Ed.: For more memory card performance data, including SDHC and Compact Flash cards, please check out our most updated charts. You can find the SDHC charts here and the Compact Flash charts right here.)
The prices of portable memory cards have decreased to almost ridiculous levels: 8 GB SDHC cards now start at only $12. However, enthusiasts don’t want just any memory card—they want one that delivers high write throughput for their devices such as digital cameras, and fast reads, so they can copy contents to their systems quickly. These elite products are much more expensive, so we invited eight popular brands to a shootout.
The Secure Digital (SD) card was invented by SanDisk in 2001 and was based on the multi-media card (MMC) standard. Technically, SD is similar to MMC, but adds digital rights management based on CPRM. SD cards also feature a write protection switch, but it is not a hardware feature: the client device has to handle both settings appropriately.
SD, SDHD
The 2 GB capacity defined by the SD 1.1 standard wasn’t enough as card sizes grew, so the SD 2.0 or SDHC standard was added. It allows for capacities of up to 32 GB today; the standard is potentially ready for capacities of up to 2 TB. SDXC will follow next year, as 32 GB may remain the limit for the SDHC standard. Note that SDHC and SD cards are identical from the outside, so be sure your device supports SDHC before purchasing such a card (4 GB and up).
Classes 2, 4, 6
The first SD cards could be read at 3.6 MB/s and written at 0.8 MB/s. Faster cards were required by the increasing resolutions of digital cameras, as well as more demanding consumers. As a result, SDHC was divided into three classes: 2, 4 and 6; the numbers represent the minimum sustainable write throughput in MB/s.
Applications
It’s not only high resolution digital SLR cameras that require fast memory cards, allowing them to write several photos per second onto the storage device. Another key application is multi-purpose, high-speed mobile storage, or using these cards as system drives via USB or eSATA card readers.
We asked Kingston, Lexar, OCZ, Patriot, PNY, Sandisk, Silicon Power and Transcend to send us their fastest and highest capacity SD cards for review. Let’s look at the 13 cards between 4 GB and 32 GB that we received.
Declaring red for color values is the lazy man’s #FF0000. By saying:
color: red;
You’re essentially saying that the browser should display what it thinks red is. If you’ve learned anything from making stuff function correctly in all browsers — and the hours of frustration you’ve accumulated because of a stupid list-bullet misalignment that can only be seen in IE7 — it’s that you should never let the browser decide how to display your web pages.
Instead, you should go to the effort to find the actual hex value for the color you’re trying to use. That way, you can make sure it’s the same color displayed across all browsers. You can use a color cheatsheet that provides a preview and the hex value of a color.
This may seem trivial, but when it comes to CSS, it’s the tiny things that often lead to the big gotchas.
Joe Anybody - Filming the Cops "Copwatching in Portland" Mood: chillin' Now Playing: Copwatching in Portland my anaylisis on copwatching Topic: POLICE
First I noticed the 2 bike security patrol officers, there in the south park blocks around noon (waiting for... -->) then 2 Portland cops on bikes show up..... to write a couple tickets.
A "30 day banned from the park" (sic)citation is issued as well.
In this 15 minute video there is "not a lot of drama" or excitement.
Just 2 cops and 2 security patrols standing around ticketing some homeless(?)-(forgive me for assuming) folks.
The charge.... for (assumed) drinking (?) in the park. (I seen no drinking nor containers as I filmed)
The sick irony is that this park is ***surround with alcohol drinking fancy places****** for the rich and middle class to use
Fifty feet away across the street people sit along the sidewalk and drink wine at an expensive restaurant!
YET a poor person in the park is treated as "the town criminal" if they have any kind of an alcoholic drink?
Then for them to be banned for 30 days is a civil rights issue and in my opinion, and is illegal, and shameful, not to mention a BIG WASTE of the cities money enforcing this non criminal act on poor people primarily.
The points of why I filmed (this) the police are:
1) to document what the police are doing in our community and "how they are doing it" <behavior, attitude, lawful, etc>
2) to openly and honestly record the interaction as a witness for the truth and to preserve justice through independent media as to not be manipulated by the corporate media and or official untruthful reports that over ride citizens own words
3) to provide a back up report on truly what happened in a media-format for legal proof
4) to let the police know that the community is "watching them" and that they are "public servants working for the communities interests and safety"
5) to provide a legally available witness to any inappropriate behavior, human rights violations, civil rights violations, inappropriate attitude, or violent attacks on any citizen around me by a police officer or any city government agent, especially on marginalized or minority communities or political activists.
6) to openly let the public know how the police treat people (good or bad the video will record how they interacted with the citizens) as well as to let the city officials see and the appropriate agency oversight committees see as well.
7) to inadvertently help the police, in which by openly filming them, they get to realize that they MUST be accountable to their community and their sworn oaths
8) to provide "police oversight by citizens" due to the pathetic lack of concern by (the) police management and their own department to do this, and especially their union show of blatant disrespect for the rights of the people in this community as well as the continuing battle to correct this "lack of oversight" that the city (does not sufficiently provide) but continues to allow through the years and tolerates to especially but not specifically; not correct rouge cops (behaviors) or discipline / fire the ones that operate "outside" of the communities interest and harm or kill community members.
The facts that police are allowed to act not in the community’s interest, use excessive force, kill, tazer, pepper-spray and all with “full impunity” and no “oversight from within their own rank” is a sham and cover-up tragedy in and by itself.
By filming it becomes a legal document for "real" justice and to hold the police accountable, when need be or when questioned, from a citizens and community position as well as over sight committees and legal inquiries by civil rights and human rights commissions
This 14 minute video is not full of action. But that doesn’t make it unimportant.
Less action is better when it comes to involvement with the police.
By posting this I want to also show ... that "you can film the police".
And how (one of the ways) that it can be done.
First Big Rule à stay out of their way, do not interfere with what they are doing.
Keep (leave) the camera always "turned on" (hence extra batteries and tape is required)
Stay till the end of the engagement.
If anything starts to get "inappropriate" then for sure get the badge numbers or names and witness accounts
I have seen over and over and over ...police behavior, attitudes, respect change the moment they see a camera filming them!
And truthfully I like the way they treat people better when they are being filmed.
As you can see ... filming somewhat irritates them and they would prefer "you leave" or turn your camera away from them.
But don’t be intimidated, don’t stop filming. Maybe step one step back if they are obviously fixating on you filming to deescalate the tension so you can continue filming the original interaction.
As you may of seen in other videos...they sometimes get downright PISSED....so be on high alert.
I have had my camera taken away by a cop in 2008...(returned within hours) wherein I then filed a lawsuit which we all (the city, police, DA and my lawyer) came to the agreement you can film the cops and they now "train their officers to recognize this right" ;-)
The less you become involved in their "operation at hand" the better.
(You be the observer / press / witness)
The (my) camera was turned on when I approached (in advanced, in my hand, out in the open)
When I film …I don’t want to be “in the issue at hand” but involved in so much as "I’m just documenting and witnessing" and I am JUST watching closely this “issue at hand”
On a side note.
I have seen many, many cops, act professional, smile, be polite, and treat people of their communities with respect. Which I do like.
But those videos scenes I am really not out to promote nor am too concerned about that aspect, I do appreciate the civil behavior don’t get me wrong. But in the same breath I shouldn’t think that to treat people with civility and respect needs any special "thanks".
It should be “a given” and is to be "expected"
End note:
I walk by many cops who I don’t need to film.
And I don’t “hate the cops” …I do question their whole role in our society and what exactly are they protecting?
I see the need for safety and the need to have a society where we can call on someone to help protect oneself when its needed.
What angers and motivates me is that in today world especially in my city, we see the rampant abuse by the very people “who we are suppose to call”. The police abuse protesters rights with sprays and bodily force, mentally challenged people are arrested and killed, folks from immigrant backgrounds, color and race see stereotyping, and worst of all the marginalized and CONTINUED harassment of houseless people.
The fact that the police and our city officials would harass and hassle the poorest people in the city is deplorable.
I will film every interaction I see between the police and city agents when they are targeting the houseless or poor. As well as filming for citizen when they are being restricted, ticketed, or violated of their unalienable rights, be it civil rights or human rights.
I am ashamed of the attitude of our police agency (and city’s tolerance and acceptance of it) to the problem being targeted towards the most marginalized folks on earth who have the least if nothing at all.
The police should have nothing to worry about if they see me or anyone filming them, unless they are up to no good.
Then the whole world will be watching. ((( i )))
"Portland Copwatch" is a local group here in Portland --> http://www.portlandcopwatch.org/
Andalso another local group is "Rosecity Copwatch" --> http://rosecitycopwatch.wordpress.com/
From safeguarding Internet transactions to squeezing meaning out of Twitter streams, Portland companies are generating bold new ideas for the Web. Photo: Dustin Eppers/EnzymePDX
It’s no secret that Portland is home to some serious ingenuity when it comes to software and technology. What’s lesser known is how many varied, innovative uses of the Web call Oregon home. This list is a small sampling of the best of the Web, grown right here.
Mission: Influencing the Influencers The Company: Twitalyzer What They Do: Twitalyzer attempts to make sense of the vast reams of data pouring in through Twitter’s worldwide user base by carefully measuring every last detail about how you use the popular messaging/micro-blogging service. It can tell you how much impact your account has, whether you’re considered a source, sun or spider, and an endless stream of other deceptively technical variables with endearing names like Generosity, Engagement, Clout and “Klout.” The service was featured on the social networking site Mashable in May, and offers plans ranging from free personal accounts for individuals to monthly plans for heavy-duty corporate users. Behind the Code: Twitalyzer is produced by Portland-based Web Analytics Demystified, a web analytics company headed by Eric Peterson.
Mission: Spreading the Stories The Company: IdeaMensch.com What They Do: Every day, the folks at IdeaMensch, whose tagline is “Passionate People Bringing Ideas to Life,” post an interview with someone who has a unique story to tell. The interviews focus on entrepreneurs or leading business leaders, and offer rare glimpses into the thought process behind people with ideas who decide to take a risk and go for it. The site’s library of interviews covers a wide spread of topics, including hangover cures, Greek wine, high-tech industry and comic books. Heavy hitters who’ve gotten the IdeaMensch treatment include marketing celebrity Seth Godin, social media leader Chris Brogan, and the titular Craig Newmark of Craigslist. Behind the Code: IdeaMensch is the brainchild of Mario Schulzke out of Los Angeles, with Portland-based Evan Davies manning community and marketing efforts.
Mission: Making the Music The Company: CDBaby.com What They Do: CDBaby is one of the world’s largest distributors of independent music, with a commitment to making sure that artists are paid their due. What started as a side project for founder Derek Sivers to help his friends sell their music online blossomed into a gateway for independent musicians to get their music out to the world. Now, the site offers hosting solutions and website development for artists, a service that matches musicians with promoters to facilitate bookings, and even rentable credit card swipers that bands can use at shows to sell albums. Behind the Code: Although Sivers sold CDBaby in 2008, the company remains headquartered in Portland. Sivers’ next projects include virtual assistant company MuckWork and free online song contest site SongTest.
Mission: Securing Payments Online The Company: Iovation What They Do: With so many options to make payments online, there’s now an incredible amount of ways for the sneaky to snag credit card numbers, initiate fraudulent “chargebacks” against vendors, and launder cash through virtual currencies. Iovation’s suite of online services can perform instant reputation checks against buyers to guard against fraud before it happens, and can identify known fraudulent users who have been reported by other watchdog bodies. The applications are present virtually anywhere the Internet and monetary transactions intersect – from the financial sector to online gaming and gambling. Behind the Code: Iovation’s co-founders, CEO Greg Pierson and VP Corporate Development Jon Karl, both hold degrees from Oregon State University.
Mission: A Watchful Eye, Inside Your Site The Company: New Relic What They Do: VC-backed New Relic sums up its very technical offering in a simplistic statement: “to monitor and troubleshoot Java and Ruby apps.” With software products constantly migrating to the Web as opposed to installed programs that live on your computer (think Google’s Gmail versus Microsoft’s Outlook), an entire new ecosystem has been created – that is, of ways your favorite Web application could possibly break down. New Relic’s RPM tool tracks performance and offers troubleshooting assistance when Web applications act up, and just recently reached more than 5,000 active users – including big-time corporations like Sony Music, AT&T Interactive and The Washington Post. Behind the Code: While the company is officially headquartered in San Francisco, its Portland office recently moved into a new space downtown.
The Tip of the Iceberg
This list is just a start – there are many local outfits innovating on the Web. Know of a Portland or Oregon company making new strides online? Let us know in the comments.
Whos fault: Burning Quran Dove church is endangering troops Mood: accident prone Now Playing: USA crusade in middle East whips up freenzy and hate in the states Topic: WAR
The USA crusade in Middle East whips up frenzy and hate here in the states, as the Quran is planned on being burned in a bonfire. As this hate event ramps up in the US press, I can’t help but think how all this "Muslim hate" is being stirred up by our occupation, attack, and murder spree we have openly and gleefully waged on our Muslim brothers and sisters.
Look no further than our own national policy to see why this is in flames (pun intended) and this type of outward public display of pure hate is proudly waged, at the same time as the US flag is being waved.Look no further than our ongoing military presence and blood letting, torture, and desecration of their lands, mosques, library's, utilities, water supplies, museum, and homes.
The military should not be shocked or surprised in the slightest way. This is what killing does. This is the ramifications of the US occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and is done in spirit of the hate and killing we wage, now to be displayed in our (sic) civil society. The burning(s) should be welcomed as "one more straw" as we continue to fuck over a country and a whole race of people.
Let the witch hunts begin that the USA government started. America has opened Pandora’s Box. The devil is in the air. Wave your flag. Teach your children to resist. Educate yourself and loved ones on how we brought this upon our selves, by waging world wide hate and using our military against innocent people/civillians from all over the world. .... Peace!
KABUL, Afghanistan — The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warned Tuesday an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops in the country and Americans worldwide.
Meanwhile, NATO reported the death of an American service member in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday.
The comments from Gen. David Petraeus followed a protest Monday by hundreds of Afghans over the plans by Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center — a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy — to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds to mark the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States that provoked the Afghan war.
"Images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence," Petraeus said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Muslims consider the Quran to be the word of God and insist it be treated with the utmost respect, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to the Quran is deeply offensive.
In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted the story.
Responding to Petraeus' comments, Dove World Outreach Center's senior pastor Terry Jones acknowledged Petraeus' concerns as legitimate.
"Still, we feel that it is time for America to quit apologizing for our actions and bowing to kings," Jones said in a statement released by his church. "We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats. It is time for America to return to being America."
The church, which made headlines last year after distributing T-shirts that said "Islam is of the Devil," has been denied a permit to set a bonfire but has vowed to proceed with the burning. The congregation's website estimates it has about 50 members, but the church has leveraged the Internet with a Facebook page and blog devoted to its Quran-burning plans.
The American's death brings to at least six the number of U.S. forces killed in Afghanistan this month, along with at least four other non-American members of the international coalition.
Engagements with insurgents are rising along with the addition of another 30,000 U.S. troops, bringing the total number of international forces in the country to more than 140,000.
At least 322 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan so far this year, exceeding the previous annual record of 304 for all of 2009, according to an AP count.
Petraeus is asking for 2,000 more trainers and field troops for the international force, NATO officials said Monday. It was unclear how many would be Americans.
Also Tuesday, authorities confirmed the ambush killing of a district chief by suspected insurgents in the northern province of Baghlan on Monday afternoon. Nahrin district chief Rahmad Sror Joshan Pool was on his way home after a memorial service for slain anti-Soviet guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Massoud when rocket-propelled grenades hit his vehicle, setting it on fire, said provincial spokesman Mahmood Haqmal.
Pool's bodyguard was also killed in the attack, and one militant died and two were wounded in the ensuing fire fight with police, Haqmal said.
Five children were killed and five wounded in Yaya Khil district in the southern province of Paktika when an insurgent rocket fired at an Afghan army base hit a home Monday evening, provincial government spokesman Mokhlais Afghan said.
Kidnappers also seized two electoral workers and their two drivers in the western province of Ghor, according to deputy provincial police chief Ahmad Khan Bashir. Insurgents have waged a campaign of violence and intimidation to prevent Afghans from voting, especially in rural areas, while some pre-election violence has also been blamed on rivalries among the candidates.
___
Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Travis Reed in Miami, and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
In San Francisco, the 9/th Annual 9/11 Truth Rally will begin at 10 am in the Panhandle at Ashbury on Saturday, September 11, 2010, parading at 11 am to the 12th Annual Power to the Peaceful Festival. followed at 6 pm in the evening by poetry and music at the Gandhi Statue, at the foot of Market Street behind the San Francisco Ferry Building, to take back 9/11 as "a worldwide celebration of peace and love," instead of endless American war readiness. On September 11th the 6th Annual 9/11 Truth Film Festival will run from the afternoon to through the evening in San Francisco and San Leandro, with filmmakers and speakers, premiering Hypothesis and War Promises, and including Satyagraha ? One Hundred Years of Nonviolence.
Satyagraha - Truth Force was born when people gathered together, in their struggle against empire and racism in South Africa. On September 11, 1906, at a public meeting attended by 3000 people where Gandhi spoke, Sheth haji Habib, an old Muslim resident of South Africa, was inspired to consciously speak out and state his decision to act in defiance of an unjust law that targeted the Indian population of South Africa. Habib declared his willingness to suffer the consequences in a spiritually-endowed fight for justice in the name of God. The theory of satyagraha sees means and ends as inseparable. The means used to obtain an end are wrapped up in and attached to that end. Therefore, it is contradictory to try to use unjust means to obtain justice or to try to use violence to obtain peace. Satyagraha is a synthesis of the Sanskrit words satya (meaning "truth") and Agraha ("pursuit of"). Gandhi believed that life itself is a pursuit of truth. For Gandhi, satyagraha became strength in practicing non-violent methods, or in his words "the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence." Martin Luther King Jr. defined it as "Love in Action."
The Bay Area is home to many of the 9/11 Truth groups that have catalyzed the growing global truth movement. This includesArchitects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth who are pushing for a new investigation of 9/11, particularly of the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, citing the hard evidence of explosive material in the dust, amongst other evidence, that the 9/11 Commission and NIST has ignored.
Professor Steven Jones, physicist, whose research on the WTC dust is threatening to the 9/11 cover-up, is featured in two of the films, including Hypothesis. Filmmaker Brett Smith captured a damning interview of C. Martin Hinckley in his documentary; Hinckley first threatened Jones and then tried to bribe him to redirect his research. The film shows one method used to corrupt scientists to serve political ends at the expense of principles and higher purpose. Professor Jones has heroically persisted in his pursuit of truth, despite media attacks and the loss of his teaching position; he and other scientists co-authored Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, which was published in the peer-reviewed Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal and received media attention outside the US, particularly in Denmark where co-author Chemistry Professor Niels Harrit resides. David Chandler, a high school physics teacher, whose videos and talks, simply refute and challenge NIST, will also speak at the film festivals and the 9/11 Truth Rally.
With increasing stress in today's society, it is becoming increasingly important to find ways to relax and unwind.
One of the best ways to go about managing your stress is to live a zen lifestyle. Here are three easy steps to live a zen lifetstyle!
1.) Posture Your posture is the expression of your self. It is where everything begins. You should not seek to master posture as a means to attain a particular state of mind. Your posture is the purpose itself of practice of zen living. One of the most important aspects of zen posture is a straight spine. Relax your shoulders, push up towards the ceiling with the back of your head. Press your diaphragm down towards your lower abdomen - this will help you breathe deeply.
Deeper breathing creates more oxygen in your blood stream, thereby increasing your brains alertness. Do not tilt sideways, backwards, or frontwards. Accessing your true nature through your posture is the key here. If you own your own physical body, you would be able to create presence effortlessly. Being present in their body is how athletes & performers create miracles. Enlightenment is not some good feeling or some particular state of mind.
The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is, in and of itself, enlightenment.
2.) Focus On Your Breathing Breathing is synonymous to swinging the door - the door that connects the outer world with your inner world. There is no limit to your inner world, neither is the outer world limited.
The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. When you practice Zen, the idea of time and space melts away, just the way there difference between inside and outside air disappears when you breathe. Focusing your mind on your breathing is one of the key zen activities. Breathing is a fundamental activity of the universal being.
When we focus on our breathing, we become the swinging door, and create instant presence...
3.) Give Up The Control "The greatest meditation is the mind that lets go" - Zen Philosopher. Whatever we see changes with every passing moment. Whatever we see is changing, loosing its balance. Although everything is going out of balance, the background is in perfect harmony. That's the essence of zen nature - keeping the perfect balance in background while in midst of constantly changing foreground.
One of the best ways to control your cow or sheep is to give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow. To find perfect balance of your mind, to find the calmness that you are constantly seeking, you should learn to ignore the various thoughts and images you find in your mind. The true purpose of zen practice and living so to open up our small minds so we can see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.
Be like water, not the rock. When water flows through a bamboo fountain in traditional Japanese gardens, the zen practitioners are reminded of how water is free to acquire any form. This is where true zen'ism exists.
More than 1,100 servicemen and women killed themselves between 05 and 09 Mood: not sure Now Playing: Army post says suicide rate is falling - reported on 9.1.10 Topic: WAR
Colorado Army post says suicide rate is falling
By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer Dan Elliott, Associated Press Writer
FORT CARSON, Colo. – The suicide rate among soldiers at Fort Carson is on track to drop by about 45 percent this year compared with 2008, as the U.S. military takes steps to ease what has been an increasing problem.
Commanders at the Colorado Army post said Wednesday they were trying to determine reasons for the decline and cautioned the rate could climb in the months ahead.
"There is not a silver bullet," post commander Maj. Gen. David G. Perkins told a meeting of military and civilian mental health experts. "I can't point to one single thing."
However, a campaign to make mental health experts more accessible to soldiers and to reduce the stigma associated with seeking help might be among the factors behind the drop, said Brig. Gen. Jim Pasquarette, deputy commanding general for support at the base.
Most of the Fort Carson soldiers who recently took their own lives were considered good soldiers, Perkins said. Few had problems with drugs or alcohol. Three-quarters had no criminal record in the Army, and 85 percent had no financial problems.
"It's the ones who have done everything right .... They're the good guys," he said.
Suicide rates are measured in deaths per 100,000 people.
Fort Carson's rate was 44 per 100,000 in 2008, and this year is on track to total 25 per 100,000, Pasquarette said. The figures include all soldiers assigned to the post, whether they commit suicide overseas or at home.
The Army's overall suicide rate is about 22 per 100,000.
The Defense Department has been rushing to combat rising numbers of suicides. More than 1,100 servicemen and women killed themselves between 2005 and 2009, and the overall numbers are rising this year.
A report commissioned by Congress and released last week said the Pentagon should create a high-level office to establish strategy and coordinate suicide prevention efforts across the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force.
Another report issued by the Army in July said commanders need to address a broad range of risk-taking behavior to reduce the suicide rate.
In El Paso County, which includes most of the offices and housing at Fort Carson, the suicide rate is about 26 per 100,000, Perkins said.
A major investigation reveals the extent of America's vast and heavily privatized military-corporate-intelligence establishment.
August 28, 2010 |
In July, the Washington Post published the Top Secret America project -- a sweeping portrait of America’s heavily privatized military-corporate-intelligence establishment. Lead reporter Dana Priest calls it the “vast and hidden apparatus of the war on terror.”
Priest, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, described the project as the most challenging investigation of her career. She teamed up with national security journalist William Arkin and a team of about 20 Post staffers to create an “alternative geography” of a hidden world that has exploded since the attacks of 9/11. At last count, the official U.S. intelligence budget stood at $75 billion -- more than two and a half times what it was on September 10, 2001.
The remarkable three-part series (I, II, III) and its intricate multimedia Web site attracted some initial praise, but just as quickly seemed to drop off the map. This article is an attempt to revisit some of the Priest and Arkin’s most shocking discoveries.
Top Secret America is based on hundreds of interviews with government officials, contractors and independent experts; satellite imagery; government contracts; property records; promotional materials from contractors; photo reconnaissance of suspected intelligence facilities, and more.
To give a sense of the physical layout of Top Secret America, Priest and Arkin plotted government and corporate secret locations on a map.
The reporters also compiled their data in the searchable Top Secret America database (TSA). They found 1,931 intelligence contracting firms doing work classified as “top secret,” for 1,271 government organizations at over 10,000 sites around the country. 533 of the contracting firms were founded after the 9/11 attacks.
About 110 contractors do about 90 percent of the top-secret work. The biggest of the big are household words: Booz Allen Hamilton, L-3 Communications, CSC, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and SAIC.
The TSA database doesn’t include firms that only do merely “secret” work because the reporters found too many to count.
Contractors make up nearly 30 percent of the workforce of America’s intelligence agencies. At the Department of Homeland Security the ratio of contractors to staffers is 50-50. The Post estimates that of the 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors.
The U.S. has become utterly dependent on contractors for basic national security and intelligence functions. The National Reconnaissance Office literally couldn’t launch satellites without contractors. Contractors do everything from recruiting spies to interrogating detainees to processing civil forfeitures in the war on drugs.
CIA director Leon Panetta admitted to the Post that dependence on contractors is a liability because the main duty of corporations "is to their shareholders, and that does present an inherent conflict." As Jeremy Scahill pointed out in the Nation, these reservations didn’t stop Panetta from approving a new $100 million contract with the scandal-plagued private security contractor formerly known as Blackwater.
police can track you by GPS and no warrant is needed Mood: irritated Now Playing: Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars Topic: POLICE
Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars
(Note: there is a video on this topic on the CNN website)
By Dugald McConnell, CNN
August 27, 2010 9:26 a.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Law enforcement officers may secretly place a GPS device on a person's car without seeking a warrant from a judge, according to a recent federal appeals court ruling in California.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Oregon in 2007 surreptitiously attached a GPS to the silver Jeep owned by Juan Pineda-Moreno, whom they suspected of growing marijuana, according to court papers.
When Pineda-Moreno was arrested and charged, one piece of evidence was the GPS data, including the longitude and latitude of where the Jeep was driven, and how long it stayed. Prosecutors asserted the Jeep had been driven several times to remote rural locations where agents discovered marijuana being grown, court documents show.
Pineda-Moreno eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to grow marijuana, and is serving a 51-month sentence, according to his lawyer.
But he appealed on the grounds that sneaking onto a person's driveway and secretly tracking their car violates a person's reasonable expectation of privacy.
"They went onto the property several times in the middle of the night without his knowledge and without his permission," said his lawyer, Harrison Latto.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal twice -- in January of this year by a three-judge panel, and then again by the full court earlier this month. The judges who affirmed Pineda-Moreno's conviction did so without comment.
Latto says the Ninth Circuit decision means law enforcement can place trackers on cars, without seeking a court's permission, in the nine western states the California-based circuit covers.
The ruling likely won't be the end of the matter. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., arrived at a different conclusion in similar case, saying officers who attached a GPS to the car of a suspected drug dealer should have sought a warrant.
Experts say the issue could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
One of the dissenting judges in Pineda-Moreno's case, Chief JudgeAlexKozinski, said the defendant's driveway was private and that the decision would allow police to use tactics he called "creepy" and "underhanded."
"The vast majority of the 60 million people living in the Ninth Circuit will see their privacy materially diminished by the panel's ruling," Kozinksi wrote in his dissent.
"I think it is Orwellian," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which advocates for privacy rights.
"If the courts allow the police to gather up this information without a warrant," he said, "the police could place a tracking device on any individual's car -- without having to ever justify the reason they did that."
But supporters of the decision see the GPS trackers as a law enforcement tool that is no more intrusive than other means of surveillance, such as visually following a person, that do not require a court's approval.
"You left place A, at this time, you went to place B, you took this street -- that information can be gleaned in a variety of ways," said David Rivkin, a former Justice Department attorney. "It can be old surveillance, by tailing you unbeknownst to you; it could be a GPS."
He says that a person cannot automatically expect privacy just because something is on private property.
"You have to take measures -- to build a fence, to put the car in the garage" or post a no-trespassing sign, he said. "If you don't do that, you're not going to get the privacy."
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