MEDIA ROOTS — Many of us notice our society’s shift away from the use of anonymous cash and toward the use of databeast-tracked digital money.  But many are unaware that there are steps already being taken to outlaw cash in favour of debit/credit cards and digital transactions.  In Louisiana, House Bill 195 of the 2011 Regular Session (Act 389) was passed this summer by its State Legislature and Republican Governor Bobby Jindal.  This law makes it illegal to use cash in transacting second-hand goods.  The question becomes, ‘who actually motivated this law and why?’ 

The bill states:

“A secondhand dealer shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property.  Payment shall be made in the form of check, electronic transfers, or money order issued to the seller of the junk or used or secondhand property and made payable to the name and address of the seller.  All payments made by check, electronic transfers, or money order shall be reported separately in the daily reports required by R.S. 37:1866.”

Ackel & Associates LLC, a professional law firm in Louisiana, describes the new legislation as the U.S. Government taking private property without due process.  As one may have expected, the justifying pretext involves police crime-fighting. One Louisiana State Rep co-author of the bill, Rickey Hardy, argued the law is intended to be “a mechanism to be used so the police department has something to go on and have a lead” in combating theft.  Yet, while local cops take no interest in white-collar crime, even shielding major financial criminals from nationwide Occupy Movement protests, they will definitely be ready to bust thrift shops, local antique stores, flea markets, and anyone who dares to use cash in second-hand retail transactions in Louisiana.

Already, we see class-division in the U.S. reflected between those who make virtually all purchases through digital transactions and those who rely on cash.  Here’s one possible scenario:  First an individual legislator (with or without external influence) establishes a precedent under law enforcement pretexts in a state, which may not often capture the national imagination.  Then it spreads to other states.  Unchecked, something that seemed outlandish at first becomes orthodox convention.  First, second-hand cash transactions are outlawed.  Then the slippery slope slide into fully outlawing cash becomes inevitable.  It may sound like a far-fetched concept, but in light of this legislative trajectory it’s not implausible.

Messina

***

NATURAL NEWS — Besides prohibiting the use of cash, the law also requires such “dealers” to collect personal information like name, address, driver’s license number, and license plate number from every single customer, and submit it to authorities. And the only acceptable form of payment in such situations is a personal check, money order, or electronic transfer, all of which must be carefully documented.

The stated purpose of the law, which excludes non-profits and pawn shops, is to curb criminal activity involving the reselling of stolen goods, particularly metals such as copper, silver, and gold. But according to A&A, existing Louisiana state law already requires businesses and other resellers of secondhand goods to account for transactions, and has specific laws already on the books that address the selling of stolen goods.

The new law is so broad and all-encompassing that individuals who buy and sell on sites like eBay or Craigslist using cash will also be in violation of it. Even a stay-at-home-mom who holds a garage sale with her neighbors more than once a month could be required to refuse cash from customers, as well as keep a detailed record of every single purchase made, and who made it.

There really is no legitimate reason for banning cash payments, especially in light of the required collection of detailed and excessive personal information. The measure is simply just another excuse for the government to spy on individuals, and take away their economic and civil liberties.

Read more about Louisiana prohibits residents from using cash when buying, selling secondhand goods.

© 2011 Natural News Network

***

Photo by flickr user purpleslog

MEDIA ROOTS – Felipe Messina: On Thursday, November 17, 2011, I spoke with Russia Today TV (RT) about the violent mass arrests by militarised platoons of local police, as they waged a coordinated national campaign to crush the Occupy Movement.  Images of bloodied protesters flashed on the screen, as OWS 99-percenters chanted, “Show me what a police state looks like!  This is what a police state looks like!!”  Even journalists, such as RT’s Lucy Kafanov, caught some NYPD fury against First Amendment freedom of the press. 

Yet, Obama is nowhere to be found; his campaign promises withering in the shadow of the absurdity of his future 2012 promises.  The Obama presidency has been a complete disaster thus far, as he has betrayed virtually every promise made on the campaign trail.  Those who wept with joy at his inauguration were likely unaware he was put in office by banksters and Wall Street, or that he’d soon stuff his cabinet with them.  To date, Obama has received more money from the financial sector than any other 2012 presidential candidate combined. 

And what about his piddly Jobs Bill?  Did it drown in a Democrat-controlled Senate on a technicality?  Obama’s not trying to sell that noise anymore; not that it was a New Deal for the 21^st Century, anyway.  Obama is not, and never will be, an ally of the Occupy Movement.  It is on his watch the U.S. is witnessing the most egregious police state repression against First Amendment activity. 

As I mentioned Scott Olsen on RT, left with a fractured skull after being shot by rioting Oakland cops, a man named Brendan Watts was seen around the world bloodied by NYC cops with a fractured skull.  However, at the moment both Obama and Biden are essentially MIA, as police state repression unfolds across the U.S.   

In conversation with RT, I pointed out the Federalised character of the coordinated crackdowns against the Occupy Movement.  Oakland Mayor Jean Quan had recently admitted in a radio interview that she was on a teleconference call with many other mayors across the country coordinating their crackdowns against the Occupy Movement.  Once the Federal Government is involved, people can no longer ignore the Obama Administration in this national travesty against the First Amendment.  So much for hope and change, indeed.

On Tuesday (11/15), Mike Ellis of the Minneapolis Examiner reported:

“According to [one Justice Department] official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present.”

By Wednesday (11/16), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) worked on damage control claiming worries over Federal involvement in the crackdowns were overblown.  Yet, DHS admitted taking an official role in at least one Portland, Oregon crackdown.  And, of course, this admission may be attributable to the fact that DHS agents of the Federal Protective Service variety were photographed in action at Occupy Portland, Terry Schrunk Plaza, on October 31, 2011.  So, it’s conceivable other DHS agents may have been involved elsewhere. 

It’s interesting to note how in Oakland the ostensibly liberal Mayor Quan, initially tried to co-opt Occupy Oakland through photo-ops on October 15 with establishment activists of MoveOn.  But faced with the horizontal principles of the Occupy Movement equalising Quan’s position of authority to genuine cooperation, feeling snubbed or assenting to pressure from above, gave the green light, before conveniently skipping town (in similar fashion to Obama’s trip to the Pacific Rim), to the militarised police state platoon raids and crackdowns.

It’s also striking how celebratory and supportive Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are about democracy movements abroad and yet draconian against grassroots pro-democracy activism toward socioeconomic justice within the U.S.  It’s even more striking how little awareness we’ve had of Federal involvement in the crackdowns against the Occupy Movement.

Last month, Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, was asked by Keith Olbermann about her rights being violated, as she described the Orwellian involvement of Homeland Security in First Amendment repression at OWS’ Liberty Plaza:  “Did the Department of Homeland Security have anything to do with this?”

Naomi Wolf:  “Well, I have no idea if they had anything to do with this phalanx of 30 or 40 police officers surrounding me and my partner, and taking us in when we were peacefully not breaking any laws on the sidewalks.  But I do know that something very disturbing happened after we were put into a police van. We were supposed to be taken to the First Precinct and, that’s the one that governs what happens on Hudson Street where we were arrested.

“But they got a call that the protesters had gone to the First Precinct with the lawyers of the National Lawyers Guild, who were gonna help us and meet us and represent us.  And so they detoured, the police detoured, across town to the Seventh Precinct and misled the protesters about our whereabouts, which is very disturbing.  Because in America, you know, prisoners, even for a little while, are not supposed to be unaccountable.  Disappear. 

“Even more disturbing, we learned that, when the protesters arrived at Ericsson Street where the First Precinct is, it was blocked off.  And they said, ‘What’s going on?’  They didn’t let any protesters or lawyers through, but let people in business suits through.  And NYPD said, ‘Homeland Security has frozen Ericsson Street.’

“So, to me as an American, as a New Yorker, this is very big news for reasons I don’t have to explain to you.  A Federal agency can, because two middle-aged, you know, couch-potato intellectuals get arrested for not disobeying the law?  They can freeze a New York City street?”

Keith Olbermann:  “But even if they weren’t freezing it and the name was merely invoked, that’s its own problem.  If a city police department is invoking this shadowy, national entity, that becomes its own threat to the First Amendment and freedom of assembly and all the rest.”

Naomi Wolf:  “Keith, you’re completely right.  And what baffles me is:  Where is The New York Times investigating this?  Where are our local newspapers?  Where is the national newspaper?  Because you block, you let Homeland Security block off, or even say Homeland Security’s blocked off one street, they could cordon off downtown Chicago tomorrow.  And it’s not, like, weapons of mass destruction or a natural disaster.  It’s, you know, two random people standing on the sidewalk being the excuse to close down our civil society. 

“So, there’s another really scary thing, if you want me to keep scaring you, but this is scary for all of us.  It’s not; it is not what happened to me and to my partner that is the worrying thing, the thing I’m distressed about.  It’s that people have got to understand that this could happen to absolutely anyone.  For four or five years I’ve been saying, ‘You start with Guantanamo; history shows they start with the other. It gets closer and closer and someday they come for you when you were innocent and you have no recourse.’

“When they were releasing us, the guy said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna let you go this time with a summons.  But if you go down and rejoin your friends, the protesters, and you get arrested, it’ll be a real arrest next time. Here’s the camera.’  He pointed to a camera, ‘It’ll take your photograph. Here’s the fingerprint machine. We’ll take your fingerprints. It’ll go into that database, a Federal database. And it’ll follow you forever.’

“And then I said, ‘But officer, I got arrested tonight when I was obeying the law. How do I avoid getting arrested in the future?’  And he didn’t dispute that I was obeying the law.  He said, ‘Well, the officers decided it was a safety issue.’  And I said, ‘But, then, what prevents any situation from being called a safety issue and trumping the law and how people are obeying the law?’  And he didn’t answer, but referred me to a section of the criminal code.  But that, too, is very scary.”

Keith Olbermann:  “Of course.  We’ve given them the right to make up the law as they go along.”

Naomi Wolf:  “You know, it’s interesting, we haven’t given them, well, we’ve given it to them by sleeping on the job.”

Today, the 99% is waking up to the totalitarian nightmare the Obama Administration is deepening after eight years of the Bush regime shredding the Constitution, preceded by eight years of the Clinton Administration’s neoliberalism and financial deregulation, which laid much of the foundation for the economic collapse we are witnessing today.  Under Obama, we have witnessed similar grotesquely regressive politics, which have defined our national body politic since at least 1981 with Reagan.  Some of my friends will undoubtedly set the marker further back declaring Kennedy the last legitimate U.S. President.  And, of course, few of my Native American friends would accord much legitimacy to any U.S. President. 

Up until the ‘70s, when there was still something of a labour shortage and wages still provided some modicum of working-class dignity, so many U.S. citizens didn’t much mind U.S. imperialism, racism, corporate greed, or the U.S. imposing its will around the world.  It hadn’t hit them yet.  But corruption left unchecked eventually comes home to roost.

At some point, the stink of graft in U.S. politics becomes inescapable.  Never mind Citizens United.  That was just the final nail in the coffin.

Take your pick.  Democrat or Republican, one ends up with the same corporate, one-percenter, puppet-masters behind whichever candidate one chooses to head the two-party dictatorship.  And the same applies to Congressional Democrats and Republicans.  It’s time to expand the two-party system to include alternatives.

The real test for the Occupy Movement will be whether or not its supporters can maintain its momentum and integrity long enough to impact the 2012 Presidential Election and usher in a new consciousness capable of toppling the two-party dictatorship with a powerful left party challenge.  Some of my friends will argue, even if that were to happen that third-party would somehow get corrupted.  Well, then, don’t allow that to happen, I’d say.  Stay involved, because the alternative to that would be much more radical.  For those who are, have at it.  But I just don’t see that at this stage of development for the U.S. consciousness.  Before OWS, it was pretty safe to say progressives would either vote for Obama or not vote at all, with less than five percent voting third-party.  But with the mass consciousness-raising effect of the Occupy Movement, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a huge upset may await Obama.  No small wonder, then, why he’d quietly be allowing the nation’s worst police state repression of peaceful First Amendment activity. 

I put more faith in the electoral system, provided the people do what nobody is stopping them from doing.  People must vote their conscience rather than for the least worst, as people have done in 2008 and as far back as we can remember. 

As the Occupy Movement is teaching us, change won’t just be electoral.  It will come from the 99% taking their destiny into their own hands with horizontalist vigour on the local and national level.

Only then will we see more desirable crackdowns, those on corporate and banker fascism and police state repression itself.

Written by Felipe Messina for Media Roots

Image by flickr user Donkey Hotey

MEDIA ROOTS— Recently, economic journalist Doug Henwood was interviewed on Pacifica Radio’s “Against the Grain” to dispel various myths he and his interviewer tied to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.  One of which was about the Federal Reserve being the source of all evil.

The Federal Reserve System is the private U.S. central bank which controls our monetary policy.  And although Federal Reserve Banks are “privately owned and locally controlled corporations,” run by ruling-class elitists, we’d be worse without it, claimed Henwood.

The interviewer associated OWS concerns over the Fed with conspiracist quackery, but avoided all of the real perils of the Fed in its current structure.  Henwood’s main arguments in favour of the Fed included assuring, contrary to popular belief; it wasn’t nefariously hatched up at some secret meeting on Jekyll Island, but that it was instead “a project of many decades undertaken by the ruling-class.”  Gee, that makes me feel much better…

The scale of our modern economy, per Henwood, necessitates a central bank capable of injecting liquidity into the system swiftly in times of crisis, something the gold standard could not do.  Henwood also cited Bernanke regarding the virtues of stimulus, despite the fact that stimulus is rigged for the 1% to horde capital whilst the 99% pray for crumbs and sink deeper into debt.

The biggest problem is that the Federal Reserve system works above the law, which is why Bank of America has gotten away with dumping $75 Trillion of derivatives on U.S. taxpayers with Federal approval.  With the Fed having to answer to no one, why wouldn’t its ruling-class drivers horde profits whilst shifting liabilities onto taxpayers?  It’s unlikely to be due to the benevolence of their hearts.

Messina

***

SEEKING ALPHA— Bloomberg reports that Bank of America (BAC) has shifted about $22 trillion worth of derivative obligations from Merrill Lynch and the BAC holding company to the FDIC insured retail deposit division. Along with this information came the revelation that the FDIC insured unit was already stuffed with $53 trillion worth of these potentially toxic obligations, making a total of $75 trillion.

Many big banks, including Bank of America, issue derivatives because, if they are not triggered, they are highly profitable to the issuer, and result in big bonus payments to the executives who administer them. If they are triggered, of course, the obligations fall upon the corporate entity, not the executives involved. Ultimately, by allowing existing gambling bets to remain in insured retail banks, and endorsing the shift of additional bets into the insured retail division, the obligation falls upon the U.S. taxpayers and dollar-denominated savers.

Even if we net out the notional value of the derivatives involved, down to the net potential obligation, the amount is so large that the United States could not hope to pay it off without a major dollar devaluation, if a major contingency actually occurred and a large part of the derivatives were triggered. But, if such an event ever occurs, Bank of America’s derivatives counter-parties will, as usual, be made whole, while the American people suffer. This all has the blessing of the Federal Reserve, which approved the transfer of derivatives from Merrill Lynch to the insured retail unit of BAC before it was done.

The FDIC opposed the move, but there is nothing the FDIC can do, except file a petition for a writ of mandamus in court, against the Federal Reserve, seeking a declaration that the approval was illegal. But, the FDIC would lose, because Congress has given the Federal Reserve Board ultimate power to do whatever it wishes.

So, the bottom line is this: When something bad happens, and the derivative obligations are triggered, the FDIC will be on the hook, thanks to the Federal Reserve. The counter-parties of Bank of America, both inside America and elsewhere around the world, will be safely bailed out by the full faith and credit of the USA. Meanwhile, the taxpayers and dollar denominated savers will be fleeced again. This latest example of misconduct illustrates the error of allowing a bank-controlled entity, like the Federal Reserve, complete power over the nation’s monetary system. The so-called “reforms” enacted by Congress, in the wake of the 2008 crash, have vested more, and not less, power in the Federal Reserve, and supplied us with more, rather than less instability and problems.

This is not an isolated instance. JP Morgan Chase (JPM) is being allowed to house its unstable derivative obligations within its FDIC insured retail banking unit. Other big banks do the same. So long as the Federal Reserve exists and/or other financial regulatory agencies continue to be run by a revolving door staff that moves in and out of industry and government, crony capitalism will be alive and well in America. No amount of Dodd-Frank or Volcker rule legislation will ever protect savers, taxpayers or the American people. Profits will continue to be privatized and losses socialized.

Read more about how Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval.

© 2011 Seeking Alpha

November 8, 2011

MEDIA ROOTS- As the pro-democracy ‘Arab Spring’ movement spread across North Africa and beyond, Euroamerican imperialists sent a stern message by responding with draconian violence. In Libya, US-NATO forces perpetrated crimes against humanity under the pretext of combating alleged crimes against humanity.

President Obama gloated as NATO advanced in Libya, then cheered the brutal assassination of Gaddafi, who was sodomised with a knife before being extrajudicially executed.  Soon thereafter, the U.S. corporate propaganda machine launched its coinciding media blitz selling the triumphalism of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the country.  

In a recent article, “NATO’s War Crimes in Libya,” James Petras describes how Libya’s standing with the U.S. and U.K. suddenly soured without provocation.  In fact, Euroamerican imperialists were Gaddafi supporters up until the ‘Arab Spring’ revolution toward democratic, anti-imperialist, and independent governance became contagious.  

To reassert its muscle and send a warning shot to other nations aspiring independence,  Euroamerican imperialists, via the proxy rubric of NATO, claimed to support ‘rebels’ fighting against the Gaddafi government.  And, of course, support is an understatement– NATO brutally devastated Libyan infrastructure through sea and air attacks paving the way for the so-called ‘rebels,’ which otherwise wouldn’t have stood a chance. 

These ‘rebels’ could scarcely claim popular support.  As Petras notes, the “casting of the rag-tag collection of monarchists, Islamist fundamentalists, London and Washington-based ex-pats and disaffected Gaddafi officials as ‘rebels’ is a pure case of mass media propaganda.”

Libya was made an example of by Euroamerican imperialists for many reasons. Gaddafi pursued plans for a ‘Bank of Africa,’ alternative communication systems, and long supported African unity.  Under Gaddafi, despite any demagoguery, Libya maintained the highest standard of living for any African nation. However, now smouldering after NATO’s devastation, it’s projected Libya faces a decade of reconstruction to undo the damage of being bombed back to the Stone Age. 

To be certain, Gaddafi was a complex political figure, developing from a revolutionary to a self-styled symbolic figurehead.  But one simply needs to ask why NATO forces haven’t targeted nations such as Saudi Arabia or Yemen for similar ‘humanitarian intervention’ to see through the glaring hypocrisy.

As historian Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley has explained:

“Democracy is totally irrelevant to this. This is a cynical imperialist attack aiming at the two things that the US, the British, and the French value. On the one hand the oil and on the other hand the water. And the water may turn out to be more valuable than the oil… Libya will be under IMF conditionality and that will mean the Washington consensus, deregulation, privatization, the destruction of any state-sector that remains, the destruction of any social welfare system, or social safety net, and the destruction of all of those positive things that Gaddafi had done in his regime to distribute the oil revenue to increase the general welfare.”

As in Iraq, Euroamerican imperialists stand to benefit from ‘ruin and rule’ devastation, disaster capitalism, and the years of inevitable reconstruction contracts and continued obstruction of autonomous governance. 

Messina

***

JAMES PETRAS— The NATO assault formed part of a general counter-attack designed to contain and reverse the popular democratic and anti-imperialist movements which had ousted or were on the verge of overthrowing US-client dictators.

What caused the NATO countries to shift abruptly from a policy of embracing Gaddafi to launching a brutal scorched-earth invasion of Libya in a matter of months? The key is the popular uprisings, which threatened Euro-US domination. The near total destruction of Libya, a secular regime with the highest standard of living in Africa, was meant to be a lesson, a message from the imperialists to the newly aroused masses of North Africa, Asia and Latin America: The fate of Libya awaits any regime which aspires to greater independence and questions the ascendancy of Euro-American power.

NATO’s savage six-month blitz – over 30,000 air and missile assaults on Libyan civil and military institutions – was a response to those who claimed that the US and the EU were on the “decline” and that the “empire was in decay”. The radical Islamist and monarchist-led “uprising” in Benghazi during March 2011 was backed by and served as a pretext for the NATO imperial powers to extend their counter-offensive on the road to neo-colonial restoration.

For all the ruling class and mass media euphoria, the ‘win’ over Libya, grotesque and criminal in the destruction of Libyan secular society and the ongoing brutalization of black Libyans, does not solve the profound economic crises in the EU-US. It does not affect China’s growing competitive advantages over its western competitors. It does not end US-Israeli isolation faced with an imminent world-wide recognition of Palestine as an independent state. The absence of left-wing western intellectual solidarity for independent Third World nations, evident in their support for the imperial-based mercenary “rebels” is more than compensated by the emergence of a radical new generation of left-wing activists in South Africa, Chile, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere. These are youth, whose solidarity with anti-colonial regimes is based on their own experience with exploitation, “marginalization” (unemployment) and repression at home.

Read more about NATO’s War Crimes in Libyia.

© 2011 The Official James Petras Website

***

THE GUARDIAN— As the most hopeful offshoot of the “Arab spring” so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That’s not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Gaddafi, courtesy of a Nato attack on his convoy.

For the western powers, of course, the Libyan war has allowed them to regain ground lost in Tunisia and Egypt, put themselves at the heart of the upheaval sweeping the most strategically sensitive region in the world, and secure valuable new commercial advantages in an oil-rich state whose previous leadership was at best unreliable. No wonder the new British defence secretary is telling businessmen to “pack their bags” for Libya, and the US ambassador in Tripoli insists American companies are needed on a “big scale”.

But for Libyans, it has meant a loss of ownership of their own future and the effective imposition of a western-picked administration of Gaddafi defectors and US and British intelligence assets. Probably the greatest challenge to that takeover will now come from Islamist military leaders on the ground, such as the Tripoli commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj – kidnapped by MI6 to be tortured in Libya in 2004 – who have already made clear they will not be taking orders from the NTC.

What the Libyan tragedy has brutally hammered home is that foreign intervention doesn’t only strangle national freedom and self-determination – it doesn’t protect lives either.

Read more about If the Libyan war was about saving lives, it was a catastrophic failure.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited

Photo by AFP/Getty

MEDIA ROOTS— As people in the U.S. and abroad endeavour to exercise their rights and civil liberties, such as the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, the state and its police forces continue finding methods to repress such civic activity.  An important component of social control and repression of dissent has been the curtailment of telecommunications. 

Earlier this year, when San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police killings spurred groups, such as ‘No Justice, No Bart!,’ to call for critical mass demonstrations, BART officials attempted to thwart communication among activists by cutting mobile phone service entirely to transit stations targeted by demonstrators.

Not to be outdone in the U.K., the Metropolitan Police Service of Greater London has been “operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.”

Messina

***

THE GUARDIAN– The surveillance system has been procured by the Metropolitan police from Leeds-based company Datong plc, which counts the US Secret Service, the Ministry of Defence and regimes in the Middle East among its customers. Strictly classified under government protocol as “Listed X”, it can emit a signal over an area of up to an estimated 10 sq km, forcing hundreds of mobile phones per minute to release their unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes, which can be used to track a person’s movements in real time.

The disclosure has caused concern among lawyers and privacy groups that large numbers of innocent people could be unwittingly implicated in covert intelligence gathering. The Met has refused to confirm whether the system is used in public order situations, such as during large protests or demonstrations.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, warned the technology could give police the ability to conduct “blanket and indiscriminate” monitoring: “It raises a number of serious civil liberties concerns and clarification is urgently needed on when and where this technology has been deployed, and what data has been gathered,” he said. “Such invasive surveillance must be tightly regulated, authorised at the highest level and only used in the most serious of investigations. It should be absolutely clear that only data directly relating to targets of investigations is monitored or stored,” he said.

The company’s systems, showcased at the DSEi arms fair in east London last month, allow authorities to intercept SMS messages and phone calls by secretly duping mobile phones within range into operating on a false network, where they can be subjected to “intelligent denial of service”. This function is designed to cut off a phone used as a trigger for an explosive device.

A transceiver around the size of a suitcase can be placed in a vehicle or at another static location and operated remotely by officers wirelessly. Datong also offers clandestine portable transceivers with “covered antennae options available”. Datong sells its products to nearly 40 countries around the world, including in Eastern Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. In 2009 it was refused an export licence to ship technology worth £0.8m to an unnamed Asia Pacific country, after the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills judged it could be used to commit human rights abuses.

Read more about Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited

Photo by flickr user Hozinja