Big Sis and NFL Turn Super Bowl Into Police State

Kurt Nimmo - February 5, 2011

Earlier this week, Department of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano traveled to Arlington, Texas, where the Super Bowl will be held to shill the government’s recently unveiled “If You See Something, Say Something” propaganda campaign.




“We are partnering this year with the NFL on our ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign and launching that NFL partnership right here at the Super Bowl,” Napolitano said during a press conference on Monday at Cowboy Stadium.

“The idea is simple,” she continued. “We are simply asking the American people to be vigilant, recognizing that our security is a shared responsibility that all of us must participate in. If a fan at the Super Bowl or any other American at any other place sees something that is potentially dangerous, then say something about it to local law enforcement or someone in authority.”

DHS is also working with federal, state, local and private sector partners to support security efforts at the Super Bowl through additional personnel, technology and resources, according to a DHS press release.

Public-private partnerships are the very essence of what used to be called fascism.

The DHS trained around 1,200 stadium employees as “first observers” and the venue has become a high profile showcase for a concerted effort by the government to expand the Gestapo zone concept from airports to stadiums and eventually malls and other public buildings.

“In these current times you would be shortsighted, really, not to have gone to the nth degree to design security and security equipment and security areas … and this stadium represents that,” Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, told CNN on Friday.

Fans attending the game this weekend can expect the same kind of intrusive procedures they might endure at an airport, including passing through magnetometers and TSA-like pat-downs.

Small bags will be searched and jackets will be X-rayed, reports the Kansas City Star. A large number of items will not be allowed in the stadium, including camcorders, tripods, camera cases, binocular cases, umbrellas, strollers, grills, tents, poles, sticks, banners, noisemakers, horns, beach balls, Frisbees, laser lights and pointers, containers of any type, coolers of any size, backpacks, bottles, cans, and hairspray.

Such in-your-face control is instrumental to the effort by the government to get us to accept ever increasing intrusive behavior by brutish police goons and other authorities. It is part of an ongoing effort to convince you that the dictates of the state and its phony war on manufactured terrorism negate your private space and personal liberty.

Team vehicles will have have RFID credentials and will be tracked in real-time. Frank Supovitz, NFL senior vice president, told reporters in Texas his organization will use GPS to track cars, limos, and buses that will be carrying teams, officials, and VIPs. Credentials will be checked against a database pre-loaded with names and photos.

Jones said the stadium has perches for snipers. Video cameras will record every inch of the stadium. During the game the airspace for a 30-mile radius over the stadium will be restricted and patrolled by NORAD fighter jets.




Private-public relationships. Mussolini defined such arrangements as fascism.

Bomb-sniffing dogs, gun-toting police and cops trained to detect suspicious behavior are part of the TSA teams already deployed on the region’s DART transit system, according to CNN.

National Nuclear Security Administration teams will move through Arlington with equipment to detect radioactive isotopes of the sort emitted by a dirty bomb. Debbie Wilber of the NNSA said the administration’s sensors picked up 10 hits at the 2010 Super Bowl. It turned out the hits had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or Muslims who hate us for our freedom to watch football – they were the result of nuclear medicine.

“We have 10 bomb squads and federal agencies involved in this endeavor,” Stephen Lea, assistant fire marshal with the Arlington Fire Department, told Discovery News.

The government has gone over the top in its effort to exploit the Super Bowl and use it as a showcase for its emerging police state – additional resources that will be available include: chemical and biological detection devices, bomb-retrieving robots, high-tech weaponry, and even a small unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a camera capable of flying inside the stadium.

The bomb-retrieving robots are made by the Northrup Grumman robotics company Remotec. One of the robots, known as the Andros F5, is sturdy enough to pull a trailer hitch and is studded with with cameras, microphones and two-way communication.

There will be huge Big Brother telescreens at the game displaying DHS propaganda. Government PSAs are also now prominently displayed at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and on the local DART transit system.

In its story on Big Sis and the Super Bowl, CNN mentioned the Tucson shooting and a string of absurd homegrown terror incidents provocateured by the FBI. These sensationalistic events are crucial to the propaganda campaign designed to get us accustomed to ever increasing intrusions by the state and sell us on the ridiculous idea that al-Qaeda will strike at any moment.

The DHS “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign is the centerpiece of the latest push to turn America into a high-tech police and Stasi snoop state.

From the DHS press release cited above:

Over the past six months, DHS has worked with its federal, state, local and private sector partners, as well as the Department of Justice, to expand the “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign and the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative—an administration effort to train state and local law enforcement to recognize behaviors and indicators related to terrorism, crime and other threats; standardize how those observations are documented and analyzed; and expand and enhance the sharing of those reports with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and DHS—to communities throughout the country. The “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign has recently been launched in Minnesota and New Jersey, as well as to more than 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, Walmart, Mall of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country.

Last month we reported on the DHS effort to convert Walt-marts around the country into Stasi snoop zones. As noted above, the DHS plans to expand this program to Mall of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, the sports and general aviation industries.

Jesse Ventura Sues TSA for Unlawful Sexual Assault

Jesse Ventura Sues TSA
By: Mark Albert  01/24/2011 KSTP.com 

Former governor Jesse Ventura never shied away from a battle during his term as Minnesota's chief executive.

Now, as a "television performer," as he describes himself in a new lawsuit, the former pro-wrestler is trying to launch a legal smackdown against the agencies that are supposed to protect the flying public.

In a complaint filed Monday morning in the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, Ventura is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its secretary, Janet Napolitano, as well as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and its administrator, John Pistole.

Ventura accuses the agencies of violating his "basic rights to privacy and dignity, and his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures," after he received a pat-down by a TSA agent at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in November 2010.

Ventura, who said he has a titanium implant after hip replacement surgery in 2008, alleges the pat-down included "warrantless, non-suspicion-based offensive touching, gripping and rubbing of the genital and other sensitive areas of his body," which, the lawsuit contends, met "the definition for an unlawful sexual assault."

Ventura's Minneapolis-based attorney, David Olsen, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS this afternoon, "The security procedures are going too far. There's a line somewhere and he believes that line has been crossed."

Olsen said Ventura no longer flies on commercial aviation because he is unwilling to submit to either a pat-down or a full-body scan, putting his job as host of cable television's Conspiracy Theory show, in jeopardy.

"He's made a decision that someone needs to make a stand and he's not one to back down from a fight," said Olsen. "He sees the erosion of civil liberties here and he's willing to stand up not only for himself, but for others."

A TSA spokesperson said the agency "does not comment on pending litigation."

On its website, the TSA says "Pat-downs are one important tool to help TSA detect hidden and dangerous items such as explosives."

A message left at the DHS in Washington, D.C. was not immediately returned.

In 2001, in the days after the September 11th terrorist attacks, then-Governor Ventura said increased scrutiny would be acceptable.

"We're at war and we're at war inside our own country," Ventura said on Sept. 27, 2001, "something we've never seen or heard of before inside the United States of America. I don't think you can be too careful and people are just going to have to accept a little bit of inconvenience."

Homeland Security Encourages Americans to Spy and Report on Their Neighbors

The federal government's new anti-terrorism program promotes spying and incites fear among ordinary citizens.
By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting
January 10, 2011

Urging everyday Americans to report suspicious activity they believe could be linked to terrorism remains a leading priority for Barack Obama’s homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano. Bridge workers, shopping retailers, hoteliers, garbage collectors, patrol officers and your next-door neighbor have all been encouraged to notify authorities if they witness something out of the ordinary.

The program is rolling out state by state, and local police as well as private businesses like Minnesota’s Mall of America are joining in the campaign to help officials compile evidence of possible terrorism in databases and analyze it as intelligence for leads.

An earnest-looking Napolitano appeared in a “see something, say something” public-service announcement at the height of the holiday season that aired near checkout stands for Walmart shoppers as they waited to ring up cartloads of plastic goodness. Some Internet commentators jeered, calling Napolitano “Big Sister” and Walmart shoppers something worse. The video may have done more to spark a debate about suspicious activity than anything else so far.

One issue is that “out of the ordinary” remains elusive. As the program grows, it’s difficult to imagine citizen surveillance won’t suffer from the same disapproval that befell similar Bush-era plans, like the now-defunct Operation TIPS, which enlisted utility employees, long-haul truckers and postal workers to keep an eye out for bad guys.

CNN’s Candy Crowley offered a typical response to the resurrected initiative last month while interviewing Napolitano: “It just sounds very Big Brother to me, turning in the next-door neighbor.” Americans may believe they’re already responsible enough to report conduct that seems truly out of the ordinary, and arguably, few would neglect to speak up if their neighbor was burying C4 in the front yard.

On the other hand, security experts told Congressional Quarterly recently that the Homeland Security Department is simply doing its job by conditioning Americans in an age of peril to both be aware of threatening behavior and report it. Americans are freedom-loving enough not to spy needlessly, one of them said. Added Rich Cooper of the security consulting firm Catalyst Partners:

The department will always be in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation when it comes to information. People need to get a life and take a look at the proactive piece of this. They’re looking for a conspiracy where none exists.

Two new documents required for some government intel systems became publicly available just in recent weeks and provide fresh though slim details about what actually happens after police and civilians alert the government to suspicious activity. According to the first, a desk officer at the DHS National Operations Center receives a tip that, say, someone was observed snapping photographs or drawing sketches of a government building or chemical manufacturing facility.

The officer then determines if it’s “credible” and “possibly linked to terrorism and/or criminal behavior” before writing up what’s called a “patriot report.” These patriot reports can contain rich details about an individual “engaged in and/or connected to the suspicious activity” – name, gender, age, race, ethnicity, Social Security number, driver’s license number, birth date and distinguishing features. Anything’s conceivable, even a “reliability rating of the informational source,” presumably for indicating the trustworthiness of your neighbor or local beat officer who reported the suspicious activity.

From there, patriot reports flow outward to other DHS personnel, the FBI’s own 24-hour counterterrorism center and the dozens of state and local fusion centers constructed since Sept. 11 for swapping and analyzing terrorism data.

But what happens if authorities discover there is no credible threat? A second document says the government could hold at least some records anyway:

There is a privacy risk that records containing [personally identifiable information, e.g. birthdates] collected under the SAR initiative will be deemed to not qualify as suspicious activities after further investigation and analysis but will be retained in the system.

Much of the contact police have with the public is governed by legal concepts like “probable cause” and “reasonable suspicion” that require evidence of a crime. Suspicious activity isn’t a new legal phenomenon, but it has created a new, potentially vast stream of intelligence and sensitive personal information for the government to collect without absolute clarity about what should be considered genuinely suspicious.

By Jan. 3, Congressional Quarterly had decided that “unexpected opposition” was growing due to criticism that the federal government’s suspicious activity program “promotes spying and incites fear.” “Backlash,” as the headline described it, is probably an overstatement. Few Americans are even aware of the program’s breadth to begin with, but the Washington news service did point to online reaction over Napolitano’s video appearance at hundreds of Walmart stores.

There are other nagging questions in the meantime. Florida generated thousands of suspicious activity reports for a pilot program, but how many of them could confidently be linked to terrorism or crime? A Los Angeles police commander told Congress in 2009 that of 1,400 reports there, four led to arrests with no indication of whether they were connected to terror. Will data systems and intelligence analysts become overwhelmed by the deluge of new and not-always-reliable information? For now, Uncle Sam and his sister want you to keep an eye out.

Privacy fears 'should not hamper airport security'...What? Really?

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says Human Rights Come After Security
Jun 1, 2010

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told an aviation conference in Abu Dhabi Tuesday that concerns over privacy should not hamper cooperation on airport security.
"I want to stress, I am respectful and cognizant of the privacy concerns," she told participants in the Regional Civil Aviation Security Conference, referring to protests against a US drive to use full body X-ray scans at airports.

"Respect for privacy is a value we share. But all countries have unique legal traditions, cultural differences, and political realities.

"I believe that we should not allow these differences to keep us from working toward a common goal and a deep and stronger partnership with respect to security and privacy," she said.

The move to introduce body scanners was made following the December 25 botched attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound US airliner after the alleged assailant, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, managed to pass airport security checks in Lagos and Amsterdam.

But civil liberties groups and Muslim groups have protested the move, because the body scanners provide full-body imaging.

Napolitano, who arrived in the United Arab Emirates from Saudi Arabia, said that technology advancement should be fully used against security threats.

"To effectively maintain the initiative in fighting terrorism and crime, we must also effectively utilise the intellect of our scientific community to pursue our common cause," she said.

"The December 25 attempted attack illustrated our adversaries' ingenuity and planning. This new bomb could not be detected by old technology," she added.

But she said that producers of the body scanners are already working on developing new machines that take privacy into consideration.

"Companies are devising imaging machines that can detect the kind of explosives hidden on the December 25 bomber but that can also protect privacy," she said.