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Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Federal Reserve Has Been Issued Police Powers


Federal Reserve Has Been Issued Police Powers
by Tim Brown



Did you know that the Federal Reserve is not a government entity? They aren’t. They are a private Bank that works with the federal government. However, id you know that they were also vested with police powers? That’s right, a non-government bank has police powers via the federal government.

The USA Patriot ACt of 2001, which is anything but patriotic, bestowed domestic police powers on the 12 privately owned Federal Reserve Banks.

Section 364 of the Act,

“Uniform Protection Authority for Federal Reserve,” reads: “Law enforcement officers designated or authorized by the Board or a reserve bank under paragraph (1) or (2) are authorized while on duty to carry firearms and make arrests without warrants for any offense against the United States committed in their presence…Such officers shall have access to law enforcement information that may be necessary for the protection of the property or personnel of the Board or a reserve bank.”

Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/09/federal-reserve-has-been-issued-police-powers/#ixzz26v27FcvB

Pam Martens, of AlterNet, writes,

The police officers are technically known as FRLEO, short for Federal Reserve Law Enforcement Officer. The system has its own police academies for training, their own patch and badges, uniforms, pistols, rifles, police cars and the power to arrest coast to coast without a warrant. They have ranks of Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain and a recruitment ad campaign with the slogan: “It’s about respect and recognition from your peers. It’s you.”

The FRLEOs employed by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. are considered employees of the Federal government since the Board is a government entity. Each of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, as settled law under Lewis v. United States confirms, is a private corporation owned by commercial banks in its region. An email to several of the Federal Reserve Banks confirmed that they regard their FRLEOs to be privately employed by the bank.

There is also the obvious question as to why the expense, training and potential liability of armed police would be necessary when all of the Federal Reserve Banks are in cities with large municipal police forces. With private bankers sitting on the Boards of each of these Reserve Banks, many of whom are officers of banks under criminal investigation, there is the serious need for Congressional investigation into how the Nation’s criminal databases are being used by the private sector as well as the further chilling of protest and dissent from another new sheriff in town.

Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/09/federal-reserve-has-been-issued-police-powers/#ixzz26v2F6xbd

The Ron Paul Grassroots "Delegate Lawsuit" Tossed, New Version Filed


The Ron Paul Grassroots "Delegate Lawsuit" Tossed, New Version Filed
Brian Doherty|Aug. 10, 2012 5:47 pm

The lawsuit filed by a Ron Paul grassroots activist lawyer charging the Republican National Committee (RNC) with various shenanigans against Ron Paul delegates and calling for the RNC to admit that no delegate is bound to vote for Romney was dismissed by U.S. District Judge David Carter this week.

Carter's order to dismiss.

Some relevant language from the order explaining why the Judge didn't think the suit worth going forward:

For example, Plaintiffs’ vague reference to “State Bylaws” gives this Court no inkling as to which of the 50 states and which of the millions of pages of bylaws Plaintiffs refer. Similarly, Plaintiffs’ use of the passive voice renders it impossible to discern who broke the bones of whom, who pointed a gun at whom, and whether any of the more than 100 Defendants were even involved. Finally, Plaintiffs’ vague allegations of voting ballot fraud occurring somewhere at sometime and apparently committed simultaneously by all “Defendants” lacks plausibility. While Plaintiffs make an oblique reference to a voting machine somewhere in Arizona, the lack of clarity in this allegation is insufficient to raise it to a level above mere speculation.Thus, this Court does not accept these allegations as true.

I wrote about that suit both right here at Reason and in the New York Times back in June.

The Paul campaign itself never embraced the suit or supported it--though Ron Paul himself didn't choose to condemn it either. Richard Gilbert, the lawyer who filed it, was ferocious in his insistence it was for the good of the delegates, and the honesty of the Republican primary and caucus process.

Finish Reading this Article here!



Delegates vs RNC - ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS

Friday, September 14, 2012

Kansas Republicans: We need to see Obama's birth certificate


Kansas Republicans: We need to see Obama's birth certificate

By Brian Montopoli, Phil Hirschkorn

Updated 4:03 P.M. Eastern Time with Joe Montgomery dropping his petition. (See bottom.)

(CBS News) Kansas' Republican Secretary of State and two other Republican officials have determined that they do not have enough evidence to determine whether President Obama can appear on the Kansas ballot, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer said they need to review the president's birth certificate and other documents before they can respond to a complaint alleging that Mr. Obama is not a "natural born citizen."

The State Objections Board, which the trio serve on, is seeking more information from three states -- Hawaii, Arizona, and Mississippi. (Hawaii holds the president's birth certificate; government officials in Arizona and Mississippi have conducted similar investigations.) "The State Objections Board is asking other states for evidence presented to them on this same issue of eligibility," Kay Curtis, spokeswoman for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, told CBS News.

"Given the cursory response from President Obama, the Board is merely attempting to obtain additional information before making a decision," said Curtis. Neither office of the Kansas Attorney General Schmidt or Kansas Lieutenant Governor Colyer returned calls for comment.

To finish reading this story, click here!

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Governments asking Google to remove more content






By MICHAEL LIEDTKE | Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — U.S. authorities are leading the charge as governments around the world pepper Google with more demands to remove online content and turn over information about people using its Internet search engine, YouTube video site and other services.

Google Inc. provided a glimpse at the onslaught of government requests in a summary posted on its website late Sunday. The breakdown covers the final six months of last year. It's the fifth time that Google has released a six-month snapshot of government requests since the company engaged in a high-profile battle over online censorship with China's communist leadership in 2010.

The country-by-country capsule illustrates the pressure Google faces as it tries to obey the disparate laws in various countries while trying to uphold its commitment to free expression and protect the sanctity its more than 1 billion users' personal information.

Governments zero in on Google because its services have become staples of our digital-driven lives. Besides running the Internet's most dominant search engine, Google owns the most watched video site in YouTube, operates widely used blogging and email services and distributes Android, the top operating system on mobile phones. During the past year, Google has focused on expanding Plus, a social networking service, that boasts more than 170 million users.

Many of the requests are legitimate attempts to enforce laws governing hot-button issues ranging from personal privacy to hate speech.

But Google says it increasingly fields requests from government agencies trying to use their power to suppress political opinions and other material they don't like.

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, wrote in a Sunday blog post.

That comment may have been aimed at the U.S., where police prosecutors, courts and other government agencies submitted 187 requests to remove content from July through December last year, more than doubling from 92 requests from January through June.

Only Brazil's government agencies submitted more content removal requests with a total of 194 during the final half of last year. But that figure was down from 224 requests in Brazil during the first half of the year.

Brazil's requests covered a more narrow range of content than the U.S. demands. The submissions from Brazil covered 554 different pieces of content while the U.S. requests sought to censor nearly 6,200 items.

Google usually gets a lot of removal requests from Brazil because it runs a 8-year-old social network called Orkut that is a popular forum in that country. Orkut gets so little usage in most other countries that Google took another stab at social networking by creating Plus last year.

The U.S. requests included 117 court orders, including one that instructed Google to remove 218 search results linking to websites containing content alleged to be defamatory. Google said it censored about 25 percent of the search results covered in that court order.

This report marks the first time that Google has quantified how many of the removal requests came through court orders.

Google wound up at least partially complying with 42 percent of the content removal requests in the U.S. and 54 percent in the Brazil.

Other governments frequently reaching out to Google included Germany (103 content-removal requests, down 18 percent from the previous six-month period), and India (101 requests, a 49 percent increase).

1ink.com

At least four countries — Bolivia, the Czech Republic, Jordan and Ukraine — asked Google to remove content for the first time during the final six months of last year.

Google's censorship report doesn't include China and Iran because those countries deploy filters to block content that their governments have deemed objectionable.

Governments also are leaning Google more frequently for information about people suspected of breaking the law or engaging in other mischief.

The U.S. government filed 6,321 requests with Google for user data during the final six months of the year. That was far more than any other country, according to Google, and a 6 percent increase from the previous six months. Google complied with 93 percent of the U.S. requests for user data, encompassing more than 12,200 accounts.

U.S. authorities lodge some of the user data requests on behalf of other countries covered by legal assistance agreements and other rules of cooperation.

India accounted for the second highest volume of user data requests with 2,207, a 27 percent increase from the previous six-month period. Google complied with two-thirds of India's requests, which targeted more than 3,400 Google users.

All told, Google received a more than 18,250 requests for user data during the final six months of last year, a 16 percent increase from the first half of the year.
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