The New Orleans Advocate recently published a shocking story that details the very real threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by law enforcement access to private genetic databases and familial DNA searching.
In 1996, a young woman named Angie Dodge was murdered in her apartment in a small town in Idaho. Although the police collected DNA from semen left at the crime scene, they haven’t been able to match the DNA to existing profiles in any criminal database, and the murder has never been solved.
Fast forward to 2014. The Idaho police sent the semen sample to a private lab to extract a DNA profile that included YSTR and mtDNA—the two genetic markers used to determine patrilineal and matrilineal relationships (it’s unclear why they reopened the case after nearly 20 years). These markers would allow investigators to search some existing databases to try to find a match between the sample and genetic relatives.
The cops chose to use a lab linked to a private collection of genetic genealogical data called the Sorenson Database (now owned by Ancestry.com), which claims it’s “the foremost collection of genetic genealogy data in the world.” The reason the Sorenson Database can make such an audacious claim is because it has obtained its more than 100,000 DNA samples and documented multi-generational family histories from “volunteers in more than 100 countries around the world.” Some of these volunteers were encouraged by the Mormon Church—well-known for its interest in genealogy—to provide their genetic material to the database. Sorenson promised volunteers their genetic data would only be used for “genealogical services, including the determination of family migration patterns and geographic origins” and would not be shared outside Sorenson. Its consent form states:
The only individuals who will have access to the codes and genealogy information will be the principal investigator and the others specifically authorized by the Principal Investigator, including the SMGF research staff.
Despite this promise, Sorenson shared its vast collection of data with the Idaho police. Without a warrant or court order, investigators asked the lab to run the crime scene DNA against Sorenson’s private genealogical DNA database. Sorenson found 41 potential familial matches, one of which matched on 34 out of 35 alleles—a very close match that would generally indicate a close familial relationship. The cops then asked, not only for the “protected” name associated with that profile, but also for all “all information including full names, date of births, date and other information pertaining to the original donor to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy project.”
This is when the case starts to sound like something out of the TV show “CSI.” Sorenson linked the crime scene DNA to DNA from a man born in 1952. That man didn’t fit the age profile of the murderer, so the cops used Sorenson’s genealogical information to trace his male descendant line and find his son, Michael Usry Jr., born in 1979. Then the cops searched Usry’s Facebook page and found he had some Facebook friends who lived somewhat near Idaho Falls. And then through Google searches, the cops learned Usry was a filmmaker who had been involved in making a few short films that had homicide or killings in the story line. (The cop noted in a warrant affidavit “these short films have won awards in several film festivals.”) Based on this completely circumstantial evidence, the Idaho investigators got a warrant to collect a swab of Usry’s DNA.
They called up Usry, told him they were investigating a hit-and-run, and asked him to meet with them. Usry thought he “had nothing to hide” and agreed to the meeting. They took him to an interrogation room, questioned him without a lawyer present, and eventually collected a DNA sample. Then Usry sat on pins & needles for a month waiting for the results.
When the results came in, it turned out Usry’s DNA didn’t match the crime scene sample—despite the close familial markers and other circumstantial evidence, he wasn’t the murderer.
Usry was lucky. The forensic crime scene DNA sample came from semen and likely was single source (meaning it contained DNA from only one person). This means that it was relatively easy for the cops to compare Usry’s DNA against the forensic sample and determine conclusively the two didn’t match. In many cases today, however, forensic samples come instead from “touch” DNA—miniscule samples of DNA deposited on physical surfaces that people have touched. Touch DNA is less reliable and harder to match both because it may not include enough DNA for meaningful interpretation and because it often contains DNA from multiple persons—some of whom may have had no connection to the crime at all. With touch DNA, lab analysts may see a match where none exists. Just this year in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle revealed a crime lab analyst had been making assumptions about poor-quality, incomplete genetic evidence and testified at trial that one of the profiles she generated matched the defendant, which was false. This analyst’s misconduct could affect as many as 1,400 cases. When touch DNA analysis expands to include familial markers, the risk of misidentification only increases.
This risk will increase further as state and local law enforcement agencies begin to use Rapid DNA analyzers—portable machines that can process DNA in less than an hour. These machines will make it much easier for police to collect and analyze DNA on their own outside a lab. Currently, because forensic DNA analysis in a lab takes so long, we generally see its use limited to high-level felonies like rape and murder. However, Rapid DNA manufacturers are now encouraging local police agencies to analyze DNA found at the scene of low-level property crimes. This means much more DNA will be collected and stored, often in under-regulated local DNA databases. And, because most of the forensic DNA found at property crime scenes is likely to be touch DNA—this only increases the risk that people will be implicated in crimes they didn’t commit.”
Category Archives: privacy
Citizen Statement Against Indian DNA Profiling
An excerpt from a Petition against Biometric profiling through Aadhar and Human DNA Profiling:
Notably, Human DNA Profiling Bill has been prepared and which when enacted could require the citizen to give one’s DNA to the state. What ambitions does this reveal? This would complete the journey of subjugation which started with fingerprints and is possibly ending in DNA profiling.
The profiling, and the intrusion of privacy, that is a central aspect of these projects are, among other things, contrary to the Supreme Court’s judgment dated 4th July, 2011 [Writ Petition (Civil) NO. 176 of 2009] where it reiterated that the Right to Privacy is a part of the constitutional Right to Life. The central government has shown disdain towards this judgment by launching aadhaar related projects on the basis of biometrics which is untested and untried, and which have surveillance, tracking, profiling, tagging and convergence at its core.UIDAI had set up a Biometrics Standards Committee which revealed that ’the biometrics will be captured for authentication by government departments and commercial organisations at the time of service delivery.’ The commercial organisation mentioned herein is not defined. The working paper of the UIDAI revealed that the ’UID number will only guarantee identity, not rights, benefits or entitlements’. It is also said that it would not even guarantee identity, it would only provide ’aid’ in identification. In fact it makes right to having rights conditional on having biometric aadhaar.
Notably, Biometrics Standards Committee had categorically stated that UID/aadhaar’s is meant only for “civilian application” but the order on aadhaar enabled biometric attendance system has been extended to defence employees as well. The fact remains UID was first adopted by USA’s Department of Defence, later by NATO. It has subsequently been pushed through World Bank’s eTransform Initiative in partnership with France, South Korea, Gemalto, IBM, L1, Microsoft, Intel and Pfizer.Some of them have signed agreements with UIDAI. This constitutes breach of national security.
Across the globe very stringent data privacy law has been framed wherein one’s personal data cannot be used by anyone including the government without your specific consent. But in India there is no data protection law. Aadhaar is akin to a piece of collar which the transnational powers want to tie on the neck of Indian citizens. Government has allowed itself to be misled and it has failed to protect personal sensitive information which has already gone to foreign companies.It must be recalled that Dr. Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister had distributed Unique Identification (UID)/ Aadhaar numbers among the villagers of Tembhali village in Nandurbar District of Maharashtra on 29th September 2010. “The Aadhaar number will ease these difficulties in identification, by providing a nationally valid and verifiable single source of identity proof. The UIDAI will ensure the uniqueness of the Aadhaar numbers through the use of biometric attributes (Finger Prints and Iris) which will be linked to the number”.
It has now come to light as per a RTI reply of April 2015 that out of 83.5 crore aadhaar numbers issued so far, only 2.19 lakh i.e. 0.03 % comprised of them who did not have a pre-existing ID proof.
It shows how Indians were taken for a ride.
It must also be noticed that even the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920, of colonial vintage, reads: “The object of this bill is to provide legal authority for taking measurements, finger impressions, footprints and photographs of persons convicted of, or arrested in connection with, certain offences.” According to the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920, at the time of the acquittal of the prisoner, his biometric data is required to be destroyed. Since 1857, fingerprint identification methods have been used by police agencies in India and around the world to identify suspected rebels, political dissidents and criminals. The method is unfolding to indiscriminately profile citizens in general to identify them. The UID/aadhaar project, however, stores the biometric data forever.
It should be noted that in its report to Parliament, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has taken on board studies done in the UK on the identity scheme that was begun and later withdrawn in May 2010, where the problems were identified to include”(a) huge cost involved and possible cost overruns; (b) too complex; (c)untested, unreliable and unsafe technology; (d) possibility of risk to the safety and security of citizens; and (e) requirement of high standard security measures, which would result in escalating the estimated operational costs.” Countries like China, Australia, UK and France have also rejected it.
This open declaration of war against citizens’ sensitive personal information like biometric data by transnational entities and governments captured by them paves way for the enslavement of present and future generations through aadhaar database that lies on cloud beyond Indian jurisdiction. Such initiatives must be stopped and boycotted else it will spread its tentacles in every sphere of life and mobility in the country.
Notably, central government itself has filed several written affidavits in the Hon’ble Court contending that right to privacy is a fundamental right. It is remarkable that one former Union Law Minister has complained to the Prime Minister informing him about the blunders being committed by the law officer in question.
There is a compelling logic for rejection of those parties which implicitly or explicitly support tracking, profiling, databasing and mortgaging of citizens’ rights and their sovereignty under the dictates of their donors and non-state actors. The biometric idea is aimed at making citizens transparent before the all mighty Governments so that Government, their servant can remain opaque to safeguard the interests of undemocratic and ungovernable social control technology companies.
In a case of breach of trust central government has proposed to make aadhaar mandatory although the very first promise which legally questionable UIDAI made in its aadhaar enrolment form is/was that it is “voluntary”.
This Public Statement is a follow up of the Statement of Concern against UID/aadhaar issued by 17 eminent citizens at a Press Conference at Press Club of India in New Delhi on 28th September 2010. These citizens included Justice VR Krishna Iyer, Retired Judge, Supreme Court of India, Prof Romila Thapar, Historian, K.G.Kannabiran, Senior Civil Liberties Lawyer, Kavita Srivastava, PUCL and Right to Food Campaign, Aruna Roy, MKKS, Rajasthan, Nikhil Dey, MKKS, Rajasthan, S.R.Sankaran, Retired Secretary, Government of India, Upendra Baxi, Jurist and ex-Vice Chancellor of Universities of Surat and Delhi, Uma Chakravarthi, Historian, Shohini Ghosh, Teacher and Film Maker, Amar Kanwar, Film Maker, Bezwada Wilson, Safai Karamchari Andolan, Trilochan Sastry, IIMB, and Association for Democratic Reforms, Prof. Jagdish Chhokar, ex- IIMA, and Association for Democratic Rights, Shabnam Hashmi, ANHAD, Justice A.P.Shah, Retired Chief Justice of High Court of Delhi and Deep Joshi, Independent Consultant.
A Dalit activist who was one of these eminent citizens said, “This project wants to fix our identities through time. Even after that we are dead. The information held about us will be fixed to us by the UID number. Changing an identity will become impossible. We are working for the eradication of the practice of manual scavenging, for rehabilitation of those who have been engaged in manual scavenging, and then leaving behind that tag of manual scavenger. How can we accept a system that does not allow us to shed that identity and move on? How can a number that links up databases be good for us?”
We reiterate our demand that Bills like Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 and projects like biometric aadhaar “should be halted before it goes any further”.
Signatories
1. Prof. Anil Sadgopal, Scientist, All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE), Bhopal, Email: anilsadgopal@yahoo.com
2. Prof. Kalpana Kannabiran, Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad, Email: kalpana.kannabiran@gmail.com
3. Prof (Dr) Mohan Rao, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health (CSMCH), Jawaharal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, Email: mohanrao2008@gmail.com
4. Dr Meher Engineer, Scientist, former President, Indian Academy of Social Science, Kolkata Email: mengineer2003@gmail.com
5. Ram Bahadur Rai, noted senior journalist, Email: rbrai118@gmail.com
6. Dr Babu Rao Kalapala, Scientist, formerly with National Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, Email: baburaokalapala@gmail.com
7. Kavita Krishnan, Secretary, All India Progressive Women Association (AIPWA), Email: kavitakrish73@gmail.com
8. Prof D M Diwakar, Professor of Economics, A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, , Email: dmdiwakar@yahoo.co.in
9. Arun Kumar, former Member, Press Council of India, Indian Journalists Union, General Secretary, Bihar Working Journalists Union & President, The Times of India Newspaper Employees Union, Patna, Email: karunpatna@gmail.com
10. Sankar Ray, veteran journalist, Email: sankar.ray@gmail.com
11. N D Jayaprakash, Disarmament Researcher & veteran activist seeking justice for victims of Bhopal disaster, Email: jaypdsf@gmail.com
12. Qaneez Sukhrani, urban affairs analyst, Pune, Email: qaneez.sukhrani@gmail.com
13. Kshetrimayum Onil, Lead Coordinator, REACHOUT, Manipur Email:onilrights@gmail.com
14. Shabnam Hashmi, social activist, Anhad, Email: shabnamhashmi@gmail.com
15. Irfan Ahmed, General Secretary, All India Tanjin-e-Insaf, Bihar, Email: irfan.tree@gmail.com
16. Guman Singh, Himalaya Niti Abhiyan, Himachal Pradesh, Email:guman107@yahoo.co.in
17. Dr Umakant, Human rights advocate & independent scholar, New Delhi, Email: uk4in@yahoo.co.in
18. PT George, Intercultural Resources, Delhi, Email: ihpindia@gmail.com
19. Wilfred D’ Costa, Indian Social Action Forum, Delhi, Email: willyindia@gmail.com
20. Prakash K Ray, Editor, bargad.org, Email: pkray11@gmail.com
21. Gopal Krishna, Member, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL), Email: 1715krishna@gmail.com
Hong-Kong Introduces “DNA Shaming”
To get an inkling of the abuse possible with DNA profiling of the kind being considered in India, take a look at a public health initiative called “Hong-Kong Clean Up.”
The South China Morning Post has this:
The Face of Litter campaign was launched on Global Earth Day last month for the Hong Kong Cleanup Initiative, organised by online magazine Ecozine and the Nature Conservancy. It was aimed at raising awareness of the extent of littering in the city by pinpointing those responsible and encouraging people to change their behaviour.”
That should ring a bell just there.
“Earth Day” is a holiday central to the ecological movement and, not coincidentally, it is celebrated on April 22, which is the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, the blood-drenched architect of the communist revolution in Russia in 1917.
A number of people have spotted this coincidence as further proof of the underlying communistic agenda of environmentalism.
Population control,if not depopulation, is its real goal.
Virginia-based Nature Conservancy is a corporate “do-gooder” that I’ve dealt with before.
You can read about its shenanigans in this excellent series published in the Washington Post.
Nature Conservancy has a long history with Goldman Sachs, which just supplied this “non-profit” with a CEO for a mere $700,000.
Nature Conservancy is in the business of monetizing (i.e. putting a financial figure on) environmental efforts, through such mechanisms as “cap and trade” and the “carbon exchange,” both regarded as useless rackets by grass-roots activists.
So what did “Hong-Kong Clean Up” do with the litter it picked up?
It used DNA from the litter to reconstruct the faces of the litterbugs and then posted the faces publicly to shame them.
The firm behind this DNA scheme is PR giant Ogilvy & Mather and the lab tests were done in the US by Parabon Labs.
Ogilvy & Mather has a history of complicity in the US Government’s propaganda efforts, including the War on Terror, the Drug War, and so-called “Greenwashing” – repackaging companies with bad environmental practices as good guys.
Why people resident in Hong-Kong should have their DNA fingered by Americans is anybody’s guess.
Reed Collins, the Ogilvy chief creative officer who led the campaign, says 27 facial composites were created from a combination of 24 DNA samples taken from litter and three controlled samples donated by volunteers.
The faces were used to create “wanted posters” and digital banners, which were displayed in high-traffic areas, including 10 MTR stations and at “the scene of the crime”.
“Because age is impossible to determine through DNA alone, but still integral in creating an accurate portrait, DNA data has been combined with other factors, such as demographics based on the type of litter and where it was collected to determine the approximate age of the litterer,” Collins says.”
Christensen says that although DNA alone can only produce a high probability of what someone looks like, the purpose of the campaign was not to point fingers at specific individuals.”
Despite Ogilvy & Mather’s disingenuous disclaimers, this is on so many levels outrageous.
It breaches privacy in the grossest fashion.
It has endless potential for abuse –
Identity theft
Falsification of evidence
Framing innocents
Blackmail
Refusal of insurance, housing, or other services
Racial and genetic profiling
Targeting for abortion/contraception advertising
Targeting for drug-testing
Targeting for drugs and porn advertising
Targeting for bio-weapons and depopulation programs.
If you think that’s over-reaction, consider the centrality of population control and eugenics in the thinking of every major thinker in the modern leftist pantheon.
Margaret Sanger, Bertrand Russell, Havelock Ellis, and dozens of other influential leftist thinkers, were all enamored of eugenics, population control, and the elimination of undesirables.
The question is not IF DNA profiling will be abused. The question is only WHEN.
Indian DNA Profile Usable For “Any Purpose”
In the Hindustan Times, Menaka Guruswamy, a Supreme Court lawyer, points out the dystopian nightmare hidden in India’s 2015 DNA profiling bill:
Most troubling is that the bill provides that the DNA profiles will be made available for identification in criminal cases during judicial proceedings to enable decisions in criminal prosecution for the defence of the accused and, rather strangely, ‘for the creation and maintenance of a population statistics Data Bank that is to be used … in identification research, protocol development or quality control…’.
As if this were not enough, the DNA information can also be used for ‘any other purposes’ as may be prescribed.
The idea that the State can assemble a population data base, not simply a census but a blood history of its citizens, so as to enable identification research or even quality control, is anathema to a constitutional, democratic India.
This bill, when worked in tandem with the Aadhar regime, has the potential to profile, rather intimately, every Indian.
In fact, this bill reads like very bad science fiction, one in which the State runs amok and bad science leads to little truth, many lies and an abuse of our DNA.”
Draconian Kuwaiti DNA Law Sets Ominous Precedent
From July 2015 onward, all Kuwait residents (citizens and foreigners) must submit their DNA or risk up to seven years of jail. This draconian law casts a fearful shadow on the DNA bill now being considered by the Indian government.
Earlier this month, Kuwait enacted a law that makes DNA profiling of its citizens and foreign nationals living in the country mandatory. Anybody refusing to furnish their DNA for this database is liable to be jailed for up to seven years. This means all residents of Kuwait, including Indian workers living there, will have to give samples so that their DNA can be extracted and kept in government custody. To say the least, it is draconian.
Even before the news of Kuwait’s DNA profiling law sank, news has emerged about such a law in India. No, the Indian government is not emulating the Kuwaiti model, but only wants to make DNA profiles of criminals and suspects. The Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 is slated for introduction in the Indian Parliament during the current session. The full draft of the Bill is not currently in the public domain, but going by the details trickling from various sources (and information based on its earlier versions), it appears that the bill has clauses that violate privacy and leave room for potential misuse.”
Modi Seeks Direct Govt. Interception Of Phones, Net
Milind Deora, a former minister in the United Progressive Alliance government, has cautioned against the possible misuse of a new and more sophisticated system of surveillance conceptualised by his government and now reportedly put on the fast track by the Narendra Modi government. Called the Central Monitoring System, it allows government agencies to bypass phone and internet service providers to directly intercept communications. In an interview to Scroll.in, Deora said that he realised the system could lead to “technically lawful but malicious” interception in the absence of a privacy law.
Currently, in India, the sanction of the union home secretary is required before an agency can tap phones or intercept communications. According to an official reply under a query under the Right to Information Act, the home secretary clears nearly 300 phone tap applications every day. This information led to a seminal study by the New Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Centre which found there was very little transparency about what the government is doing with so much of data that it collects through these 100,000 phone taps every year.
Ideally, any phone tap can lead to only one of two results. It can ether lead to conclusively establish that the person whose communications are being intercepted is guilty, as was suspected. Or, it can reveal that the suspicions were not founded and the person is not indulging in any criminal activity.
If the interception shows that the person is indeed guilty as suspected, then the person should be charged under the relevant laws and prosecuted in the courts. If the person is proved to be innocent after the lawful interception has been conducted, there is no guarantee that the material collected during the period when their phones were being tapped has been destroyed. None of the 10 authorised agencies under law has published a transparency report and even when asked for metadata about whether the law is being followed, they have withheld information.”
USG Monitors Poop, Feeds Citizens Cocaine
Here’s the scoop on the fate of poop in the Electronic Gulag from the American Chemical Society:
The war on drugs could get a boost with a new method that analyzes sewage to track levels of illicit drug use in local communities in real time. The new study, a first-of-its-kind in the U.S., was published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology and could help law enforcement identify new drug hot spots and monitor whether anti-drug measures are working.
Kurunthachalam Kannan and Bikram Subedi note that to date, most methods to estimate drug use in the U.S. are based on surveys, crime statistics and drug seizures by law enforcement. But much illegal drug use happens off the radar. To better approximate usage, scientists have been turning to wastewater. Like a lot of other compounds from pharmaceuticals and personal care products to pesticides, illegal drugs and their metabolic byproducts also persist in sewage. In Europe, a number of studies have been done to see how well wastewater treatment plants are removing illicit drugs from sludge before treated water is released into the environment. But until now, no study in the U.S. had looked at this, likely leading to underestimates of abuse. Kannan and Subedi wanted to form a more complete picture of drug use, so they studied levels of illicit drugs at two wastewater treatment plants in Albany, New York.”
Notice that the scientists in this program are of Indian origin. I wonder why these two didn’t put their expertise in sewage to better use by figuring out inexpensive ways to treat sewage which is a major need in India, as it is in the US.
As Mike Adams points out, it will only be a matter of time before toilets are microchipped to analyze your excreta in real time.
As he notes, if cocaine is finding its way into sewage and via the treatment procedure back into our drinking water, traces of it must be in the blood of all citizens, making the government guilty of forcing a class-A felony on its citizens.
Anyone drinking tap water is, therefore, consuming class-A felony controlled substances which can then be detected in their bodies in parts per billion concentrations. This is how the police state can arrest and imprison absolutely anyone by claiming they’re a drug user since there’s cocaine in their blood and it’s all over their twenty dollar bills, too!
There probably isn’t a single person living in America today who doesn’t have traces of cocaine on their person or in their blood. Notably, federal laws on cocaine possession make no exceptions for “inadvertent possession” or possession of trace amounts. Even one molecule of cocaine qualifies you to be charged with felony possession.
Secret Corporate Espionage, Harassment Of Citizens
From Alternet.org:
Hiring cops, spooks and vets to do corporate dirty work leads to one more trend enabling corporate espionage to flourish. That is a lack of accountability or legal consequence for espionage that clearly breaks domestic law, such as stealing documents, wiretapping, etc. In France or England, where some of these same activities have come to the attention of authorities, those responsible have been prosecuted and some perpetrators have even gone to jail. Not so in the U.S.
“Hiring former intelligence, military and law enforcement officials has its advantages,” the report notes. “First, these officials may be able to use their status as a shield. For example, current law enforcement officials may be disinclined to investigate or prosecute former intelligence or law enforcement agents… In effect, the revolving door for intelligence, military and law enforcement officials is yet another aspect of the corporate capture of federal agencies, and another government subsidy for corporations.”
What Americans Don’t Know
As detailed as the Center for Corporate Policy report is, author Gary Ruskin says most of the information was obtained “by accident.” It wasn’t freely given. It was the result of lawsuits, a handful of whisteblowers, mistakes by those hired to do the corporate espionage, boasts in trade press and other somewhat random sources.
But even so, there is a dark playbook that comes into view. Nonprofits are scrutinzed for vulnerabilities. Computers are hacked. Documents are copied or stolen. Phone calls and voice mail are secretly recorded. Personal dossiers are compiled. Disinformation is created and spread. Websites are targeted and taken down. Blackmail is attempted. Just as bad, Ruskin says, the Justice Department and Congress look the other way.
“The entire subject is veiled in secrecy,” his report says. “In recent years, there have been few serious journalistic efforts—and no serious government efforts—to come to terms with the reality of corporate spying against nonprofits.”
The United States Of Spying
Andrew Napolitano via Lew Rockwell:
“When Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of both the CIA and the NSA in the George W. Bush administration and the architect of the government’s massive suspicionless spying program, was recently publicly challenged to deny that the feds have the ability to turn on your computer, cellphone or mobile device in your home and elsewhere, and use your own devices to spy on you, why did he remain silent? The audience at the venue where he was challenged rationally concluded that his silence was his consent.”
When I read this, I’m convinced that my experience in the past few years of having my private conversations surface in a wide-range of web-sites was not imagination or paranoia at all.
I am more than ever certain that the right explanation is spying by someone with access to government technology who was either a lawless private contractor or the witless employee of one of those urban DHS (Dept of Homeland Security) fusion centers that have become notorious for spying on anti-government dissidents.
Witless, because even the most brain-dead flunky of the government should know that venting your political opinion on a blog, sans any act of armed insurrection, espionage, or other illegal activity, is constitutionally-protected, indeed highly valuable, speech and that the government is not permitted in any way, shape, or form, to go on fishing expeditions in people’s private lives (remember those things?) to either back into charges, in the case of people who are engaged in wrong-doing, or to twist arms, in the case of people who are not doing anything wrong and can only be coerced by the government’s own illegal actions or threats thereo.
Former Canadian Dep. Minister Convicted Of Child Pornography
CORRECTION:
Since I posted this piece, I’ve had time to look at the way in which Levin was charged and find that it’s really not clear what happened.
Beyond the possession of child pornography on his computer – and that’s quite easily downloaded by someone else – is there hard evidence that he committed any of the crimes about which he, admittedly, fantasized.
Did he actually counsel a real mother with a real daughter to rape her child…. or did he respond to an FBI officer engaged in entrapment, which response, devoid of actual criminal action, is something of a manufactured thought-crime, however repugnant those thoughts might be?
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
From Lifesite News comes a report that the high-level Canadian bureaucrat behind a controversial child sex-ed program, has been convicted in court of being a child pornographer. (For the American equivalent of the program, see here).
Ben Levin claims to have molested his own daughters and was recorded counseling mothers to molest their own children and prepare them for him to molest them.
For those who think that theories about a global network of pedophilic criminals in government are mere conspiracy theory, this will be an eye-opener about how and to what end our rulers are subverting instincts and cultural practices that have protected civilization for millenia:
“Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s former deputy minister of education, Benjamin Levin, was convicted March 3 in a Toronto courtroom to three charges involving child pornography: making written child pornography, counseling a person to commit a sexual assault, and possession of child pornography.
After Justice Heather Adair McArthur of the Ontario Court of Justice accepted Levin’s guilty plea to the three charges, crown counsel Allison Dellandrea said neither the crown nor Levin’s lawyer, Clayton Ruby, disputed the “agreed statement of fact.”
Among the more lurid details contained in the statement are the admission that Levin, in internet chats, claimed he had sexually abused his own daughters, hoped his daughters would make his grandchildren available to him for sex, and counseled an undercover officer on how to groom a child for sexual abuse. The statement acknowledges that there is no evidence Levin actually abused his children and he has not been charged for that offense.
Levin, in a light grey suit, sat slightly slumped in a chair to the left of lawyer Gerald Chan, often resting his head on his right hand and only once glancing behind at the 40 or so spectators filling the 1000 Finch Avenue courtroom.
These were news media, parents, grandparents, and the odd blogger, some of whom palpably recoiled as Dellandrea read out the statement of facts describing the events leading to the 63-year-old’s arrest on July 8, 2013.
At that time, Toronto police seized three laptops, 11 thumb drives, an XD Olympus memory card, a Samsung cell phone, and an external hard drive from Levin’s home.
They discovered 79 files of child pornography on two of the laptops and the external hard drive, but only 15 images and two videos were accessible to Levin. The rest of the child pornography was found in “computer system-generated folders” created without Levin’s knowledge while he used the Yahoo! Messenger program.
Levin had also created a Word document titled “aaa3” which compiled details of the approximately 1,750 people he had chatted with online “on the subject of subversive sexually interests, primarily those related to sexual contact between parents and children.”
Levin frequented a website, designated as “M” (as it is under ongoing police investigation) that described itself as an “alternative sexual lifestyle social networking site” with chat rooms on “incest” and “teens.” Levin created his profile on M in 2010, describing his gender as “couple,” and his sexuality as “nothing is taboo.” His profile, under the username BandB, had been visited 5,103 times, had 29 subscribers and was marked as a favorite by 44 users, according to the statement.
On August 7, 2012, Levin started an online chat with Toronto undercover police officer Janelle Blackadar, who posed as a “sexually submissive, young, single mother with a subversive interest in the sexualization of her children,” the statement reads.
Levin told Blackadar that “he sexually abused his own daughters and other children when they were as young as 12 years old, and encouraged D.C. Blackadar to do the same.” There is no evidence that Levin actually did so, nor has he been charged with this offence, the statement points out.”