New York City’s war on freedom could be adding a new weapon to its arsenal, especially if NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has his say.

The head of the New York Police Department is working with the Pentagon to secure body scanners to be used throughout the Big Apple.

If Kelly gets his wish, the city will be receiving a whole slew of Terahertz Imagining Detection scanners, a high-tech radiation detector that measures the energy that is emitted from a persons’ body. As CBS News reports, “It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun.”

What it can also do, however, is allow the NYPD to conduct illegal searches by means of scanning anyone walking the streets of New York. Any object on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector, and any suspicious screens can prompt police officers to search someone on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else under their clothes.

According to Commissioner Kelly, the scanners would only be used in “reasonably suspicious circumstances,” but what constitutes “suspicious” in the eyes of the NYPD could greatly differ from what the 8 million residents of the five boroughs have in mind.

The American Civil Liberties Union has already questioned the NYPD over what they say is an unnecessary precaution that raises more issues than it solves.

“It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong,” Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU says to CBS.

Read the whole article at RT.COM…

In an apparent show of strength, Washington is deploying a second carrier strike group in the Gulf. US officials also confirmed their commitment to maintaining a global fleet of 11 aircraft carriers despite budget pressure to cut the fleet’s size.

“That’s the reason we maintain a presence in the Middle East,” AP cited US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, as saying in a speech to about 1,700 sailors aboard the USS Enterprise. “We want them to know that we are fully prepared to deal with any contingency and it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”

Panetta added that the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is on course for the Persian Gulf – and will steam through the Strait of Hormuz in a direct message to Iran, AP reports.

“We’ll continue to make those messages clear. The most important way to make those messages clear is to show that we are prepared, that we are strong, that we’ll have a presence in that part of the world,” Panetta added.

The USS Enterprise, along with the other six ships in the carrier strike group, will deploy to the Middle East in March. It means the US will maintain two carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf region. The warships are expected to support the country’s battle operations in Afghanistan, its anti-piracy efforts and other missions.

Meanwhile, Iran claims it is not concerned with the move, saying it is a part of routine activity.

Read the whole article at RT.COM

Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich has won a very clear victory in the Republican primary in South Carolina, breaking a 30-year tradition. It’s the first time since 1980 that three different candidates have won the first three primaries.

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich beat Mitt Romney, who was widely seen as the frontrunner.  With nearly all the votes counted, Gingrich got 40 per cent in the conservative US state of South Carolina, where the first Southern primaries are held.

Romney follows him with 28 per cent.

Gingrich’s surprise triumph puts him at the head of the race to be the Republican challenger to President Barack Obama.

Gingrich performed poorly in the other two primaries, which until now had been seen as more of a success for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and private equity firm chief.

The South Carolina win by Gingrich means the three state-by-state contests held so far have yielded three different winners – Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucus on January 3, and Romney won New Hampshire on January 10.

Political analysts say the primaries in South Carolina are crucial – since 1980, the Republican winner in that state has invariably been voted the official candidate at the party’s national convention.

In the race for delegates in the early stages, Gingrich has 25, Romney has 33 and Rick Santorum has 14 delegates.

Candidates need 1,144 delegates to win the party’s presidential nomination.

Read the whole article at RT.COM

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.
Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.

The latest of sites to fall is FBI.gov, which finally broke at around 7:40 pm EST Thursday evening.

Less than an hour after the DoJ and Universal sites came down, the website for the RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, went offline as well. Shortly before 6 p.m EST, the government’s Copyright.gov site went down as well. Thirty minutes later came the site for BMI, or Broadcast Music, Inc, the licensing organization that represents some of the biggest names in music.

Read the whole article at RT.COM…

Richard (RJ) Eskow, Op-Ed: