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Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and it doesn’t work. Oh, yes, it works nicely for the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, especially if they want to shroud their efforts to influence politics behind shell corporations. It just doesn’t happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a plutocracy.
Citation preview
The Citizens United catastropheBy
1 EJ Dionne Jr
February 5
We have seen the world created bythe
1 Supreme Courtrsquos Citizens Uniteddecision and it doesnrsquot work Ohyes it works nicely for the wealthiestand most powerful people in thecountry especially if they want toshroud their efforts to influencepolitics behind shell corporations Itjust doesnrsquot happen to work if youthink we are a democracy and not aplutocracy
Two years ago Citizens United tore down a centuryrsquos worth of law aimed at reducing the amountof corruption in our electoral system It will go down as one of the most naive decisions everrendered by the court
The strongest case against judicial activism mdash against ldquolegislating from the benchrdquo as formerPresident George W Bush liked to say mdash is that judges are not accountable for the new systemsthey put in place whether by accident or design
The Citizens United justices were not required to think through the practical consequences ofsweeping aside decades of work by legislators going back to the passage of the landmarkTillman Act in 1907 who sought to prevent untoward influence-peddling and indirect bribery
If ever a court majority legislated from thebench (with Bushrsquos own appointees leadingthe way) it was the bunch that voted forCitizens United Did a single justice in themajority even imagine a world of super PACsand phony corporations set up for the solepurpose of disguising a donorrsquos identity Didthey think that a presidential candidacy mightbe kept alive largely through the generosity ofa Las Vegas gambling magnate withimportant financial interests in China Didthey consider that the democratizing gainsmade in the last presidential campaignthrough the rise of small online contributors
might be wiped out by the brute force of millionaires and billionaires determined to have theirway
ldquoThe appearance of influence or access furthermore will not cause the electorate to lose faith inour democracyrdquo Those were Justice Anthony Kennedyrsquos words in his majority opinion How didhe know that Did he consult the electorate Did he think this would be true just because he saidit
Justice John Paul Stevensrsquo observation in his dissent reads far better than Kennedyrsquos in light ofsubsequent events ldquoA democracy cannot function effectivelyrdquo he wrote ldquowhen its constituentmembers believe laws are being bought and soldrdquo
But ascribing an outrageous decision to naiveteacuteis actually the most sympathetic way of looking atwhat the court did in Citizens United A more troubling interpretation is that a conservativemajority knew exactly what it was doing that it set out to remake our political system by fiat inorder to strengthen the hand of corporations and the wealthy Seen this way Citizens United wasan attempt by five justices to push future electoral outcomes in a direction that would entrenchtheir approach to governance
In fact this decision should be seen as part of a larger initiative by moneyed conservatives to rigthe electoral system against their opponents How else to explain conservative legislation instate after state to obstruct access to the ballot by lower-income voters mdash particularly membersof minority groups mdash through voter identification laws shortened voting periods and restrictionson voter registration campaigns
Conservatives are strengthening the hand of the rich at one end of the system and weakening thevoting power of the poor at the other As veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew noted in animportant New York Review of Books article ldquolittle attention is being paid to the fact that oursystem of electing a president is under siegerdquo
Those who doubt that Citizens United (combined with a comatose Federal Election Commission)has created a new political world with broader openings for corruption should consult reports lastweek by Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo in the New York Times and by TW Farnamin The Washington Post Both accounts show how American politics has become a bazaar for thevery wealthy and for increasingly aggressive corporations We might consider having candidateswear corporate logos This would be more honest than pretending that tens of millions in cashwill have no impact on how we will be governed
In the short run Congress should do all it can within the limits of Citizens United to contain thedamage it is causing In the long run we have to hope that a future Supreme Court will overturnthis monstrosity remembering that the first words of our Constitution are ldquoWe the Peoplerdquo notldquoWe the Richrdquo
Ron Paul Warns Of Federal ReservePower Grab
Kurt NimmoInfowarscomFebruary 6 2012
Not only was Obamarsquos appointmentof Richard Cordray to the misnamedConsumer Financial ProtectionBureau (CFPB) unconstitutional butthe newly minted federal leviathanitself is in direct violation ofConstitution specifically the TenthAmendment
Ron Pauls Texas Straight Talk2612 Trust Us Were theGovernment
httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=VmA8zbJTfyY
In January Obama thumbed his nose at Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution It states that thepresident ldquoshall nominate and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate shall appointrdquoofficers to the government
But as Ron Paul notes in the above video the new agency ndash founded under the Federal Reservedominated Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ndash is itself anunconstitutional monster that will further degrade the financial health of the country
Cordray will act as a czar answerable not to the American people but his masters at the FederalReserve Like an EU or Soviet era committee the CFPB will be run by unelected commissarswho will exercise extraordinary power The agency is part of the Federal Reserve and its budgetis not subject to congressional control or oversight
On January 4 the agency began toregulate nonbank servicesincluding debt collection consumerreporting prepaid cards debt reliefservices consumer credit and moneytransmitting check cashing andrelated activities It claims theauthority to supervise any nonbankthat it decides may pose a ldquoriskrdquo toconsumers or engages in ldquounfairdeceptive or abusiverdquo practices
In other words the CFPB will micromanage alarge sector of the economy and punish supposedviolators not based on law but rather suppositionof harm and political priorities
The CFPB is another bankster scam protectedunder the cloak of the Federal Reserve Thefinancial crisis did not result from lack ofregulation over consumer financial products andservices The CFPB is simply another power grabby the bankster cartel masquerading as consumerprotection
ldquoGiving impetus to the CFPBrsquos creation was thepoor reputation of Wall Street banks and financialfirms that developed as a result of the financialcrisisrdquo Paul explains ldquoBanks which receivedtrillions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts turned around and shafted their customers byforeclosing on homes raising credit card interest rates and introducing numerous new feesrdquo
ldquoBut rather than keeping Wall Street in check asits proponents allege the CFPB will end upplacing further restrictions on the ability of MainStreet Americans to engage in productivefinancial endeavorsrdquo he continues ldquoCurrent lawalready allows only the richest Americans toinvest in potentially lucrative ventures such ashedge funds because such investments are deemedto be ldquotoo riskyrdquo for the average American toinvest in The government in its paternalisticwisdom treats American investors as too stupid toknow what to do with their own money andldquoprotectsrdquo them supposedly by keeping thempoorer than they otherwise would be We canexpect even more of this once the CFPB isrunning in full striderdquo
Not surprisingly the establishment media hascompletely ignored this story It is their job tomake sure you donrsquot find out what the CFPB is allabout and demand it be stopped immediately Ifthe government really wanted to protectconsumers it would dismantle the FederalReserve system reintroduce honest money andbreak up the criminal bankster cartel
Wall Streetrsquos Secret Spy Center Runby NYPD Pam Martens
1 CounterpunchFebruary 6 2012
On September 25 2011 just eightdays after the Occupy Wall Streetprotests began in Zuccotti Park inlower Manhattan the muchacclaimed CBS News program60 Minutes aired a fawning lookat the thousands of surveillancecameras affixed to buildings andlampposts throughout New YorkCity The cameras feed liveimages of people going abouttheir everyday lives to a $150million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the dailyhabits of what are for the most part law-abiding Americans
The thrust of the 60 Minutes program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by theNYPD and its Commissioner Raymond Kelly It was a triumph in public relations for a policedepartment about to go on an assault spree ndash pepper spraying and punching peaceful protestorskicking ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrations
On air the reporter Scott Pelley said the surveillance center was ldquohoused in a secret locationrdquoas one would expect of a real counter terrorism program mdash as opposed to a program to simplyquash dissent Mr Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD As it turns out neither of
those assertions were accurate
The New York Times the worldwide news agencyAgence France-Presse (AFP) Wired Magazine theNew York City Council had all previously reportedthe location of the supposedly super secret counterterrorism center on their public web sites 55Broadway in the bowels of the financial districtWhat was a secret about the operation and notreported by 60 Minutes to its viewers despite beingwell aware of the facts is that the center is jointlystaffed and operated by the NYPD along with the
largest Wall Street firms ndash the same firmsunder investigation in 50 states formortgage and foreclosure fraud andwidely credited with causing the Nationrsquoseconomic collapse The Wall Street firmsthat were involuntarily bailed out by the99 are now policing the 99
In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program RobertAnderson he conceded that he was awareof the presence of the Wall Street firms inthe center It would have been hard tomiss them The facility is designed withthree long rows of computerworkstations The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupantsGoldman Sachs Citigroup JPMorganChase etc
You wonrsquot find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any US corporatenews outlet but a foreign news service has them openly displayed ndash a news organizationservicing countries of the former Soviet Union These photos were taken during a large gatheringof reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD As shown in the photos the eventwas hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly Very secretcounter terrorism operation indeed with global reporters and photographers coming and going inboth 2010 and 2011
As we reported in October the surveillance plan became known as the Lower ManhattanSecurity Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security CoordinationCenter It operates round-the-clock with 2000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firmsand other corporations together with approximately 1000 more owned by the NYPD At least700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown
center where all film is integrated for analysis The$150 million of taxpayer money thatrsquos funding thiscorporatepolice spying operation comes from bothcity and Federal sources with the cost rising dailyas more technology is added
Not only is it unprecedented for corporations underserial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowedto spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimaturof the largest police force in the country but thelegality of the operation by the NYPD itself ishighly questionable
During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time850) the following exchange takes place betweenthe reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch the
NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policyand Planning who played a significant role indeveloping the Lower Manhattan SecurityCoordination Center (Tisch is in her earlythirties and did not come up through theranks of counter terrorism or lawenforcement She is the granddaughter andone of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch whobuilt the Loews Corporation Her fatherJames Tisch is the CEO of the LoewsCorporation and was elected by Wall Streetbanks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank ofNew York until 2013 representing thepublicrsquos interest Ms Tisch is apparentlystanding in for the publicrsquos interest in thissurveillance operation rather than publichearings Ms Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself)
Pelley ldquoTisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on adescription ndash a red shirt for examplerdquo
Tisch ldquoAnd I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someonewearing a red shirtrdquo
Pelley ldquoSo the computer looks essentially through all the video finds all of the red shirtsand puts it together for yourdquo
Tisch ldquoVideo canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do yoursquoll now be able to dowith the snap of a fingerrdquo
Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis
Unfortunately electronic surveillance ofindividuals at the snap of a finger is exactlywhat New York State law prohibits NewYork Code Section 70015 requires awarrant for video surveillance and thewarrant is only issuable ldquoUpon probablecause to believe that a particularlydescribed person is committing hascommitted or is about to commit aparticular designated offenserdquo Blanketsurveillance of hundreds of thousands oflaw-abiding citizens with cameras that pantilt and rotate to track individuals to thedoorsteps of their psychiatrist debt
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
might be wiped out by the brute force of millionaires and billionaires determined to have theirway
ldquoThe appearance of influence or access furthermore will not cause the electorate to lose faith inour democracyrdquo Those were Justice Anthony Kennedyrsquos words in his majority opinion How didhe know that Did he consult the electorate Did he think this would be true just because he saidit
Justice John Paul Stevensrsquo observation in his dissent reads far better than Kennedyrsquos in light ofsubsequent events ldquoA democracy cannot function effectivelyrdquo he wrote ldquowhen its constituentmembers believe laws are being bought and soldrdquo
But ascribing an outrageous decision to naiveteacuteis actually the most sympathetic way of looking atwhat the court did in Citizens United A more troubling interpretation is that a conservativemajority knew exactly what it was doing that it set out to remake our political system by fiat inorder to strengthen the hand of corporations and the wealthy Seen this way Citizens United wasan attempt by five justices to push future electoral outcomes in a direction that would entrenchtheir approach to governance
In fact this decision should be seen as part of a larger initiative by moneyed conservatives to rigthe electoral system against their opponents How else to explain conservative legislation instate after state to obstruct access to the ballot by lower-income voters mdash particularly membersof minority groups mdash through voter identification laws shortened voting periods and restrictionson voter registration campaigns
Conservatives are strengthening the hand of the rich at one end of the system and weakening thevoting power of the poor at the other As veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew noted in animportant New York Review of Books article ldquolittle attention is being paid to the fact that oursystem of electing a president is under siegerdquo
Those who doubt that Citizens United (combined with a comatose Federal Election Commission)has created a new political world with broader openings for corruption should consult reports lastweek by Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo in the New York Times and by TW Farnamin The Washington Post Both accounts show how American politics has become a bazaar for thevery wealthy and for increasingly aggressive corporations We might consider having candidateswear corporate logos This would be more honest than pretending that tens of millions in cashwill have no impact on how we will be governed
In the short run Congress should do all it can within the limits of Citizens United to contain thedamage it is causing In the long run we have to hope that a future Supreme Court will overturnthis monstrosity remembering that the first words of our Constitution are ldquoWe the Peoplerdquo notldquoWe the Richrdquo
Ron Paul Warns Of Federal ReservePower Grab
Kurt NimmoInfowarscomFebruary 6 2012
Not only was Obamarsquos appointmentof Richard Cordray to the misnamedConsumer Financial ProtectionBureau (CFPB) unconstitutional butthe newly minted federal leviathanitself is in direct violation ofConstitution specifically the TenthAmendment
Ron Pauls Texas Straight Talk2612 Trust Us Were theGovernment
httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=VmA8zbJTfyY
In January Obama thumbed his nose at Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution It states that thepresident ldquoshall nominate and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate shall appointrdquoofficers to the government
But as Ron Paul notes in the above video the new agency ndash founded under the Federal Reservedominated Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ndash is itself anunconstitutional monster that will further degrade the financial health of the country
Cordray will act as a czar answerable not to the American people but his masters at the FederalReserve Like an EU or Soviet era committee the CFPB will be run by unelected commissarswho will exercise extraordinary power The agency is part of the Federal Reserve and its budgetis not subject to congressional control or oversight
On January 4 the agency began toregulate nonbank servicesincluding debt collection consumerreporting prepaid cards debt reliefservices consumer credit and moneytransmitting check cashing andrelated activities It claims theauthority to supervise any nonbankthat it decides may pose a ldquoriskrdquo toconsumers or engages in ldquounfairdeceptive or abusiverdquo practices
In other words the CFPB will micromanage alarge sector of the economy and punish supposedviolators not based on law but rather suppositionof harm and political priorities
The CFPB is another bankster scam protectedunder the cloak of the Federal Reserve Thefinancial crisis did not result from lack ofregulation over consumer financial products andservices The CFPB is simply another power grabby the bankster cartel masquerading as consumerprotection
ldquoGiving impetus to the CFPBrsquos creation was thepoor reputation of Wall Street banks and financialfirms that developed as a result of the financialcrisisrdquo Paul explains ldquoBanks which receivedtrillions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts turned around and shafted their customers byforeclosing on homes raising credit card interest rates and introducing numerous new feesrdquo
ldquoBut rather than keeping Wall Street in check asits proponents allege the CFPB will end upplacing further restrictions on the ability of MainStreet Americans to engage in productivefinancial endeavorsrdquo he continues ldquoCurrent lawalready allows only the richest Americans toinvest in potentially lucrative ventures such ashedge funds because such investments are deemedto be ldquotoo riskyrdquo for the average American toinvest in The government in its paternalisticwisdom treats American investors as too stupid toknow what to do with their own money andldquoprotectsrdquo them supposedly by keeping thempoorer than they otherwise would be We canexpect even more of this once the CFPB isrunning in full striderdquo
Not surprisingly the establishment media hascompletely ignored this story It is their job tomake sure you donrsquot find out what the CFPB is allabout and demand it be stopped immediately Ifthe government really wanted to protectconsumers it would dismantle the FederalReserve system reintroduce honest money andbreak up the criminal bankster cartel
Wall Streetrsquos Secret Spy Center Runby NYPD Pam Martens
1 CounterpunchFebruary 6 2012
On September 25 2011 just eightdays after the Occupy Wall Streetprotests began in Zuccotti Park inlower Manhattan the muchacclaimed CBS News program60 Minutes aired a fawning lookat the thousands of surveillancecameras affixed to buildings andlampposts throughout New YorkCity The cameras feed liveimages of people going abouttheir everyday lives to a $150million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the dailyhabits of what are for the most part law-abiding Americans
The thrust of the 60 Minutes program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by theNYPD and its Commissioner Raymond Kelly It was a triumph in public relations for a policedepartment about to go on an assault spree ndash pepper spraying and punching peaceful protestorskicking ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrations
On air the reporter Scott Pelley said the surveillance center was ldquohoused in a secret locationrdquoas one would expect of a real counter terrorism program mdash as opposed to a program to simplyquash dissent Mr Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD As it turns out neither of
those assertions were accurate
The New York Times the worldwide news agencyAgence France-Presse (AFP) Wired Magazine theNew York City Council had all previously reportedthe location of the supposedly super secret counterterrorism center on their public web sites 55Broadway in the bowels of the financial districtWhat was a secret about the operation and notreported by 60 Minutes to its viewers despite beingwell aware of the facts is that the center is jointlystaffed and operated by the NYPD along with the
largest Wall Street firms ndash the same firmsunder investigation in 50 states formortgage and foreclosure fraud andwidely credited with causing the Nationrsquoseconomic collapse The Wall Street firmsthat were involuntarily bailed out by the99 are now policing the 99
In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program RobertAnderson he conceded that he was awareof the presence of the Wall Street firms inthe center It would have been hard tomiss them The facility is designed withthree long rows of computerworkstations The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupantsGoldman Sachs Citigroup JPMorganChase etc
You wonrsquot find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any US corporatenews outlet but a foreign news service has them openly displayed ndash a news organizationservicing countries of the former Soviet Union These photos were taken during a large gatheringof reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD As shown in the photos the eventwas hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly Very secretcounter terrorism operation indeed with global reporters and photographers coming and going inboth 2010 and 2011
As we reported in October the surveillance plan became known as the Lower ManhattanSecurity Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security CoordinationCenter It operates round-the-clock with 2000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firmsand other corporations together with approximately 1000 more owned by the NYPD At least700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown
center where all film is integrated for analysis The$150 million of taxpayer money thatrsquos funding thiscorporatepolice spying operation comes from bothcity and Federal sources with the cost rising dailyas more technology is added
Not only is it unprecedented for corporations underserial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowedto spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimaturof the largest police force in the country but thelegality of the operation by the NYPD itself ishighly questionable
During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time850) the following exchange takes place betweenthe reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch the
NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policyand Planning who played a significant role indeveloping the Lower Manhattan SecurityCoordination Center (Tisch is in her earlythirties and did not come up through theranks of counter terrorism or lawenforcement She is the granddaughter andone of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch whobuilt the Loews Corporation Her fatherJames Tisch is the CEO of the LoewsCorporation and was elected by Wall Streetbanks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank ofNew York until 2013 representing thepublicrsquos interest Ms Tisch is apparentlystanding in for the publicrsquos interest in thissurveillance operation rather than publichearings Ms Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself)
Pelley ldquoTisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on adescription ndash a red shirt for examplerdquo
Tisch ldquoAnd I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someonewearing a red shirtrdquo
Pelley ldquoSo the computer looks essentially through all the video finds all of the red shirtsand puts it together for yourdquo
Tisch ldquoVideo canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do yoursquoll now be able to dowith the snap of a fingerrdquo
Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis
Unfortunately electronic surveillance ofindividuals at the snap of a finger is exactlywhat New York State law prohibits NewYork Code Section 70015 requires awarrant for video surveillance and thewarrant is only issuable ldquoUpon probablecause to believe that a particularlydescribed person is committing hascommitted or is about to commit aparticular designated offenserdquo Blanketsurveillance of hundreds of thousands oflaw-abiding citizens with cameras that pantilt and rotate to track individuals to thedoorsteps of their psychiatrist debt
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
Ron Paul Warns Of Federal ReservePower Grab
Kurt NimmoInfowarscomFebruary 6 2012
Not only was Obamarsquos appointmentof Richard Cordray to the misnamedConsumer Financial ProtectionBureau (CFPB) unconstitutional butthe newly minted federal leviathanitself is in direct violation ofConstitution specifically the TenthAmendment
Ron Pauls Texas Straight Talk2612 Trust Us Were theGovernment
httpwwwyoutubecomwatchv=VmA8zbJTfyY
In January Obama thumbed his nose at Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution It states that thepresident ldquoshall nominate and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate shall appointrdquoofficers to the government
But as Ron Paul notes in the above video the new agency ndash founded under the Federal Reservedominated Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ndash is itself anunconstitutional monster that will further degrade the financial health of the country
Cordray will act as a czar answerable not to the American people but his masters at the FederalReserve Like an EU or Soviet era committee the CFPB will be run by unelected commissarswho will exercise extraordinary power The agency is part of the Federal Reserve and its budgetis not subject to congressional control or oversight
On January 4 the agency began toregulate nonbank servicesincluding debt collection consumerreporting prepaid cards debt reliefservices consumer credit and moneytransmitting check cashing andrelated activities It claims theauthority to supervise any nonbankthat it decides may pose a ldquoriskrdquo toconsumers or engages in ldquounfairdeceptive or abusiverdquo practices
In other words the CFPB will micromanage alarge sector of the economy and punish supposedviolators not based on law but rather suppositionof harm and political priorities
The CFPB is another bankster scam protectedunder the cloak of the Federal Reserve Thefinancial crisis did not result from lack ofregulation over consumer financial products andservices The CFPB is simply another power grabby the bankster cartel masquerading as consumerprotection
ldquoGiving impetus to the CFPBrsquos creation was thepoor reputation of Wall Street banks and financialfirms that developed as a result of the financialcrisisrdquo Paul explains ldquoBanks which receivedtrillions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts turned around and shafted their customers byforeclosing on homes raising credit card interest rates and introducing numerous new feesrdquo
ldquoBut rather than keeping Wall Street in check asits proponents allege the CFPB will end upplacing further restrictions on the ability of MainStreet Americans to engage in productivefinancial endeavorsrdquo he continues ldquoCurrent lawalready allows only the richest Americans toinvest in potentially lucrative ventures such ashedge funds because such investments are deemedto be ldquotoo riskyrdquo for the average American toinvest in The government in its paternalisticwisdom treats American investors as too stupid toknow what to do with their own money andldquoprotectsrdquo them supposedly by keeping thempoorer than they otherwise would be We canexpect even more of this once the CFPB isrunning in full striderdquo
Not surprisingly the establishment media hascompletely ignored this story It is their job tomake sure you donrsquot find out what the CFPB is allabout and demand it be stopped immediately Ifthe government really wanted to protectconsumers it would dismantle the FederalReserve system reintroduce honest money andbreak up the criminal bankster cartel
Wall Streetrsquos Secret Spy Center Runby NYPD Pam Martens
1 CounterpunchFebruary 6 2012
On September 25 2011 just eightdays after the Occupy Wall Streetprotests began in Zuccotti Park inlower Manhattan the muchacclaimed CBS News program60 Minutes aired a fawning lookat the thousands of surveillancecameras affixed to buildings andlampposts throughout New YorkCity The cameras feed liveimages of people going abouttheir everyday lives to a $150million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the dailyhabits of what are for the most part law-abiding Americans
The thrust of the 60 Minutes program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by theNYPD and its Commissioner Raymond Kelly It was a triumph in public relations for a policedepartment about to go on an assault spree ndash pepper spraying and punching peaceful protestorskicking ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrations
On air the reporter Scott Pelley said the surveillance center was ldquohoused in a secret locationrdquoas one would expect of a real counter terrorism program mdash as opposed to a program to simplyquash dissent Mr Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD As it turns out neither of
those assertions were accurate
The New York Times the worldwide news agencyAgence France-Presse (AFP) Wired Magazine theNew York City Council had all previously reportedthe location of the supposedly super secret counterterrorism center on their public web sites 55Broadway in the bowels of the financial districtWhat was a secret about the operation and notreported by 60 Minutes to its viewers despite beingwell aware of the facts is that the center is jointlystaffed and operated by the NYPD along with the
largest Wall Street firms ndash the same firmsunder investigation in 50 states formortgage and foreclosure fraud andwidely credited with causing the Nationrsquoseconomic collapse The Wall Street firmsthat were involuntarily bailed out by the99 are now policing the 99
In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program RobertAnderson he conceded that he was awareof the presence of the Wall Street firms inthe center It would have been hard tomiss them The facility is designed withthree long rows of computerworkstations The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupantsGoldman Sachs Citigroup JPMorganChase etc
You wonrsquot find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any US corporatenews outlet but a foreign news service has them openly displayed ndash a news organizationservicing countries of the former Soviet Union These photos were taken during a large gatheringof reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD As shown in the photos the eventwas hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly Very secretcounter terrorism operation indeed with global reporters and photographers coming and going inboth 2010 and 2011
As we reported in October the surveillance plan became known as the Lower ManhattanSecurity Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security CoordinationCenter It operates round-the-clock with 2000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firmsand other corporations together with approximately 1000 more owned by the NYPD At least700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown
center where all film is integrated for analysis The$150 million of taxpayer money thatrsquos funding thiscorporatepolice spying operation comes from bothcity and Federal sources with the cost rising dailyas more technology is added
Not only is it unprecedented for corporations underserial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowedto spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimaturof the largest police force in the country but thelegality of the operation by the NYPD itself ishighly questionable
During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time850) the following exchange takes place betweenthe reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch the
NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policyand Planning who played a significant role indeveloping the Lower Manhattan SecurityCoordination Center (Tisch is in her earlythirties and did not come up through theranks of counter terrorism or lawenforcement She is the granddaughter andone of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch whobuilt the Loews Corporation Her fatherJames Tisch is the CEO of the LoewsCorporation and was elected by Wall Streetbanks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank ofNew York until 2013 representing thepublicrsquos interest Ms Tisch is apparentlystanding in for the publicrsquos interest in thissurveillance operation rather than publichearings Ms Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself)
Pelley ldquoTisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on adescription ndash a red shirt for examplerdquo
Tisch ldquoAnd I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someonewearing a red shirtrdquo
Pelley ldquoSo the computer looks essentially through all the video finds all of the red shirtsand puts it together for yourdquo
Tisch ldquoVideo canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do yoursquoll now be able to dowith the snap of a fingerrdquo
Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis
Unfortunately electronic surveillance ofindividuals at the snap of a finger is exactlywhat New York State law prohibits NewYork Code Section 70015 requires awarrant for video surveillance and thewarrant is only issuable ldquoUpon probablecause to believe that a particularlydescribed person is committing hascommitted or is about to commit aparticular designated offenserdquo Blanketsurveillance of hundreds of thousands oflaw-abiding citizens with cameras that pantilt and rotate to track individuals to thedoorsteps of their psychiatrist debt
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
In other words the CFPB will micromanage alarge sector of the economy and punish supposedviolators not based on law but rather suppositionof harm and political priorities
The CFPB is another bankster scam protectedunder the cloak of the Federal Reserve Thefinancial crisis did not result from lack ofregulation over consumer financial products andservices The CFPB is simply another power grabby the bankster cartel masquerading as consumerprotection
ldquoGiving impetus to the CFPBrsquos creation was thepoor reputation of Wall Street banks and financialfirms that developed as a result of the financialcrisisrdquo Paul explains ldquoBanks which receivedtrillions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts turned around and shafted their customers byforeclosing on homes raising credit card interest rates and introducing numerous new feesrdquo
ldquoBut rather than keeping Wall Street in check asits proponents allege the CFPB will end upplacing further restrictions on the ability of MainStreet Americans to engage in productivefinancial endeavorsrdquo he continues ldquoCurrent lawalready allows only the richest Americans toinvest in potentially lucrative ventures such ashedge funds because such investments are deemedto be ldquotoo riskyrdquo for the average American toinvest in The government in its paternalisticwisdom treats American investors as too stupid toknow what to do with their own money andldquoprotectsrdquo them supposedly by keeping thempoorer than they otherwise would be We canexpect even more of this once the CFPB isrunning in full striderdquo
Not surprisingly the establishment media hascompletely ignored this story It is their job tomake sure you donrsquot find out what the CFPB is allabout and demand it be stopped immediately Ifthe government really wanted to protectconsumers it would dismantle the FederalReserve system reintroduce honest money andbreak up the criminal bankster cartel
Wall Streetrsquos Secret Spy Center Runby NYPD Pam Martens
1 CounterpunchFebruary 6 2012
On September 25 2011 just eightdays after the Occupy Wall Streetprotests began in Zuccotti Park inlower Manhattan the muchacclaimed CBS News program60 Minutes aired a fawning lookat the thousands of surveillancecameras affixed to buildings andlampposts throughout New YorkCity The cameras feed liveimages of people going abouttheir everyday lives to a $150million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the dailyhabits of what are for the most part law-abiding Americans
The thrust of the 60 Minutes program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by theNYPD and its Commissioner Raymond Kelly It was a triumph in public relations for a policedepartment about to go on an assault spree ndash pepper spraying and punching peaceful protestorskicking ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrations
On air the reporter Scott Pelley said the surveillance center was ldquohoused in a secret locationrdquoas one would expect of a real counter terrorism program mdash as opposed to a program to simplyquash dissent Mr Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD As it turns out neither of
those assertions were accurate
The New York Times the worldwide news agencyAgence France-Presse (AFP) Wired Magazine theNew York City Council had all previously reportedthe location of the supposedly super secret counterterrorism center on their public web sites 55Broadway in the bowels of the financial districtWhat was a secret about the operation and notreported by 60 Minutes to its viewers despite beingwell aware of the facts is that the center is jointlystaffed and operated by the NYPD along with the
largest Wall Street firms ndash the same firmsunder investigation in 50 states formortgage and foreclosure fraud andwidely credited with causing the Nationrsquoseconomic collapse The Wall Street firmsthat were involuntarily bailed out by the99 are now policing the 99
In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program RobertAnderson he conceded that he was awareof the presence of the Wall Street firms inthe center It would have been hard tomiss them The facility is designed withthree long rows of computerworkstations The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupantsGoldman Sachs Citigroup JPMorganChase etc
You wonrsquot find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any US corporatenews outlet but a foreign news service has them openly displayed ndash a news organizationservicing countries of the former Soviet Union These photos were taken during a large gatheringof reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD As shown in the photos the eventwas hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly Very secretcounter terrorism operation indeed with global reporters and photographers coming and going inboth 2010 and 2011
As we reported in October the surveillance plan became known as the Lower ManhattanSecurity Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security CoordinationCenter It operates round-the-clock with 2000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firmsand other corporations together with approximately 1000 more owned by the NYPD At least700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown
center where all film is integrated for analysis The$150 million of taxpayer money thatrsquos funding thiscorporatepolice spying operation comes from bothcity and Federal sources with the cost rising dailyas more technology is added
Not only is it unprecedented for corporations underserial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowedto spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimaturof the largest police force in the country but thelegality of the operation by the NYPD itself ishighly questionable
During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time850) the following exchange takes place betweenthe reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch the
NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policyand Planning who played a significant role indeveloping the Lower Manhattan SecurityCoordination Center (Tisch is in her earlythirties and did not come up through theranks of counter terrorism or lawenforcement She is the granddaughter andone of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch whobuilt the Loews Corporation Her fatherJames Tisch is the CEO of the LoewsCorporation and was elected by Wall Streetbanks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank ofNew York until 2013 representing thepublicrsquos interest Ms Tisch is apparentlystanding in for the publicrsquos interest in thissurveillance operation rather than publichearings Ms Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself)
Pelley ldquoTisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on adescription ndash a red shirt for examplerdquo
Tisch ldquoAnd I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someonewearing a red shirtrdquo
Pelley ldquoSo the computer looks essentially through all the video finds all of the red shirtsand puts it together for yourdquo
Tisch ldquoVideo canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do yoursquoll now be able to dowith the snap of a fingerrdquo
Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis
Unfortunately electronic surveillance ofindividuals at the snap of a finger is exactlywhat New York State law prohibits NewYork Code Section 70015 requires awarrant for video surveillance and thewarrant is only issuable ldquoUpon probablecause to believe that a particularlydescribed person is committing hascommitted or is about to commit aparticular designated offenserdquo Blanketsurveillance of hundreds of thousands oflaw-abiding citizens with cameras that pantilt and rotate to track individuals to thedoorsteps of their psychiatrist debt
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
Wall Streetrsquos Secret Spy Center Runby NYPD Pam Martens
1 CounterpunchFebruary 6 2012
On September 25 2011 just eightdays after the Occupy Wall Streetprotests began in Zuccotti Park inlower Manhattan the muchacclaimed CBS News program60 Minutes aired a fawning lookat the thousands of surveillancecameras affixed to buildings andlampposts throughout New YorkCity The cameras feed liveimages of people going abouttheir everyday lives to a $150million computer center equipped with artificial intelligence to integrate and analyze the dailyhabits of what are for the most part law-abiding Americans
The thrust of the 60 Minutes program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by theNYPD and its Commissioner Raymond Kelly It was a triumph in public relations for a policedepartment about to go on an assault spree ndash pepper spraying and punching peaceful protestorskicking ramming and arresting journalists attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrations
On air the reporter Scott Pelley said the surveillance center was ldquohoused in a secret locationrdquoas one would expect of a real counter terrorism program mdash as opposed to a program to simplyquash dissent Mr Pelley also said the program was run by the NYPD As it turns out neither of
those assertions were accurate
The New York Times the worldwide news agencyAgence France-Presse (AFP) Wired Magazine theNew York City Council had all previously reportedthe location of the supposedly super secret counterterrorism center on their public web sites 55Broadway in the bowels of the financial districtWhat was a secret about the operation and notreported by 60 Minutes to its viewers despite beingwell aware of the facts is that the center is jointlystaffed and operated by the NYPD along with the
largest Wall Street firms ndash the same firmsunder investigation in 50 states formortgage and foreclosure fraud andwidely credited with causing the Nationrsquoseconomic collapse The Wall Street firmsthat were involuntarily bailed out by the99 are now policing the 99
In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program RobertAnderson he conceded that he was awareof the presence of the Wall Street firms inthe center It would have been hard tomiss them The facility is designed withthree long rows of computerworkstations The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupantsGoldman Sachs Citigroup JPMorganChase etc
You wonrsquot find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any US corporatenews outlet but a foreign news service has them openly displayed ndash a news organizationservicing countries of the former Soviet Union These photos were taken during a large gatheringof reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD As shown in the photos the eventwas hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly Very secretcounter terrorism operation indeed with global reporters and photographers coming and going inboth 2010 and 2011
As we reported in October the surveillance plan became known as the Lower ManhattanSecurity Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security CoordinationCenter It operates round-the-clock with 2000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firmsand other corporations together with approximately 1000 more owned by the NYPD At least700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown
center where all film is integrated for analysis The$150 million of taxpayer money thatrsquos funding thiscorporatepolice spying operation comes from bothcity and Federal sources with the cost rising dailyas more technology is added
Not only is it unprecedented for corporations underserial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowedto spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimaturof the largest police force in the country but thelegality of the operation by the NYPD itself ishighly questionable
During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time850) the following exchange takes place betweenthe reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch the
NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policyand Planning who played a significant role indeveloping the Lower Manhattan SecurityCoordination Center (Tisch is in her earlythirties and did not come up through theranks of counter terrorism or lawenforcement She is the granddaughter andone of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch whobuilt the Loews Corporation Her fatherJames Tisch is the CEO of the LoewsCorporation and was elected by Wall Streetbanks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank ofNew York until 2013 representing thepublicrsquos interest Ms Tisch is apparentlystanding in for the publicrsquos interest in thissurveillance operation rather than publichearings Ms Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself)
Pelley ldquoTisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on adescription ndash a red shirt for examplerdquo
Tisch ldquoAnd I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someonewearing a red shirtrdquo
Pelley ldquoSo the computer looks essentially through all the video finds all of the red shirtsand puts it together for yourdquo
Tisch ldquoVideo canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do yoursquoll now be able to dowith the snap of a fingerrdquo
Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis
Unfortunately electronic surveillance ofindividuals at the snap of a finger is exactlywhat New York State law prohibits NewYork Code Section 70015 requires awarrant for video surveillance and thewarrant is only issuable ldquoUpon probablecause to believe that a particularlydescribed person is committing hascommitted or is about to commit aparticular designated offenserdquo Blanketsurveillance of hundreds of thousands oflaw-abiding citizens with cameras that pantilt and rotate to track individuals to thedoorsteps of their psychiatrist debt
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
largest Wall Street firms ndash the same firmsunder investigation in 50 states formortgage and foreclosure fraud andwidely credited with causing the Nationrsquoseconomic collapse The Wall Street firmsthat were involuntarily bailed out by the99 are now policing the 99
In a telephone conversation with the co-producer of the program RobertAnderson he conceded that he was awareof the presence of the Wall Street firms inthe center It would have been hard tomiss them The facility is designed withthree long rows of computerworkstations The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupantsGoldman Sachs Citigroup JPMorganChase etc
You wonrsquot find photographs showing these firms in the surveillance center in any US corporatenews outlet but a foreign news service has them openly displayed ndash a news organizationservicing countries of the former Soviet Union These photos were taken during a large gatheringof reporters and photographers at the invitation of the NYPD As shown in the photos the eventwas hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly Very secretcounter terrorism operation indeed with global reporters and photographers coming and going inboth 2010 and 2011
As we reported in October the surveillance plan became known as the Lower ManhattanSecurity Initiative and the facility was dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security CoordinationCenter It operates round-the-clock with 2000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firmsand other corporations together with approximately 1000 more owned by the NYPD At least700 additional cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown
center where all film is integrated for analysis The$150 million of taxpayer money thatrsquos funding thiscorporatepolice spying operation comes from bothcity and Federal sources with the cost rising dailyas more technology is added
Not only is it unprecedented for corporations underserial and ongoing corruption probes to be allowedto spy on law abiding citizens under the imprimaturof the largest police force in the country but thelegality of the operation by the NYPD itself ishighly questionable
During the 60 Minutes program (at elapsed time850) the following exchange takes place betweenthe reporter Scott Pelley and Jessica Tisch the
NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policyand Planning who played a significant role indeveloping the Lower Manhattan SecurityCoordination Center (Tisch is in her earlythirties and did not come up through theranks of counter terrorism or lawenforcement She is the granddaughter andone of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch whobuilt the Loews Corporation Her fatherJames Tisch is the CEO of the LoewsCorporation and was elected by Wall Streetbanks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank ofNew York until 2013 representing thepublicrsquos interest Ms Tisch is apparentlystanding in for the publicrsquos interest in thissurveillance operation rather than publichearings Ms Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself)
Pelley ldquoTisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on adescription ndash a red shirt for examplerdquo
Tisch ldquoAnd I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someonewearing a red shirtrdquo
Pelley ldquoSo the computer looks essentially through all the video finds all of the red shirtsand puts it together for yourdquo
Tisch ldquoVideo canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do yoursquoll now be able to dowith the snap of a fingerrdquo
Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis
Unfortunately electronic surveillance ofindividuals at the snap of a finger is exactlywhat New York State law prohibits NewYork Code Section 70015 requires awarrant for video surveillance and thewarrant is only issuable ldquoUpon probablecause to believe that a particularlydescribed person is committing hascommitted or is about to commit aparticular designated offenserdquo Blanketsurveillance of hundreds of thousands oflaw-abiding citizens with cameras that pantilt and rotate to track individuals to thedoorsteps of their psychiatrist debt
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policyand Planning who played a significant role indeveloping the Lower Manhattan SecurityCoordination Center (Tisch is in her earlythirties and did not come up through theranks of counter terrorism or lawenforcement She is the granddaughter andone of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch whobuilt the Loews Corporation Her fatherJames Tisch is the CEO of the LoewsCorporation and was elected by Wall Streetbanks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank ofNew York until 2013 representing thepublicrsquos interest Ms Tisch is apparentlystanding in for the publicrsquos interest in thissurveillance operation rather than publichearings Ms Tisch drafted the guidelines for the program herself)
Pelley ldquoTisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on adescription ndash a red shirt for examplerdquo
Tisch ldquoAnd I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someonewearing a red shirtrdquo
Pelley ldquoSo the computer looks essentially through all the video finds all of the red shirtsand puts it together for yourdquo
Tisch ldquoVideo canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do yoursquoll now be able to dowith the snap of a fingerrdquo
Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis
Unfortunately electronic surveillance ofindividuals at the snap of a finger is exactlywhat New York State law prohibits NewYork Code Section 70015 requires awarrant for video surveillance and thewarrant is only issuable ldquoUpon probablecause to believe that a particularlydescribed person is committing hascommitted or is about to commit aparticular designated offenserdquo Blanketsurveillance of hundreds of thousands oflaw-abiding citizens with cameras that pantilt and rotate to track individuals to thedoorsteps of their psychiatrist debt
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
counselor Alcoholics Anonymous orprosecutorrsquos office ndash shared withcorporations that employ hundreds ofthousands of these same individuals isbreathtaking in its blatant disregard forprivacy rights
In a letter dated March 26 2009 to PoliceCommissioner Kelly following years ofbeing stonewalled with its Freedom ofInformation Law requests for more details onthe surveillance program the New YorkCivil Liberties Union warned ldquohellipvirtuallyall of the enormous information gathered andmaintained by the system will be aboutpeople engaged in wholly lawfulactivityhellipwe believe this entire enterprise isillegitimate and inappropriatehelliprdquo
In a 2006 formal report on the camera surveillance network the NYCLU noted that ldquoTodayrsquossurveillance camera is not merely the equivalent of a pair of eyes It has super human vision Ithas the capability to zoom in and lsquoreadrsquo the pages of the book you have opened while waiting fora train in the subwayrdquo The report further explained that ldquoNew York City has a long and troubledhistory of police surveillance of individuals and groups engaged in lawful political protest anddissent Between 1904 and 1985 the NYPD compiled some one million intelligence files on morethan 200000 individuals and groups mdash suspected communists Vietnam War protesters healthand housing advocates education reform groups and civil rights activistsrdquo
An even bigger problem for New York City came on January 23 of this year when the USSupreme Court issued a rare unanimous decision in United States v Jones All nine justicesagreed that the use of an electronic GPS tracking device placed on an automobile by lawenforcement constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment and required a warrant
Writing the decision for the court Justice Antonin Scalia stated ldquoAs Justice Brennan explainedin his concurrence in Knotts Katz did not erode the principle lsquothat when the Government doesengage in physical intrusion of a consti-tutionally protected area in order to obtain informationthat intrusion may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendmentrdquo
Writing a concurring opinion Justice Sonia Sotomayor expanded on the potential forunconstitutional law enforcement actions using electronic surveillance devices ldquoGPS monitoringgenerates a precise comprehensive record of a personrsquos public movements that reflects a wealthof detail about her familial political professional religious and sexual associations See egPeople v Weaver 12 N Y 3d 433 441ndash442 909 N E 2d 1195 1199 (2009) (lsquoDisclosed in[GPS] data will be trips the indisputably private na-ture of which takes little imagination toconjure trips to the psychiatrist the plastic surgeon the abortion clinic the AIDS treatmentcenter the strip club the criminal defense attorney the by-the-hour motel the union meet-ingthe mosque synagogue or church the gay bar and on and onrsquo) The Government can store such
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
records and efficiently mine them for information years into the futurerdquo
Electronic surveillance cameras deployed in New York City however do for more than GPSdevices they film the individual their features their companions and show just what doorstepsthey are entering in their comings and goings throughout the day week after week 247
What zealous prosecutor or Wall Street whistleblower or investigative reporter is safe from beingtargeted by this surveillance juggernaut
The electronic tracking capability described by Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes where an individual inthe snap of a finger is tracked all over Manhattan with no warrant and no more probable causethan wearing a red shirt seems just what Justices Scalia and Sotomayor had in mind as illegalactivities
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are civil rights attorneys who co-founded thePartnership for Civil Justice Fund They have filed a class action lawsuit against PoliceCommissioner Kelly Mayor Bloomberg and the City of New York over the arrest on October1 2011 of more than 700 peaceful protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge Ms Verheyden-Hilliardhad this to say about the sprawling surveillance program in New York City
ldquoThe clearly stipulated and clearly defined requirement of probable cause a centralguarantee that protects individuals from over-reaching police authority has beeneviscerated in practice and in policy by the all-pervasive surveillance tools that makecertain people and groups the lsquousual suspectsrsquo in an environment that authorizes racialreligious and political profiling as the de facto law of the land The NYPD is engaged inmass surveillance and mass aggregation of data on persons who not only have engaged inno criminal activity but for whom there is no probable cause or individualized suspicionto believe they have engaged or are engaged in criminal activity This is a perversion ofcivil rights and civil liberties by the government that is spreading across the countryrdquo
Chris Dunn Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU said in response to my questionconcerning the significance to New Yorkers of the Jones Supreme Court decision ldquoThis decisionopens the door to the argument that police camera systems that systematically track themovements and whereabouts of people in public places trigger constitutional scrutiny We havelong believed that LMSI [Lower Manhattan Security Initiative] violates the privacy rights of law-abiding New Yorkers and this ruling from the Supreme Court supports that viewrdquo (Mr Dunn isalso an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law where he teaches in the Civil Rights Clinicand he authors the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties column in the New York Law Journal He haswritten a detailed analysis of the United States v Jones decision in his current column)
Mr Dunnrsquos opinion is buttressed by a powerful corporate law firm Wilmer Cutler PickeringHale which ironically lists among its clients the Wall Street firms Citigroup Goldman Sachs andJPMorganChase The firm co-authored the 2007 report for the Constitution Project titled ldquoPublicVideo Surveillance A Guide to Protecting Communities and Preserving Civil Libertiesrdquo
The report singles out New York interpreting its law as follows ldquoSeveral state statutes regulateaspects of public use of video surveillance In New York for example video surveillance canonly be conducted as part of a police investigation into the allegedly criminal behavior of an
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
individual pursuant to a warrant Because of what the statute terms lsquothe reasonable expectation ofprivacy under the constitution of this state or of the United Statesrsquo the bar for authorizing orapproving such a warrant is set quite high and the alleged crimes must be quite serious Arizonain contrast merely makes it a misdemeanor for a person to use video lsquosurveillancersquo in a publicplace without posting noticerdquo
This vast surveillance program in New York City has had no public hearings to develop properguidelines no public overseers no legislative mandate and is operating with no checks andbalances
The City Councilrsquos Committee on Public Safety chaired by Peter Vallone did tour the LowerManhattan Security Coordination Center on June 16 2011 The minutes of the meeting on theCity Councilrsquos public web site list only the date time and location A phone call and emailrequest to Mr Vallonersquos office to make the full minutes available to the public was met withsilence
I asked Michael Cardozorsquos office Corporation Counsel for New York City to give me astatement as to the legality of this NYPD-Wall Street surveillance program Mr Cardozodeclined to be quoted but his associate Deputy Communications Director Connie Pankratz saidldquoIt is perfectly legal to use security cameras in public spaces This is no different than having apolice officer watch or follow someone on a public streetrdquo
That analogy is like comparing a pea shooter to a heat-seeking missile These cameras can pantilt rotate and zoom The live feeds are integrated with cameras from all over Manhattan whichcan simultaneously analyze the images using artificial intelligence to look for specific humanfeatures or clothing colors To quote Ms Tisch on 60 Minutes ldquoNobody has a system like thisrdquo
I filed two Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the NYPD in the Fall of 2011New York State has an inspiring sunshine law which acknowledges that ldquoThe peoplersquos right toknow the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statisticsleading to determinations is basic to our society Access to such information should not bethwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality The legislature thereforedeclares that government is the publicrsquos business and that the public individually andcollectively and represented by a free press should have access to the records of government inaccordance with the provisions of this articlehelliprdquo
Notwithstanding the noble intent of the law and notwithstanding the legislative mandate torespond in 5 business days or a period reasonable to the request both of my requests received awritten response stating it would take five months to answer mdash five months or 30 times longerthan the legislative intent The NYPD has 15000 non uniformed employees available to fulfillthe legislative mandate to permit participatory government If it wanted to honor the legislativemandate it could assign more staff to the Records Access Department Until it does it isfunctioning in contravention of the state legislative mandate
In the 2010 book ldquoHeat and Light Advice for the Next Generation of Journalistsrdquo by MikeWallace and Beth Knobel the producer of the 60 Minutes episode on the surveillance centerRobert Anderson is quoted as follows
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
ldquoMike [Wallace] has always said that we are seekers of truth and thatrsquos what we are Weare seekers of truths that people would be better off knowing and that they probablydonrsquot know And we are looking for something that is hopefully of some significancebecause the more significant it is the better the story it is for usrdquo
There are two significant stories at the surveillance center at 55 Broadway The first is that thelargest police force in the country has secretly deputized as its partners the same giant Wall Streetfirms that are serially charged with looting the public but never prosecuted no matter how bigthe crime The second significant story is that the largest police force in the country has tappedthe public coffers to the tune of $150 million to operate what legal experts say is an illegalprogram
Kevin Tedesco Executive Director of 60 Minutes had this to say about my concerns with theprogram ldquoWe find your inquiry somewhat puzzling This was a story about defending againstterrorism probably the most important issue of our times You have only to look at 60 Minutesrsquorecord to see that we frequently report on Wall Street institutions the most recent of whichldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo was broadcast on December 4 Robert Anderson the producer of thestory on the command center produced ldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo an investigation aboutmisleading and fake mortgage documentation that cast a harsh light on financial institutionswhen it was broadcast on August 7 and April 3 No one told us what to report or not report inthose stories and neither did anyone in this one We appreciate the chance to respondrdquo
I willingly concede that 60 Minutes regularly provides outstanding investigative reports I havepreviously referenced their groundbreaking work in my writing Robert Andersonrsquos work onldquoThe Next Housing Shockrdquo brings the audacity and collusiveness of the foreclosure crimes intosharp focus and admirably serves the public interest
But rather than deflecting my criticisms Mr Tedesco ends up making my case by pointing to theDecember 4 broadcast of ldquoProsecuting Wall Streetrdquo This is a story alleging systemic corruptionat Citigroup made by a Vice President of the firm Richard Bowen a man so confident of hisfacts that he testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Mr Bowen had his dutiesreassigned and was retaliated against and told to remain off the premises once he brought thecorruption to the attention of the most senior executives at Citigroup
Charges like these have been made for over a decade against Citigroup by other key employeesNo senior executives have ever been prosecuted Now a Citigroup representative sits alongsidepolice in a high tech center where it can monitor the comings and goings of pedestriansincluding potential whistleblowers If thatrsquos not significant I donrsquot know what is
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
Food Stamp Fraud Targeted As ElectionSeason Brings Criticism
huffingtonpostcom
02 62012
USDA adds social media datamining to enforcement tools
Official Warns against strictereligibility rules
By Lisa Baertlein
LOS ANGELES Feb 6 (Reuters) -Stung by election-year criticism of aprogram used by one in sevenAmericans administrators of USfood stamp benefits are intensifying efforts to combat fraud and protect the $753 billion planfrom the budget axe
Enrollment in the food aid program that helps the poor elderly and disabled is running at recordhigh levels with 461 million people now participating
High joblessness persistent woes in the housing market and a tepid economic recovery havedriven more that 14 million people to sign up for the benefits since US President Barack Obamatook office three years ago
That number includes many displaced workers who are now attempting to eke out a living withlow-wage or part-time jobs In many states a family of four with net income of just over $23000would qualify for food stamps
The spike in enrollment prompted Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich to dubObama the food stamp president and has fueled calls for cuts to assistance programs that criticssay are turning the United States into a welfare state
In the face of such criticism officialsresponsible for food stamps aretrumpeting the programs efficiency andvowing further improvements
Kevin Concannon US Department ofAgriculture undersecretary for food
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
nutrition and consumer services said his agency was doubling efforts to prevent fraud whichaccounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits but equals about $750 million each year
This is $750 million that isnt being used to provide food to individuals and families and thatissue isnt lost on us Concannon said in a recent phone interview
We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged inthis economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program he said
The programs biggest step forward in fraud prevention came in 2004 when the governmentreplaced paper coupons with plastic cards that are loaded electronically like debit cards In 2008the USDA changed the name of the program to the Supplemental Nutritional AssistanceProgram or SNAP but the benefits are still commonly referred to as food stamps
Concannon said the program was adding high-tech strategies to its enforcement quiver
Those include working with socialmedia firms and data mining companySRA International Inc to root outabuse It also debuted a new websitefor public whistleblowers at wwwfnsusdagovfightingsnapfraud
While administrators work to reducepayment errors the USDA iscollaborating with state agencies toinvestigate recipients suspected ofcommitting fraud or misusing benefitsIt also will seek tougher penalties forstores engaged in trafficking
Trafficking generally takes the form of users selling their benefits for roughly 50 cents on thedollar to brick-and-mortar retailers or to individuals found via websites like eBay or Facebook
From Oct 1 through Dec 31 the USDA sanctioned more than 225 stores found to be violatingprogram rules and permanently disqualified 350 stores for trafficking in SNAP benefits aroughly 14 percent increase in disciplinary actions overall
Fraud is not a static concept -- we know that where there is a will to commit malfeasance badactors will try to find a way Concannon said
ASSET TEST
Concannon and other supporters of the food stamp program are also warning against efforts bysome states to toughen eligibility rules The program is funded by the federal government but
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
administered at the state level
Programs in 36 states as well as theDistrict of Columbia Guam and the USVirgin Islands have no asset test for foodstamp eligibility
Such rules came under scrutiny last yearwhen it came to light that a Michigan manwho won a $2 million lottery jackpot wascollecting food stamps under a stateloophole that counted only income notassets The man took his winnings in a
lump sum which categorized them as assets
Michigan has since closed the loophole and adopted an asset test
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has proposed denying food stamps to households withassets of more than $5500 The limit would be $9000 for households that include a person whois disabled or age 60 or older His original proposal which had significantly lower asset limitshit a wall of resistance from anti-hunger advocates who called it unusually punitive
Some US lawmakers have called for asset tests for all recipients
Concannon said the food stamp program was designed to help people weather tough timesbrought on by a job loss or illness Requiring participants to exhaust their resources in order toqualify for benefits could leave them in a weakened position when the economy recoversConcannon said
We would caution states to be wary of just running down the road without thinking through theimpact on their citizens especially in what is still a tough jobs economy he said
SOURCE httpwwwhuffingtonpostcom20120206food-stamp-fraud_n_1256684html
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