02.11.14

Skynet Watch: Surveillance for Assassination

Posted in Law at 5:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Abuse of technology and removal of technological rights like privacy for political goals

• Skynet Is Here (And Stealing Your Jobs)

  In a bid to make local communities safer and give local law enforcement agencies more tools to fight crime, California-based Knightscope recently unveiled a line of K5 robots that it believes will “predict and prevent crime with an innovative combination of hardware, software and social engagement.”

• Mass Surveillance: The Day We Fight Back

• Snowden plea bargain speculation played down by ex-CIA and NSA chief

  Michael Hayden says he sees little appetite for deal with whistleblower, and portrays US surveillance reforms as limited

• Reddit, Tumblr and More Protest NSA With “Day We Fight Back”

  On Tuesday, a little more than two years after the “blackout” in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Internet freedom activists are officially “planning a day of protest against mass surveillance” aimed at the National Security Agency.

• NSA Strives to Restore 100% Coverage of Phone Calls as in the Days of George W. Bush

  If you’re concerned about the privacy of your phone calls, take heart: There’s less than a 30% chance the federal government is tracking them…for now.

• Request to Caitlin Hayden for Full NSA Comments

  Hayden has been quoted in a recently published book, “The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man,” as responding to inquiries from the Guardian newspaper concerning disclosure of classified NSA documents, and quoted as well in a news report today, 10 February 2014, “The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program,” by Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald, concerning release of classified information about alleged NSA role in drone strikes. It would be beneficial for the public to have access to Hayden’s full remarks in both these cases rather than snippets favoring the news outlets’ side. I would like to publish Hayden’s full remarks on the public education website, Cryptome.org, of which I am the administrator, which since 1996 has provided information on intelligence agencies.

• Whistleblower: NSA targets SIM cards for drone strikes, ‘Death by unreliable metadata’

  The “NSA has played an increasingly central role in drone killings over the past five years,” according to a former drone operator for the Joint Special Operations Command’s (JSOC) High Value Targeting task force who has also worked with the NSA. On the condition of anonymity, the whistleblower agreed to talk about the top-secret programs to The Intercept’s reporters Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald. His account was backed up by former U.S. Air Force drone sensor operator Brandon Bryant as well as documents leaked by Edward Snowden.Drone strikes based on NSA geolocation of SIM cards

• How drone strikes based on NSA surveillance kill innocents

  The first report from Greenwald and Scahill’s new site highlights dangerous role of NSA phone tracking

• Report alleges NSA role in U.S. drone assassinations

• New Whistleblower Reveals NSA Picking Drone Targets Based On Bad Data: ‘Death By Unreliable Metadata’

  Late last night, the new publication from Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill launched. It’s called The Intercept, and I imagine that it’s going to be a must-follow for a variety of reasons. Its first major article digs deep into the NSA’s role in killing people with drones (often innocent people) based on questionable metadata. Remember how NSA defenders kept insisting that “it’s just metadata” as if that was no big deal? Well, what about when that metadata is being used to kill people?

• Why Should AP Withhold Name of Country Where US Might Launch Drone & Kill Another US Citizen?

  Late in the afternoon, the Los Angeles Times went ahead and released the name of the country: Pakistan. That it explains the concern. There definitely are special operations forces from the US operating covertly in the country and the US cannot call too much attention to them without risking blowback.

  A United States citizen, who happens to be an alleged member of al Qaeda, is reportedly planning attacks on Americans who are overseas. The Associated Press reports, based on the comments of four anonymous United States officials, that President Barack Obama’s administration is contemplating how it can legally add this citizen to a “kill list” so he could be killed by a drone.

• Obama administration mulls drone strike to kill suspected American Al-Qaeda member feared plotting attacks

  An American citizen who is a member of Al-Qaeda is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.

• US considers drone strike on American al-Qaida suspect abroad

  An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, US officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.

• Obama administration considering drone killing of US citizen

  A United States citizen accused of being an overseas “Al-Qaeda facilitator” could soon be killed by an American drone, the Associated Press reported on Monday, but first the US government must find a way to legally launch such a strike.

• Administration Officials Perform Some Very Public Handwringing Over Extrajudicial Drone Killing

  The administration has sort of painted itself into a corner with its new rules on drone strikes. It’s apparently seeking to take out a US citizen who has joined al-Qaeda and is “actively plotting” against the US. Multiple issues have arisen, thanks to Obama’s better-late-than-never drone guidelines, which were issued last year to appease the many countries perturbed by the US government’s increasing reliance on drones to take out suspected terrorists.

• Obama Officials Weigh Drone Attack on US Suspect

• Obama administration American terror suspect possibly targeted for drone attack

  The case of an American citizen and suspected member of al-Qaida who is planning attacks on U.S. targets overseas underscores the complexities of President Barack Obama’s new stricter targeting guidelines for the use of deadly drones.

  The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he’s a U.S. citizen. The Pentagon drones that could are barred from the country where he’s hiding, and the Justice Department has not yet finished building a case against him.

• Giuliani: Leak of Drone Target Compromises Mission

  U.S. officials who leaked plans for a possible drone strike on a U.S. citizen planning terror attacks don’t take their oaths of office seriously and should worry President Barack Obama, says former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

• The U.S. May Be Planning to Kill Another U.S. Citizen Abroad

  “U.S. officials” have told Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press that the Obama administration is wrestling with a decision over whether to kill a U.S. citizen who is a member of al-Qaida and is reportedly actively planning attacks against U.S. citizens abroad.

• Should Obama administration murder American citizen with drone strike?

  There is a reason we have courts and constitutional protection that one will get a fair trial before being punished for the crime he/she may or may not have done. Killing a suspect without giving fair trail is taking away his/her constitutional rights.

• Anti-drone activist kidnapped in Pakistan before he was due to testify in Europe

  A prominent Pakistani journalist and anti-drone activist has gone missing after nearly two dozen men stormed his home and abducted him, his lawyer announced on Monday – just days before he was due to testify before European parliamentarians.

  Kareem Khan was taken from his home in Rawalpindi – a city located just nine miles away from Islamabad in Punjab province – by approximately 20 men. Shahzad Akbar, Khan’s lawyer, told AFP that many of the men were wearing police uniforms, though the affiliation of the kidnappers remains unknown.

• Google Unmasks the Anonymous With Google Authorship

  Google has a goal in mind and it has more to do with visitor identification as it relates to targeted advertising than it has to do with improving the quality, speed, or usefulness of searching or finding. This demands drawing out as many anonymous visitors as possible. This includes members with false names, stage names, brand names, noms de plume, and noms de guerre. Google wants to triangulate real name with as much online behavior as possible. Google’s apps, products, phones, OSes, and services are just elaborate strategies to lure Internet denizens out of the cold and into the system. The greater the number of points of reference connecting that user with online behavior the better. And it’s all for market data. It all comes down to revenue generation: AdWords, ad networks, and back-office partnerships and deals with other ad networks and revenue-generating schemes.

• Another Successful Cryptoparty

  On Thursday night, as part of Manchester’s week long free software festival, Manchester Open Rights Group were helping to run a CryptoParty.

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