football matches.”

The plans mirrored leaked documents out of the UK Home Office three years prior, which revealed that authorities in the UK were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects”.

Now, according to a Forbes report, backscatter x-ray vision devices mounted on trucks are already being deployed inside the United States to scan passing individuals and vehicles in complete violation of the Fourth Amendment.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold many of the devices to U.S. law enforcement agencies, who are already using them on the streets for “security” purposes.

“Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” points out Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure. If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”

“The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images,” states the report. “Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment.”

However, as we reported right from the start and as was confirmed earlier this month, federal authorities have been storing checkpoint body scan images all along, proving that their claim that no images could be stored or transmitted was an act of mass public deception in order to grease the skids for the rapid introduction of the devices after the botched and highly suspicious underwear bomber incident.

As we have constantly reiterated, everything that we see unfolding in the airports is eventually designed to be used on the streets. People who had a blasé attitude about the privacy-busting body scanners, behavioral interrogations, and intrusive pat-downs occurring in airports on the basis that they could avoid them by not flying face a rude awakening once all this is in their face on a daily basis.

Body and vehicle scanners are just one tool authorities plan to implement on a widespread basis as part of our deepening decline into a hi-tech militarized police state.

Homeland Security is already implementing technology to be enforced at “security events” which purportedly reads “malintent” on behalf of an individual who passes through a checkpoint. The video below explains how “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) checkpoints will conduct “physiological” and “behavioral” tests in order to weed out suspected terrorists and criminals.

The clip shows individuals who attend “security events” being led into trailers before they are interrogated as to whether they are terrorists while lie detector-style computer programs analyze their physiological responses. The subjects are asked about their whereabouts, and if they are attempting to smuggle bombs or recording devices into the “expo,” proving that the technology is intended to be used at public events and not just airports. Individuals who do not satisfy the first lie detector-style test are then asked “additional questions”.

The use of such technology is not only a complete violation of the Fourth Amendment, it also eviscerates the notion of innocent until proven guilty, and therefore totally undermines everything America stands for. Given the widespread abuse witnessed in the first eight months alone after the roll out of airport body scanners, Americans need to boycott the companies producing these systems and also resist their deployment at every turn.

Fourth Amendment lawsuits such as the one filed by EPIC against the naked body scanners should be used as a tool with which to ensure that such systems are never allowed to become commonplace, unless we wish to see supposedly free countries turned into high-tech prison grids ruled over by corrupt government enforcers who treat citizens as slaves.

4th Amendment Violating Mobile X-Ray Scanners Hit The Streets.

youtube.com/watch?v=pfYs5C8D4uk

Subscriber RocketGuy tipped us off to this EPFL School of Engineering project involving a fleet of swarming flying robots. Using an ant-inspired swarming algorithm running on a Linux SBC, this network of swarming micro air vehicles is purportedly the largest of its kind. [Thanks, RocketGuy!]

Posted by Adam Flaherty | Sep 27, 2010 04:00 AM

blog.makezine.com

Make: Online : Robotic swarm over Switzerland.

Imagine a public eye scanner that can identify 50 people per minute, in motion. Now imagine that the government install these scanner systems all across an entire city. Or don’t imagine it, because it’s already happening, right now.

The City of Leon, Mexico, is doing exactly that, installing real time iris scanners from biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. These scanners don’t require people to stop and put their eyes in front of a camera. They work in real time, as people walk, like this:

Which is very similar to this once-science-fiction scene:

There are different kinds of machines being installed across Leon, from large scanners—capable of identifying 50 people per minute in motion— to smaller ones—like the EyeSwipe in the video above—that range from 15 to 30 people per minute. These devices are being installed in public places, like train and bus stations, and connected to a database that will track people across the city.

City officials and proponents of the system are hoping that public retinal scans will stop crime and fraud. According to Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers:

If you’ve been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter. If you’re a known shoplifter, for example, you won’t be able to go into a store without being flagged. Certainly for others, boarding a plane will be impossible.

The retinal scanning of Leon’s one million population has started already with its convicted criminals. Citizens with no criminal records have been offered the opportunity to “voluntarily” scan their eyes. This, however, is just the beginning. According to Carter, everyone in the planet should be connected to the iris tracking system in 10 years:

In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris. Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected within the next 10 years.

The End of Privacy: Entire City to Track People With Public Eye Scanners.

Other relevant Surveillance Society headlines:

• Flashback: In China, a High-Tech Plan to Track People
  By KEITH BRADSHER / August 12, 2007
  parapolitics.info/2007/09/15/in-china-a-high-tech-plan-to-track-people/
  www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business/worldbusiness/12security.html
• Flashback: With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
  By NAOMI KLEIN / 2008
  www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye
  www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/05/chinas-all-seeing-eye
  www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2120/76/