{"id":196968,"date":"2019-10-27T08:09:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T08:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=196968"},"modified":"2019-10-30T08:22:03","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T08:22:03","slug":"with-little-fanfare-william-barr-formally-announces-orwellian-pre-crime-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=196968","title":{"rendered":"With Little Fanfare, William Barr Formally Announces Orwellian Pre-Crime Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whitney Webb \u2013 Activist Post Oct 26, 2019<\/a><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr issued a memorandum<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to all U.S. attorneys, law enforcement agencies and top ranking Justice Department officials announcing the imminent implementation of a new \u201cnational disruption and early engagement program\u201d aimed at detecting potential mass shooters before they commit any crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

Per the memorandum, Barr has \u201cdirected the Department [of Justice] and the FBI to lead an effort to refine our ability to identify, assess and engage potential mass shooters before they strike.\u201d The Attorney General further described the coming initiative, slated to be implemented early next year, as \u201can efficient, effective and programmatic strategy to disrupt individuals who are mobilizing towards violence, by all lawful means.\u201d More specific information about the program is set to follow the recent memorandum, according to Barr, though it is unclear if that forthcoming document will be made public.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barr also requested that those who received the memorandum send their \u201cbest and brightest\u201d to a training conference at FBI headquarters this coming December where the DOJ, FBI and \u201cprivate sector partners\u201d will prepare for the full implementation of the new policy and will also be able to provide \u201cnew ideas\u201d for inclusion in the program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the memorandum is Barr\u2019s frank admission that many of the \u201cearly engagement\u201d tactics that the new program would utilize were \u201cborn of the posture we adopted with respect to terrorist threats.\u201d In other words, the foundation for many of the policies utilized following the post-9\/11 \u201cwar on terror\u201d are also the foundation for the \u201cearly engagement\u201d tactics that Barr seeks to use to identify potential<\/em> criminals as part of this new policy. Though those \u201cwar on terror\u201d policies have largely targeted individuals abroad, Barr\u2019s memorandum makes it clear that some of those same controversial tactics will soon be used domestically.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barr\u2019s memorandum also alludes to current practices by the FBI and DOJ that will shape the new plan. Though more specifics of the new policy will be provided in the forthcoming notice, Barr notes that \u201cnewly developed tactics\u201d used by the Joint Terrorist Task Forces \u201cinclude the use of clinical psychologists, threat assessment professionals, intervention teams and community groups\u201d to detect risk and suggests that the new \u201cearly engagement program\u201d will work along similar lines. Barr also alludes to this \u201ccommunity\u201d approach in a separate instance, when he writes that \u201cwhen the public \u2018says something\u2019 to alert us to a potential threat, we must do something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the memorandum differentiates suspected terrorists from the individuals this new program is set to pursue. Barr states that, unlike many historical terrorism cases, \u201cmany of today\u2019s public safety threats appear abruptly and with sometimes only ambiguous indications of intent\u201d and that many of these individuals \u201cexhibit symptoms of mental illness and\/or have substance abuse problems.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, the goal of the program is ostensibly to circumvent these issues by finding new and likely controversial ways to determine intent. As will be shown later in this report, Barr\u2019s recent actions suggest that the way this will be accomplished is through increased mass surveillance of everyday Americans and the use of algorithms to analyze that bulk data for vaguely defined symptoms of \u201cmental illness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Barr also suggested the likely courses of action that would follow the identification of a given individual as a \u201cpotential mass shooter.\u201d The Attorney General notes that in past cases individuals deemed a violent or terroristic threat before they commit a crime are subject to \u201cdetention, court-ordered mental health treatment, substance abuse counseling, electronic monitoring\u201d, among other measures. Ostensibly, the new program would then apply these same practices to individuals in the U.S. that federal authorities believe are \u201cmobilizing towards violence,\u201d as Barr put it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bill Barr\u2019s been busy<\/h2>\n

The memorandum, despite heralding a new era of Orwellian surveillance and \u201cpre-crime\u201d on a national level, has been sparsely covered by the mainstream media. One of the few reports that did cover the new Justice Department policy, published Wednesday<\/strong><\/span><\/a> by the Huffington Post<\/em>, framed the new Barr-led initiative as largely positive and asserted that the \u201canti-terror tactics\u201d to which Barr alluded could \u201chelp thwart mass shooters.\u201d No mention was made in the piece of the threat such a program is likely to pose to civil liberties.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, no mention was made of Barr\u2019s clear push over the past few months to lay the groundwork for this recently announced program. Indeed, since becoming Attorney General under President Trump, Barr has spearheaded numerous efforts<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to this end, including pushing for a government backdoor into consumer apps or devices that utilize encryption and for a dramatic increase of long-standing yet controversial warrantless electronic surveillance programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

On July 23rd, Barr gave the keynote address<\/a><\/strong><\/span> at the 2019 International Conference on Cyber Security<\/a><\/strong><\/span> (ICCS) and mainly focused on the need for consumer electronic products and applications that use encryption to offer a \u201cbackdoor\u201d for the government, specifically law enforcement, in order to obtain access to encrypted communications as a matter of public safety.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barr went onto say that \u201cwarrant-proof encryption is also seriously impairing our ability to monitor and combat domestic and foreign terrorists.\u201d Barr stated that \u201csmaller terrorist groups and \u2018lone wolf\u2019 actors\u201d \u2014 such as those involved in the series of mass shootings in California, Texas and Ohio that occurred in the weeks after his speech \u2014 \u201chave turned increasingly to encryption.\u201d Barr later noted that he was specifically referencing encryption used by \u201cconsumer products and services such as messaging, smartphones, email, and voice and data applications.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To overcome the resistance by some private companies \u2014 who do not want to renege on their right to privacy by giving the government backdoor access to their devices \u2014 and American consumers, Barr tellingly anticipated \u201ca major incident may occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.\u201d Shortly after this speech, several mass shootings, including one at an El Paso Walmart took place, which again brought the issue to the forefront of political discourse.<\/span><\/p>\n

As MintPress<\/em> reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span> at the time, Barr\u2019s uncanny prediction and a litany of other oddities related to the El Paso shooting left many answered questions about the FBI\u2019s foreknowledge of the event. In addition, the tragedy did appear to serve as the very \u201cgalvanizing\u201d event that Barr had anticipated, as the solution offered by President Trump in the wake of the shootings was the creation of a government backdoor into encryption as well as calling for the very pre-crime system<\/a><\/strong><\/span> Barr formally announced just last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pre-crime dragnet takes shape<\/h2>\n

More recently, Barr and U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel signed<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>a data access agreement on October 3rd that allows both countries to demand electronic data on consumers from tech companies based in the other country without legal restrictions. It is the first executive agreement reached as part of the controversial Clarifying Overseas Use of Data Act or CLOUD Act passed by the U.S. Congress last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

The CLOUD Act has come under fire from rights groups who have warned<\/strong><\/span><\/a> that the legislation gives \u201cunlimited jurisdiction to U.S. law enforcement over any data controlled by a service provider, regardless of where the data is stored and who created it\u201d and that this also \u201capplies to content, metadata, and subscriber information\u201d, including private messages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, Barr and Patel claimed<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that the data access agreement will instead \u201cenhance\u201d civil liberties and further asserted that the agreement would be used to go after \u201cpedophiles\u201d and \u201corganized crime\u201d, even though both Barr and his U.K. equivalent have shown minimal interest in pursuing the co-conspirators of child sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, whose sex trafficking network has been linked<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>to both organized crime and the intelligence agencies of both the U.S. and Israel. Some have charged that the lack of interest on the part of William Barr is due to the fact that Barr\u2019s father once hired the now deceased pedophile.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notably, Jeffrey Epstein also had an apparent interest in pre-crime technologies, and was a key funder<\/a> of the controversial technology company Carbyne911, along with former Israeli Prime Minister and close Epstein associate Ehud Barak. Carbyne911 is one of several Israeli companies that market their software products to the U.S. as a means of reducing mass shootings and improving the response times of emergency service providers. These companies boast numerous and troubling connections to the governments and intelligence communities of both the U.S. and Israel. Epstein, himself linked to the intelligence apparatuses of both nations<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, invested at least $1 million in Carbyne911 through a \u201cdata mining\u201d company he controlled.<\/span><\/p>\n

As was detailed in a recent MintPress<\/em> expos\u00e9<\/a><\/strong><\/span> on these companies, Carbyne911 and similar companies extract any and all data from consumer smartphones for merely making emergency calls and then use it to \u201canalyze the past and present behavior of their callers, react accordingly, and in time predict future patterns,\u201d with the ultimate goal of smart devices making emergency calls to the authorities, as opposed to human beings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Data obtained from these software products, already used by several U.S. counties and slated to be adopted nationwide as part of a new national \u201cnext generation\u201d 911 system, will then be shared with the same law enforcement agencies who will soon be implementing Barr\u2019s \u201cnational disruption and early engagement program\u201d to target individuals flagged as potentially violent based on vague criteria.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notably, following the El Paso shooting, President Trump has been mulling the creation<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of a new federal agency known as HARPA that would work with the Department of Justice to use \u201cbreakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence,\u201d specifically \u201cadvanced analytical tools based on artificial intelligence and machine learning.\u201d The data to be analyzed would be harvested from consumer electronic devices as well as information provided by health-care providers to identify who may be a threat.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is important to point out that such initiatives, whether HARPA or Barr\u2019s newly announced program, are likely to define \u201cmental illness\u201d to include some political beliefs, given that the FBI recently stated<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in an internal memo that \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d were motivating some domestic terror threats and a series of questionable academic studies have sought to link<\/a><\/strong><\/span> \u201cconspiracy theorists\u201d to mental illnesses. Thus, the Department of Justice and \u201cmental health professionals\u201d have essentially already defined those who express disbelief in official government narratives as both a terror threat and mentally ill \u2014 and thus worthy of special attention from pre-crime programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sleepwalking into a nightmare<\/h2>\n

This widely overlooked background is crucial to understanding William Barr\u2019s recent memorandum and the massive and greatly underreported shift in the policy it heralds. Over a period of several months, Barr \u2014 aided by \u201cprivate sector partners\u201d as well as other current and former government officials \u2014 has been laying the groundwork for the system he has now formally announced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the software products offered by companies like Carbyne911 and through Barr\u2019s personal crusade to mandate government backdoors into encrypted software and products, Barr\u2019s new pre-crime program already has the tools for the mass extraction and storage of consumer data by means of both private tech companies and public services like emergency call centers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the already drafted plan for HARPA and its proposed solution to identifying \u201cmental illness\u201d via artificial intelligence and machine learning, this newly announced \u201cpre-crime\u201d program will have the means to analyze the mass of data harvested from consumer electronic devices from Carbyne and other means using vague \u201cmental health criteria.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While many of the specifics of the program remain unknown, the actions of Barr and others in government and private sectors show that this newly announced initiative is the product of years of careful planning and many of the tactics and tools it is poised to use have been in the works for months and even years.<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent decades, and especially after the September 11 attacks, Americans have quietly traded an increasing number of civil liberties for increased government \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d programs and wars purportedly waged to \u201ckeep us safe.\u201d Now, those same policies used to target \u201cterrorists\u201d are set to be used against ordinary Americans, whose electronic lives and communications are now set to be scoured for evidence of \u201cmental illness.\u201d If these untransparent algorithms flag an individual, that could be enough lead to court-ordered \u201cmental health treatment\u201d or even imprisonment regardless of whether or not a crime was committed or even planned.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a consequence, William Barr\u2019s coming \u201cpre-crime\u201d program is arguably worse than the stuff of dystopian science fiction novels and films as it not only aims to detain Americans who have committed no crime but will expressly target individuals based on their use of electronic consumer products and the contents of their communications with their friends, family, co-workers, and others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was sourced from MintPress News<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dark dreams of dystopian science fiction are becoming reality. Whitney Webb explains<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Surveillance","category-The_New_World_Order"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196968"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196972,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196968\/revisions\/196972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}