The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Police State

Coming Soon to a City Near You

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From aa440 Flickr
The Baltimore Police Department has secretly deployed a privately funded surveillance system using planes and powerful cameras that can continuously record 30-square-mile sections of the city at once. ACLU Attorney David Rocah had this to say.

The surveillance program itself is a privacy nightmare come to life and precisely what we have warned against for years. It’s the equivalent of requiring each of us to wear a GPS tracker whenever we leave our homes, something that would never be tolerated in the physical world.

Read More:

Police Secretly Put Large Part of Baltimore Under Constant Aerial Video Surveillance | American Civil Liberties Union

Baltimore Police Secretly Running Aerial Mass-Surveillance Eye in the Sky | ACLU BLog

Secret Cameras Record Baltimore’s Every Move From Above | Bloomberg Business Week

FBI Expands Domestic Spy Role

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In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The New York Times, the Justice Department has partially declassified a report about the F.B.I.’s involvement in administering the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the FISA Amendments Act. When the report was completed in September 2012, it was entirely classified and the department announced only that it existed.

Read the report here: Justice Department Declassifies 2012 Inspector General Report on FBI Activities Under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – NYTimes.com.

You can also read the Times’ story concerning the report here: F.B.I. is Broadening Surveillance Role, Report Shows – NYTimes.com.

The Assassination of Fred Hampton

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Today marks the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton by the Chicago Police. Five years ago, on the fortieth anniversary, Democracy Now aired a retrospective.

On December 4th, 1969, Chicago police raided Fred Hampton’s apartment, shot and killed him in his bed. He was just twenty-one years old. Black Panther leader Mark Clark was also killed in the raid.

While authorities claimed the Panthers had opened fire on the police who were there to serve a search warrant for weapons, evidence later emerged that told a very different story: that the FBI, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton. Noam Chomsky has called Hampton’s killing “the gravest domestic crime of the Nixon administration.”

See the full report: “The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther” | Democracy Now!.

Articles That Caught My Eye Today

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“DOWN OUTRIGHT MURDER”: A COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE SHOOTING OF MICHAEL BROWN BY DARREN WILSON | Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept

A State-by-State Look at TANF | The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

A generation jeopardized by obsession with testing | Wendy Lecker, The Stamford Advocate

WALL STREET IS TAKING OVER AMERICA’S PENSION PLANS | Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept

The war on giving | Jessica Hansen-Weaver, Socialist Worker

How Police Use Military Tactics to Quash Dissent | Aaron Cantú, Alternet

Wal-Mart’s Bottomless Greed: Dodging Billions in Taxes, Scheming to Avoid Billions More | Steven Rosenfeld, Alyssa Figueroa, Alternet