Skynet Watch: From Targeting Terrorists to Targeting Protesters and From Foreign to Domestic
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-12 15:05:18 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-12 15:05:18 UTC
Summary: Rapid exacerbation of human rights, with surveillance-based torture and assassination that expand in terms of scope
-
Impending bill from Republican Marc Roberts highlights growing movement at state level against government surveillance powers
-
The former head of the CIA and the National Security Agency, General Michael Hayden has said that the reforms recently announced by president Barack Obama to tackle mass surveillance are limited, as they allow the spy agency "a pretty big box" in which to continue to operate.
Hayden was reported by the Guardian as speaking at an Oxford University lecture, when he said that while some of the reforms would be onerous for the NSA, the agency still had room to manoeuvre, enabling it to continue to collect metadata.
-
According to documents published by German newspaper Der Spiegel, the NSA uses a tactic called "method interdiction," which intercepts packages that are en route to the recipient. Malware or backdoor-enabling hardware is installed in workshops by agents and the item then continues on its way to the customer.
-
Sen. Rand Paul will sue President Barack Obama and top officials in the National Security Agency over surveillance.
-
When the German version of the FBI needs to share sensitive information these days, it types it up and has it hand-delivered.
This time last year, it would have trusted in the security of email. But last year was before Edward Snowden and the public revelations of the scope of the National Security Agency’s PRISM electronic intelligence-gathering program. After Snowden, or post-PRISM, is a new digital world.
-
If you visit sites such as Upworthy, Hacker News, BoingBoing or around 5,000 other sites today, you'll notice an odd headline: a banner stating "Today We Fight Back." The banner runs a loop of facts about the NSA's internet and phone surveillance activities, such as "The NSA is regularly tracking hundreds of millions of devices."
-
In fall 2013, the U.S. National Security Agency quietly began booting up its Utah Data Center, a sprawling 1.5 million-square-foot facility designed to store and analyze the vast amounts of electronic data the spy agency gathers from around the globe. Consisting of four low-slung data halls and a constellation of supporting structures, the facility includes at least 100,000 square feet of the most advanced data reservoirs in the world. The project represents a massive expansion of the NSA's capabilities and a profound threat to press freedom worldwide.
-
At least 117,000 websites and citizens of the world joined a world day of rejection to the massive surveillance in Internet by the National Security Agency of the United States (NSA) and its allied from other countries.
-
It was a walk down memory lane for Mark Klein on Tuesday night, when a crowd gathered to hear him speak out, yet again, about the secret sharing of data between a top communications company and the US government.
Klein, a retired AT&T technician, leaked several internal AT&T documents in 2006 that showed that the NSA was collecting data from AT&T through a restricted room, 641A.
-
The Freedom of Information Act requires a release, but the spy agency says it is excluded due to national security concerns.
-
One of the legacies 2013 will leave behind, as Andrea Peterson wrote recently in The Washington Post, is that it was “the year that proved your paranoid friend right.” Since January of last year, we’ve learned that the National Security Agency is collecting massive amounts of phone call metadata, emails, location information of cell phones and is even listening to Xbox Live. Shocking as this obviously was to me, as a citizen of the country of “We the People,” one founded on civil liberties, what was perhaps more shocking was how mild the reaction of many Americans was. While polls showed that a small majority of U.S. citizens opposed the NSA’s collection of phone and Internet usage data, after months of reassurances by the President that the programs would be reformed and used responsibly, the numbers seem to have changed (or at least, the story seems to be dying down).
-
A court in Pakistan on Wednesday ordered authorities to produce an anti-drone activist abducted just days before he was due to travel to Europe to meet lawmakers, in a case that spotlights citizens’ distrust of the unmanned aircraft and government security forces.
-
“Unmanned” reports the impacts of drone strategy. This documentary directed by Robert Greenwald, investigates drone strikes at home and abroad through more than 70 separate interviews, including a former American drone operator who shares what he has witnessed in his own words, Pakistani families mourning loved ones and seeking legal redress, investigative journalists pursuing the truth and top military officials warning against blowback from the loss of innocent life.
-
“If indeed there is mulling over the possibility of assassinating another American citizen abroad, really what they should be telling the American people is that we’re moving into an era where state-sanctioned assassinations of people is becoming routine and there is no reason for the American people to expect that this will not develop to the point where Americans are routinely targeted in America,” he added.
-
Tuesday’s protest included a blockade of the South Lake Union Streetcar, with activists holding a banner that read: CIAmazon. That was in reference to Amazon Web Services’ partnership with the CIA, and it comes a day after protesters blocked a Microsoft Connector bus on Capitol Hill on Monday.
-
MKUltra also enjoyed the help of ex-Nazi scientists.
-
The attorney general has extended the deadline till June of the six year old investigation into allegations that a CIA prison was operated in Poland, where terrorist suspects were held and tortured.
-
Independent research published recently contains revealing facts about the involvement of doctors and other health professionals in tortures in military jails of the USA.
-
Last week it was reported that former CIA Director James Woolsey, forced to resign during the Clinton administration for his bungling of the Aldrich Ames affair, was going around telling people that the reason Jonathan Pollard, the notorious Israeli spy, was still in prison after 29 years is because the U.S. government is anti-Semitic. In short, Pollard remains in prison because he's a Jew.
-
According to Wikipedia, a content farm is an organization that employs large numbers of "writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines." In a way, the American MFA system, spearheaded by the infamous Iowa Writer's Workshop, is a content farm, too—one initially designed to satisfy a much less complicated algorithm sculpted by the CIA to maximize the spread of anti-Communist propaganda through highbrow literature.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Microsoft's 'Lawsuit Diplomacy' (SLAPPs Riding UK Libel Law and Piggybacking UK GDPR, Inapplicable!) Will Only Give a Worse Image to Microsofters (and Microsoft), Give Exposure to Even More Suppressed Facts and Scandals
- Microsoft came to dominate some sectors because of (or owing to) crimes; Microsoft won't just go away without some more crimes.
- Five (or Three) Years Without Social Control Media
- Glyn Moody quit X (Twitter)
- Why GNU/Linux is Growing
- There's growing interest in GNU/Linux right now because people do not fancy buying a new PC just to 'upgrade' (more spying) Windows
-
- Links 20/04/2025: Bleeding Constitution and ChatGPT Infuriates Users Some More
- Links for the day
- Deja vu: Hitler's Birthday, Andreas Tille elected Debian Project Leader again
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Chinese OEMs (and World's Largest) Pave a Path Out of Microsoft Windows
- So Microsoft now values (or prices) Vista 11 at just $140?
- Gemini Links 20/04/2025: Contradictions of Mark Carney and Blog Questions Challenge
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, April 19, 2025
- Electronics in People's Bedrooms
- Modern technology not only blurred the gap between "functions" of rooms
- Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Contingencies, GTD, and Old Computers
- Links for the day
- Links 19/04/2025: Economic Races, Charm Offensives, and USB-C Rants
- Links for the day
- Links 19/04/2025: "Infantilization at Big Tech" and LLM Slop Abused in Defiance of Workplace Rules/Policies
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 19/04/2025: Palm Addiction and Real Experts
- Links for the day
- Egypt is Controlled by Google, Not Microsoft
- Moving from Microsoft to Google is not the answer
- Microsofters Say They Cannot Find a Job (That They Want) Because of Techrights, But Techrights Merely Reported on Their Behaviour
- Quit pointing the finger at people who are recipients of abuse or merely mention the abuse
- Free Software and Standards - Not Marketing Blitz - Needed Amid Growing Severity of Dependency on Hostile Suppliers (or Another Country's Sovereignty)
- ZenDiS can be described as the "Center for Digital Sovereignty of Public Administration"
- When It Comes to the Web, Google is Evil and It Destroys the Web's Integrity With LLM Slop
- Even academia, which is meant to keep standards high, is being lured into LLM slop
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, April 18, 2025
- Links 18/04/2025: "Fentanylware (TikTok) Exodus Continues", Chinese Weapons Allegedly in Russia Already
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/04/2025: Price of Games and State of Tinylog
- Links for the day
- Sounds Like IBM is Preparing for Mass Layoffs/Redundancies in Red Hat, Albeit in "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) or "Relocation" Clothing
- This isn't the "old" IBM; they're applying pressure by confusion and humiliation
- Gemini Links 17/04/2025: Role of Language and Back to Mutt for E-mail
- Links for the day
- "Sayonara" (さよなら), Microsoft
- Windows had fallen below iOS in some countries
- Links 18/04/2025: Layoffs at Microsoft Infosys and Qt Becoming Increasingly Proprietary (Plus Slop)
- Links for the day
- Google News is Dying
- treating MElon's algorithmic/biased site as a source of verified news
- Microsoft's Attack Dogs Have Failed. Now What?
- It would be utterly foolish to assume that Microsoft has any intention of changing
- All Your "Github Projects" Will be Gone One Day (Just Like Skype)
- If you have code you wish to share and keep, then start learning how to do so on your own
- To Understand Who's Truly Controlling You Follow the Trail of Censorship (or Self-Censorship)
- Do not let media steal and steer the narrative; CoCs are not about "social justice", they're about corporate domination
- Fedora Already Lost Its Soul Under IBM
- Fedora used to be very strict compared to many other distros and it had attracted very bright volunteers
- Microsoft is Still Attacking GNU/Linux and the Net
- Microsoft bribed the government using money that did not even exist
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 17, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, April 17, 2025
- Gemini Links 18/04/2025: Pinephone Pro and Linux is too Easy
- Links for the day