Fox News' Reality Check: Patriot Act Fail

Fox News affiliate reports that the "Patriot" Act hasn't stopped the 42 attacks commonly reported, and that most of the few 'victories' were really failures or simply fabricated by the law enforcement that claims them as victories.

"The majority of cases... were not law enforcement victories, they were simply failed attacks.

For instance, shoe bomber Richard Reid. His shoe bombs simply didn't detonate. The Patriot Act powers didn't stop him from trying."

"It is very difficult to quantify how well the Patriot Act has worked in preventing terror attacks, especially when you find that in many of these plots that were broken up the Feds bated suspects, offered in many cases to buy weapons or explosives, and then once that suspect agreed to take part in the plot, they were arrested."

'Virtual Alabama': Anyone with .edu or .gov Email to have Spying Authority

A new post on Selma Intelligencer by this author details a few of the problems with Alabama's Department of Homeland Security's 'Virtual Alabama' program.

Albama's Department of Homeland Security has an application that allows anyone with a .gov or .edu email address to use the privacy-invading tools the government has implemented to spy on anyone virtually anywhere in the State of Alabama. The 3 minute propaganda video on their website tries to explain how the live video feeds are used for 'keeping our community safer', yet details how the EPA is using Virtual Alabama 'extinsively' to watch what you're doing in your yard (2:40), and that it is used for economic development and other non-safety issues (2:05). This program is clearly being used to spy on the citizens of Alabama.

As troubling as it may be that any government employee with an .edu or .gov email can get the software, that's not the main issue. The ruggedness of the screening process for obtaining an account is unknown. The issue is the privacy of Alabama's citizens, which has been ignored. Even if the screening process to be granted an account is extremely stringent, the ability of users to use this data in a malicious way is far too great.

Political opponents can use this to gain a god-like advantage by tracking every move of their opponents and critics without having to leave a computer. The system has been implemented with cameras in both Selma City Schools (January 2010), and Dallas County Schools (June 2010). This creates a risk for children, as well.

Bottom line: The cameras shouldn't be there in the first place. The realtime surveillance of innocent citizens is the kind of thing you'd expect from a tyrant, not from a free State in the United States of America. This program, even according to it's own promotional video, does very little towards it's professed goal of 'keeping our community safer', and goes a very long way to destroying the very rights that make our State and Country great.

Not mentioned in the article is the fact that Alabama's DHS logo looks like it could have been designed by WWII Germany. Using the Alabama Flag's St. Andrew's cross as the background of a sun circle cross with a DHS shield in the center looks more than a little Nazi-esque. The National Socialists would be MORE than proud to have gotten their hands on technology like this.