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George Zimmerman May Head Back to Court to Face Molestation Charges [LISTEN]
ByBlackAmericaWeb.com staff
A woman allegedly related to George Zimmerman and his family told investigators that members of Zimmerman’s family were boastfully proud racists and that Zimmerman sexually molested her for several years.
“It started when I was six,” the woman told investigators in 2012. “We’d all lay in front of the TV and we had pillows and blankets and he would reach under the blankets and try to do things and I would try to push him off but he was bigger and stronger and older,” the woman said, audibly weeping in the Florida State Attorney’s Office interview recording released Monday.
“It was in front of everybody and I don’t know how I didn’t say anything, I just didn’t know any better.”
Listen to the Cousin’s Audio Testimony Below!
A number of news sources have reported that the woman is a relative of the Zimmerman family, though her exact relationship to Zimmerman was redacted from the interview recording. Zimmerman’s legal team, in a statement released in 2011, identified the woman as a cousin.
“We've known about this since the beginning but out of respect to her privacy, her emotional state, we haven’t said anything,” Natalie Jackson, an attorney for the family of victim Trayvon Martin, told The Huffington Post.
The woman told investigators that she was coming forward because she thought that Zimmerman might have shot and killed Martin because he was black.
“This is the first time in my life that I’m not afraid of him,” the woman said. “[H]e cant get to me. If I saw him on the street or saw him anywhere it would just make me break down in tears, but now with everything going on I know that he’s not going to be out in public. I won’t go to Target and see him anymore. I’m not afraid of him anymore.”
The witness claims that Zimmerman has also abused one other female, who has yet to come forward.
Zimmerman’s defense attorney, Mark O’Mara, argued that witness 9’s statements were irrelevant to the Trayvon Martin case. Some of the racial implications made by the witness, he said, could likely cause “widespread hostile publicity.”
“I was afraid that he may have done something because the kid was black,” the witness told investigators. “Because growing up they've always made, him and his family have always made statements that they don’t like black people if they don’t act like white people. They like black people if they act white and other than that, they talk a lot of bad things about black people.”
Obama Files Federal Charges Against George Zimmerman Following Acquittal in Shooting Murder of Trayvon Martin
Posted about 1 hour ago |
Just when we thought the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case was over after Zimmerman’s acquittal, the Obama Administration has taken the steps needed to file federal charges, thus sidestepping the well established double jeopardy, against Zimmerman. Unidentified sources within the Administration have confirmed that Obama, and Justice Eric Holder at the Department of Justice have filed charges against Zimmerman for “violating Trayvon Martin’s civil rights”.
Double jeopardy is an often misunderstood concept in American Law. The rule merely states that an individual cannot be tried twice for the same crime in the SAME COURT. Liberal Justice Department officials often charge Americans with crimes from which they have previously been acquitted by filing federal charges on a similar crime in a federal court.
Comedian Chris Farley look-alike Justice Debra Nelson
At approximately 10:01 pm EST this evening Judge Debra Nelson (pictured right) announced that the all women jury had found Zimmerman not guilty of fatally shooting and killing the 17-year old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL, just over one year ago.
The case has received national attention and nearly wall-to-wall coverage on all mainstream media outlets. While Al Sharpton and the entire staff at MSNBC has advocated heavily for a guilty verdict, we on the right have been praying for an acquittal for Zimmerman who was simply exercising his right to “Stand your Ground” (a Florida statute that apparently allows individuals to follow, track, then attack young Black youth before shooting them dead if feeling at all threatened throughout the process).
Obama has actively used his influence throughout the case (think “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon”). Earlier this week, multiple sources, including Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the entire right wing, has reported on the involvement of the Federal Government in spending millions of dollars in support of anti-Zimmerman protests (race riots). According to Fox News, ” The Community Relations Service (CRS), a unit of DOJ, reported expenses related to its deployment in Sanford to help manage protests between March and April 2012, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.”
Trayvon Martin: Was He Responsible For His Own Death? George Zimmerman: Was He Responsible For Trayvon's Death?
Sometimes in the heat of legal battle the main reason we are on the battlefield becomes clouded in chaos, semantics, and legalities. Lost to many are logic, common sense and even reality. Logic would tell us that the entire tragedy, the Murder of Trayvon Martin would never have occurred had George Zimmerman never followed Trayvon. If this unemployed, wanna-be-cop (who failed to become a police officer) had only stayed in his car instead of following Trayvon whom in error Zimmerman thought was one of those "ass holes who always get away" then Trayvon would not be dead. No one can dispute this because the bottom line is that Mr Zimmerman shot and killed him. It is simply 'Cause and Effect'! Zimmerman's actions, getting out of his vehicle and following Trayvon is why Trayvon was shot. The effect is that Trayvon is now dead! Because Trayvon is no more his family has been tragically and emotionally affected. Subsequently, this nation has been affected. We have once again been thrust under the racism microscope. As well Florida's gun laws have come under scrutiny. I just returned from Florida. I was very close to Sanford and even went there twice while the trial was underway and what I heard from most people black and white was that Zimmerman should go to prison and pay for his crime. These I assume were rational thinking people. George Zimmerman was not a rational thinking man. He should never have had a gun to begin with.
Trayvon Martin's parents want 'justice' for son in Zimmerman trial
NBC News' Kerry Sanders sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Trayvon Martin's parents before the George Zimmerman trial began (Interview was on May 9). Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, saying he shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense.
By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News
The parents of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin say they want to see "justice" in the second-degree murder trial of George Zimmerman.
A month before the trial began, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin told NBC News' Kerry Sanders that they believe their 17-year-old son was doing nothing wrong on Feb. 26, 2012—the night he was shot and killed by Zimmerman, 29, who told police he acted in self-defense.
Martin's parents haven't spoken publicly since testimony began, but on May 9 they sat down with NBC News for an extensive interview that lasted over an hour.
"Justice, to me, would be for the person who killed our son to be held accountable and for all the evidence to come out and for, you know, a jury to hear everything that happened that night of February 26," Fulton said.
"We believe that Trayvon did nothing wrong, that he was just walking from the store," Fulton said, referring to the convenience store the teen had visited before he was observed by Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch coordinator. "He wasn't committing any crime. He wasn't bothering anybody. He was minding his own business."
Lawyers for Zimmerman, who has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, have said their client was attacked by Martin during their encounter and that Zimmerman then fired his gun in self-defense.
Fulton, when asked what was "stolen" from her the night of the fatal shooting, said she lost "a precious gem that cannot be replaced, a life of a child that has so much potential."
"We never said that Trayvon was perfect," Fulton said. "Nobody is. But he was ours. And I don't think you can replace that, you know. I mean, you can have other kids and there's other kids in the world, but it's just nothing like your own."
When asked if he was prepared for the prosecution to attack Trayvon's character during the trial, Tracy Martin said he and his ex-wife knew the "truth" about their son.
"One thing I can say about that is you can't tear apart what we know we built," he said. "You can try to demoralize. You can try to assassinate his character. You can try to make him out to be the baddest kid in the world."
"We know our son," he said. "And we know that's far from the truth."
The defense team during pre-trial proceedings asked a Florida judge to allow the admission of evidence they claimed bolstered their theory that Trayvon Martin was the aggressor in his fatal encounter with Zimmerman, including a suspension from school, prior marijuana use, allegedly incriminating text messages and past fighting.
"Did George Zimmerman know anything about Trayvon's school records? He didn't know anything about Trayvon," Tracy Martin said. "So anything prior to February 26, 7:17(p.m.), to me is totally irrelevant. What matters to me is what happened that night he pulled the trigger."
Tracy Martin said that, should the jury acquit Zimmerman at the conclusion of the trial, "we will still put our faith in God."
"My answer to that would be God is in control. You know, we continue to put our faith in God. And God forbid, if acquittal is handed down, we still put our faith in God, you know, it's out of our hands. There's nothing we can do and we'll continue to pray," he said.
"And we'll continue to be the voice of Trayvon whether there's an acquittal (or) whether it's a guilty verdict."
Editor’s note: George Zimmerman has sued NBC Universal for defamation. The company strongly denies the allegation.
Tempers flare as crowd at courthouse waits for Zimmerman verdict
Casey Kole, center in white shirt, has watched the George Zimmerman case unfold on TV and believes he is innocent. Outside the courthouse on Saturday he talks with a group of Trayvon Martin supporters.(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times / July 13, 2013)
By Molly Hennessy-FiskeThis post has been corrected. See the note below for details.
July 13, 2013, 11:19 a.m.
SANFORD, Fla. -- The white-haired old man waded into the crowd that was shouting “Justice for Trayvon!” in the shade of the courthouse here Saturday, smiling as he murmured, “George Zimmerman is an innocent man.”
Terrie Ann Campbell, 38, who works for the school district in Orlando, looked on from a lawn chair on the courthouse lawn where she had propped up her “Justice 4 Trayvon” sign in the damp grass on what had already become a hot and humid day.
About 50 people gathered in the morning to protest as jurors deliberated the fate of Zimmerman, 29, a neighborhood watch volunteer who identifies himself as Latino and who is charged with second-degree murder in connection with the Feb. 26, 2012, fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman maintains he shot Martin in self-defense after Martin suddenly attacked him in a confrontation on that rainy night in Sanford.
“It was peaceful in the beginning, but it seems like there are certain people out here trying to provoke a reaction,” said Campbell, who is black and was hoping for a guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial that has transfixed the nation.
As the six-woman jury continued their second day of deliberations Saturday, local authorities staffed the emergency operations center and sheriff’s deputies lingered at the edge of the courthouse lawn, where metal barricades had been erected.
“Shouting at each other -- it’s not going to do anything,” Campbell said.
As the white-haired man made his way through the crowd, a chorus of angry voices trailed him.
“Zimmerman’s a killer!”
“He’s a murderer!”
“You’re a racist!”
Eventually, half a dozen protesters surrounded the man with signs, chanting. One of the young women wore a T-shirt that said, “What if it were your son?” They talked about the O.J. Simpson case, one holding a sign that said, “The glove don’t fit.”
They tried to convince the white-haired man that he was wrong, but the man just shook his head.
“He has a right to self-defense,” he said of Zimmerman.
Tempers flared. Voices rose. But no one came to blows.
In the end, the old man walked away to talk to more Martin supporters, including a young black man wearing a T-shirt with Zimmerman’s face in the cross-hairs.
Across the barricade, a few Zimmerman supporters held signs that said “Not guilty” and “Free George.” They did not tangle much with the other group.
The white-haired man, Casey Kole, who is white, wanted to talk to the other side.
Nancy Grace hosted George Zimmerman's friend Frank Taaffe on her Tuesday HLN show but ended up cutting his mic during the interview. Taaffe was sparring with Grace during a discussion on Zimmerman's decision to carry a gun. When Taaffe grew so heated that he did not let Grace speak, the HLN host asked her producer to cut off his mic. Grace then spoke over a silence Taaffe and said, "Yes, everyone has a right to carry a gun but it it's still extraordinary that you think it's so normal that [Zimmerman] carries a loaded gun—with ammo, no safety—to walk his dog." Grace has clashed with Taaffe in the past. He appeared on Grace's show last month, when the HLN host dismissed his defense of Zimmerman.
Conservative Talker Michael Savage’s Theory on Zimmerman Proves Guilt
July 8, 2013
*Given that he’s an ultra conservative talk show host, what Michael Savage has to say about George Zimmerman is a shocker, to say the least.
Last week Savage explained to his audience that Zimmerman’s 911 call and subsequent actions on the night he shot and killed Trayvon Martin are enough evidence to prove that Zimmerman is in fact guilty.
Basically, his analysis is that George Zimmerman’s gun was in a state of readiness and proves that he intended to cause harm and should be found guilty by the jury.
“I’m about to break an analysis that no one yet in the media has done, as you would expect from me — being the senior member of the American media and possibly the most insightful,” a bodacious Savage said.
“White people generally think Zimmerman is innocent, except for liberals who are sure he is guilty; black people probably to the 99th percentile are sure Zimmerman’s a murderer. So where does Michael Savage fit in? I’m an independent observer and I call them as I see them,” the conservative host continued. “I think Zimmerman committed what he’s being charged with: manslaughter. He didn’t intend to kill him, but he may as well have intended to kill him.”
Savage said the fact that Zimmerman’s handgun, a Kel Tec 9mm, had no safety on and a bullet in the chamber meant that he had intentions to shoot someone that night.
“Had he not chambered a round prior to meeting Trayvon, and had he not taken the safety off — even if Trayvon, during the altercation even if Trayvon had tried to grab the gun away from Zimmerman — had that gun not been chambered with a round and safety off, Trayvon Martin would have had to use two hands. You can’t do it with one hand,” Savage asserted.
“Because Zimmerman carried a loaded weapon with the safety off, Trayvon Martin is dead,” he continued. “Therefore, the responsibility is in the hands of Zimmerman.”
One of the last observations Savage gave was that Zimmerman seemed to have uttered a racial slur under his breath during his conversation with the 911 operator.
“And I’m afraid that the fact that he has this racist statement — made this racist statement on the 911 call — and that he was carrying a loaded gun with a bullet in the chamber and the safety off, you have to find this man guilty of second-degree manslaughter is my opinion,” Savage declared. “Something’s wrong with this whole story.”
Listen to the clip below via “The Michael Savage Show”:
Friends say Kemar Brooks was shot while on his way home after playing tennis. (July 6, 2013)
THE BRONX - Police and family members are still searching for answers one year after a Bronx teen was fatally shot in Haffen Park.
Kemar Brooks, 14, was fatally shot in Haffen Park last July. His friends say he was on his way home after playing tennis and no witnesses were nearby when it happened.
Patrick Watts, a friend of Brooks, says police patrols at the park have increased since his friend's death, but nothing has turned up.
A reward of $22,000 is being offered for information leading to the arrest of Brooks' killer.
There has been a lot of discussion in the news media about the fact that the George Zimmerman trial is really a story of white on black (white man with a gun, black victim). It is generally understood by many analysts that the public fascination with the case is really another manifestation of the racial tension and discord that still remains in this country, much as the O.J. Simpson trial was in reverse (black on white) I am not discounting this view entirely but I want to present an alternative perspective. Rather than race, I believe our fascination has more to do with the mystery of not knowing exactly what happened and the almost palpable fear of death that we all sense is at the heart of this story.
One or both men were afraid for their lives. But who was afraid the most? This is in fact the greatest mystery.
Was it Zimmerman, on the bottom of the scrape, having his head pounded, fearing for his life as he maintains, or was it actually the now forever-silent Martin, fearing for his?
As I wrote in "False Alarm; the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear," fear is a great motivator and it captures our negative imagination; we are petrified of losing control, never more so than when it involves the ultimate loss of control, death.
A gun is walking death, but so is the fear of an unknown stranger pummeling you into submission and then going further.
Which story is true in this case?
We may never know. But there are clues.
The striking photographs of an injured Zimmerman has been used at trial to suggest that he was badly beaten, but I must tell you that they don’t look that way to me nor to Dr. Michael Baden, one the top forensic pathologists in the U.S.
I discussed the photos with Dr. Baden and he agreed that the wounds “appear superficial.”
Earlier in my career I treated hundreds of scrapes and cuts like the ones on the back of George Zimmerman’s head at the Bellevue Hospital Emergency Room.
The scalp is very vascular and bleeds easily, making a cut look worse than it is. The same is true for the nose, and the fact that Zimmerman’s was bloodied doesn’t imply that he was hit hard.
The EMTs’ testimony that Zimmerman was able to answer questions at the scene and was able to stand and walk to the squad car and declined to go to the hospital also go against there having been significant injury.
There appears to be a growing body of evidence that George Zimmerman wasn’t badly hurt by Trayvon Martin, which is not the same thing as saying he wasn’t afraid of him.
Of course, it is also possible that Zimmerman’s fear was racially-tinged and was not in keeping with the actual risk that Martin presented.
If there is to be justice in the George Zimmerman trial then fear must be suppressed and the facts allowed to dominate.
Unfortunately, without Trayvon Martin’s side of the story to help guide the jury, this may never happen. If fear runs rampant there will never be a public consensus even if there is a verdict. Dr. Marc Siegel is an associate professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Medical Center. He is a member of the Fox News Medical A Team and author of several books, including "False Alarm; the Truth About the Epidemic of Fear"; He is also the author of "Swine Flu and Bird Flu." His most recent book is The Inner Pulse: Unlocking the Secret Code of Sickness and Health.
One day after The Guardianrevealedthat the U.S. government has been secretly collecting call log data from millions of Verizon customers,The Washington Post reportedThursday that the government’s monitoring of American’s data goes much, much deeper. The FBI and the National Security Agency are mining the servers of the country’s biggest technology companies for the purpose of hunting spies and terrorists. The program, code-named PRISM, is massive in scope and involves web services that many Americans use every day.
To make all this shadowy surveillance easier to digest, here are the relevant data points about the massive data collection:
9 The number of tech companies involved in the PRISM program. Here’s a list, from an NSA slideshow, including the date when monitoring began:
Microsoft (September 2007)
Yahoo (March 2008)
Google (January 2009)
Facebook (June 2009)
PalTalk (December 2009)
YouTube (September 2010)
Skype (February 2011)
AOL (March 2011)
Apple (October 2012)
So far Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo have flatly denied that they provide the government backdoor access to their services, according to avarietyofnews sources. Twitter, which says it has been particularly vigilant in protecting user data from government agencies, is notably absent from the list. Dropbox is next in line to be added to PRISM, according to the Post.
10 The number of different types of data that are collected through PRISM. E-mails, instant messages, videos, photos, stored data (likely items stored on cloud services like Google Drive), voice chats, file transfers, video conferences, log-in times, and social network profile details have all been monitored by the government. Through PRISM NSA officials can even conduct live surveillance of someone doing a Google search, according to the Post.
$20 million The annual cost of PRISM, according to NSA documents obtained by the Post
2007 The year PRISM was established. The Post describes an “exponential growth” in the program since President Obama took office. The government has snooped on other forms of communication in recent years as well. On Thursday, Senator Dianne Feinstein confirmed that the NSA phone log database has been in place for at least seven years.
1,477 The number of times PRISM data was cited in 2012 as part of President Obama’s daily briefing, a high-level intelligence presentation given to the president, the vice president and select cabinet members. According to the Post, at least 1 in 7 intelligence reports from the NSA make use of PRISM data.
51% Confidence level intelligence officials are supposed to have of a target’s “foreignness” to make use of PRISM data. The massive database is aimed at surveilling spies and foreign terrorists, not Americans. However, large amounts of American user data is also picked up as officials hunt for threats. The NSA describes this as “incidental.”
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty ImagesTexas Rep. Lamar Smith (far right) poses with other representatives and President Bush at the signing of an executive order intended to improve agencyinformation disclosure.
Imagine you're shopping at a mall. You browse different stores, make a few purchases and move on. Then, you notice that a man you don't know seems to be following you. You even catch a glimpse of him taking notes on what you're looking at and buying. The entire time you've been shopping, you've been spied on!Many people fear that a similar thing is happening on the Web. They're worried that someone, usually the government, is recording and analyzing their Web browsing activity. They argue that these acts are an invasion of privacy. Are they right to be worried? Can the government keep track of all the Web sites everyone visits, and would it be able to act on that information?
It's easy to understand why some people are worried. The United StatesPatriot Act expands the government's ability to perform searches and install wiretaps. It doesn't seem like a big stretch to add tracking people's Internet activity to the list. These people fear that they'll be spied on whether they've done anything to justify it or not.
In some ways, fear about the government's ability to keep tabs on Web activities has reached the level of aconspiracy theory. In the most extreme version of the theory, the government is tracking not only Web site activity, but also is building a database of potential suspects for crimes ranging from corporate sabotage to terrorism. Other theories don't go that far, but still suggest the government is treating everyone like a suspect -- even if people aren't doing anything illegal or questionable.
How might the government track someone's activities on the Web?
Keeping Track of Web Activity
Internet cookies aren't going to tell the government about everyWeb site you've visited. Some consumer news articles might give you the impression that Internet cookies broadcast everything you do on your computer to every Web site administrator connected to theInternet. The truth isn't quite so frightening.
Internet cookies are small text files that Web sites store to your computer's hard drive -- they aren't computer programs. An Internet cookie gives a unique identifier relevant to a particular Web site to each computer that visits the site. The identifier lets Web sites tailor the browsing experience to your preferences. If you visit an international Web site that's available in many languages, you'd want to read it in a language you know. Using an Internet cookie, the Web site can remember this information. The next time you visit that site, you'll go straight to the appropriate version because the cookie on your hard drive told the site which language you prefer.
If you fill out an online form on a Web site, the site may store that information in the cookie on your hard drive. The personal information can't get into the cookie file unless you choose to provide that information. There's no way for the cookie to search your computer for identification information. In other words, if you're worried about personal information hitting the Web, just don't share it.
A small number of major Web companies provide most of the cookies on the Internet. These companies use the same format for all their cookies, so it's possible for these companies to see when a computer visits different Web sites that use their cookies. For example, Web advertising giant DoubleClick provides cookies for thousands of Web sites. DoubleClick can see if a computer visits different Web sites using their cookies, but it can't see if the computer visits a site that either uses a different Internet cookie or doesn't use cookies at all.
Currently, the U.S. Congress is considering an act that would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain personal data for all its subscribers that the government could then use in investigations. The act is called H.R. 837: Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth (SAFETY) of 2007 [source: GovTrack]. If this becomes law, ISPs will have to save personal information like names, postal addresses and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for all its subscribers. While the government wouldn't be able to track a user's browsing in real time, it could request records from an ISP showing all Internet activities on a particular user's account. People who use public computer accounts (like a computer lab in a public library) would be harder to track.
Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas introduced the bill on Feb. 6, 2007. On March 1, 2007, the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security received the bill for deliberation. As of February 2008, the bill is still in the legislative process.
Government Policy on Internet Tracking
While it's not efficient to try to track a person's Web activities with cookies, it's still a concern for privacy advocates. A governmentWeb page could hire a corporation like DoubleClick to provide Internetcookies. In theory, DoubleClick could search its database to see if the visitor had been to any other Web site that also used DoubleClick cookies. The government could try to gather information about a user by cross-referencing all the DoubleClick cookie sites he or she visits.
Some Internet privacy advocates don't like the idea of a governmental agency keeping information files about Web site visitors. Whether the government intends to use that information for tracking purposes is beside the point. The advocates argue that the government shouldn't keep tabs on people using cookies at all.
It may come as a surprise to conspiracy theorists, but the government more or less agrees with this perspective. In 2003, the White House's Office of Management and Budget issued a memo regarding the federal government's Internet privacy policies. The memo said that all federal government sites must post their privacy policies on an easily accessible Web page. The memo also forbids the use of persistent cookies in most cases. These are Internet cookies that remain on your hard drive even after you close your browser program [source: Office of Management and Budget].
There are some exceptions to the rule. The memo says that a federal government Web site can use persistent cookies if:
There is a "compelling need," although the memo doesn't define what makes a need compelling
The agency provides a clear posting in the privacy policy that alerts the user that the site has persistent cookies
The agency explains in the privacy policy how the information in the cookie will be used
Cookies that expire once the user closes his or her browser program are exempt from these rules. Web bugs, which are images one pixel wide by one pixel tall that have many of the same properties as persistent Internet cookies, are not explicitly addressed, meaning some agencies may consider them exempt.
Despite this memo, several people have reported the use of persistent cookies on governmental Web sites. For example, the New York Times reported in 2005 that the National Security Agency (NSA) used persistent Internet cookies on its Web site that wouldn't expire until 2035. An NSA spokesperson said that the inclusion of the persistent cookies was an accident caused by a software upgrade [source: New York Times].
Bolten, Joshua B. "Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies." Office of Management and Budget. Executive Office of the President. September 26, 2003. http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/text/m03-22.html
Gay, Lance. "White House drug office tracks computer visitors." Scripps Howard News Service. June 20, 2000. http://shns.scripps.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=COOKIES-06-20-00&cat=AN
"Government Cookies Show Up Even When Prohibited." Tech Law Prof Blog. January 6, 2006. http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/tech_law_prof/2006/01/government_cook.html
"H.R. 837: Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act (SAFETY) of 2007." GovTrack.us. Updated January 26, 2008. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-837
McCullagh, Declan and Broache, Anne. "Government Web sites are keeping an eye on you." CNET News. January 5, 2006. http://www.news.com/2100-1028_3-6018702.html
Rankin, Bob. "A Closer Look at Cookies." The Internet Tourbus. http://www.internettourbus.com/cookies.htm
Singel, Ryan. "Are TSA's Tracking Cookies Legal?" Wired. February 14, 2007. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/02/are_tsas_tracki.html
"Spy Agency Removes Illegal Tracking Files." New York Times. December 29, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/national/29cookies.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1203374103-RXeNedoeBrDHiVw/w2avjQ
Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you (and they include 'pork', 'cloud' and 'Mexico')
Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request
Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent
PUBLISHED: 04:32 EST, 26 May 2012 | UPDATED: 12:46 EST, 26 May 2012
The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.
The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as 'attack', 'Al Qaeda', 'terrorism' and 'dirty bomb' alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like 'pork', 'cloud', 'team' and 'Mexico'.
Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.
The words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder' used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'.
Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that 'reflect adversely' on the government. However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.
More... Thanking his drug dealer in his yearbook and inventing the best ways to inhale: Book lifts lid on 'Barry' Obama's marijuana-smoking school days Passengers restrain man on an American flight from Jamaica after 'he tried to rush the cockpit after landing' Undercover US agents brought down our new Superjet: Russia’s extraordinary claim about crash which killed 45 As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts. The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center - a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents. In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as 'broad, vague and ambiguous'. Scroll down for full list
Threat detection: Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats
They point out that it includes 'vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.'
A senior Homeland Security official told the Huffington Post that the manual 'is a starting point, not the endgame' in maintaining situational awareness of natural and man-made threats and denied that the government was monitoring signs of dissent.
However the agency admitted that the language used was vague and in need of updating.
Spokesman Matthew Chandler told website: 'To ensure clarity, as part of ... routine compliance review, DHS will review the language contained in all materials to clearly and accurately convey the parameters and intention of the program.'
