MLB Prepares New DHS Screening Measures at All Ballparks

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by Mikael Thalen
January 23rd, 2014
Updated 01/23/2014 at 8:00 am

Major League Baseball teams began announcing new metal detection screening measures Tuesday, a mandatory league-wide policy expecting full implementation by 2015.

Using the Boston Marathon bombing as justification, all venues are now required to subject fans to hand-held metal detection sweeps or walk-through magnetometers, a result of the Department of Homeland Security’s encroaching relationship with professional sports leagues.

“This procedure, which results from MLB’s continuing work with the Department of Homeland Security to standardize security practices across the game, will be in addition to bag checks that are now uniform throughout MLB,” baseball spokesman Michael Teevan told the Associated Press.

Following a preliminary test phase at several ballparks, teams such as the Seattle Mariners have announced the implementation of walk-through detectors for the upcoming season, a policy the MLB claims no fan opposes.

“We conducted testing of these measures at the All-Star game and at both World Series venues last year, and we were pleased that it was effective and received without issue from fans,” Teevan said.

Commenting on the new policy in an official press release, Seattle Mariners Security Director Sylvester Servance reassured fans that the screening process was in their best interests.

“The Mariners and Major League Baseball are keenly aware of the current security environment at public events,” Servance said. “We believe this step is necessary, poses minimal inconvenience, and ultimately will serve the best interests of all fans.”

Despite evidence indicating clear foreknowledge, the federal government has continued to use the Boston Marathon as justification for increased police state measures across the board.

Just last year, bags and purses were banned from all National Football League stadiums at the discretion of the DHS. Claiming bombs are likely to be smuggled through items such as seat cushions, fans are now required to carry their possessions in one-gallon clear plastic freezer bags.

Just this week, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced that a low flying helicopter would be used to monitor radiation levels at the upcoming Super Bowl in New Jersey, an over-the-top measure to stop potential “dirty bombs.”

During the 2012 Super Bowl, thousands of stadium vendors were taught how to spot “potential terrorist activities” during a mandated TSA training program. Fans were also subject to full body pat downs, a policy ordered by the DHS in 2011.

While strangling the public’s Fourth Amendment in the name of alleged security, a recent Freedom of Information Act request uncovered documents that confirmed the State Department’s role in allowing members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a known terrorist group, to bypass airport security while traveling through the US in 2012.

Despite bee stings being statistically more dangerous to human life than terrorism, the federal government continues in its attempts to create a paranoid society, always keeping the public’s attention away from the proven historical danger, government itself.

Tags: DHS, featured, latest, MLB, NFL, nsa, secondary

Category: Privacy, US

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MLB Prepares New DHS Screening Measures at All Ballparks

Bloomberg, Watts Team Up to Demand Tougher Gun Control Measures

NewsMax – by Drew MacKenzie

Outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has joined forces with gun control crusader Shannon Watts to urge Congress to enact tougher measures to prevent the spread of illegal firearms.

Bloomberg’s organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Watts’ group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense have combined to create “a nationwide movement” of Americans to put pressure on lawmakers for expanded background checks on all gun purchases.  

In a joint editorial in Politico Magazine, the pair wrote Monday that gun buyers with “something to hide” are turning to unlicensed “private sellers” over the Internet and to gun show dealers who aren’t required to conduct background checks.

“It’s like offering two lines at the airport, one with security and one with none,” the two said about the nation’s background check laws. “Criminals are naturally choosing the latter. And Americans are dying as a result.”

They pointed out that due to the vast power of the gun lobby in Washington it’s “an uphill battle” in closing dangerous loopholes in the background check system and in strengthening gun control enforcement.

“For decades, the gun lobby has had the field to itself, fear-mongering to raise money and sell firearms, and claiming any measure to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is a step on the way to gun confiscation, which is of course nonsense,” Bloomberg and Watts wrote. “Those falsehoods have undermined public safety for generations, allowing millions of innocent Americans to be murdered.”

Mayors Against Illegal Guns was formed in 2006 with a group of 15 mayors creating a bipartisan coalition for more gun control. The organization now has more than 1,000 mayors in its membership and claims 1.5 million supporters.

Moms Demand Action was started by Watts as a grassroots campaign on Facebook on Dec. 15, 2012, a day after the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn. A year later, the group has 130,000 active members and chapters in all 50 states.

“The passion of moms who think every day about the safety of their children, families and neighborhoods helped make the group a prominent voice in the gun debate,” said Bloomberg and Watts. “To get Congress to listen, we must unite supporters from every walk of life. And that is why our two organizations are merging.”

The editorial noted that on average 33 Americans are murdered every day with guns, mostly with illegal firearms. But the two also pointed out that New York has become the nation’s safest big city, with murder rates down to record lows, partially because of a crackdown on illegal guns.

“But 90 percent of guns recovered at New York crime scenes come from out of state, mostly from states that don’t require background checks on all gun purchases,” the two wrote. “Clearly, this is a national problem that requires national action.”

They added, “Combining the legal and policy expertise of mayors with the passion and determination of moms will create a force for change that political leaders will not be able to ignore.”

Bloomberg leaves office on December 31st; Democrat Bill de Blasio will be taking over as the city’s chief executive.

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Bloomberg, Watts Team Up to Demand Tougher Gun Control Measures

Weapons of Last Resort: ECB Considers Extreme Crisis Measures

Spiegel Online
December 5, 2013

The European Central Bank wants to spur lending by banks in Southern Europe, but conventional methods have shown little success so far. On Thursday, ECB officials will consider monetary weapons that were previously considered taboo.

From Mario Drahgi’s perspective, the euro zone has already been split for some time. When the head of the powerful European Central Bank looks at the credit markets within the currency union, he sees two worlds. In one of those worlds, the one in which Germany primarily resides, companies and consumers are able to get credit more cheaply and easily than ever before. In the other, mainly Southern European world, it is extremely difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to get affordable loans. Fears are too high among banks that the debtors will default.

For Draghi and many of his colleagues on the ECB Governing Council, this dichotomy is a nightmare. They want to do everything in their power to make sure that companies in the debt-plagued countries also have access to affordable loans — and thus can bring new growth to the ailing economies.

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This article was posted: Thursday, December 5, 2013 at 1:56 pm

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Weapons of Last Resort: ECB Considers Extreme Crisis Measures

Obama says wants to pass housing reform measures this year

U.S. President Barack Obama waves as he returns from a birthday weekend visit at Camp David to the White House in Washington, August 4, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Reuters: Politics

Obama says wants to pass housing reform measures this year

China takes measures to boost growth

24 July 2013 Last updated at 22:46 ET

China has previously used stimulus measures to help sustain its high growth rate

China has unveiled a series of moves aimed at boosting growth, indicating that policymakers are concerned about the slowdown in its economy.

The steps include tax breaks for small businesses, reduced fees for exporters and opening up of railway construction.

China’s economic growth rate has slowed for two quarters in a row and there are concerns that it may slow further.

But the cabinet said the economy is in a reasonable shape and it was pushing for reforms to stabilise growth.

“The economy is still running in a reasonable range,” the cabinet said.

“We must look at now and beyond to let restructuring and reform play an active role in stabilizing growth.”

Data released earlier this month showed that China’s economic growth slowed in the April to June period.

The world’s second biggest economy grew by 7.5% compared to the previous year, down from 7.7% in the January to March period.

BBC News – Asia

China takes measures to boost growth

Australia Adopts Tough Measures to Curb Asylum Seekers

SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia moved Friday to curtail the record number of people attempting the dangerous boat journey to claim asylum, pledging that no one who arrives in Australia by boat without a visa will ever be granted permission to settle here.

Under the tough new policy, all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat would be sent to a refugee-processing center in nearby Papua New Guinea, which like Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Conventions. If they are found to be genuine refugees, they will be resettled in that country but forfeit any right to asylum in Australia.

Thousands of asylum seekers fly into Indonesia every year, where they pay smugglers to ferry them in often unsafe, overcrowded vessels to Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean that is its nearest point to Indonesia. Accidents at sea have killed more than 600 people since late 2009, and a long-term solution has bedeviled successive Australian governments going back more than a decade.

Mr. Rudd, who is facing a hotly contested federal election within weeks, acknowledged that the policy was harsh and likely to face legal challenges. But he said that something had to be done to protect the lives of asylum seekers and restore the integrity of the country’s borders.

“Australians have had enough of seeing people drowning in the waters to our north,” Mr. Rudd said at a news conference. “Our country has had enough of people smugglers exploiting asylum seekers and seeing them drown on the high seas.”

“As of today asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia,” he said.

No issue looms as large over Australian politics as how do deal with asylum seekers, and the crossings involving fatalities have continued without any sign of abatement. On Wednesday the government announced that a boat carrying around 150 asylum seekers had capsized in the Indian Ocean, killing four people. An infant was killed in a similar accident the previous week.

Under the so-called Pacific Solution of former Prime Minister John Howard a decade ago, asylum seekers were transported to nearby island nations like Papua New Guinea and Nauru for lengthy processing meant to remove the incentive for claiming asylum on Australia’s shores. The policy, which was roundly criticized by human rights advocates, was abandoned when Mr. Rudd became prime minister for the first time in 2007.

But Mr. Rudd’s policy has backfired, leading to an explosion in the number of arrivals from 161 asylum seekers in 2008 to 11,599 in just the first three quarters of 2012-13, the latest period for which official statistics have been published. The majority of arrivals are from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

In 2012, former Prime Minister Julia Gillard effectively revived the Pacific Solution, opening offshore detention centers in Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The number of spots at those two centers, however, was not nearly adequate to hold the steady stream of new arrivals, and Australia is now facing a backlog of some 20,000 people awaiting processing.

Mr. Rudd said that there would be no cap on the number of people who could be sent to Papua New Guinea under the new agreement, but that the policy would be re-examined after one year. It was not immediately clear how much it would cost to build adequate facilities in Papua New Guinea, nor did Mr. Rudd say how much of that cost burden would be shouldered by Australia.

But many have been highly critical of conditions at the Manus Island camp, and the announcement immediately drew the ire of rights groups. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a damning report last month that called conditions there “below international standards for the reception and treatment of asylum-seekers” and warned about the “harsh” living arrangements for men in particular.

“The new plans to resettle all asylum seekers that are found to be refugees in PNG shows not only a complete disregard for asylum seekers but absolute contempt for legal and moral obligations,” Graeme McGregor, Amnesty International Australia’s refugee campaign coordinator, said in a news release.

“Mark this day in history as the day Australia decided to turn its back on the world’s most vulnerable people, closed the door and threw away the key,” he said.

NYT > Global Home

Australia Adopts Tough Measures to Curb Asylum Seekers

Officials say new anti-leak measures set at NSA

A demonstrator wearing a representation of the U.S. flag over his mouth participates in a protest outside the regional office of the presidency in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, July 18, 2013. Demonstrators gathered to show their discontent against the government’s rejection of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden’s asylum application, in early July. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

A demonstrator wearing a representation of the U.S. flag over his mouth participates in a protest outside the regional office of the presidency in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, July 18, 2013. Demonstrators gathered to show their discontent against the government’s rejection of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden’s asylum application, in early July. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

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ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — The National Security Agency is implementing new security measures because of the disclosures by former NSA-systems-analyst-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden, top defense officials said Thursday.

NSA chief Keith Alexander said his agency had implemented a “two-man rule,” under which any system administrator like Snowden could only access or move key information with another administrator present. With some 15,000 sites to fix, Alexander said, it would take time to spread across the whole agency.

“Some of your sites are small … and you only have one system administrator, so you’ve got to address all of those, and we are working our way through it,” he said after speaking to an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Alexander said that server rooms where such data is stored are now locked and require a two-man team to access them — safeguards that he said would be implemented at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies after a pilot program at the NSA.

Snowden leaked to the media information revealing that the NSA was gathering millions of U.S. phone records and intercepting some U.S. Internet traffic.

“This was a failure to defend our own networks,” Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said at the forum.

“In an effort for those in the intelligence community to be able to share with each other, there was an enormous amount of information concentrated in once place. That’s a mistake,” Carter said. “The loading of everything onto a server creates a risk.”

Carter said they are also looking at how to better monitor individuals with access to that kind of information and suggested the Pentagon might monitor intelligence workers just as it monitors staff at nuclear installations.

“When it comes to nuclear weapons, you watch people’s behavior in a special way. We don’t let people all by themselves do anything,” he said. “There is always some aberrant individual and you’ve got to recognize that.”

Alexander said he hoped to more quickly implement a new intelligence sharing system in which all such information uploaded to a server was encrypted, such that only analysts that needed access to certain information would have the code to read it.

Alexander, Carter and National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew Olsen all said the Snowden leaks damaged national security. Olsen said during the forum that al-Qaida and related groups are seeking to change how they communicate to avoid U.S. detection and surveillance because of Snowden’s leaks. Previously, U.S. officials have said anonymously that Snowden’s leaks to the media have been damaging and prompting terrorists to change their ways.

“We have concrete proof that terrorist groups and others are taking action, making changes, and making our job tougher,” Alexander said.

His comments and those of the other officials seemed at odds with testimony only a day earlier by John C. Inglis, the deputy director of the NSA. He told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that while the impact of Snowden’s disclosures can be very harmful, “it’s too soon to tell whether, in fact, adversaries will take great note of the things that he’s disclosed.”

Alexander defended the surveillance and data collection programs Snowden disclosed, one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that monitors U.S.-based Internet servers for foreign terrorist or espionage-related activity.

He told the Aspen audience that the secrecy about how the programs work was needed “not to hide it from you, it’s to hide it from those who walk among you and are trying to kill you.”

Alexander said the congressional intelligence committees were looking at whether it was feasible in terms of cost for the private companies to hold the data themselves instead of handing it over to the NSA. He said it would take an act of Congress to require them to hold the data, and added that he thought his agency could figure out how to process and analyze the information if that’s what Congress deemed necessary.

In a separate development, Alexander and Carter both said the Pentagon is close to launching a 4,000-person cybersquad of both offensive and defensive teams that would both protect Defense Department systems and launch cyberattacks against enemy networks when the White House orders it.

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Officials say new anti-leak measures set at NSA

Philadelphia mayor seeks measures to prevent building collapses

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter on Friday recommended random drug tests for heavy equipment operators and other safeguards as part of a sweeping set of reforms in the wake of this week’s fatal building collapse.

Reuters: Top News

Philadelphia mayor seeks measures to prevent building collapses