I heard about a backpack-sized setup that you can get which takes a video input, compresses to HD quality, then splits the outgoing signal onto six separate cell phone data links (three are 3G, three are standard).

This was pretty expensive for 30 hours/month service but in theory would let you do high quality video without a satellite uplink or other special gear.

Presumably stitching the data streams back together is a pretty big hat trick especially with low latency.

Everyone should check this out. A group called Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC) ran a website that supported putting the seriously nasty Huntington Life Sciences animal testing corporation out of business. They were quite successful but now the SHAC7 are getting crushed via the ridiculous Animal Enterprise Terrorism laws & etc. This seems a lot worse than the Texas situation because this is about anti-corporate political websites rather than simple social networking harassment. See http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/shac-7-conviction-upheld-on-appeal/2307/ . A really, really dangerous appeals court ruling came out that should scare the hell out of anyone that wants to effectively organize against corporate trolls via the Internet:

The conviction of the SHAC 7–animal rights activists hit with “terrorism” charges for publishing a website and vocally, unapologetically supporting direct action–has been upheld by a U.S. appellate court. It is a landmark free speech ruling that lowers the threshold of what types of conduct are protected by the First Amendment, and upholds a law that is so broad that it targets civil disobedience as “terrorism.”

As a brief introduction: The “SHAC 7” of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty ran an effective campaign that had the sole purpose of putting Huntingdon Life Sciences, a notorious animal testing company, out of business. The campaign pressured corporations to sever ties with the lab. The SHAC 7 were never accused of breaking windows or releasing animals from labs, but they supported those who did. They published a website which posted news of both legal and illegal tactics, and supported all of it. The website had also posted names and addresses of individuals connected to the corporations targeted. ....Supporting and facilitating non-violent civil disobedience is not protected speech.

As part of their campaign, SHAC supporters were emailed about “electronic civil disobedience.” The email and message board posts included instructions on how electronically “sit in” on corporate web sites through emails, faxes and phone calls.

Now, one of the benchmarks in First Amendment law is what is called the Brandenburg standard. It holds that even the most controversial and inflammatory speech is protected as long as it not likely to incite “imminent and lawless action.” That is a very high threshold. In this court ruling—which, to the best of my knowledge and the attorneys I have spoken with is the first of its kind—the written word can be construed as promoting, or resulting in, imminent and lawless action.

To put it more plainly: Vocally supporting civil disobedience, explaining what it involves, and encouraging/facilitating people to take part is not protected speech.

This is so important let me say it again, another way: People who write about civil disobedience and encourage people to take part can be found convicted of a crime even if they do not take part in the civil disobedience.

Another thing happening is extreme Grand Jury fishing expeditions against green activists - we had a grand jury thing go down in Minneapolis just this week. See http://tc.indymedia.org/ for the latest on this.

Here's a nifty story I did for Politics in Minnesota based on the docs about Minnesota's mostly-mandatory infant DNA screening program. It turns out that the State owns the DNA intellectual property rights but the Mayo owns the derivative works, according to the contract. Who knew?

The original headline was "Freedom of consent, total galactose & intellectual property: Minnesota's infant DNA Mayo-Gopher industrial complex". see
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/2009/may29/3251/freedom-consent-total-galactose-intellectual-property-minnesotas-infant-dna-mayo-gop

Get 100 MB super-multifile-PDF here - OCR'd
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/files/infant-dna-combined-doc.pdf

ledes:
A new round of documents obtained from the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) regarding the state's Newborn Screening Program (NBS) show interesting implications about the difference between its role catching certain dangerous genetic diseases, and the various genetic research and testing programs that the samples ultimately get sent to. There's quite a difference between the "trip-wire" disease screening program and the DNA studies; the role of DNA research as intellectual property suddenly pops up.

The study project authorizations approved by the Department of Health involve DNA research; critics of the policies around the newborn DNA samples want to know what happens to all the genetic data, and who might profit from it. Two big players around here, the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota, do work on the blood samples. The operative contracts, which include defining the "intellectual property" of what could almost be called the "derivative works" of newborn DNA, of the U of M and Mayo were obtained by lawyer Nathan Hansen, working in concert with the Citizens Council on Health Care, via Data Practices requests.

Here is the University's newborn screening contract and the Mayo's [PDFs]. Fans of cellular rights might find the parts on the State apparently owning their chromosomes a bit profound! [PIM combined all of Hansen's PDFs, now searchable via OCR...]

I am rather pleased with myself for correctly parsing this story in 2006. It was clear to some at the time what was really going on.

"In sum total: The FBI has the evidence already. The shape of spy scandals to get exposed depends on who runs the Intelligence committees, and Reyes seems like the only good choice" etc.

An excellent overview of the techniques and methods of mass data mining.

The question is whether all that stuff they collected (and the galaxy of contractors is REALLY well explained) can count as exculpatory evidence in big cases. (IE if you're accused of being a terrorist, then Booz Allen Hamilton ought to cough everything up.)

Which is why i loaned my copy to rnc8.org - the RNC Welcoming Committee "furtherance of terrorism" defendants!

Hiyo, i posted below the deeper stuff behind the Texas operation
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1128199&cid=26859903
long story short, in MN they want to extend to us this RFID based tracking system, and all the docs got wrenched out of the bureaucracy. 700 pages explaining exactly how this total tracking platform would work. story here
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/2008/aug/19/now-searchable-mndot-nasco-nafta-superhighway-document-stash
PDF (searchable OCR) here
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/files/nasco-documents-ocr.pdf
Please check this out - thanks

OK so you guys should check this out - Lockheed Martin is attempting to build an RFID-centered tracking system on I-35 and I94 called NAFTRACS under the NASCO (north american super corridor coaltion) nonprofit 'front company' aka 'systems integrator' or super-contractor. this system entails dozens of RFID data collection points and the cosntruction of "total transportation domain awareness centers of excellence" (really!) which would integrate all this information.

The whole thing got exposed via Minnesota Data Practices Act @ the MnDOT - it is an extension of the CINTRA 'NAFTA superhighway' in Texas.

This surfaced in my day job - we have 700 pages that spell out everything from PR emails to the grant applications to the whole damn design of the system.

Check it out yourself. As i like to say, "these are the droids you're looking for!" Obviously such a system can be extended to provide total big brother tracking and a mileage tax, as well as competitive advantage for Lockheed, which announced they would resell the shipping data as marketable information (Walmart subscribes to its competitors supply chain dataflow).

VERY big - please pass the word - its a perfect example of the domesticization of military industrial tracking systems (actually a clone of Lockheeds military container tracking sytem Global Transport Network etc). READ this stuff (I even OCR'd it)
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/2008/aug/19/now-searchable-mndot-nasco-nafta-superhighway-document-stash
43 MB PDF searchable! http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/files/nasco-documents-ocr.pdf

Ok my question is can this /. community isolate or expose the methods of what the NSA has been doing, and has the NSA been feeding these data mining systems into other areas of the government or military?

Specifically you guys should look at US NORTHCOM (northern command), Homeland Security dept, and the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency. I strongly suspect that these groups put together have fed illegally obtained data into the law enforcement apparatus (the NGA and NORTHCOM had a presence at the Republican National Convention here in Minnesota - these are military agencies!)

NGA's website talks a lot about the data feeds they create for the NORTHCOM/DHS National Incident Management System (NIMS). We could easily find that various events like raids were generated via illegal data mining... Where is the manifestation of law enforcement ACTIVITY from data mining collection??

How to approach this systematically, that is what I'm asking you folks about.

Here's the problem folks: the FCC refuses to acknowledge electronic devices' emissions having any effect on the human body besides thermal. I.E. cellphones must only cause your tissue to heat to a certain level. However, the FCC refuses to regulate the other possible effects of this radiation. Period. This, of course, is of pivotal importance to the high tech and telecom industries, because it lets them keep their products within the 'no effects' category without any government intervention.

Personally, I get dizzy from 45 minute cell phone calls and have to shake it off. By that time the phone is certainly warm. Its other effects? Officially, the government passes the buck!

Check this: the devious Stanford Research Institute (which was, indeed, contracted by the CIA to do remote viewing research in the 1970s, see Operation STARGATE) wrote a very interesting thing about the "Changing Images of Man," the kind of thing spit out by ominous acid-dropping elite scientist types.
http://www.skilluminati.com/research/entry/scientists_on_acid_the_story_behind_changing_images_of_man/
In this marvelous example of 1970s establishmentarian utopianism, there is a good deal of info about studies in "electromagnetic pollution." Think of that: the very phrase is totally alien to us now, even though we are subjected to so much more than we used to be. Their main study cited was about a lady who got schizophrenic-style symptoms; it turned out she had an unshielded power conduit in her wall that was filling her apartment with powerful EM radiation. Once the power conduit was properly shielded, her health problems abated.

If these cats knew it could affect people then (since of course our bodies operate within a kind of electromagnetic flux), why aren't there more substantive studies today?!

For some time I had a WiFi router right next to the head of my bed; I would stare at it as it blinked at me, thinking of all the energy going thru my head. I was happy to have it go away. I don't use WiFi in my home, though of course it leaches in. I strongly feel that longterm studies about cellphone use are coming up rather ominous, especially for younger people whose thinner skulls are less resistant to the microwaves. What is everyone going to feel like after 30 years of intense WiFi and especially cellphone exposure?!

It is important to realize that law enforcement has decided that Facebook or MySpace 'friend' status is an acceptable threshold to connect people that they want to make subjects of investigation, i.e. the status of 'friending' meets some legal or procedural threshold to open a file on someone. This is going to be an important element of political pressure upon radical and social change organizations, in particular.

If for example, Person A is hosting some radical political meeting, and is friends with Person B on MySpace, then the government can initiate an investigation of Person B because they seem to be 'associated.' This of course is much easier for lazy agents to carry out, and additionally it is 'open source' information in the legal sense as well. (we are not even including the vaunted Facebook/CIA venture capital backdoor business or whatever people speculate about)

This is a VERY big deal but has not been examined. VERY big - it is going on now. We are all getting more and more 'control files' developed by them (and their contractor buddies) to control us, and this type of data is elemental. There has been no reckoning about what it means.

Also informants and provocateurs also now are getting things like MySpace pages. That has been the case here in Minnesota, in particular. Part of their personas.

All of this is now being called I2 or Identity Intelligence, a new school of INT like SIGINT, etc.