11 Ways That Amerika Is Becoming More Like North Korea

The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.

Congress first authorized Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite "interior law enforcement support" as part of their mission.

In an interview, Michael C. Kostelnik, a retired Air Force general who heads the office that supervises the drones, said Predators are flown "in many areas around the country, not only for federal operators, but also for state and local law enforcement and emergency responders in times of crisis."

The Metro Public Health and the Tennessee Department of Health will be using a tool designed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to go door to door and check to see how disaster ready you are.

The door to door assessment will take place from 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Thursday and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday. It will be in 30 neighborhoods in Davidson County that have been randomly selected to be the target of a door to door assessment.

The mother of a 14-year-old Dieruff High School student has filed a federal lawsuit claiming an Allentown police officer used excessive force when he shot her daughter in the groin with a stun gun during class dismissal in September.

Victoria Geist says her daughter, Keshana Wilson, had her arms raised high to indicate she surrendered when officer Jason Ammary pointed a Taser at her on Sept. 29 outside the high school and fired, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by attorney Richard J. Orloski.

The suit claims Ammary fired the Taser directly at the teen's groin and he then filed retaliatory charges against the girl to justify using the Taser.

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.

The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.

The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.

Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making "security announcements" and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of "recording conversations," bringing the potential privacy threat posed by 'Intellistreets' to a whole new level.

Senator Levin told Congress recently that under the original wording of the National Defense Authorization Act, American citizens were excluded from the provision that allowed for detention. Once Obama's officials saw the text though, says Levin, "the administration asked us to remove the language which says that US citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section."