Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Tuesday 05-17-16

Hidden Microphones Exposed As Part of Government Surveillance Program In The Bay Area

OAKLAND (CBS SF) — Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed.
Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing.  It happens all the time, and the FBI doesn’t even need a warrant to do it.
Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations.
Jeff Harp, a KPIX 5 security analyst and former FBI special agent said, “They put microphones under rocks, they put microphones in trees, they plant microphones in equipment. I mean, there’s microphones that are planted in places that people don’t think about, because that’s the intent!”
FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures and at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse without a warrant to record conversations, between March 2010 and January 2011.
Federal authorities are trying to prove real estate investors in San Mateo and Alameda counties are guilty of bid rigging and fraud and used these recordings as evidence.
Harp said, “An agent can’t just go out and grab a recording device and plant it somewhere without authorization from a supervisor or special agent in charge.”
The lawyer for one of the accused real estate investors who will ask the judge to throw out the recordings, told KPIX 5 News that, “Speaking in a public place does not mean that the individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy…private communication in a public place qualifies as a protected ‘oral communication’… and therefore may not be intercepted without judicial authorization.”
Harp says that if you’re going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. He says that was the original intention of the Fourth Amendment, but it’s up to the judge to interpret it.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/13/hidden-microphones-exposed-as-part-of-government-surveillance-program-in-the-bay-area/

The buying and selling of America, it is on going, this is just a drop in the bucket

Chinese pour $110bn into US real estate, says study

Investment is set to double in the next five years as wealthy rush to get their money into overseas assets, especially houses.

Chinese nationals have become the largest foreign buyers of US property after pouring billions into the market in search of safe offshore assets, according to a study.
A huge surge in Chinese buying of both residential and commercial real estate last year took their five-year investment total to more than $110bn, according to the study from the Asia Society and Rosen Consulting Group.
The sheer size of that total has helped the real estate market recover from the crash that began in 2006 and precipitated the 2008 economic crisis, they said.
Chinese investment in property has also helped to inflate prices in other developed countries, notably the UK and Australia in the wake of the dip in world stock markets in 2015.
And despite a slowdown due to Beijing’s subsequent clampdown on capital outflows, the figure for the second half of this decade is likely to double to $218bn, the study said.
“What makes China different and noteworthy is the combination of the high volume of investment (and) the breadth of its participation across all real estate categories,” including a “somewhat unique entry into residential purchases,” the study said.
The authors of the study said their numbers, based on public and real estate industry data, understate the total. They necessarily miss purchases made by front companies and trusts that do not identify the sources of the funds.
Big deals such as the Anbang insurance group’s $2bn purchase of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York last year and its failed $14bn offer for the Starwood group in March have made headlines. But the study said Chinese buying of US homes far outpaces its investment in commercial land and buildings.
Between 2010 and 2015, Chinese buyers put more than $17bn into US commercial real estate, with half of that spent last year alone. Unlike many countries, there are very few restrictions on what foreigners can buy in the US.
But during the same period at least $93bn went into US homes. And in the 12 months to March 2015, the latest period for which relatively comprehensive data could be gathered, home purchases totaled $28.5bn.
That took the Chinese past Canadians, who have long been the biggest foreign buyers of US residential real estate.
Geographically, Chinese buyers are concentrated in the most expensive markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Property in Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas is also popular.
That focus means they pay well above the average US home price: last year, Chinese buyers paid on average about $832,000 per home in the United States, compared with the average for all foreign purchases of $499,600.
The motivations are broad: some are buying second homes, some are buying as they move to the United States on EB-5 investor visas; some are investing for rental and resale.
Most of the money in US homes, the study noted, is private wealth, not corporate.
“This familiarity of utilizing real estate as an investment or wealth preservation tool is more prevalent in China and reflects the broader comfort of purchasing second homes in the United States by Chinese individuals and families,” the study noted.
Since last year, there has also been the motivation to get money outside China and into dollar assets amid worry about the continued fall in the yuan, which was devalued slightly against the US dollar in August.
The study says it expects a lot more commercial real estate buys in the United States by Chinese companies.
Last month, Chinese conglomerate HNA announced it would buy the 1,400-hotel group Carlson Hotels, owner of the Radisson brand.
“Anbang is not the only firm looking at these assets. Other Chinese entities were originally interested in acquiring Starwood in 2015 before Marriott reached an initial deal, including Jin Jiang Hotel Group, which had already acquired a European hotel chain in 2015, and CIC, the sovereign wealth fund,” the study said.
In Australia, the government recently blocked an attempt by Dakang Holdings to buy the Kidman farmland empire whose assets cover 1.3% of the Australian land mass.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/16/chinese-pour-110bn-into-us-real-estate-says-study

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