20131230
The Man Behind The World's Most Dangerous Website
John L. Young asks that question a lot. When he poses it to me, leveling his intense, glassy blue eyes at mine across a barroom table on a muggy evening in late May, it is less a direct attack on my credibility than a cruel epistemological riddle.
Over the previous week, I had exchanged e-mails and spoken on the telephone with Young, a 71-year-old architect, spy buff, and proprietor of a strange and engrossing website called Cryptome, to set up an interview.
Over the previous week, I had exchanged e-mails and spoken on the telephone with Young, a 71-year-old architect, spy buff, and proprietor of a strange and engrossing website called Cryptome, to set up an interview.
In doing so, I supplied him with certain data: my name [John Cook], occupation [reporter], employer [Radar magazine], location [216 E. 45th St.], e-mail address [redacted], telephone number [redacted]. Young craves data. He covets it, collects it, triangulates it, and uploads it to Cryptome - an online repository of forbidden information - where it collides with more data, gig after gig sloshing around in chaotic digital clouds.
There are high-resolution satellite photos of President Bush's Crawford ranch, technical documents detailing how the National Security Agency spies on computer traffic, even the home addresses and telephone numbers of government officials, including former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.
But Young knows that raw data is suspect...
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_worldmostdangerouswebsite.htm
There are high-resolution satellite photos of President Bush's Crawford ranch, technical documents detailing how the National Security Agency spies on computer traffic, even the home addresses and telephone numbers of government officials, including former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.
But Young knows that raw data is suspect...
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_worldmostdangerouswebsite.htm
State Dept. whistleblower has email hacked, deleted
WASHINGTON — The personal e-mail account of a State Department whistleblower was hacked, and four years worth of messages — some detailing alleged wrongdoing at the agency — were deleted, The Post has learned.
The computer attack targeted the Gmail account of Diplomatic Security Service criminal investigator Richard Higbie, his lawyer, Cary Schulman, confirmed.
“They took all of his e-mails and then they deleted them all,” said Schulman. He said that he could not prove who was responsible for the hack job, but said the attack was “sophisticated” and called the targeting of Higbie “alarming.”
“Obviously, somebody is not happy with something he’s doing and wanted to get that information and also cause him an inability in the future to have ready access to that,” Schulman said...
http://nypost.com/2013/12/30/state-dept-whistleblower-has-email-hacked-deleted/
The computer attack targeted the Gmail account of Diplomatic Security Service criminal investigator Richard Higbie, his lawyer, Cary Schulman, confirmed.
“They took all of his e-mails and then they deleted them all,” said Schulman. He said that he could not prove who was responsible for the hack job, but said the attack was “sophisticated” and called the targeting of Higbie “alarming.”
“Obviously, somebody is not happy with something he’s doing and wanted to get that information and also cause him an inability in the future to have ready access to that,” Schulman said...
http://nypost.com/2013/12/30/state-dept-whistleblower-has-email-hacked-deleted/
20131229
20131227
Wiki: October Surprise conspiracy theory
One of the leading national issues during that year was the release of 52 Americans being held hostage in Iran since November 4, 1979.[1] Reagan won the election. On the day of his inauguration, in fact, 20 minutes after he concluded his inaugural address, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages. The timing gave rise to an allegation that representatives of Reagan's presidential campaign had conspired with Iran to delay the release until after the election to thwart President Carter from pulling off an "October surprise".
According to the allegation, the Reagan Administration rewarded Iran for its participation in the plot by supplying Iran with weapons via Israel and by unblocking Iranian government monetary assets in US banks.
After twelve years of mixed media attention, both houses of the US Congress held separate inquiries and concluded that the allegations lacked supporting documentation.Nevertheless, several individuals—most notably former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr,[2] former Naval intelligence officer and National Security Council member Gary Sick; and former Reagan/Bush campaign and White House staffer Barbara Honegger—have stood by the allegation. There have been allegations that the 1980 Camarate air crash which killed the Portuguese Prime Minister, Francisco de Sá Carneiro, was in fact an assassination of the Defence Minister, Adelino Amaro da Costa, who had said that he had documents concerning the October surprise conspiracy theory and was planning on taking them to the United Nations General Assembly...
History of British Petroleum: Part I
(Part one of a three-part series excerpted from Chapter 1: David Rockefeller & the Shah of Iran: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
In 1872 British Baron Julius du Reuter was granted an exclusive 50-year mining and communications concession in Persia by that country’s Peacock Throne monarchy. By 1921 the British government had installed Shah Mohammed Reza Khan in a palace coup. With their puppet in place, du Reuter’s firm, one of the British Empire’s most important tentacles, busied itself exploiting the rich oil reserves of Iran.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company grew swiftly, first changing its name to Anglo-Iranian Oil, and later becoming British Petroleum (BP). During the last two decades of the 20th century BP speeded its global expansion, absorbing Britoil and Standard Oil of Ohio during the 1980’s, then swallowing up Amoco and Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) in the late 1990’s.
In 1991 Russia earned $13 billion in hard currency from oil exports. In 1992 IMF puppet Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia’s world leading 9.2 billion barrel/day oil sector would be privatized. Sixty percent of Russia’s Siberian reserves had never been tapped. In 1993 the World Bank announced a $610 billion loan to modernize Russia’s oil industry, by far the largest loan in the bank’s history. World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation bought stock in several Russian oil companies and made an additional loan to the Bronfman family’s Conoco for its purchase of Siberian Polar Lights Company.
The main vehicle for international banker control over Russian oil would be Lukoil, initially 20%-owned by BP and Credit Suisse First Boston. A handful of Zionist Russian oligarchs with Israeli passports, collectively known as the Russian Mafia, owned the rest of Lukoil, which partnered with the Four Horsemen in oil and gas developments throughout the country involving staggering amounts of capital...
The CIA and the Washington Post
News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark.
The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon — which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.
Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.
And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure.
Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”
The CIA and the Washington Post » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon — which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.
Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.
And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure.
Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”
The CIA and the Washington Post » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
9/11 Families 'Ecstatic' They Can Finally Sue Saudi Arabia
Families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks today celebrated a federal court's ruling that allows relatives of people who died in the 9/11 terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia.
Most of the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 were from Saudi Arabia, and the complaint states that much of the funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists came from Saudi Arabia.
An attempt to Saudi Arabia in 2002 was blocked by a federal court ruling that said the kingdom had sovereign immunity. That ruling was reversed Thursday by a three-judge federal panel.
"I'm ecstatic.... For 12 years we've been fighting to expose the people who financed those bastards," said William Doyle, the father of Joseph Doyle, 25, a Cantor-Fitzgerald employee who was killed in the North Tower of the World Trade Center...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/911-families-ecstatic-finally-sue-saudi-arabia/story?id=21290177
#1 ICS and SCADA Security Myth: Protection by Air Gap
In his blog article, Fix the Problem, Stop Bailing out Vendors, Dale Peterson made a brief comment about “fantasy of the air gap”. It was an important comment, but one I think got lost in the other messages Dale offered. So today, I am going to focus on the topic of air gaps.
The existence of an “air gap” between control system networks and the rest of the world has been one of the most enduring fairy tales in the field of SCADA / ICS security. The idea is that in a properly designed system, there is a physical gap between the control network and the business network. Since digital information cannot cross such a gap, bad things like hackers and worms can never get into critical control systems. From this, a corollary flows: “Companies that get worms in their systems obviously have not created the proper air gap and deserved to be infected.”
Now there are many materials supporting the idea of the air gap. Every week a new SCADA and ICS vulnerability notice comes out and every week end users get to read statements like this:
“In addition, it is important to ensure your automation network is protected from unauthorized access using the strategies suggested in this document or isolate the automation network from all other networks using an air gap...”
http://www.blog.beldensolutions.com/1-ics-and-scada-security-myth-protection-by-air-gap/
The existence of an “air gap” between control system networks and the rest of the world has been one of the most enduring fairy tales in the field of SCADA / ICS security. The idea is that in a properly designed system, there is a physical gap between the control network and the business network. Since digital information cannot cross such a gap, bad things like hackers and worms can never get into critical control systems. From this, a corollary flows: “Companies that get worms in their systems obviously have not created the proper air gap and deserved to be infected.”
Now there are many materials supporting the idea of the air gap. Every week a new SCADA and ICS vulnerability notice comes out and every week end users get to read statements like this:
“In addition, it is important to ensure your automation network is protected from unauthorized access using the strategies suggested in this document or isolate the automation network from all other networks using an air gap...”
http://www.blog.beldensolutions.com/1-ics-and-scada-security-myth-protection-by-air-gap/
20131226
Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the predators in the present-day? Drones are remote-controlled planes that can be used for anything from surveillance and deadly force, to rescue operations and scientific research. Most drones are used today by military powers for remote-controlled surveillance and attack, and their numbers are growing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicted in 2012 that within 20 years there could be as many as 30.000 drones flying over U.S. Soil alone. As robotic birds will become commonplace in the near future, we should be prepared to identify them.
This survival guide is an attempt to familiarise ourselves and future generations, with a changing technological environment.
This document contains the silhouettes of the most common drone species used today and in the near future. Each indicating nationality and whether they are used for surveillance only or for deadly force. All drones are drawn in scale for size indication. From the smallest consumer drones measuring less than 1 meter, up to the Global Hawk measuring 39,9 meter in length...
http://dronesurvivalguide.org
Top US Psychologist Allegedly Met With SERE Psychologist James Mitchell in Days Before Zubaydah Torture
America 2013: A top U.S. psychologist touting “Positive Psychology” is to be a keynote speaker at a huge Southern California conference on psychotherapy. Other speakers include psychiatry heavies Aaron Beck, Irvin Yalom, as well as Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman, and big media names like James Foley and Alanis Morissette.
The famous psychologist — Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania — has been linked to the CIA’s Bush torture program. The charges lack a smoking gun, but there is lots of circumstantial evidence. What is reported below shows that Seligman wasn’t fully open about his contacts with those accused of waterboarding Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and torturing various CIA “black site” prisoners circa 2002-2006. Why did he hide this information?
A Forgotten Book
A 2011 book written by Georgetown academic and ethics expert M. Gregg Bloche (currently co-director for the Georgetown-Johns Hopkins Joint Program in Law and Public Health) broke important new ground about the origins of the post-9/11 CIA torture program. Unfortunately, he did so just as the Obama administration’s policy of non-investigation and non-prosecution of those involved in U.S. torture had gained ascendancy among both press and the public...
http://pubrecord.org/torture/11073/psychologist-allegedly-psychologist/
20131223
An Open Letter to the Chiefs of EMC and RSA
An Open Letter to:
Joseph M. Tucci - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, EMC
Art Coviello - Executive Chairman, RSA
Dear Joseph and Art,
I don’t expect you to know who I am.
I’ve been working with computer security since 1991. Nowadays I do quite a bit of public speaking on the topic. In fact, I have spoken eight times at either RSA Conference USA, RSA Conference Europe or RSA Conference Japan. You’ve even featured my picture on the walls of your conference walls among the 'industry experts'.
On December 20th, Reuters broke a story alleging that your company accepted a random number generator from the National Security Agency, and set it as the default option in one of the your products, in exchange of $10 million. Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim. Eventually, NSA’s random number generator was found to be flawed on purpose, in effect creating a back door. You had kept on using the generator for years despite widespread speculation that NSA had backdoored it.
As my reaction to this, I’m cancelling my talk at the RSA Conference USA 2014 in San Francisco in February 2014...
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002651.html
7 Reasons the TSA Sucks (A Security Expert's Perspective)
For a bunch of people in snappy uniforms patting down crotches, the TSA is remarkably unpopular. Nobody likes going through security at the airport, but you probably figured most of it had a point. All those hours spent in line with other shoeless travelers are a necessary precursor to safe flying. It's annoying, but at least it wards off terrorism.
That's all bullshit. The TSA couldn't protect you from a 6-year-old with a water balloon. What are my qualifications for saying that? My name is Rafi Sela, and I was the head of security for the world's safest airport. Here's what your country does wrong.
(If only we could go back to the uber-safe days of the Wild West, where the biggest annual gun death toll in any town was five people. Read The De-Textbook and never let Clint Eastwood trick you again.)
#7. The TSA Is Supposed to Regulate Itself...
http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-reasons-tsa-sucks-a-security-experts-perspective/
20131222
Covert action in Colombia
The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 former and current U.S. and Colombian officials.
The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security Agency, is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It is not a part of the public $9 billion package of mostly U.S. military aid called Plan Colombia, which began in 2000.
Above: A Colombian Air Force member cleans an A-29 Super Tucano, a turboprop aircraft typically involved in strikes on FARC targets. (Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images)
The previously undisclosed CIA program was authorized by President George W. Bush in the early 2000s and has continued under President Obama, according to U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic officials. Most of those interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program is classified and ongoing.
The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/covert-action-in-colombia/
The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security Agency, is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It is not a part of the public $9 billion package of mostly U.S. military aid called Plan Colombia, which began in 2000.
Above: A Colombian Air Force member cleans an A-29 Super Tucano, a turboprop aircraft typically involved in strikes on FARC targets. (Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images)
The previously undisclosed CIA program was authorized by President George W. Bush in the early 2000s and has continued under President Obama, according to U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic officials. Most of those interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program is classified and ongoing.
The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/covert-action-in-colombia/
20131221
Inside NSA: We Brought In a Recording Device So You Don’t Have To
The NSA is not exactly known for engaging with the public. The old “No Such Agency” joke more or less captured the agency’s traditional posture: the less said, the better. Whatever the merits of that approach from the perspective of protecting sources and methods of SIGINT collection, however, it comes at a huge cost in terms of public credibility, as the events of the past six months have underscored.
Well, some agencies are born open, some achieve openness, and this one has had openness thrust upon it.
In recent months, the agency been taking preliminary steps—themselves dramatic for a signals intelligence agency—to engage the public debate. Tomorrow evening, for example, 60 Minutes will air a segment on NSA that reflects considerable cooperation with CBS. A preview snippet is posted here, and the full program will be well-worth watching.
For those who want a more granular and lengthy glimpse behind the curtain? Well, that’s where Lawfarecomes in. All this week, starting Monday morning, we’ll be posting a series of podcasts we’re calling “Inside NSA: We Brought in a Recording Device So You Don’t Have To...”
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/12/inside-the-nsa-we-brought-in-a-recording-device-so-you-dont-have-to/
Well, some agencies are born open, some achieve openness, and this one has had openness thrust upon it.
In recent months, the agency been taking preliminary steps—themselves dramatic for a signals intelligence agency—to engage the public debate. Tomorrow evening, for example, 60 Minutes will air a segment on NSA that reflects considerable cooperation with CBS. A preview snippet is posted here, and the full program will be well-worth watching.
For those who want a more granular and lengthy glimpse behind the curtain? Well, that’s where Lawfarecomes in. All this week, starting Monday morning, we’ll be posting a series of podcasts we’re calling “Inside NSA: We Brought in a Recording Device So You Don’t Have To...”
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/12/inside-the-nsa-we-brought-in-a-recording-device-so-you-dont-have-to/
20131220
Exclusive: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.
Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show...
20131219
20131214
A Disappearing Spy, and a Scandal at the C.I.A.
Robert A. Levinson was an overweight bear of a man who once worked as an F.B.I. agent and desperately wanted to recapture the life of international intrigue he relished as an expert on Russian organized crime. But as he sat in a hotel room in Geneva in early 2007, he was anxious about a secret mission he had planned to Iran.
“I guess as I approach my fifty-ninth birthday on the 10th of March, and after having done quite a few other crazy things in my life,” he wrote in an email to a friend, “I am questioning just why, at this point, with seven kids and a great wife, why would I put myself in such jeopardy.”
He would like some assurance, he added, that “I’m not going to wind up someplace where I really don’t want to be at this stage of my life.”
Mr. Levinson gambled and traveled to an island off the Iranian coast to meet with an American fugitive he hoped to turn into his informant. There, his worst fears were realized — he disappeared, and has since been seen only as a prisoner in a video that emerged about three years ago and in photographs showing him dressed like a Guantánamo detainee, in orange garb...
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/world/middleeast/a-disappearing-american-spy-and-the-cia.html
The NSA’s “Lone Wolf” Justification for Mass Spying Is B.S.
In reality:
Top security experts say that mass spying interferes with U.S. counter-terror efforts (more here and here)
American presidents agree
The chairs of the 9/11 Commission say that the spying has gone way too far (and that the Director of National Intelligence should be prosecuted for lying about the spying program)
Top officials say that the claim that the government could only have stopped the attacks if it had been able to spy on Americans is wholly false
The NSA was already conducting mass surveillance prior to 9/11
But we want to focus on another angle: the unspoken assumption by the NSA that we need mass surveillance because “lone wolf” terrorists don’t leave as many red flags as governments, so the NSA has to spy on everyone to find the needle in the haystack...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/saudis.html
But we want to focus on another angle: the unspoken assumption by the NSA that we need mass surveillance because “lone wolf” terrorists don’t leave as many red flags as governments, so the NSA has to spy on everyone to find the needle in the haystack...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/saudis.html
about the cryptopocalypse
Last weekend, Bitcoin reported that several Android-based wallets were insecure and that bitcoin were stolen from them - all because the individual transactions (authenticated by a ECDSA signature) used a poor source of randomness. When you use a poor source of randomness in a DSA (or ECDSA) signature, you may reuse one of the values in the signature, the k value. Reusing k can expose the private key - something Sony knows well, as it was the flaw that exposed a private key in the PS3.
But the Bitcoin apps used SecureRandom, which as the name implies is actually supposed to be cryptographically secure. On Android, it's the recommended, "cryptographically secure" library... and it wasn't secure. And the results have been as catastrophic as they can be - long term private keys have been recovered. Why? Mathematically speaking, we understand why - but why do we rely on DSA, when it has this horrendous property? We know that random number generators will fail. Whether it's this instance, Mining Your P's and Q's, or Debian's openssl bug - even in seemingly highly secure or reliable instances... we still shouldn't trust the random number generator fully. While every algorithm requires strong randomness for key generation, only DSA requires strong randomness for every signature - RSA does not. It's time to stop letting DSA hold a gun to our heads.
Fortunately, we have a solution, and it doesn't necessarily require moving to another algorithm. We can incrementally fix DSA. The k value doesn't necessarily have to be random - it just must be unique and secret. RFC 6979 is a mechanism to generate a unique number based off the key and message, to ensure it's not reused. Dubbed "deterministic DSA" - you can generate signatures with this technique that are completely compatible with any DSA signature-checking implementation. With all the problems DSA has given us, deterministic DSA (or another scheme that does not rely on randomness for every single signature) really needs to be the standard way of generating signatures...
http://ritter.vg/blog-cryptopocalypse_followup.html
But the Bitcoin apps used SecureRandom, which as the name implies is actually supposed to be cryptographically secure. On Android, it's the recommended, "cryptographically secure" library... and it wasn't secure. And the results have been as catastrophic as they can be - long term private keys have been recovered. Why? Mathematically speaking, we understand why - but why do we rely on DSA, when it has this horrendous property? We know that random number generators will fail. Whether it's this instance, Mining Your P's and Q's, or Debian's openssl bug - even in seemingly highly secure or reliable instances... we still shouldn't trust the random number generator fully. While every algorithm requires strong randomness for key generation, only DSA requires strong randomness for every signature - RSA does not. It's time to stop letting DSA hold a gun to our heads.
Fortunately, we have a solution, and it doesn't necessarily require moving to another algorithm. We can incrementally fix DSA. The k value doesn't necessarily have to be random - it just must be unique and secret. RFC 6979 is a mechanism to generate a unique number based off the key and message, to ensure it's not reused. Dubbed "deterministic DSA" - you can generate signatures with this technique that are completely compatible with any DSA signature-checking implementation. With all the problems DSA has given us, deterministic DSA (or another scheme that does not rely on randomness for every single signature) really needs to be the standard way of generating signatures...
http://ritter.vg/blog-cryptopocalypse_followup.html
How Law Enforcement Tracks Cellular Phones
Recent news stories, notably this story in USA Today and this story in the Washington Post, have brought to light extensive use of "Stingray" devices and "tower dumps" by federal -- and local -- law enforcement agencies to track cellular telephones.
Just how how does all this tracking and interception technology work? There are actually a surprising number of different ways law enforcement agencies can track and get information about phones, each of which exposes different information in different ways. And it's all steeped in arcane surveillance jargon that's evolved over decades of changes in the law and the technology. So now seems like a good time to summarize what the various phone tapping methods actually are, how they work, and how they differ from one another.
Note that this post is concerned specifically with phone tracking as done by US domestic law enforcement agencies. Intelligence agencies engaged in bulk surveillance, such as the NSA, have different requirements, constraints, and resources, and generally use different techniques. For example, it was recently revealed that NSA has access to international phone "roaming" databases used by phone companies to route calls. The NSA apparently collects vast amounts of telephone "metadata" to discover hidden communications patterns, relationships, and behaviors across the world. But, as interesting and important as that is, it has little to do with the phone tracking techniques used by local law enforcement, and it's not what we're talking about here.
Phone tracking by law enforcement agencies, in contrast to intelligence agencies, is intended to support investigations of specific crimes and to gather evidence for use in prosecutions. And so their interception technology -- and the underlying law -- is supposed to be focused on obtaining information about the communications of particular targets rather than of the population at large...
http://www.crypto.com/blog/celltapping/
20131211
20131210
CIA Internal Review Confirms that Leon Panetta Revealed ‘Top Secret’ Information to Hollywood Filmmaker at bin Laden Assault Awards Ceremony
Documents obtained by Judicial Watch also reveal former CIA Director told ceremony attendees: “And you have made me proud as an Italian to know that bin Laden sleeps with the fishes.”
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained more than 200 pages of documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including a previously unreleased CIA internal report confirming that former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed classified information at a June 24, 2011, bin Laden assault awards ceremony attended by “Zero Dark Thirty” filmmaker Mark Boal. The documents were produced in response to a June 21, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Significantly, the entire transcript of the Panetta speech provided to Judicial Watch by the CIA is classified “Top Secret.” More than 90 lines are redacted for security reasons, further confirming that significant portions of the speech should not have been made in front of the filmmaker who lacked top security clearance.
At the conclusion his speech, the transcript shows Panetta told the audience at the ceremony, “You have made me proud of the CIA family. And you have made me proud as an Italian to know that bin Laden sleeps with the fishes...”
Significantly, the entire transcript of the Panetta speech provided to Judicial Watch by the CIA is classified “Top Secret.” More than 90 lines are redacted for security reasons, further confirming that significant portions of the speech should not have been made in front of the filmmaker who lacked top security clearance.
At the conclusion his speech, the transcript shows Panetta told the audience at the ceremony, “You have made me proud of the CIA family. And you have made me proud as an Italian to know that bin Laden sleeps with the fishes...”
Whose sarin?
Seymour M. Hersh
Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.
In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.
He cited a list of what appeared to be hard-won evidence of Assad’s culpability: ‘In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighbourhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces.’ Obama’s certainty was echoed at the time by Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, who told the New York Times: ‘No one with whom I’ve spoken doubts the intelligence’ directly linking Assad and his regime to the sarin attacks...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.
In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.
He cited a list of what appeared to be hard-won evidence of Assad’s culpability: ‘In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighbourhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces.’ Obama’s certainty was echoed at the time by Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, who told the New York Times: ‘No one with whom I’ve spoken doubts the intelligence’ directly linking Assad and his regime to the sarin attacks...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking
The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.
For years, privacy advocates have raised concerns about the use of commercial tracking tools to identify and target consumers with advertisements. The online ad industry has said its practices are innocuous and benefit consumers by serving them ads that are more likely to be of interest to them.
The revelation that the NSA is piggybacking on these commercial technologies could shift that debate, handing privacy advocates a new argument for reining in commercial surveillance...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/10/nsa-uses-google-cookies-to-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking//?print=1
20131208
CIA's anti-terrorism effort called 'colossal flop'
WASHINGTON — Several years ago, a senior officer in the CIA clandestine service attended a closed-door conference for overseas operatives. Speakers included case officers who were working in the manner Hollywood usually portrays spies — out on their own.
Most CIA officers abroad pose as U.S. diplomats. But those given what's called non-official cover are known as NOCs, pronounced "knocks," and they typically pose as business executives. At the forum, the NOCs spoke of their cover jobs, their false identities and measures taken to protect them. Few said much about gathering intelligence.
A colleague passed a caustic note to the senior officer. "Lots of business," it read. "Little espionage."
Twelve years after the CIA began a major push to get its operatives out of embassy cubicles and into foreign universities, businesses and other local perches to collect intelligence on terrorists and rogue nations, the effort has been a disappointment, current and former U.S. officials say. Along with other parts of the CIA, the budget of the so-called Global Deployment Initiative, which covers the NOC program, is now being cut.
"It was a colossal flop," a former senior CIA official said in sentiments echoed by a dozen former colleagues, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a classified program...
Reagan administration, CIA complicit in DEA agent’s murder, say former insiders
Two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency contract pilot are claiming that the Reagan Administration was complicit in the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena at the hands of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero.
The administration’s alleged effort to cover up a U.S. government relationship with the Mexican drug lord to provide for the arming and the training of Nicaraguan Contra rebels, at a time when official assistance to the Contras was banned by the congressional Boland Amendment, led to Camarena’s kidnap, torture and murder, according to Phil Jordon, former head of the DEA’s El Paso office, Hector Berrellez, the DEA’s lead investigator into Camarena’s kidnapping, torture and murder, and CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee.
“We’re not saying the CIA murdered Kiki Camarena,” Jordan said. But the “consensual relationship between the Godfathers of Mexico and the CIA that included drug trafficking” contributed to Camarena’s death, he added.
“I don’t have a problem with the CIA conducting covert operations to protect the national security of our country or our allies, but not to engage in criminal activity that leads to the murder of one our agents,” Jordan said.
Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle on the covert operation, Jordan alleged.
Berrellez said two witnesses identified, from a photo lineup, two or three Cuban CIA operatives who participated in Camarena’s interrogation...
http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/Reagan-administration-CIA-complicit-in-DEA-agent-s-murder-say-former-insiders_Friday-December-06-2013
The administration’s alleged effort to cover up a U.S. government relationship with the Mexican drug lord to provide for the arming and the training of Nicaraguan Contra rebels, at a time when official assistance to the Contras was banned by the congressional Boland Amendment, led to Camarena’s kidnap, torture and murder, according to Phil Jordon, former head of the DEA’s El Paso office, Hector Berrellez, the DEA’s lead investigator into Camarena’s kidnapping, torture and murder, and CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee.
“We’re not saying the CIA murdered Kiki Camarena,” Jordan said. But the “consensual relationship between the Godfathers of Mexico and the CIA that included drug trafficking” contributed to Camarena’s death, he added.
“I don’t have a problem with the CIA conducting covert operations to protect the national security of our country or our allies, but not to engage in criminal activity that leads to the murder of one our agents,” Jordan said.
Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle on the covert operation, Jordan alleged.
Berrellez said two witnesses identified, from a photo lineup, two or three Cuban CIA operatives who participated in Camarena’s interrogation...
http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/Reagan-administration-CIA-complicit-in-DEA-agent-s-murder-say-former-insiders_Friday-December-06-2013
How to Debunk WTC Thermite
The evidence for the presence of thermite at the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11 is extensive and compelling. This evidence has accumulated to the point at which we can say that WTC thermite is no longer a hypothesis, it is a tested and proven theory. Therefore it is not easy to debunk it. But the way to do so is not difficult to understand.
To debunk the thermite theory, one must first understand the evidence for it and then show how all of that evidence is either mistaken or explained by other phenomena. Here are the top ten categories of evidence for thermite at the WTC.
Molten metal: There are numerous photographs and eyewitness testimonies to the presence of molten metal at the WTC, both in the buildings and in the rubble. No legitimate explanation has been provided for this evidence other than the exothermic reaction of thermite, which generates the temperatures required and molten iron as a product.
The fires at Ground Zero could not be put out for several months. Despite the application of millions of gallons of water to the pile, several rainfall events at the site, and the use of a chemical fire suppressant, the fires would not subside. Thermal images made by satellite showed that the temperatures in the pile were far above that expected in the debris from a typical structure fire. Only thermite, which contains its own oxidant and therefore cannot be extinguished by smothering it, can explain this evidence.
Numerous eyewitnesses who were fleeing the area described the air mass as a hot wind filled with burning particles.[1] This evidence agrees with the presence of large quantities of thermite byproducts in the air, including hot metallic microspheres and still-reacting agglomerates of thermite...
http://digwithin.net/2013/12/08/thermite/
JPMorgan Tracked Business Linked to China Hiring
Federal authorities have obtained confidential documents that shed new light onJPMorgan Chase’s decision to hire the children of China’s ruling elite, securing emails that show how the bank linked one prominent hire to “existing and potential business opportunities” from a Chinese government-run company.
The documents, which also include spreadsheets that list the bank’s “track record” for converting hires into business deals, offer the most detailed account yet of JPMorgan’s “Sons and Daughters” hiring program, which has been at the center of a federal bribery investigation for months. The spreadsheets and emails — recently submitted by JPMorgan to authorities — illuminate how the bank created the program to prevent questionable hiring practices but ultimately viewed it as a gateway to doing business with state-owned companies in China, which commonly issue stock with the help of Wall Street banks.
The hiring practices seemed to have been an open secret at the bank’s headquarters in Hong Kong, according to the documents, copies of which were reviewed by The New York Times. In the email citing the “existing and potential business opportunities,” a senior JPMorgan executive in Hong Kong emphasized that the father of a job candidate was the chairman of the China Everbright Group, a state-controlled financial conglomerate. The executive also extolled the broader benefits of the hiring program, telling colleagues in another email: “You all know I have always been a big believer of the Sons and Daughters program — it almost has a linear relationship” with winning assignments to advise Chinese companies. Until now, the indications of a connection between the hires and business deals have not been so explicit...
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/bank-tabulated-business-linked-to-china-hiring/
The documents, which also include spreadsheets that list the bank’s “track record” for converting hires into business deals, offer the most detailed account yet of JPMorgan’s “Sons and Daughters” hiring program, which has been at the center of a federal bribery investigation for months. The spreadsheets and emails — recently submitted by JPMorgan to authorities — illuminate how the bank created the program to prevent questionable hiring practices but ultimately viewed it as a gateway to doing business with state-owned companies in China, which commonly issue stock with the help of Wall Street banks.
The hiring practices seemed to have been an open secret at the bank’s headquarters in Hong Kong, according to the documents, copies of which were reviewed by The New York Times. In the email citing the “existing and potential business opportunities,” a senior JPMorgan executive in Hong Kong emphasized that the father of a job candidate was the chairman of the China Everbright Group, a state-controlled financial conglomerate. The executive also extolled the broader benefits of the hiring program, telling colleagues in another email: “You all know I have always been a big believer of the Sons and Daughters program — it almost has a linear relationship” with winning assignments to advise Chinese companies. Until now, the indications of a connection between the hires and business deals have not been so explicit...
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/bank-tabulated-business-linked-to-china-hiring/
20131207
FBI’s search for ‘Mo,’ suspect in bomb threats, highlights use of malware for surveillance
Mo remained elusive for months, communicating via e-mail, video chat and an Internet-based phone service without revealing his true identity or location, court documents show. So with no house to search or telephone to tap, investigators turned to a new kind of surveillance tool delivered over the Internet.
The FBI’s elite hacker team designed a piece of malicious software that was to be delivered secretly when Mo signed on to his Yahoo e-mail account, from any computer anywhere in the world, according to the documents. The goal of the software was to gather a range of information — Web sites he had visited and indicators of the location of the computer — that would allow investigators to find Mo and tie him to the bomb threats....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2013/12/06/352ba174-5397-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html
20131205
How the CIA Bungled the War on Terror
Call it the Jason Bourne strategy.
Think of it as the CIA’s plunge into Hollywood—or into the absurd. As recent revelations have made clear, that Agency’s moves couldn’t be have been more far-fetched or more real. In its post-9/11 global shadow war, it has employed both private contractors and some of the world’s most notorious prisoners in ways that leave the latest episode of the Bourne films in the dust: hired gunmen trained to kill as well as former inmates who cashed in on the notoriety of having worn an orange jumpsuit in the world’s most infamous jail.
The first group of undercover agents were recruited by private companies from the Army Special Forces and the Navy SEALs and then repurposed to the CIA at handsome salaries averaging around $140,000 a year; the second crew was recruited from the prison cells at Guantánamo Bay and paid out of a secret multimillion dollar slush fund called “the Pledge.”
Last month, the Associated Press revealed that the CIA had selected a few dozen men from among the hundreds of terror suspects being held at Guantánamo and trained them to be double agents at a cluster of eight cottages in a program dubbed “Penny Lane.” (Yes, indeed, the name was taken from the Beatles song, as was “Strawberry Fields,” a Guantánamo program that involved torturing “high-value” detainees.) These men were then returned to what the Bush administration liked to call the “global battlefield,” where their mission was to befriend members of Al Qaeda and supply targeting information for the Agency’s drone assassination program...
http://www.thenation.com/article/177478/how-cia-bungled-war-terror#
Think of it as the CIA’s plunge into Hollywood—or into the absurd. As recent revelations have made clear, that Agency’s moves couldn’t be have been more far-fetched or more real. In its post-9/11 global shadow war, it has employed both private contractors and some of the world’s most notorious prisoners in ways that leave the latest episode of the Bourne films in the dust: hired gunmen trained to kill as well as former inmates who cashed in on the notoriety of having worn an orange jumpsuit in the world’s most infamous jail.
The first group of undercover agents were recruited by private companies from the Army Special Forces and the Navy SEALs and then repurposed to the CIA at handsome salaries averaging around $140,000 a year; the second crew was recruited from the prison cells at Guantánamo Bay and paid out of a secret multimillion dollar slush fund called “the Pledge.”
Last month, the Associated Press revealed that the CIA had selected a few dozen men from among the hundreds of terror suspects being held at Guantánamo and trained them to be double agents at a cluster of eight cottages in a program dubbed “Penny Lane.” (Yes, indeed, the name was taken from the Beatles song, as was “Strawberry Fields,” a Guantánamo program that involved torturing “high-value” detainees.) These men were then returned to what the Bush administration liked to call the “global battlefield,” where their mission was to befriend members of Al Qaeda and supply targeting information for the Agency’s drone assassination program...
http://www.thenation.com/article/177478/how-cia-bungled-war-terror#
20131204
US court: Negligence not cause of 3rd WTC collapse
NEW YORK — Negligence was not the cause of the collapse of a third World Trade Center tower several hours after the twin towers were destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a federal appeals court said Wednesday, absolving a developer and others of responsibility in the destruction of the 47-story building.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said it was “simply incompatible with common sense and experience to hold that defendants were required to design and construct a building that would survive the events of September 11, 2001.”
The 2-to-1 decision upheld the rulings regarding World Trade Center 7 by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who had written that the claims by the Consolidated Edison Co. of New York and its insurance companies were “too farfetched and tenuous” to survive. Con Ed and the insurance companies had claimed that a company owned by developer Larry Silverstein and other defendants could be held liable. Hellerstein had dismissed various defendants in a series of rulings.
The building fell at 5:21 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, nearly seven hours after the other buildings collapsed. A Con Edison power station beneath Tower 7 was crushed when the building fell.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-court-negligence-not-cause-of-3rd-wtc-collapse/2013/12/04/20ae0f7c-5cff-11e3-8d24-31c016b976b2_story.html
Dec. 4th, 1969: Police murder four Black Panthers including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark
"...Upon arrival, they were met by O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner which was eaten by the group around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the powerful barbiturate sleep agent, secobarbitol into a drink that was consumed by Hampton during the dinner in order to sedate Hampton so that he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal left at this point, and, at about 1:30 a.m., Hampton fell asleep in mid-sentence talking to his mother on the telephone.[9][10][11][12] Although Hampton was not known to take drugs, Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman would report that she ran two separate tests which each showed a powerful barbiturate had been introduced into Hampton's blood. An FBI chemist would later fail to find similar traces, but Berman stood by her findings.[13]
Body of Fred Hampton, after being shot twice in the head at point blank range by members of the Chicago Police Department.
The raid was organized by the office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahanusing officers attached to his office.[14] Hanrahan had recently been the subject of a large amount of public criticism by Hampton, who had made speeches about how Hanrahan's talk about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to carry out a "war on black youth".[15]
At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, dividing into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45, they stormed in the apartment.
Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was killed instantly, firing off a single round which was later determined to be a reflexive reaction in his death convulsions after being shot by the raiding team; this was the only shot the Panthers fired.[4][16][17]
Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to wake up as a result of the barbiturates that the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink..."
Body of Fred Hampton, after being shot twice in the head at point blank range by members of the Chicago Police Department.The raid was organized by the office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahanusing officers attached to his office.[14] Hanrahan had recently been the subject of a large amount of public criticism by Hampton, who had made speeches about how Hanrahan's talk about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to carry out a "war on black youth".[15]
At 4:00 a.m., the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, dividing into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45, they stormed in the apartment.
Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. He was killed instantly, firing off a single round which was later determined to be a reflexive reaction in his death convulsions after being shot by the raiding team; this was the only shot the Panthers fired.[4][16][17]
Automatic gunfire then converged at the head of the bedroom where Hampton slept, unable to wake up as a result of the barbiturates that the FBI infiltrator had slipped into his drink..."
20131203
Pentagon gives more room for deadly error in drone strikes
Image Source: Texas doctor to operate on injured girl - CNN.
The Pentagon has loosened its guidelines on avoiding civilian casualties during drone strikes, modifying instructions from requiring military personnel to “ensure” civilians are not targeted to encouraging service members to “avoid targeting” civilians.
In addition, instructions now tell commanders that collateral damage “must not be excessive” in relation to mission goals, according to Public Intelligence, a nonprofit research group that analyzed the military’s directives on drone strikes.
“These subtle but important changes in wording provide insight into the military’s attempts to limit expectations in regards to minimizing collateral damage and predicting the lethal effects of military operations,” Public Intelligence said in a recent report.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/3/pentagon-gives-more-room-for-deadly-error-in-drone/
20131202
The Money Changers Serenade: A New Plot Hatches
A Warburg in-law financed Woodrow Wilson’s presidential campaign. Part of the reward was Wilson’s appointment of Paul Warburg to the first Federal Reserve Board. The symbiotic relationship between presidents and bankers has continued ever since. The same small clique continues to wield financial power.
Geithner’s career is illustrative. In the 1980s, Geithner worked for Kissinger Associates. In the mid to late 1990s, Geithner served as a deputy assistant Treasury secretary. Under Rubin and Summers he moved up to undersecretary of the Treasury...
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/11/29/money-changers-serenade-new-plot-hatches-paul-craig-roberts/
911DocumentArchive on Scribd
Archive of 9/11-related documents; in particular, the 9/11 Commission records. Complete set can be downloaded free from 911Datasets.org
http://www.scribd.com/911DocumentArchive
http://HistoryCommons.org
http://www.scribd.com/911DocumentArchive
http://HistoryCommons.org
Feinstein And Rogers Try To Scare Americans With Ooga Booga Terrorism Threats
It may be relevant that of Feinsteins' top 10 donors, 5 of them are defense contractors (General Dynamics, General Atomics, Northrup Grumman, Honeywell International, and BAE Systems). With the others being pharmaceutical and energy companies; and pro-israeli lobby group. But that influencing her policy decisions would be a delusional conspiracy theory, right?
“I don’t think so,” Feinstein replied. “I think terror is up worldwide, the statistics indicate that. The fatalities are way up. The numbers are way up. There are new bombs, very big bombs. Trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there.”
Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2014&cid=N00007364&type=C
"It appears that the heads of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers, are recognizing that their strategy for keeping their co-dependent relationship with the NSA going is failing and that the American public and an increasingly large segment of Congress no longer believes their bogus claims. Perhaps that's because every time they open their mouths, it takes all of about an hour before many of their claims are completely debunked, if not outright mocked for obviously being bogus. So their latest strategy? To basically yell "Ooga Booga Terrorists!" as loud as they can to try to scare people based on absolutely nothing.
Feinstein and Rogers did a little dance on Sunday political TV shows insisting that "the terrorism threat is increasing" and we're all going to die if we stop trying to make sure the NSA actually, you know, respects the Constitution. Asked if we were "safer" now than a year or two years ago, Feinstein kicked off the FUD:
"It appears that the heads of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers, are recognizing that their strategy for keeping their co-dependent relationship with the NSA going is failing and that the American public and an increasingly large segment of Congress no longer believes their bogus claims. Perhaps that's because every time they open their mouths, it takes all of about an hour before many of their claims are completely debunked, if not outright mocked for obviously being bogus. So their latest strategy? To basically yell "Ooga Booga Terrorists!" as loud as they can to try to scare people based on absolutely nothing.
Feinstein and Rogers did a little dance on Sunday political TV shows insisting that "the terrorism threat is increasing" and we're all going to die if we stop trying to make sure the NSA actually, you know, respects the Constitution. Asked if we were "safer" now than a year or two years ago, Feinstein kicked off the FUD:
“I don’t think so,” Feinstein replied. “I think terror is up worldwide, the statistics indicate that. The fatalities are way up. The numbers are way up. There are new bombs, very big bombs. Trucks being reinforced for those bombs. There are bombs that go through magnetometers. The bomb maker is still alive. There are more groups than ever. And there is huge malevolence out there.”
20131201
For Nearly Two Decades the Nuclear Launch Code at all Minuteman Silos in the United States Was 00000000
Today I found out that during the height of the Cold War, the US military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly two decades they intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to 8 zeroes.
We guess the first thing we need to address is how this even came to be in the first place. Well, in 1962 JFK signed the National Security Action Memorandum 160, which was supposed to ensure that every nuclear weapon the US had be fitted with a Permissive Action Link (PAL), basically a small device that ensured that the missile could only be launched with the right code and with the right authority.
There was particularly a concern that the nuclear missiles the United States had stationed in other countries, some of which with somewhat unstable leadership, could potentially be seized by those governments and launched. With the PAL system, this became much less of a problem...
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/11/nearly-two-decades-nuclear-launch-code-minuteman-silos-united-states-00000000/
We guess the first thing we need to address is how this even came to be in the first place. Well, in 1962 JFK signed the National Security Action Memorandum 160, which was supposed to ensure that every nuclear weapon the US had be fitted with a Permissive Action Link (PAL), basically a small device that ensured that the missile could only be launched with the right code and with the right authority.
There was particularly a concern that the nuclear missiles the United States had stationed in other countries, some of which with somewhat unstable leadership, could potentially be seized by those governments and launched. With the PAL system, this became much less of a problem...
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/11/nearly-two-decades-nuclear-launch-code-minuteman-silos-united-states-00000000/
The U.S. Army got caught pirating $180 million in software. It’s settling for $50 million.
Now the government is handing Apptricity $50 million to settle the developer's copyright infringement case, a fraction of what the government would actually owe based on the number of missing licenses. The government initially bought a handful of server and device licenses for $4.5 million in 2004. That was followed by another purchase about five years later.
But according to Apptricity's complaint, the U.S. Army then installed the software on another 100 servers and 9,000 devices and didn't come clean until June 2011, after a series of inventory reports revealed the inconsistency. Not only did the Army stall in telling Apptricity about the infringement, the complaint alleges, but the Army also tried to get out of paying by tampering with the software...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/29/the-u-s-army-got-caught-pirating-180-million-in-software-its-settling-for-50-million/
JFK and 9/11: The Common Threads
Criminals leave signatures. There is consistency in their motives, methods, alibis and techniques. A detective from the Spanish National Police said that investigators knew within minutes of reaching the mangled remains of commuter trains in Madrid where almost 200 commuters were killed that the Basque terrorist group ETA had not carried out the attack- a fact which was concealed by the Spanish government for several days in a vain attempt to save an election. The investigators immediately saw that the signature was wrong; it just didn't smell right.
President Kennedy was murdered on November 22, 1963 and less than two years later American Marines entered South Vietnam beginning the US intervention that would end ten years later with the fall of Saigon and millions dead. Less than two years after the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington, the United States began the Iraq War, which would end eight years later with the withdrawal of the coalition forces, leaving Iraq destabilized and clearly within the sphere of Iranian influence.
Apart from the similar aftermaths, both events have common elements both in their buildup and execution as well their social ramifications...
http://www.thecactusland.com/2013/11/jfk-and-911-common-thread.html
President Kennedy was murdered on November 22, 1963 and less than two years later American Marines entered South Vietnam beginning the US intervention that would end ten years later with the fall of Saigon and millions dead. Less than two years after the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington, the United States began the Iraq War, which would end eight years later with the withdrawal of the coalition forces, leaving Iraq destabilized and clearly within the sphere of Iranian influence.
Apart from the similar aftermaths, both events have common elements both in their buildup and execution as well their social ramifications...
http://www.thecactusland.com/2013/11/jfk-and-911-common-thread.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)