For those of you using smart phones, I made a small change to the site last night to make it easier to get your fill of Meets the Weird on the go. Now when you visit the site from your Blackberry, iPhone, or Android device (more devices can be added to that list, just shoot me an email at john@meetstheweird.com and I will try and make sure you can access the mobile site) the page should be optimally formatted for your phone’s smaller screen. The best part about all of this is that you, my valued reader, don’t have to do a single thing to get access to the mobile version of the site. Simply visit the normal URL (http://www.meetstheweird.com) and the page will be automagically reformatted to be easy to read and navigate from your phone.

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It is no secret that the government has taken advantage of the 9/11 tragedy and scared the majority of the country into willingly sacrificing their freedom for a false sense of security. Yet, even with the sheeple cowed into compliance, the few remaining “annoyances” required to get unfettered access to the personal information of every US citizen are still apparently too daunting for the fine agents of the FBI. According to information contained in a report released today by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, the FBI routinely ignores the already lenient rules that they are required to follow to obtain phone records.

According to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, telecom providers are allowed to immediately provide records in the case of an actual emergency where there is a “reasonable belief” that “an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure without delay.” The FBI expresses this urgent need through what is called an “exigent letter” that is provided to the phone company. While I am not privy to the actual process, I can only imagine that it involves an agent filling in the phone number in question on a form letter and then handing it to a phone company employee (who, believe it or not, works inside the FBI office responsible for handling these requests). While you would imagine that the FBI would be perfectly happy with a system that is devoid of judicial oversight and only requires only writing a letter to gain access to private records, but according to the Inspector General’s report agents routinely obtained records without using an “exigent letter”. In some cases, the phone number in question was merely written down on a Post-It note left on the telecom employee’s desk, other times requests were made verbally.

Additionally, the FBI has developed a new legal “theory” that allows telecoms to divulge information without any judicial process AT ALL! Unfortunately for the American public, the portion of the report dealing with this new theory is heavily redacted. Hidden from view is any discussion of the legal basis for this new claim. Even the section number of the law the FBI feels grants it this power is redacted. This ridiculous secrecy is exactly the opposite of what you would expect from an administration that ran on a platform of hope and promised openness and transparency. Well at least we know that it is business as usual at the Department of Injustice.

FBI Replaced Legal Process with Post-It Notes to Obtain Phone Records

Youtube user seeingUFOsPA has posted dozens of videos of UFOs flying over and into a stretch of woods near Latrobe, Pennsylvania. While the videos are definitely interesting, they are hardly what I would describe as a smoking gun (most are of single points of light against the night sky). In fact there are hundreds like them on Youtube. What interests me with these specific videos is the organized campaign that seeingUFOsPA claims has been trying to keep the public from seeing this footage. The videos have been targeted by several false DCMA takedown requests made by individuals claiming to be representatives of MUFON and even Bill Burns from The History Channel’s UFO Hunters. seeingUFOsPA is so certain that the videos contain footage of actual UFOs that she is offering $500 plus to cost of any FAA radar reports to anyone that can prove the craft on the video are man made. To aid anyone willing to take on the task of debunking the film, seeingUFOsPA post the approximate GPS coordinates of where the craft were sighted and that’s when this decidedly man made craft showed up:

Yes, that’s right. A armed Apache gunship was spotted flying low over the stretch of woods in question. What exactly is flying over the Pennsylvania woods that someone feels the need to hide from the public and send an attack helicopter to investigate?

LOOK who’s checking out UFO WOODS. January 20, 2010
seeingUFOsPA’s Youtube channel (more videos here)