20140526
20140525
The Lies Mike Rogers Told Congress About The USA Freedom Act
One of the most obvious ways that you knew the USA Freedom Act that passed out of the House yesterday was clearly not real NSA reform was the simple fact that the NSA #1 defender in chief, Rep. Mike Rogers, not only voted for it, but spoke strongly in favor of it on the House floor.
In typical Mike Rogers fashion, his statement is quite incredible for its bald faced lies. Let's dig in.
It is commendable that we have found a responsible legislative solution to address concerns about the bulk telephone metadata program so that we may move forward on other national security legislative priorities. Our obligation to protect this countryshould not be held hostage by the actions of traitors who leak classified information that puts our troops in the field at risk or those who fear-monger and spread mistruth to further their own misguided agenda.
Got that? The only reason that this debate is happening is because Ed Snowden revealed how the NSA was breaking the law. Rep. Sensenbrenner wrote the original USA Freedom Act to make it clear that what the NSA was doing directly violated what he intended the law to be when he wrote the original USA Patriot Act. To argue that revealing the NSA breaking the law makes him a "traitor" is just one of many of Rogers' continued lies and mistruths. But that opening paragraph also makes it clear that Rogers views the USA Freedom Act as a mere nuisance, which needs to be passed to get the privacy groups to shut up -- though, of course they won't.
And, despite all of Rogers' claims, there is still no evidence at all that any of the information "puts our trips in the field at risk." As for "fear-mongering" and "spreading mistruth" that has been the currency of Rogers himself -- in fact, in this very sentence, where he talks about "traitors" and putting the troops at risk.
Following the criminal disclosures of intelligence information last June, the Section 215 telephone metadata program has been the subject of intense, and often inaccurate, criticism. The bulk telephone metadata program is legal, overseen, and effective at saving American lives. All three branches of government oversee this program, including Congress, the FISC, inspectors general, and internal compliance and privacy and civil liberties offices in executive branch agencies.
Actually, that's not even close to true...
Secrets, lies and Snowden's email: why I was forced to shut down Lavabit
My company, Lavabit, provided email services to 410,000 people –including Edward Snowden, according to news reports – and thrived by offering features specifically designed to protect the privacy and security of its customers. I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the US government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they travelled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet.
But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company's private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords – which were sent securely – so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company's encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".)
Bothered by what the agents were saying, I informed them that I would first need to read the order they had just delivered – and then consult with an attorney. The feds seemed surprised by my hesitation...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email
20140524
What does GCHQ know about our devices that we don't?
While the initial disclosures by Edward Snowden revealed how US authorities are conducting mass surveillance on the world's communications, further reporting by the Guardian newspaper uncovered that UK intelligence services were just as involved in this global spying apparatus. Faced with the prospect of further public scrutiny and accountability, the UK Government gave the Guardian newspaper an ultimatum: hand over the classified documents or destroy them.
The Guardian decided that having the documents destroyed was the best option. By getting rid of only the documents stored on computers in the UK, it would allow Guardian journalists to continue their work from other locations while acquiescing to the Government's demand. However, rather than trust that the Guardian would destroy the information on their computers to the Government's satisfaction, GCHQ sent two representatives to supervise the operation. Typically, reliable destruction of such hardware in the circumstances would be to shred or melt all electronic components using a much larger version of the common paper shredder and leaving only the dust of the original devices. Indeed, some devices such as external USB sticks were turned to dust.
Alternatively, it might have been expected that GCHQ would solely target the hard drives of the devices in question. The hard drives, after all, are one of the few components of a computer where user data is supposed to be retained after the power to the device is removed.
Surprisingly, however, GCHQ were not just interested in hard drives nor did they destroy whole devices. An examination of the targeted hardware by Privacy International, with cooperation from the Guardian, has found the whole episode to be more troubling and puzzling than previously believed... 1
https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/what-does-gchq-know-about-our-devices-that-we-dont
The Guardian decided that having the documents destroyed was the best option. By getting rid of only the documents stored on computers in the UK, it would allow Guardian journalists to continue their work from other locations while acquiescing to the Government's demand. However, rather than trust that the Guardian would destroy the information on their computers to the Government's satisfaction, GCHQ sent two representatives to supervise the operation. Typically, reliable destruction of such hardware in the circumstances would be to shred or melt all electronic components using a much larger version of the common paper shredder and leaving only the dust of the original devices. Indeed, some devices such as external USB sticks were turned to dust.
Alternatively, it might have been expected that GCHQ would solely target the hard drives of the devices in question. The hard drives, after all, are one of the few components of a computer where user data is supposed to be retained after the power to the device is removed.
Surprisingly, however, GCHQ were not just interested in hard drives nor did they destroy whole devices. An examination of the targeted hardware by Privacy International, with cooperation from the Guardian, has found the whole episode to be more troubling and puzzling than previously believed... 1
https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/what-does-gchq-know-about-our-devices-that-we-dont
20140518
20140516
Uh...I said look, when you become president you have to kill people.
"I remember the first conversation I ever had with him, during the campaign. Uh...I said look, when you become president you have to kill people. And are you willing to pull the trigger? Are you willing to do that side of the job? And then he got very silent and looked at me in a very steely kind of way and said, 'I know that. And I can do that."
--Richard Clarke, on talking to Obama prior to his election.
20140515
NSA Customs Cross-Border Implant Program
From: Wayne Madsen <waynemadsendc[at]hotmail.com>
Subject: For publication
Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 11:09:15 -0400
To: <jya[at]cryptome.net>
The author of "No Place to Hide" Glenn Greenwald was asked by Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now" what the term "Customs" meant in relation to NSA's placement of "implants" into computer systems.
"AMY GOODMAN: Customs?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, I'm not sure what that is, actually. We've asked several experts. It could be, you know, some tactic that people aren't aware of."
There are those who are, unlike Greenwald, totally aware of what is meant by Customs. Greenwald insists on sitting on his alleged cache of hundreds of thousands of classified documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden. "Customs" is a serious program. It means that every time someone crosses a border posting and is asked to hand over their laptop computers, smart phones, or other devices to the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel, there is a risk of NSA installing implants that can later "beacon" data to NSA capture points. This is why ICE says it has the authority to hold devices at border crossings indefinitely. The revelation also means that the diplomatic pouch privileges traditionally afforded embassy and other diplomatic personnel are likely being routinely breached during the transit of pouches on planes and ships.
Former NSA/CIA Special Collection Service employee Snowden knows what Customs means. Why wasn't he one of the "experts" consulted by Greenwald and the First Looker team?...
http://cryptome.org/2014/05/nsa-customs.htm
Subject: For publication
Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 11:09:15 -0400
To: <jya[at]cryptome.net>
The author of "No Place to Hide" Glenn Greenwald was asked by Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now" what the term "Customs" meant in relation to NSA's placement of "implants" into computer systems.
"AMY GOODMAN: Customs?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, I'm not sure what that is, actually. We've asked several experts. It could be, you know, some tactic that people aren't aware of."
There are those who are, unlike Greenwald, totally aware of what is meant by Customs. Greenwald insists on sitting on his alleged cache of hundreds of thousands of classified documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden. "Customs" is a serious program. It means that every time someone crosses a border posting and is asked to hand over their laptop computers, smart phones, or other devices to the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel, there is a risk of NSA installing implants that can later "beacon" data to NSA capture points. This is why ICE says it has the authority to hold devices at border crossings indefinitely. The revelation also means that the diplomatic pouch privileges traditionally afforded embassy and other diplomatic personnel are likely being routinely breached during the transit of pouches on planes and ships.
Former NSA/CIA Special Collection Service employee Snowden knows what Customs means. Why wasn't he one of the "experts" consulted by Greenwald and the First Looker team?...
http://cryptome.org/2014/05/nsa-customs.htm
20140513
Joe Biden's son appointed to board of Ukrainian Energy Co.
...On May 12th, 2014, Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, announced that it had expanded its Board of Directors by bringing on Mr. R Hunter Biden as a new director.[10]...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden
20140512
20140511
‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’
Supporters of the National Security Agency inevitably defend its sweeping collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting so-called “metadata”—who you call, when you call, how long you talk. Since this does not include the actual content of the communications, the threat to privacy is said to be negligible. That argument is profoundly misleading.
Of course knowing the content of a call can be crucial to establishing a particular threat. But metadata alone can provide an extremely detailed picture of a person’s most intimate associations and interests, and it’s actually much easier as a technological matter to search huge amounts of metadata than to listen to millions of phone calls. As NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker has said, “metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content.” When I quoted Baker at a recent debate at Johns Hopkins University, my opponent, General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, called Baker’s comment “absolutely correct,” and raised him one, asserting, “We kill people based on metadata...”
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/
20140510
The Rise of the Machines
Why Increasingly “Perfect” Weapons Help
Lieutenant Colonel Douglas A. Pryer is a military intelligence officer who has served in various command and staff positions in Iraq, Kosovo, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and, most recently, Afghanistan. He is the author of The Fight for the High Ground: the U.S. Army and Interrogation During Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003-2004, and is the winner of numerous military writing awards.
AT THE START of 2004, when I was the commander of a military intelligence company in Baghdad, my company received five of the first Raven unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployed to Iraq.1 The Raven UAV is a small, hand-launched reconnaissance plane that has probably never figured prominently in any discussion about the ethics of waging war via remote-controlled robots. This drone is not armed, nor can it range more than a few miles from its controller. It looks more like a large toy plane than a weapon of war.
To my troops, I seemed quite enthused about this capability. Not all of this excitement was for show. I actually did find the technology and the fact that my troops were among the first to employ these drones in Iraq to be excit- ing. I had fully bought into the fantasy that such technology would make my country safe from terrorist attack and invincible in war.
I also felt, however, a sense of unease. One thing I worried about was so- called “collateral damage.” I knew that, because of the small, gray viewing screens that came with these drones as well as their limited loiter time, it might prove too easy to misinterpret the situation on the ground and relay false information to combat troops with big guns. I suspected that, if we did contribute to civilian deaths, my troops and I would not handle it well. But at the same time, I worried that we might cope quite well. Since we were physically removed from the action, maybe such an event would not affect us much. Would it look and feel, I wondered, like sitting at home, a can of Coke in hand, watching a war movie? Would we feel no more than a passing pang that the show that day had been a particularly hard one to watch? And, if that is how we felt, what would that say about us?...
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20130430_art005.pdf
POTUS Loves and Kills Kids
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/kids-killed-drones-us-pushes-back/story?id=19759808
American officials are disputing the findings of a secret Pakistani government report, the first known internal Pakistani assessment of America's lethal drone program, that says U.S. drones killed scores of civilians in a three-year span and that nearly 100 of those were children.
The Pakistani report, obtained and published this week by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, details 75 drone strikes and their alleged collateral damage between 2006 and 2009. Of 746 people killed by drones in that period, the BIJ report says, at least 147 "are clearly stated to be civilian victims, 94 of those are said to be children."...
http://cryptome.org/2014-info/potus-kids/potus-loves-kills-kids.htm
American officials are disputing the findings of a secret Pakistani government report, the first known internal Pakistani assessment of America's lethal drone program, that says U.S. drones killed scores of civilians in a three-year span and that nearly 100 of those were children.
The Pakistani report, obtained and published this week by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, details 75 drone strikes and their alleged collateral damage between 2006 and 2009. Of 746 people killed by drones in that period, the BIJ report says, at least 147 "are clearly stated to be civilian victims, 94 of those are said to be children."...
http://cryptome.org/2014-info/potus-kids/potus-loves-kills-kids.htm
20140506
YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD NSA
With funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and local taxpayers, police departments across the country are collecting unprecedented amounts of information about Americans. They’re using images from bridge crossings, GPS data, facial recognition, smart video motion recognition, license-plate readers, camera networks and other technology to create or expand surveillance hubs on a citywide or regional level.
The Center for Investigative Reporting is deeply interested in the emerging technologies that could revolutionize policing – and how the public is monitored by the government.
Our team of reporters and producers – Andrew Becker, Matt Drange, Amanda Pike, G.W. Schulz and Ali Winston – will work with CIR editors to uncover this issue, from California’s Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C., and local communities. We’re experts at getting access to crucial documents and making sense of data. Our goal is to harness the power of investigative journalism to produce stories that engage the public, spark action and protect our democracy...
https://www.beaconreader.com/projects/the-neighborhood-nsa
The Center for Investigative Reporting is deeply interested in the emerging technologies that could revolutionize policing – and how the public is monitored by the government.
Our team of reporters and producers – Andrew Becker, Matt Drange, Amanda Pike, G.W. Schulz and Ali Winston – will work with CIR editors to uncover this issue, from California’s Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C., and local communities. We’re experts at getting access to crucial documents and making sense of data. Our goal is to harness the power of investigative journalism to produce stories that engage the public, spark action and protect our democracy...
https://www.beaconreader.com/projects/the-neighborhood-nsa
20140505
Arms Cache Most Likely Kept in Texas by the C.I.A.
From the facility, located somewhere in the United States, the C.I.A. has stockpiled and distributed untraceable weapons linked to preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the arming of rebels and resistance fighters from Angola to Nicaragua to Afghanistan.
Yet despite hints that “Midwest” was not actually where it was located, the secrecy surrounding the C.I.A. armory has survived generations of investigations. In a 2007 essay on the 20th anniversary of the Iran-contra affair, for example, a congressional investigator noted that the facility where the C.I.A. had handled missiles bound for Iran remained classified even as other “incredible things were unveiled during the hearings.”
But three years ago, it became public that the C.I.A. had some kind of secret location at Camp Stanley, an Army weapons depot just north of San Antonio and the former Kelly Air Force Base, though its purpose was unclear. And now, a retired C.I.A. analyst, Allen Thomson, has assembled a mosaic of documentation suggesting that it is most likely the home of Midwest Depot.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/us/arms-cache-most-likely-kept-in-texas-by-the-cia.html
20140503
Big Banks Started Laundering Massive Sums of Drug Money In the 1980s … And Are Still Doing It Today
For More Than 30 Years, the Big Banks Have Been Key Players In the Drug Trade
It has become mainstream news that at least some of the big banks are laundering staggering sums of drug money. See this, this, this, this, this, this and and this.
But you may not know the scope or history of the problem.
Official statistics show that huge sums of drug money are laundered every year:
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducted a study to determine the magnitude of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organised crimes and to investigate to what extent these funds are laundered. The report estimates that in 2009, criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6% of global GDP, with 2.7% (or USD 1.6 trillion) being laundered.
This falls within the widely quoted estimate by the International Monetary Fund, who stated in 1998 that the aggregate size of money laundering in the world could be somewhere between two and five percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Using 1998 statistics, these percentages would indicate that money laundering ranged between USD 590 billion and USD 1.5 trillion. At the time, the lower figure was roughly equivalent to the value of the total output of an economy the size of Spain.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/u-s-banks-started-laundering-drug-money-decades-ago-still-today.html
It has become mainstream news that at least some of the big banks are laundering staggering sums of drug money. See this, this, this, this, this, this and and this.
But you may not know the scope or history of the problem.
Official statistics show that huge sums of drug money are laundered every year:
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducted a study to determine the magnitude of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organised crimes and to investigate to what extent these funds are laundered. The report estimates that in 2009, criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6% of global GDP, with 2.7% (or USD 1.6 trillion) being laundered.
This falls within the widely quoted estimate by the International Monetary Fund, who stated in 1998 that the aggregate size of money laundering in the world could be somewhere between two and five percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Using 1998 statistics, these percentages would indicate that money laundering ranged between USD 590 billion and USD 1.5 trillion. At the time, the lower figure was roughly equivalent to the value of the total output of an economy the size of Spain.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/u-s-banks-started-laundering-drug-money-decades-ago-still-today.html
20140502
20140501
Supreme Court Refuses to Uphold the Constitution: Allows Indefinite Detention
“We Are No Longer a Nation Ruled By Laws”
Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges – along with journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, activist Tangerine Bolen and others – sued the government to join the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans.
The trial judge in the case asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys.
The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.
The trial judge ruled that the indefinite detention bill was unconstitutional. But the court of appeal overturned that decision, but in a way which limited the NDAA to non-U.S. citizens:...
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/05/supreme-court-refuses-to-uphold-the-constitution-allows-indefinite-detention/
Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges – along with journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, activist Tangerine Bolen and others – sued the government to join the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans.
The trial judge in the case asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys.
The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.
The trial judge ruled that the indefinite detention bill was unconstitutional. But the court of appeal overturned that decision, but in a way which limited the NDAA to non-U.S. citizens:...
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/05/supreme-court-refuses-to-uphold-the-constitution-allows-indefinite-detention/
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