Rise of the Nanny Police State: Town Governments Across the US Ban Sledding

By John Vibes

Dubuque, Iowa ? Local politicians in cities and towns across America have implemented laws that will ban children from sledding.

Town officials in Dubuque, Iowa for example, have banned sledding in 48 of its 50 parks because they fear that children will get hurt and that their parents could sue the city.

?We have all kinds of parks that have hills on them. We can?t manage the risk at all of those places,? Marie Ware, Dubuque?s leisure services manager told reporters.

"Everybody likes sledding, OK? Everyone wants to promote outdoor activities, and we want people to be active. But everyone knows sledding is a risky activity, we want to manage that risk," she added.

In other cities such as Des Moines, Iowa; Montville, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Columbia City, Indiana, the local governments have not entirely banned sledding, but instead posted signs warning people that they are sledding at their own risk. This approach gives some level of legal protection to the city if someone happens to get hurt, without enacting an all out ban.

In places where these bans have been put into place, many children and family?s have ignored the laws and engaged in civil disobedience. Town officials said that fines are expected for repeat offenders.

It is only a matter of time before the first arrests are made of those ?rebel children? who dare to have fun outdoors.

The natural tendency of the state to control every aspect of our lives is constantly on the rise.?The message from the state is clear, either you keep your kids locked up in the house or you very well may be the one locked up.

Children's book author, Kari Anne Roy, received an unexpected visit from Child Protective Services (CPS) and the Austin Police Department last year. She was being investigated for allowing her son Isaac, 6, to play outside unsupervised.

In June of last year,?Jeffrey Williamson?s 8-year-old son skipped church to play in the neighborhood. Williamson was subsequently arrested for child endangerment after a neighbor called the police to report an unsupervised child on the loose.

Also last year, there was the case of?5-year-old Eric Lopez, who was charged with sexual misconduct after he decided to drop his pants on the playground.

_
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he is also the owner of a successful music promotion company. In 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled "Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance" at bookpatch.com.

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.0"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

Latest Tyranny/Police State
- NYPD 'Slowdown' Saves Taxpayers $10M A Week In Parking Ticket Fines
- NJ Man Arrested for Refusing to Hand Over Camera as "Evidence" After Cop Veers Off Road
- Police in the US Kill Citizens at Over 70 Times the Rate of Other First-World Nations
- Cop Arrested for His Violent Behavior to be Reinstated Despite the Department Not Wanting Him
- Extended Video Shows Aftermath of Tamir Rice Shooting; Cops Gave No Aid, Restrained Sister
- Cop Trying to Kill the Family Dog, Kills Woman Instead, In Front of her Husband and 4-year-old Son
- New York Family Left Homeless After Police Rip Down Walls to Serve DWI Warrant
- How Lithuanian Cops React to a Drunk, Aggressive American Girl

I'm not sure it's the government bureaucracy to blame.

"Town officials in Dubuque, Iowa for example, have banned sledding in 48 of its 50 parks because they fear that children will get hurt and that their parents could sue the city."

It's quite likely that this step was made not out of blue, but exactly because there were parents who did sue the city.

Same as when there's yet another incident of an overboard zero-tolerance at yet another school, it may also very well be in response to the paranoia expressed by the parents, and this zero tolerance is exactly what they demanded. Quite likely the same mother who today is crying that her angel was arrested for even mentioning a gun, is the one who only yesterday adamantly demanded exactly that, to "protect" said angel.

I don't need to reach very far for examples - my own spouse is an exhibit #1.

This has nothing to do with 'Nanny-State', it is full-blown fascism .
Sadly, it is what often happens when you give 'The Little Man' any power -
He abuses it to impose whatever twisted idea he may have on people he should have no power ever in the first place . Having grown up in Iowa, I can tell you that there's not much else for kids to do in the winter. They say Dubuque has 50 parks, but I would wager that maybe 5 of them have hills big enough for sledding. I guess there's always Meth..... LOL! No doubt there is plenty of meth! :D Allegheny County, PA had a place called "Sunny Slopes" in South Park. It was a big half-funnel with hay bales at the bottom. Teen agers and some adults would go there at night, get a fire in a tash barrel or two and then we'd ride sleds and inner tubes to the bottom. Great fun for most of the night. They closed Sunny Slopes to sledding about thirty years ago.
Pass any play area and look for "see-saws." They aren't there anymore. Yet the road signs advising of a play area show a see-saw. What irony.
WE are gong to immobilize our selves in this country. Whew, Just had Crazed Suits and Tie Mob gnawing at my Cars Tires coming home from purchasing Bird Food. Must have been Local Politicians. Crikey, Cigs but no Lighter. Dayum am afraid to go back out.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the DMCA and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
About Us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy

View the original article here

FBI begins installation of $1 billion face recognition system across America

Follow @infolibnews!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src='//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,'script','twitter-wjs');
by RT

Birthmarks, be damned: the FBI has officially started rolling out a state-of-the-art face recognition project that will assist in their effort to accumulate and archive information about each and every American at a cost of a billion dollars.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reached a milestone in the development of their Next Generation Identification (NGI) program and is now implementing the intelligence database in unidentified locales across the country, New Scientist reports in an article this week. The FBI first outlined the project back in 2005, explaining to the Justice Department in an August 2006 document (.pdf) that their new system will eventually serve as an upgrade to the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across America .

"The NGI Program is a compilation of initiatives that will either improve or expand existing biometric identification services," its administrator explained to the Department of Justice at the time, adding that? the project, "will accommodate increased information processing and sharing demands in support of anti-terrorism."

"The NGI Program Office mission is to reduce terrorist and criminal activities by improving and expanding biometric identification and criminal history information services through research, evaluation and implementation of advanced technology within the IAFIS environment."

The agency insists, "As a result of the NGI initiatives, the FBI will be able to provide services to enhance interoperability between stakeholders at all levels of government, including local, state, federal, and international partners." In doing as such, though, the government is now going ahead with linking a database of images and personally identifiable information of anyone in their records with departments around the world thanks to technology that makes fingerprint tracking seem like kids' stuff.

According to their 2006 report, the NGI program utilizes "specialized requirements in the Latent Services, Facial Recognition and Multi-modal Biometrics areas" that "will allow the FnewBI to establish a terrorist fingerprint identification system that is compatible with other systems; increase the accessibility and number of the IAFIS terrorist fingerprint records; and provide latent palm print search capabilities."

Is that just all, though? During a 2010 presentation (.pdf) made by the FBI's Biometric Center of Intelligence, the agency identified why facial recognition technology needs to be embraced. Specifically, the FBI said that the technology could be used for "Identifying subjects in public datasets," as well as "conducting automated surveillance at lookout locations" and "tracking subject movements," meaning NGI is more than just a database of mug shots mixed up with fingerprints -- the FBI has admitted that this their intent with the technology surpasses just searching for criminals but includes spectacular surveillance capabilities. Together, it's a system unheard of outside of science fiction.

New Scientist reports that a 2010 study found technology used by NGI to be accurate in picking out suspects from a pool of 1.6 million mug shots 92 percent of the time. The system was tested on a trial basis in the state of Michigan earlier this year, and has already been cleared for pilot runs in Washington, Florida and North Carolina. Now according to this week's New Scientist report, the full rollout of the program has begun and the FBI expects its intelligence infrastructure to be in place across the United States by 2014.

In 2008, the FBI announced that it awarded Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, one of the Defense Department's most favored contractors, with the authorization to design, develop, test and deploy the NGI System. Thomas E. Bush III, the former FBI agent who helped develop the NGI's system requirements, tells NextGov.com, "The idea was to be able to plug and play with these identifiers and biometrics." With those items being collected without much oversight being admitted, though, putting the personal facts pertaining to millions of Americans into the hands of some playful Pentagon staffers only begins to open up civil liberties issues.

Jim Harper, director of information policy at the Cato Institute, adds to NextGov that investigators pair facial recognition technology with publically available social networks in order to build bigger profiles. Facial recognition "is more accurate with a Google or a Facebook, because they will have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen pictures of an individual, whereas I imagine the FBI has one or two mug shots," he says. When these files are then fed to law enforcement agencies on local, federal and international levels, intelligence databases that include everything from close-ups of eyeballs and irises to online interests could be shared among offices.

The FBI expects the NGI system to include as many as 14 million photographs by the time the project is in full swing in only two years, but the pace of technology and the new connections constantly created by law enforcement agencies could allow for a database that dwarfs that estimate. As RT reported earlier this week, the city of Los Angeles now considers photography in public space "suspicious," and authorizes LAPD officers to file reports if they have reason to believe a suspect is up to no good. Those reports, which may not necessarily involve any arrests, crimes, charges or even interviews with the suspect, can then be filed, analyzed, stored and shared with federal and local agencies connected across the country to massive data fusion centers. Similarly, live video transmissions from thousands of surveillance cameras across the country are believed to be sent to the same fusion centers as part of TrapWire, a global eye-in-the-sky endeavor that RT first exposed earlier this year.

"Facial recognition creates acute privacy concerns that fingerprints do not," US Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) told the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law earlier this year. "Once someone has your faceprint, they can get your name, they can find your social networking account and they can find and track you in the street, in the stores you visit, the government buildings you enter, and the photos your friends post online."

In his own testimony, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Alessandro Acquisti said to Sen. Franken, "the convergence of face recognition, online social networks and data mining has made it possible to use publicly available data and inexpensive technologies to produce sensitive inferences merely starting from an anonymous face."

"Face recognition, like other information technologies, can be source of both benefits and costs to society and its individual members," Prof. Acquisti added. "However, the combination of face recognition, social networks data and data mining can significant undermine our current notions and expectations of privacy and anonymity."

With the latest report suggesting the NGI program is now a reality in America, though, it might be too late to try and keep the FBI from interfering with seemingly every aspect of life in the US, both private and public. As of July 18, 2012, the FBI reports, "The NGI program ... is on scope, on schedule, on cost, and 60 percent deployed."

(function(d, s, id) {var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if (d.getElementById(id)) return;js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));

Latest Big Brother/Orwellian
- House Approves Rep. Lamar Smith's Bill To Keep Spying On Americans
- 16-Year-Old Questioned by FBI Over YouTube Video
- Court To Twitter: No Time For Appeal, Hand Over Info Or You're In Contempt
- New Results From Our Nationwide Cell Phone Tracking Records Requests
- Man Investigated By Police For Buying Ammunition
- Google Adds Pirate Bay Domains to Censorship List
- The Prisons We Call "Airports"
- Hackers Get Personal Info On 12-Million Apple Users... From An FBI Laptop

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
About Us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy

View the original article here

DEA Sweeps Across Western Washington With Dispensary Raids

By Steve Elliott

Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided medical marijuana collectives in Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Puyallup, Rochester, and Lacey, Washington, as a coordinated raid swept across the Puget Sound region on Tuesday.

Patient advocates and legal defense groups report that at least nine dispensaries have been raided, according to The Seattle Times. Ben Livingston of the patient advocacy group Cannabis Defense Coalition said he's spoken with several dispensary owners and defense attorney Aaron Pelley, who confirmed raids were occurring.

"I'm in shock because now I have no pain medicine," said patient Cameron Christenson outside of Seattle Cannabis Co-op on Rainer Avenue, reports David Rose at Q13 Fox News. "I can think of 100 crack houses in town -- why don't you go raid those?"

"It means people are going to have to go back out on the street and you don't know what you're getting," Christenson said. "It's going to be a nightmare."

Read More

Latest Tyranny/Police State
- UC Davis Campus Police Pepper Spray Student Protesters Sitting Doing Nothing
- Woman Places Sign On Her Car Stating Police Do Not "Protect and Serve," Police Respond By Arresting Her For Crimes She Did Not Commit
- Protect and Serve: NY Cops Violently Drag Woman By Her Hair
- Video Released: Oakland Police Strike Army Ranger With Nightsticks On His Back, Ribs, Shoulders and Hands, Lacerating His Spleen and Causing Internal Bleeding
- "What can you offer to get out of a DUI?" -- Cop solicits women he pulled over
- Dash-Cam Video Shows Sam Houston State Police Beating Student
- Two cops fired over horrific video which shows them beating up suspect - then CELEBRATING
- Cop Gets 25 Years for Murdering Bar Owner Who Threw Him Out

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
About Us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

View the original article here