Summary: The latest target of BT’s patent bullying (shakedowns and lawsuits) is the company that has turned into somewhat of a Debian proponent (albeit with DRM)

BT is a patent aggressor whose activities in the court we haven't heard of in a while (it even targeted Android). BT shows no sign of relenting. This unpopular strategy carries on and the latest suggests that “British Telecommunications (BT) have filed a lawsuit against Valve claiming patent infringement. The action was brought “based on Valve’s continued willful infringement” of four patents (I’ll go into what they are in a moment) and was filed in Delaware on 28 July.”

“It resorts to patent aggression to make up for commercial issues, just like IBM (it too became a patent bully).”Notice the choice of Delaware. The British and US media wrote quite a lot about this lawsuit [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]. So far we have found 22 articles about this lawsuit alone (that’s a lot for patent news) and it looks rather obvious that BT is just getting desperate. It resorts to patent aggression to make up for commercial issues, just like IBM (it too became a patent bully). █

The new owner of Slashdot has been treating the Slashdot community like an enemy. People hate what’s being done to the interface and some are disgusted by the editorial choices. While I no longer read Slashdot myself, several people in our IRC channels (and our IRC bots) are following Slashdot. They say that the FOSS-hostile bias is increasing (we wrote about that yesterday) and Microsoft lobbyists regularly get placements there. A site called Slashcott says that boycotts against the site began some days ago and will last for at least a week in order to demonstrate to Slashdot’s owner that a Slashdot without community is just another Web site on the Web. Some of our readers have said that they are running out of FOSS-friendly sites that they can visit. █

• Amanda Knox and the Wages of American Imperialism

  By the fall of 2007, Italy was in a significant state of conflict with the US over the Bush administration’s policy of extraordinary rendition. Of specific note were Italian kidnapping charges against nearly two dozen CIA agents for the kidnapping of Muslim cleric Abu Omar, resulting in 23 convictions. The New York Times reported, “Judge Oscar Magi handed an eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. base chief in Milan, and five-year sentences to the 22 other Americans, including an Air Force colonel and 21 C.I.A. operatives.”

  [...]

  It’s not clear if Amanda Knox will foot the bill for the 23 convicted CIA agents, but what is clear is that Italy and many other countries view America’s policy of rendition as indeed extraordinary, and they have a point to make.

• Lithuanian Court’s ruling on CIA rendition case, a breakthrough for justice

  A decision by a court in Lithuania ruling that a Saudi Arabian national has a right to an investigation into his alleged torture in a secret CIA detention centre in the country is a breakthrough for justice, said Amnesty International.

• Lithuanian prosecutor’s refusal to reopen CIA prison investigation found ungrounded

  Vilnius Regional Court has ruled prosecutors unfoundedly refused to launch a pre-trial investigation into claims a Saudi Arabian citizen was kept in a secret CIA detention center in Lithuania in 2004-2006.

• Lithuanian prosecutor accused in Guantanamo Bay case

• CIA Director Grilled On Domestic Surveillance, Torture At Senate Hearing

  Three senators pummeled CIA Director John Brennan at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday, peppering him with tough questions on torture and domestic surveillance that he has refused to answer in public.

  Brennan defended the CIA against accusations that it is double-dealing with the Intelligence committee about a report on agency torture, and he also received surprisingly pointed questions about whether the CIA spies on Americans. Such public hearings offer senators critical of the intelligence agencies the chance to telegraph their private concerns about classified programs — and these questions could suggest there is something the public isn’t being told about what the CIA does at home.

• The Pentagon’s route out of Afghanistan passes through a former CIA black site

  The Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania is a short drive from the Black Sea and the port city of Constanta, a sprawling metropolis with beach resorts, museums, and nightclubs. It’s also about to become the main transit point for the tens of thousands of U.S. troops flowing out of Afghanistan. It won’t be the first time Washington has used the base for a sensitive mission, however: If human rights groups are correct, the facility also used to house one of the CIA’s notorious “black site” detention facilities.

• Chuck Hagel: ‘Polish-US relationship can withstand CIA prison allegations’

  US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has said in Warsaw that the US-Polish partnership can “withstand testing and questioning” over allegations of a secret CIA prison in Poland.

• Polish ex-intelligence official says time for truth on CIA jail

  Poland’s official stance of denying it hosted a secret CIA jail is harming its reputation and it needs to be frank about what really happened, a senior intelligence official at the time the alleged prison was operating told Reuters.

• Investigators ask for CIA prison probe deadline extension

  Prosecutors leading Poland’s investigation into an alleged CIA prison where terrorist suspects were held and tortured have asked for another extension to the probe.

• Arabian Gulf energy still vital to the US, says former CIA director

  David Petraeus, the chairman of the KKR Global Institute and former commander of the US Central Command, said that while the energy boom had extended to Canada and Mexico, the Arabian Gulf’s oil and gas still fuelled the US’s trade partners and would for the foreseeable future.

  He was speaking at a lecture on the forthcoming North American decades at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research last night.

  “According to projections, the US is set to become a leading oil producer by 2020,” he said. “Crude oil production is expected to reach 9.5 million barrels a day by only 2016, and this situation is dramatically changed since 2008-2009, when many experts said oil production had peaked and wasn’t ready to climb. They couldn’t have been more wrong.”

• A Manufactured Nuclear Crisis

  The subtitle of Gareth Porter’s new book, “The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare,” is well-chosen. Large parts of “A Manufactured Crisis” are indeed untold till now. They amount to what the author terms an “alternative narrative”.

• C.I.A. Drone Bases

  The Central Intelligence Agency should not be launching deadly military strikes. We would be better off if the C.I.A. returned to being an agency that collected and analyzed intelligence and stopped being a secretive paramilitary organization.

• Leaked official document records 330 drone strikes in Pakistan

• US agencies might lose drone bases in Afghanistan

• Block, First and Hawkeness: Stop training drone pilots in Wisconsin

  Dozens of Wisconsin residents phoned or visited the district offices of our senators and representatives to call for an end to drone warfare. The visits and calls were timed for Jan. 15-21 when our nation commemorated its prophet of peace and nonviolence, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

• “Dirty Wars” Filmmaker Jeremy Scahill on the “Drone President” & Obama’s Whitewashing of NSA Spying

  In his State of the Union address, President Obama called on the United States to “move off a permanent war footing,” citing his recent limits on the use of drones, his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and his effort to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Obama also vowed to reform National Security Agency surveillance programs to ensure that “the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated.” Jeremy Scahill, whose Oscar-nominated film “Dirty Wars” tackles the U.S. drone war and targeted killings abroad, says Obama has been a “drone president” whose operations have killed large numbers of civilians. On NSA reform, Scahill says “the parameters of the debate in Washington are: Should we figure out a way to streamline this and sell it to the American people, or should we do more surveillance?”

• “A Silent Coup”: Jeremy Scahill & Bob Herbert on Corporate, Military Interests Shaping Obama’s SOTU

  On issues from domestic inequality to foreign policy, President Obama delivered the fifth State of the Union with a vow to take action on his own should Congress stonewall progress on his agenda. But will Obama’s policies go far enough? We host a roundtable with three guests: Jeremy Scahill, producer and writer of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield;” and senior investigative reporter at First Look Media, which will launch in the coming months; Bob Herbert, Distinguished Senior Fellow with Demos; and Lorella Praeli, Director of Advocacy and Policy at the United We Dream Coalition.

• Arizona lawmaker pushing NSA data mining restrictions may also go after drones

  An Arizona lawmaker who wants to prohibit police departments, prosecutors and state courts from helping the National Security Agency with its data mining and surveillance plans on adding anti-drone language to the measure.

• ‘Drone warfare helps sell wars to a domestic audience’

  Development of modern drone technologies will never eliminate civilian collateral damage in conflict deployment, Michael Raddie, antiwar activist told RT, arguing that investing in drones makes warfare more acceptable for general public.

• Leaked Pakistani document contradicts US accounts of drone strikes

  It is the fullest official record of the covert campaign yet to emerge, providing the dates, precise times and exact locations of drone strikes, as well as casualty estimates. The document abruptly stops routinely recording civilian casualties after the start of 2009, but overall casualty estimates continue to be comparable to independent estimates such as those compiled by the Bureau.

• Are GCHQ workers in danger of becoming accessories to murder?

  I am not a lawyer but I am certain that the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, needs to take very seriously a legal opinion which was handed to Parliament this week.

  It comes from Jemima Stratford QC. She has given a judgment on whether GCHQ can pass information onto the US, which is later used to facilitate drone strikes.

• 8 Films That Reveal the Shifting American Bias Towards the Middle East

  It’s been over 10 years since the United States entered Iraq. Though the war in Iraq has officially been over since 2011, our involvement in the Middle East is stronger than ever. And from 9/11 until now, popular opinion in favor of or against the war in Afghanistan has ebbed and flowed.

• CIA and Saudis cooperate on Chinese missile purchase

  Undoubtedly, the role of the Saudi Arabia and its influence on the Middle East has long been under the discussion. Now with Iran and the West trying to reach an agreement on the nuclear matter, the monarchy is trying to amend the situation to their favor, with the Washington’s support, according to recent reports.

• Heads of Killing, Lying, and Spying Under Fire

  Before the hearing began, activists from CODEPINK stood up holding signs reading ‘Stop – Killing, Lying, Spying’ and called for the firing of James Clapper, Director of Central Intelligence, John Brennan, Director of the CIA, and James Comey, Director of the FBI.

Corporate Servers

• GCHQ taught NSA how to monitor Facebook, Twitter in real time – Snowden leak

  British intelligence officials can infiltrate the very cables that transfer information across the internet, as well as monitor users in real time on sites like Facebook without the company’s consent, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

  The internal documents reveal that British analysts gave instruction to members of the National Security Agency in 2012, showing them how to spy on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in real time and collect the computer addresses of billions of the sites’ uploaders.

• Fancy a little kinky sex? GCHQ+NSA will know – thanks to ANGRY BIRDS

  Some of the world’s most popular smartphone applications are telling British and American intelligence agencies everything about you – from your location to your politics or whether you’re part of the swinging set.

• Angry Birds: NSA And GCHQ Harvest Apps Data

  British and US spy agencies have gathered data from smartphone apps which leak personal data on to global networks, according to reports.

• Angry Birds and ‘leaky’ phone apps targeted by NSA and GCHQ for user data

• A Little (Angry) Bird Told the NSA What You’re Up To

• NSA surveillance: Angry Birds and other ‘leaky apps’ targeted by US and UK security agencies

• Not even Google Maps, Angry Birds are safe from NSA and GCHQ spying

• NSA and GCHQ collecting data leaked from smartphone apps like Angry Birds?

• GCHQ is monitoring Facebook Likes and Youtube with Operation Squeaky Dolphin

  EXILED AMERICAN WHISTLEBLOWER Edward Snowden has revealed evidence that shows GCHQ is able to monitor web traffic without the knowledge of either the website or the user.

  Operation Squeaky Dolphin is explained in the presentation “Psychology A New Kind of SIGDEV” (Signals Development) obtained by NBC from the Snowden files. It describes an operation to harvest Facebook Likes, Youtube URLs and Blogger visits

• Bruce Schneier: ‘NSA and GCHQ have betrayed the trust of the internet’

  Security expert and technologist Bruce Schneier has told the BBC that he believes the NSA and GCHQ have “betrayed the trust of the internet”.

• NSA, GCHQ mapping “political alignment” of cellphone users

  New information made public by Edward Snowden reveals that the governments of the United States and United Kingdom are trawling data from cellphone “apps” to accumulate dossiers on the “political alignments” of millions of smartphone users worldwide.

• NSA, British Spy Agency Collect Angry Birds Data

Crimes Concealed

• The NSA, CIA, and the Promise of Industrial Espionage

  In a weekend interview with German ARD public television network, Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. government uses its broad electronic surveillance capabilities to engage in industrial espionage. Snowden told ARD TV that, “I will say is there is no question that the U.S. is engaged in economic spying,” Snowden gave the example that, “If there is information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security, of the United States, they will go after that information and they’ll take it.” Snowden left hanging what exactly is done with such potentially useful economic intelligence, and he provided little additional information on this subject beyond indicated the news outlets holding copies of yet published NSA leaked documents could provide more specific information.

• U.S. Eyes Ways to Keep NSA Snooping Hidden

  At the same time that the Obama administration publicly mulls over how to end its controversial storage of millions of Americans’ phone records swept up by the National Security Agency, the government is also reportedly exploring ways to prevent other spies from seeing what it’s spying on.

Police/FBI (Domestic Spying)

• The FBI Seized All of TorMail’s Data and Is Using It to Catch Hackers

  If you had any faith left in anonymous email services, now would be the time to let that go. New court documents show that in chasing down associates of Freedom Hosting, the FBI managed to download the entire email database of TorMail. And now it’s using that information to take on the Darknet.

• Md. mall gunman was avid skater, no criminal past

  Police began tracking Aguilar’s phone and soon discovered it was at the mall.

US Political Reaction

• Issa, Five Other Congressmen Call For DNI Clapper’s Removal

  A group of six Congressmen have asked President Barack Obama to remove James Clapper as director of national intelligence as a result of his misstatements to Congress about the NSA’s dragnet data-collection programs. The group, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said that Clapper’s role as DNI “is incompatible with the goal of restoring trust in our security programs”.

• NSA Surveillance Divides the Republican Party

  The RNC has declared domestic spying illegal. A faction led by George W. Bush-era bureaucrats is pushing back.

• Cut Off the NSA’s Juice

  The National Security Agency depends on huge computers that guzzle electricity in the service of the surveillance state. For the NSA’s top executives, maintaining a vast flow of juice to keep Big Brother nourished is essential — and any interference with that flow is unthinkable.

European Reaction

• Data Protection Day

  When the EU agreed its current Data Protection Directive in 1995, the internet was just coming onto the horizon, and Mark Zuckerberg was just 11.

• SAP and Atos team up for EU cloud standards to counter NSA threat

  SAP and Atos are working with the European Union to bring in new standards for web-based programmes and data storage in an effort to tackle growing surveillance fears following ongoing NSA revelations.

• AT&T’s ambitions to expand in Europe have been put on ice, for now.

  AT&T’s ambitions to expand in Europe have been put on ice, for now. And the NSA spying scandal is at least partly to blame.

• German TV: Snowden Says NSA Also Spies On Industry

• Edward Snowden tells German TV that NSA is involved in industrial espionage

  Public broadcaster ARD airs interview in which whistleblower says National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage

People’s Voice

• Prominent cryptography and security researchers deplore NSA’s surveillance activities

• February 11, 2014: The Day We Fight Back Against the NSA

  It only makes sense that the NSA be confronted online. After all, it’s the Internet the agency uses to spy on us. They’re not following us down dark streets or steaming open our snail mail. Instead, they’re monitoring our emails to discover who is in our circle and stalking us on Facebook and Google Plus. Especially if we use Windows, there’s no need for them to dirty their hands sifting through our garbage when they can enter through a virtual trap door on our computer to rifle through our word processor and spreadsheet files. Phone tapping? How old school in a world where every call we make, even from a land line, becomes VoIP somewhere along the line. When we use VoIP or Skype, they can easily listen. If we visit a website located in a country on their hit list, they sit-up and take notice.

Corporations’ Voice

• Tech giants reach White House deal on NSA surveillance of customer data

  The Obama administration has reached a deal with a number of technology giants, allowing the companies to disclose more information on customer data they are compelled to share with the government.

• Google’s Drummond calls for new NSA reforms

• Google to acquire AI firm for $400 million

  For quite some time there have been rumours of Google wanting to take AI to the next level. Popular Android-based game, ‘Ingress‘ presents an artificial layer on top of real world landmarks and allows players to claim territories while the interact with their surroundings. Although it’s not what the public expected initially, it did represent the future that Google envisioned for gaming.

• You Say NSA Has Hurt U.S. Tech Sector

  72% of you said that you thought the NSA’s actions would have an effect on the entire U.S. software industry, with 20% of you expressing the opinion that proprietary software developers only would be effected. Taken together, this means that 92% of you are of the opinion that the NSA’s dirty tricks will have a negative effect on the U.S. tech sector. 7% of you answered “maybe a little but not much” with only 1% choosing “not at all.”

Libel Against Snowden

• Snowden, in rare interview, denies all accusations of help from Moscow

  Leaker tells The New Yorker: “The American public has a seat at the table now.”

• Snowden denies receiving assistance from Russian intelligence with NSA leaks

  Former National Security Agen­­cy contractor Edward Snowden denied accusations that he was working for a foreign government when he stole countless classified documents detailing U.S. surveillance programs and efforts to gather information on world leaders.

  In an interview with the New Yorker, published Tuesday evening on the magazine’s Web site, Snowden said claims that he may have been working for the Russians as a spy were “absurd.”

• Before Snowden, Nixon Admin Pioneered Evidence-Free ‘Russian Spy’ Smears Against Daniel Ellsberg

Snowden Q & A

• 5 questions for Snowden that aren’t exactly about the NSA

• NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to hold live chat on Thursday

• NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to hold Q&A Thursday

NSA

• Obama’s NSA smoke and mirrors

  He is quite blatantly playing to public ignorance when he says that he is doing these essentially unnecessary things, as Wittes points out, to “maintain the trust of the American people, and people around the world.” It is an odd way to build trust when you find public concerns unfounded but try to sound like you’re all for reform. Conservatives are hoping all of this is atmospheric nonsense to calm his base, while the intelligence community goes along its way and all that follow-up — like the Trayvon Martin civil rights investigation by the Justice Department — goes nowhere.

• NSA Surveillance Program Still Unconstitutional Despite Proposed Changes

  Freedom is the great deity of the west, the goddess central to American identity; the idea being that individuals have autonomy—good or bad, wise or foolish, controversial or conventional—to live their lives with minimal interference from the government.

• Ex-CIA Director And Current Surveillance Task Force Member Mike Morell Parrots Talking Points To Defend Bulk Collections

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  This “theory” that the NSA was hamstrung by its lack of access to millions of irrelevant call records practically debunks itself at this point. The defenders of these programs can’t seem to find a better rhetorical device than this one, which has been completely eviscerated by dozens of intelligence experts and the 9/11 Commission itself.

  Morell’s position on the surveillance review task force seems to be as a “devil’s advocate” — someone placed on the board by the president to ensure no one gets too carried away trying to protect Americans’ rights or limit the NSA’s power.

• Gov’t used Surveillance of MLK in Bid to Destroy Him: Now they want us to just Trust Them

  Among the ironies of Barack Obama trying to sell us the gargantuan NSA domestic spying program is that such techniques of telephone surveillance were used against the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in an attempt to destroy him and stop the Civil Rights movement. Had the republic’s most notorious peeping tom, J. Edgar Hoover, succeeded in that quest, Obama might never have been president, or even been served in Virginia restaurants.

• Some States Have a Sneaky Plan to Stop the NSA

  So far, six states (Missouri, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Washington, and Indiana) have introduced bills that target the NSA.

International

• One Planet, One Internet: A Call To the International Community to Fight Against Mass Surveillance

  The Snowden revelations have confirmed our worst fears about online spying. They show that the NSA and its allies have been building a global surveillance infrastructure to “master the internet” and spy on the world’s communications. These shady groups have undermined basic encryption standards, and riddled the Internet’s backbone with surveillance equipment. They have collected the phone records of hundreds of millions of people none of whom are suspected of any crime. They have swept up the electronic communications of millions of people at home and overseas indiscriminately, exploiting the digital technologies we use to connect and inform. They spy on the population of allies, and share that data with other organizations, all outside the rule of law.

• Germany’s Privacy Stance Boosts Berlin’s Tech Startups

  CEO Felix Langhof insists that corporations formed during the internet era have a systemic blind spot towards this new market, simply because the practice of attaching their ID to their customers’ actions is now so deeply engrained.

• TrustyCon vs. RSA and NSA: New conference pushes trustworthy agenda (but Microsoft-funded, i.e. NSA)

  Who do you trust? That’s a question asked increasingly by a security industry with a growing sense that the National Security Agency (NSA) has sought to weaken encryption or get backdoors into computers, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden to the media. Now, trust is also the theme of a new conference called TrustyCon that will vie for attention on Feb. 27 in San Francisco while the big RSA Conference for security pros is also taking place in that city.

• Davos Dispatch: Tech Titans On Life-Changing Gadgets And NSA Reform

  Benioff said the discussion about the NSA and data privacy over the last 6 months is “way overdue… Only through transparency will we get back to trust… Trust will drive customer choice because the customer has to have the choice about exactly where they want their data and how to manage it and see it and it cannot be anonymous. I think our model is closest to where we need to go: customers can choose what country their data is run out of. They can go into the data center, see it and monitor it. Tech vendors have to provide this kind of transparency and can’t pin it on the government.”

Facebook

• Facebook like an infectious disease, will lose 80 percent of users, says Princeton study

  Don’t worry, like a viral outbreak, Facebook use will explode before plummeting down to Myspace levels of obscurity, says a new study from Princeton University.

• Facebook May Lose 80% of Its User Base by 2017

  Social networks function like infectious diseases, according to Princeton researchers. They spread fast—and then disappear

• Facebook Will Lose 80 Percent of Users by 2017, According to an Infectious Disease Model

  We’ll all be cured of Facebook soon. At least, that’s the conclusion of a new Princeton paper published this month on the Arxiv server that modeled the social network’s popularity over time as if it were an infectious illness. The conclusions may sound hard to believe—the scientists predict Facebook will lose 80 percent of its user base by the end of the year—but they sound a lot more probable if you know how they calculated that number.

The following are a bit older:

• The Google Clones That Power NSA Surveillance

  Google. Amazon. Facebook. These giants of the web have a knack for juggling enormous amounts of data across tens of thousands of computer servers. And they’ve been kind enough to share their “big data” methods with the world at large. Many open source software projects now let anyone build similarly enormous operations capable of juggling similarly enormous amounts of data — including the National Security Agency.

• Facebook, Twitter followers a multi million-dollar business

• Is BP ‘trolling’ its Facebook critics?

• France Wants To Tax YouTube And Facebook Videos

• Italy Approves ‘Google Tax’ on Internet Companies

  Italy’s Parliament today passed a new measure on web advertising, the so-called “Google tax,” which will require Italian companies to purchase their Internet ads from locally registered companies, instead of from units based in havens such as Ireland, Luxembourg and Bermuda.

• Facebook Forces Video Ads on You Because Marketers Told It To

• Facebook to launch autoplay video ads

• Independent commission to investigate future of internet after NSA revelations

New Leaks

• New documents: NSA provided 2-3 daily “tips” to FBI for at least 3 years

  According to newly-declassified court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the National Security Agency (NSA) was (and may still be) tipping off the FBI at least two to three times per day going back at least to 2006.

  Hours after President Barack Obama finished his speech last Friday on proposed intelligence and surveillance reforms, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified a number of documents from the nation’s most secretive court.

Speech/PR

• Obama’s “Big” Speech on NSA Delivers So Little

  I doubt whether many people had high expectations of President Obama’s “big” speech last week about NSA spying. After all not only has he showed few signs of being willing to admit the value of Snowden’s revelations, he has, in general, been an immense disappointment to many who had placed such great hopes in his election. But at least this time he did not disappoint us, because what he announced was as disappointing as everyone expected.

• Obama’s Lies, NSA Spies, and the Sons of Liberty

  Remember, Obama is the chief executive of a super secretive surveillance state whose overarching purpose is to remain in power by any means available. As such, he and his surveillance state cohorts have far more in common with King George and the British government of his day than with the American colonists who worked hard to foment a rebellion and overthrow a despotic regime.

  Indeed, Obama and his speechwriters would do well to brush up on their history. In doing so, they will find that the Sons of Liberty, the “small, secret surveillance committee” they conveniently liken to the NSA, was in fact an underground, revolutionary movement that fought the established government of its day, whose members were considered agitators, traitors and terrorists not unlike Edward Snowden.

• Half of Americans unaware of Obama’s proposed changes to NSA surveillance – poll

Germany

• Probing America: Top German Prosecutor Considers NSA Investigation

  Germany and the US appear to be edging closer to political confrontation. The Federal Prosecutor says there is sufficient evidence to open a politically explosive investigation into NSA spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

• Germany Cool to Obama NSA Reforms

Human Rights Watch

• Human Rights Watch says Obama not gone far enough on NSA reforms

• NSA sets global trend for surveillance: Human Rights Watch

• HRW: Obama’s NSA reforms not enough

• NSA sets global trend for surveillance: Human Rights Watch

  The United States is setting a dangerous example for the world with its sweeping surveillance programmes, giving governments an excuse for mass censorship of online communications, Human Rights Watch said in its annual report Tuesday.

Microsoft-Funded But ‘NSA-free’

• F-Secure’s Hypponen leads RSA refuseniks to NSA-free infosec chatfest

  The one-day TrustyCon, to be held on 27 February at the AMC Metreon Theatre in San Francisco, has drawn Mikko Hypponen as its keynote, giving “The talk I was going to give at RSA”. So far, the only other confirmed speakers are ISEC Partners’ Alex Stamos; Marcia Hofmann (EFA) and Christopher Soghoian (American Civil Liberties Union) who dropped out of the RSA Conference; Google’s Chris Palmer; and Black Hat’s Jeff Moss.

Ed: Microsoft-funded means not NSA-free. Microsoft receives a lot of money from the NSA.

UK

• Manchester ORG hosts second Crypto Party – 6th Feb

  Cryptoparties provide a great way for anyone to learn how to install and use encryption technology and other tips to keep you anonymous online. Tech facilitators will be there to help you with encryption of email, live chat and how to browse the web without being tracked. All are welcome to come learn and share skills in a fun environment.

Vietnam

• Vietnamese hackers target EFF staffers, journalist in phishing attack

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published details of an attempted malware attack on two of its employees by a group of hackers associated with the Vietnamese government. The hacker group, known as Sinh Tử Lệnh, has targeted Vietnamese dissidents and bloggers in the past; it now appears that the campaign has been extended to attacks on US activists and journalists who publish information seen as critical of the Vietnamese government.

• Vietnamese Malware Gets Very Personal

Facebook

• Zuckerberg rarely mentions the word ‘privacy’

  When it comes to privacy, what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says — and doesn’t say — is surprising.

• Young users see Facebook as ‘dead and buried’

• Facebook ‘dead and buried to teens’, research finds

• Facebook’s so uncool, but it’s morphing into a different beast

• The next level of open health data tracking is good for you

  Companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are collecting enormous amounts of information all day, every day. They use powerful supercomputers to analyze this data. Many people use this to better market products to consumers, for instance.

• Washington State Bill Proposes Criminalizing Help to NSA, Turning Off Resources to Yakima Facility

  The state-level campaign to turn off power to the NSA got a big boost January 15, 2014, as Washington became the first state with a physical NSA location to consider a Fourth Amendment protection act designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.

• Turn off the NSA’s power campaign underway

  A campaign which aims to turn off the electricity to the NSA so that it can’t store data on citizens is in full swing.
  The campaign has started in Washington and appears to be part of a partisan effort to rein in the country’s Men in Black.

  Washington became the first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.

  The Bill, which has the catchy title HB2272, has been designed by Republican David Taylor and Democrat Luis Moscoso. It was introduced to the house in the dead of night and is based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition.

• NSA infiltrated more than 100,000 offline computers using covert devices, says leaks

• New Evidence That the NSA Isn’t Forthcoming With Congress

  Throughout the NSA leak scandal, the surveillance agency’s defenders have insisted its actions are legitimate in part because they’re overseen by all three branches of government. The characterization has always been extremely misleading. For example, the secret FISA court system is often incapable of verifying the truth of what they’re told by the NSA, and so many members of Congress were ignorant of how the Patriot Act has been interpreted prior to the last reauthorization that, had the ignorant voted the other way, it would’ve changed the outcome.

• NSA hacking tools will find their way to criminals eventually

• Obama: Speech on perceived NSA abuses a turning point

• Obama to reveal curbs on NSA spy programmes

  President Barack Obama is to announce changes to US electronic spy programmes after revelations made by ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

  He aims to restore public confidence in the intelligence community.

  Mr Obama is expected to create a public advocate at the secretive court that approves intelligence collection.

  His proposals come hours after UK media reports that the US has collected and stored almost 200 million text messages per day across the globe.

• NSA states Dishfire does exist and lawfully collects data

• NSA collects millions of text messages globally – Guardian

  The U.S. National Security Agency has been gathering nearly 200 million text messages a day from around the world, gathering data on people’s travel plans, contacts and credit card transactions, Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.

• Revealed: UK and US spied on text messages of Brits

  A slide from a presentation, seen by The Guardian and Channel 4 News, shows how Dishfire gave spies access to a trove of information. For example, by intercepting the welcome messages phone users receive when they arrive in a new country, the NSA tracked the movements of more than 1.5 million people every day. The agency spied on phone users’ contacts by hoovering up five million missed call alerts per day, as well as business cards sent by text message.

• Report: NSA ‘collected 200m texts per day’

  The US National Security Agency (NSA) has collected and stored almost 200 million text messages a day from around the world, UK media report.

• The NSA Lied About Collecting Hundreds of Millions of Texts a Day, and Everything Else

  During a speech at a hacker convention five months ago, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander showed a PowerPoint slide that listed eight things his agency “does NOT collect.” In the months since, every single claim has been proven a lie.

• NSA Whistleblower: NSA Is a Corrupt, Broken Institution

  NSA has come under intense scrutiny because of Edward Snowdens disclosures about their spying on all Americans. But there are more problems at NSA than their violation of the fourth amendment protections of the constitution.

• OBAMA AND THE N.S.A.: WHY HE CAN’T BE TRUSTED

• NSA defenders’ shameless “national security” bait and switch

  Mounting evidence shows surveillance has had no impact on preventing terrorism. Is the public paying attention?

• Obama Panel to Address Online Companies’ NSA Concerns

  President Barack Obama tomorrow will create a panel to examine how data-collection efforts like the National Security Agency’s spy programs affect Internet companies and privacy rights, said two people familiar with White House deliberations.

• Spying plunges U.S.-German ties lower than Iraq war: Merkel ally

• NSA: six out of 10 Americans want reform of data collection, says poll

• US set to announce NSA reforms

  Former NSA employee Edward Snowden’s leaks to the public have sparked months of controversy and could lead to reforms.

• Phone Companies to Win in Obama Plan to Leave Records at NSA

  President Barack Obama’s plan to keep phone data with the National Security Agency for now is a victory for telecommunications companies, which resisted the idea of holding the records themselves over concerns about lawsuits, lost business and unwanted responsibility.

• NSA reform measures quietly included in $1.1tn spending bill

• Huawei dismisses NSA backdoor claims as profits soar

  It’s been a mixed week for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei after the firm announced impressive financials but was forced again to deny allegations of security weaknesses in its products.

  The device and telecoms kit maker announced its unaudited financials on Wednesday, claiming sales revenue for 2013 will reach between 238 billion and 240 billion yuan (£24bn). This will be a year-on-year jump of around 8 per cent, or 11.6 per cent when measured in US dollars.

• Anti-NSA Blackphone: Encrypted smartphone designed to liberate users from total surveillance

• NSA Metadata Collection: Fourth Amendment Violation

  This issue is headed to the Court of Appeals. From there, it will likely go the Supreme Court. The high court checked and balanced President George W. Bush when he overstepped his legal authority by establishing military commissions that violated due process, and attempted to deny constitutional habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. It remains to be seen whether the court will likewise refuse to cower before President Barack Obama’s claim of unfettered executive authority to conduct dragnet surveillance. If the court allows the NSA to continue its metadata collection, we will reside in what can only be characterized as a police state.

• NSA Whistlebower– William Binney: Corruption in NSA, Lies About Snowden, Threats to Democracy

• Security Expert Bruce Schneier Says to Foil NSA Spies, Encrypt Everything

  In the world of cybersecurity, Bruce Schneier is an unusually accessible voice for those of us who feel we don’t quite understand what’s going on. The author of 12 books, and a prolific blogger and speaker, Schneier helped the Guardian go through the top-secret documents from the U.S. National Security Agency leaked by Edward Snowden last year.

• Privacy advocates fear ‘largely cosmetic’ NSA reform package

• Latest Revelations on NSA Likely to Change Little in US Cyber Spying

  U.S. officials are reacting cautiously to revelations published in The New York Times that the National Security Agency has found a way to spy on computers even when they are not connected to the Internet. Report says software was implanted into 100,000 computers worldwide.

• Obama set to respond to Snowden about NSA reforms in highly anticipated speech

• Two whistleblowers share concerns of NSA overreach at WCU event

  As President Obama prepares to announce Friday what action he will take with the future of the National Security Agency, two whistleblowers visited West Chester University with recommendations on how to roll back government surveillance.

  The two former NSA employees, William Binney and Thomas Drake, sat down with a WCU class Tuesday to discuss the current state of privacy in the country and their struggle for freedom.

• The NSA’s Biggest Supporter Is Worried About Drone Privacy Issues

• This Is Where Drone Operators Kill People by Remote Control

• Texas named a drone ‘site’

  With Alpine and the area off limits to drone testing, Texas still was one of the six states selected for “drone test sites,” the Federal Aviation Administration has announced.

• UC doesn’t want you to fear the dawn of drones

• Violence becoming the new norm in America

  The United States carried on two ten-year wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where we killed an estimated 250,000 civilians. We killed many more Muslim fighters by the tens of thousands. We destroyed their country with our bombs. Because those third world countries lack birth records, identification and death certificates–the numbers could be much higher.

  In most large city in America, such as Denver, newscasters relate killings every night of the week. Chicago, Houston, Detroit and Los Angeles suffer gang killings nightly.

  One in four children suffers bullying by a teen thug in high schools across America every day during school terms. In other words, our children cannot attend school without fear of being beat up, harassed, called names and demeaned by meaner, bigger students who have no other purpose in life but to manifest their thuggery.

  What bothers me: we promote horrific violence via our continuous wars promoted by bankers and the military industrial complex that profit at the cost of human lives. We promote TV violence such as “Criminal Minds” and “NCIS” where lots of people commit diabolical mayhem. We support social media arcade games for kids like “Doom” and worse. Our movies feature horrific violence that pours into our kids minds and emotions. It’s like the 60s movie “Clockwork Orange” seems normal. You can watch television “Cops” where violence becomes normal. Our drones in the Middle East kill any number of humans without identity.

• Secret amendment in Congress keeps CIA in charge of deadly drone strikes

  President Barack Obama said last May that control of the United States’ weaponized drone program would shift away from the Central Intelligence Agency and into the hands of the Pentagon, but a new report suggests Congress could keep that from happening.

• US policymakers seek to block transfer of drone campaign CIA to Pentagon

• How the CIA Shaped the Modern Middle East

  The authoritarian regimes, bloody revolutions and tense diplomatic relations in the Middle East dominate the news today. Much of this turmoil was presaged by the activities and experiences of three covert CIA officers in the 1940s and 1950s, says Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach. In “America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East,” Wilford chronicles American adventures in the Middle East after World War II. He recently spoke to U.S. News about romanticized spy games, staged coups and the consequences of it all. Excerpts:

• DOES BEZOS’ CIA LINK, COMPROMISE WASHINGTON POST?

  A “progressive” columnist whose own organization is pursuing a “fresh approach” in contrast to “a far-right Republican Party that is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America,” is petitioning the Washington Post to publicize its owners’ financial investments each time it reports on the CIA.

• The Special Ops Surge: America’s Secret War in 134 Countries

• Secret Law Alert: Congress Tries to Hide Its Drone Policy

• UK not to reject from drones in military operations

• Jeremiah Wright slams President Obama at MLK event; says he has a ‘kill list’

  The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration in Chicago Wednesday, took several swipes at President Barack Obama, at one point saying that while King would have said, “I have a dream,” the president would have to say “I have a drone.”

  According to a story in The Chicago Sun Times, Wright, Obama’s former pastor, spoke at the breakfast hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union and called on those there to reject the “three-headed demon” of “racism, militarism and capitalism” — the foundations of Western society.

  Wright went on to slam the president by saying that each week Obama presides at a meeting to decide where drones will be launched.

• McCain blasts budget panel for meddling in U.S. drone policy

• Lawmakers seek to stymie plan to shift control of drone campaign from CIA to Pentagon

• There’s a Secret Provision in Congress’ Spending Bill

  Congress’ $1.1 trillion spending bill contains a secret provision torpedoing President Obama’s plans to pass the drone program from the CIA to the Pentagon. In a classified annex, the bill specifically prohibits any funds being used to facilitate such a transfer, the Washington Post reports. Obama wants to shift the CIA from its paramilitary footing back to an intelligence one, and perhaps bring greater transparency to the drone program. But lawmakers don’t trust the military with the keys.

• Congress balks at moving drone oversight from CIA to Pentagon

  Congress has moved to block President Barack Obama’s plan to shift control of the U.S. drone campaign from the CIA to the Defense Department, inserting a secret provision in the massive government spending bill introduced this week that would preserve the spy agency’s role in lethal counterterrorism operations, U.S. officials said.

• Congress Restricts Drones Program Shift

Syria and Libya (Weapons)

• Whose sarin?

  The absence of immediate alarm inside the American intelligence community demonstrates that there was no intelligence about Syrian intentions in the days before the attack. And there are at least two ways the US could have known about it in advance: both were touched on in one of the top secret American intelligence documents that have been made public in recent months by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor.

  On 29 August, the Washington Post published excerpts from the annual budget for all national intelligence programmes, agency by agency, provided by Snowden. In consultation with the Obama administration, the newspaper chose to publish only a slim portion of the 178-page document, which has a classification higher than top secret, but it summarised and published a section dealing with problem areas. One problem area was the gap in coverage targeting Assad’s office. The document said that the NSA’s worldwide electronic eavesdropping facilities had been ‘able to monitor unencrypted communications among senior military officials at the outset of the civil war there’. But it was ‘a vulnerability that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces apparently later recognised’. In other words, the NSA no longer had access to the conversations of the top military leadership in Syria, which would have included crucial communications from Assad, such as orders for a nerve gas attack. (In its public statements since 21 August, the Obama administration has never claimed to have specific information connecting Assad himself to the attack.)

• Pentagon labeled Benghazi a terrorist attack as Obama administration wavered: newly declassified testimony

• New York Times Report: CIA-Backed Militias Linked to Benghazi, Libya Attack

  The Times article, based on dozens of interviews in Benghazi, asserts that the attack that killed four Americans, including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, was carried out by Libyans who had previously been allied with the US government in the 2011 war that overthrew and murdered Gaddafi. Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick writes that the attack was not organized by Al Qaeda or any other group from outside Libya, but “by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi.”

Ed: Reports from last year, which are based on leaks, indicated that Benghazi had been used to funnel weapons to Syria. The leak’s coverage started in CNN and as the British press put it, “The television network said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels.”

PJ Harvey Brings Guests to BBC

• Julian Assange rails against surveillance on Today programme

• John Pilger: ‘We Have Been Misled’

  January 05, 2014 “Information Clearing House – When I travelled in Iraq in the 1990s, the two principal Moslem groups, the Shia and Sunni, had their differences but they lived side by side, even intermarried and regarded themselves with pride as Iraqis. There was no Al Qaida, there were no jihadists. We blew all that to bits in 2003 with ‘shock and awe’. And today Sunni and Shia are fighting each other right across the Middle East.

Iraq

• UK politicians accused of Iraq war crimes

• Bush’s Iraqi “freedom”: Bloody civil war

  Ten years after the US invasion began, a stable democracy in Iraq seems further away than ever

• John McCain and Lindsey Graham Want to invade Falluja Yet Again

• UK taxpayers financing immoral, inefficient arms contracts and other Underground stories

Africa

• Michael Parenti: The US Empire Sees Only Two Kinds of Countries: Satellites or Enemies

• Britain’s black power movement is at risk of being forgotten, say historians

  New biography of Darcus Howe claims struggle is ignored because it does not fit idea of Britain as ‘utopia of fair play’

• ‘Educated’ Black Men Appear ‘Whiter’ in Memory

• Mandela and Misremembering US History

  U.S. media coverage of Nelson Mandela’s legacy celebrates the late icon’s forgiveness. They mean his ability to reconcile with some of the leaders of South Africa’s apartheid years, of course; but one area that gets relatively little attention is US support for the racist government Mandela fought against.

• ‘Fake’ Mandela memorial sign language interpreter provokes anger

• NASA unveils 6-foot ‘superhero robot’ Valkyrie

  Designed to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, this “female” robot could be the precursor to robo-astronauts that will help colonize Mars.

• Why Obama’s memorial selfie was not a mark of disrespect

• The ‘fake’ Mandela memorial interpreter said it all

• ‘Selfie’ diplomacy: Michelle Obama looks unamused by Barack’s joking with Danish prime minister

  For a memorial service it was a remarkably jovial scene: Barack Obama, David Cameron and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Danish prime minister, huddled together for a smart phone photograph.

  But one person looked distinctly less amused by the world leaders’ “selfie” – Michelle Obama.

  The First Lady stared straight ahead, hands clasped in her lap, while her husband laughed with the Europeans at Nelson Mandela’s memorial in Johannesburg.

• Obama and Mandela

  The US president was the first of six foreign heads of state to address the crowd assembled in Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium. Filled with demagogic phrases about “struggle,” “liberation,” “freedom” and “revolution,” the speech’s attempt to cloak Obama in the legacy of Mandela’s years of sacrifice, imprisonment and persecution was an obscene exercise in hypocrisy.

• Army sends troops to South Sudan, gear to African Union
  

• The Plundering of South Sudan

  Most telling of all is the BBC’s reference to Libya – another nation destroyed by Western military aggression that saw both Russian and Chinese interests crumble overnight and replaced by Western corporations. While South Sudan’s chaos is being orchestrated more covertly by the West, the final goal of pushing out the Chinese and taking over is the same.

• EU Draws Up Plans to Send Troops to Central Africa

  Draft plans for a European Union military mission in the Central African Republic envisage the deployment of hundreds of ground troops to buttress African and French forces struggling to prevent a bloodbath there, according to diplomats briefed on the proposal.

• Any More U.S. “Stabilization” and Africa Will Collapse

  In 2011, the U.S. midwifed the creation of a new nation, South Sudan. Though at the time Obama invoked the words of Dr. Martin Luther King speaking about Ghana (“I knew about all of the struggles, and all of the pain, and all of the agony that these people had gone through for this moment”) in officially recognizing the country, many were more focused on the underlying U.S. motives, isolating the rest of Sudan as part of the war on terror, and securing the oil reserves in the south for the U.S. The State Department rushed to open an embassy in South Sudan, and U.S. money poured in to pay for the new government. Like his counterparts from Iraq and Afghanistan when the U.S. was still in charge of those places, the new South Sudan president was brought to the White House for photos, all blithely pushed out to the world via the Voice of America. The two leaders were said to have discussed “the importance of maintaining transparency and the rule of law.”

Eastern Tensions

• China and Philippines: The reasons why a battle for Zhongye (Pag-asa) Island seems unavoidable

  Zhongye (Pag-asa) Island, the second largest in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands, has an area of 0.33 square km, and is of great strategic significance for China if it wants to control a vast part of the South China Sea that it claims to be its territorial waters.

  As the Island is located roughly in the middle of the area, if China builds an air force and naval base there, it will more easily control the sky and sea in the claimed area.

The “Nazi” Smears and WW2 Recalled

• Russian Human Rights Report Casts Europe as Land of Nazis and Gay Propaganda

• Schools Have Become A Playground For Food And Beverage Marketing

  The vast majority of students are exposed to marketing campaigns by food and beverage companies at their schools, usually for unhealthy products, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics.

• ‘Hitler furious’ at Swedish minister’s satire mishap

  Sweden’s Justice Minister Beatrice Ask has been criticized for sharing a satirical article about legalized marijuana killing scores of people in the US and tying it to her anti-narcotics stand as a youth politician. Her critics did not hold back.

• From Hollywood to the Headlines: Art Looted by the Nazis Comes to Light

  It is a story with deep roots: The chaos and destruction of World War II left a horribly fragmented cultural world: art lost forever in the confusion or destroyed in battle; art declared “degenerate” and destroyed by Hitler (whose opinions on racial purity were mirrored in his opinions on purity in art); art seized throughout the continent and carted back to Germany; and art stolen from or sold under duress by Jewish collectors. It’s now almost 70 years since the war’s end, but European authorities and the descendants of the original owners of looted art are still attempting to put the pieces back where they belong.

  Close to 1,400 of these missing pieces were found in the home of 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt, a recluse who has been painted by the media as tragic, bizarre and potentially culpable. He inherited the art from his father, one of only four art dealers licensed by Hitler’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, to purchase and sell “degenerate” art during the war.

• Digging for their lives: Russia’s volunteer body hunters

  “There are so many unburied soldiers, it will take decades to find them. There will definitely be work for our grandchildren,” says Marina. “But nature is working against us. The remains are decomposing and it is getting harder to find the bones, ID tags and army kit.” The more years that go by. The less information there is.

• Unseen Alfred Hitchcock Holocaust documentary ‘Memory of the Camps’ to be released

  An Alfred Hitchcock documentary about the Holocaust which was suppressed for political reasons is to be screened for the first time in the form its director intended after being restored by the Imperial War Museum, reports the Independent.

UK, Ireland, and Falklands

• Eilis O’Hanlon: No need for secrecy on State soup

  Sometimes what is revealed by the State papers is of undoubted importance. The papers from 1982 released this New Year fleshed out, for instance, the tensions between Ireland and Britain over Northern Ireland and the Falklands conflict; as well as the contrasting closeness between the then government and the Catholic bishops in advance of the abortion referendum.

  Other items are intriguing because they show how little has changed in the interim. Thirty years ago, Charles Haughey was apparently as eager as Health Minister James Reilly nowadays to clamp down on Irish smokers; and women’s groups were complaining about the “degrading treatment of women as sex objects in all forms of the media”. Plus ca change, indeed.

• The British Punk Band That Fooled Reagan, Thatcher And The CIA

• Falklands’ war Regan/Thatcher fake tape had CIA and MI6 in disarray for months

• Paddy Ashdown warned Thatcher about CIA’s activities

Mexico

• U.S. Government and Top Mexican Drug Cartel Exposed as Partners

• ​US govt struck deal with Mexican drug cartel in exchange for info – report

  Between 2000 and 2012, the US government had a deal with Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa that allowed the group to smuggle billion of dollars of drugs in return for information on its rival cartels, according to court documents published by El Universal.

  Written statements made by a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and a US Department of Justice official in US District Court of Chicago following the 2009 arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla – son of a Sinaloa leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and the organization’s alleged “logistics coordinator” – indicate that DEA agents met with top Sinaloa officials over 50 times beginning in 2000.

Asia

• Does God work for the CIA?

  The arrest and imprisonment in North Korea of US citizen Kenneth Bae raises once again the issue of the use of religion and humanitarianism as covert vehicles for furthering US hegemony.

  [...]

  It still remains a mystery just exactly what Kenneth Bae was doing in North Korea.

• US-Backed Islamic Terrorism: Dividing the Arab World, Weakening Russia and China

  Terrorism came into being as soon as humanity appeared, but the US special services turned it into a threat of global scale. The end of the 1970s can be considered as the starting point. Back then the Central Intelligence Agency launched a training program for «Islamic brigades» to entangle the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic into the war in Afghanistan. In 1998 Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, «According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahedeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention». That was the time Osama bin Laden was recruited.

• The Secret World of American Spies in the Middle East

  This was the life of a few elite American Middle East specialists and spies in the early days of the Cold War: intrigue and a self-possessed sense of adventure in a region emerging from European colonialism and into, they insisted, a more magnanimous American orbit of what historian Hugh Wilford has called “disinterested benevolence.” If only it had happened that way.

• CIA used taxpayer funds for lap dances at “tittie bars” in Kazakhstan

• Court Rules That Woman Wrongfully Placed On No Fly List Should Be Taken Off The List… We Think

  We’ve written a few times about the troubling case of Rahinah Ibrahim, a PhD. student at Stanford who was wrongfully placed on the “no fly” list because (it appears) some clueless law enforcement officials mixed up the names of a networking group of professional Muslims in Malaysia who had returned from work or study in the US and Europe (which she was a part of) and a very, very different terrorist organization. While she had received something of an apology for initially not being allowed to fly to Malaysia (and then allowed to fly), it appeared that her name was then placed on the no fly list, preventing her from ever returning. She was later blocked from even flying back to the US for her lawsuit against the government.

• Despite Growing Military Budget, an Undercurrent of Skepticism

  United States military spending has ballooned since World War II, although Americans have historically been reluctant to go to war. The Times’s Sam Tanenhaus explains why.

Silencing the Press

• NY Times reporter fighting order to reveal his CIA sources

• New York Times Reporter James Risen, Fighting Obama Administration’s Attack on the Press, Turns to Supreme Court

  The Justice Department under President Barack Obama insists a journalist must testify against his source so they can prosecute and convict a former CIA officer for a leak. It has spent about six years trying to force him to testify, and now, having lost in an appeals court, he is taking his case to the Supreme Court.

• NY Times reporter appeals to top US court in leak case

  A New York Times reporter has asked the US Supreme Court to block an order that would require him to reveal the confidential source for his book exposing CIA secrets.

Conquering the Press

• Activists Continue To Push Washington Post To Disclose Its CIA Connection

• Why the Washington Post’s New Ties to the CIA Are So Ominous

• Why the Washington Post’ New Ties to the CIA Are So Ominous

  A tip-off is that the Washington Post refuses to face up to a conflict of interest involving Jeff Bezos — who’s now the sole owner of the powerful newspaper at the same time he remains Amazon’s CEO and main stakeholder.

  The Post is supposed to expose CIA secrets. But Amazon is under contract to keep them. Amazon has a new $600 million “cloud” computing deal with the CIA.

  The situation is unprecedented. But in an email exchange early this month, Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron told me that the newspaper doesn’t need to routinely inform readers of the CIA-Amazon-Bezos ties when reporting on the CIA. He wrote that such in-story acknowledgment would be “far outside the norm of disclosures about potential conflicts of interest at media organizations.”

  But there isn’t anything normal about the new situation. As I wrote to Baron, “few journalists could have anticipated ownership of the paper by a multibillionaire whose outside company would be so closely tied to the CIA.”

Domestic Backlash

• One Month After JFK’s Murder, Former President Harry Truman Called For Abolishing The CIA

  One month to the day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, former President Harry Truman recommended that the U.S. abolish the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

• The Internet fights back against the NSA with the biggest protest since SOPA

• A Republic If You Can Keep It

  expansion of presidential powers in the United States.

• Legislating Tyranny

  Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF – September 2001) approved open-ended permanent wars. They rage out-of-control. They do so at home and abroad.

  The FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) targets freedom. It prioritizes militarism and permanent wars. It authorizes over $600 billion for global belligerence, mass killing and destruction.

• “Our Leaders Do Not Mean Well”

  Blum is the author of the famous book Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventionssince World War II (Common Courage Press). The book enjoyed remarkable success, becoming required reading for students and professions in numerous fields. Professor Noam Chomsky said of the book, “It is far and away the best book on the topic.” The book is astounding, as Blum breaks down the post-war CIA in more than 50 fascinating chapters. Actions everywhere from Albania to Zaire are discussed in the book. I met with William Blum in early December in Washington, DC.

• Washington Drives the World Toward War — Paul Craig Roberts

  Washington has had the US at war for 12 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and almost Syria, which could still happen, with Iran waiting in the wings. These wars have been expensive in terms of money, prestige, and deaths and injuries of both US soldiers and the attacked civilian populations. None of these wars appears to have any compelling reason or justifiable explanation. The wars have been important to the profits of the military/security complex. The wars have provided cover for the construction of a Stasi police state in America, and the wars have served Israel’s interest by removing obstacles to Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and southern Lebanon.

• Obama admin to hold firm in pursuit of neutrality amid ‘global rebalancing’

• The Years of Living Stupidly

  A workable solution to the perpetual foreign policy crisis requires a new economy and civil society institutions that provide a political fund to promote demilitarized politicians, supported by an alternative ethos of diplomacy, foreign aid, and non-militarized soft power. Social movements might explore how universities contribute to the cycle of violence by marginalizing discourses related to disarmament, alternative security and an ecologically-rooted conversion of big oil, auto and defense firms. Otherwise, expect another several years of dismal headlines in newspapers chronicling blow back, terror states, and meaningless violence.

Slow Justice

• Ex-Nazi SS soldier charged in WWII massacre in France

Mandela

• CIA sued for targeting Nelson Mandela as ‘terrorist threat’

• CIA allegedly involved in 1962 arrest of the late, Nelson Mandela

• CIA sued over Madiba arrest docs

• Lawsuit seeks proof of CIA meddling in Mandela’s arrest

• CIA Sued To Solve Decades-Old Nelson Mandela Mystery

• ​CIA sued for records on possible role in Nelson Mandela arrest

  A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student sued the Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday to compel release of its records on Nelson Mandela, the former South African president and anti-apartheid activist who died last month at age 95.

Border Tyranny

• Stripped of dignity at Ben-Gurion airport: Now you know what the Jews went through

  Security staff allegedly plumb new depths when they subjected D. to a humiliating body search, referencing the Holocaust during their invasive actions.

• Federal judge rules that TSA, FBI can detain and arrest you for carrying Arabic flashcards

  A former college student detained at Philadelphia International Airport after Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials discovered he was carrying Arabic language flashcards lost his bid to sue the federal agents who detained him.

  Nicholas George alleged that the TSA agents violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights when they arrested him as he tried to board a flight from his Philadelphia home to Pomona College in 2009.

  According to Chief Judge Theodore McKee’s ruling, despite the fact that George clearly had the right to carry the flashcards, the TSA agents were “at the outer boundary” of justifiability in detaining him. In addition to everyday words and phrases like “day before yesterday,” “fat,” “cheap,” and “pink,” the deck of flashcards also contained and phrases like “bomb,” “terrorist,” “explosion,” and “to target.”

• Can Robots Better Spot Terrorists at Airports? (taking more biometrics from most people)

• I flew on a plane without going through security. It was amazing and no one died.

Misc.

• Lynne Stewart, Dying Ex-Lawyer Convicted In Terror Case, Released From Prison

  Stewart was convicted of helping a blind Egyptian sheik communicate with his followers from prison. She had been imprisoned since 2009 and had said she didn’t want to die in “a strange and loveless place.”

• Julian Assange to be guest on Radio 4′s Today programme

  Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who has been holed up in an embassy in London for more than a year, is to be a guest on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.

  Assange, who has been granted asylum by Ecuador but faces arrest if he leaves the country’s London embassy, will be giving his thoughts on the history of the control of information on Thursday.

• Israeli nuclear ambiguity as an illusion

  Americans who volunteered to distribute books in Russia didn’t know the CIA paid for the printing.

• Strange psychological testing at the CIA

• Piss test at the CIA

• ‘Caro Quintero is Protected by the White House’: Former CIA pilot

• “I witnessed and reported animal abuse… and now was being charged with a crime myself.”

  Taylor Radig worked undercover at a cattle company and documented horrific abuses of dairy calves. She turned her footage over to the Weld County Sheriff’s Office, and police said they were charging three of the farm workers with animal cruelty.

  But when Radig walked into the sheriff’s office to provide a formal statement a few months ago, the police turned around and told her that she, the whistleblower, was also being charged with animal cruelty for her investigation.

• Is he your best friend? Or an undercover cop?

  Mark Kennedy undercop cop spyThe story of Mark Kennedy, the undercover cop who targeted social activists throughout Europe, was shocking to activists and the general public alike — among them Kennedy’s former friend Jason Kirkpatrick. Now, Kirkpatrick is creating a documentary about Kennedy’s spy ops. He’ll be in New York City and San Francisco this month to preview clips from Spied Upon.

• Oakwood prison: G4S ‘must shape up or ship out’

  Labour calls on justice secretary to give private firm six months to improve situation at prison facing series of disturbances

• At last, a law to stop almost anyone from doing almost anything

  Protesters, buskers, preachers, the young: all could end up with ‘ipnas’. Of course, if you’re rich, you have nothing to fear

• Mark Duggan inquest: Furious protesters drown out police statement

• Trigger happy Britain? How police shootings compare

• One piece still missing from puzzle of fatal theater shooting: Why?

• The corruption of Britain: UK’s key institutions infiltrated by criminals

  In 2003 Operation Tiberius found that men suspected of being Britain’s most notorious criminals had compromised multiple agencies, including HM Revenue & Customs, the Crown Prosecution Service, the City of London Police and the Prison Service, as well as pillars of the criminal justice system including juries and the legal profession.

• Revealed: How gangs used the Freemasons to corrupt police

  Secret networks of Freemasons have been used by organised crime gangs to corrupt the criminal justice system, according to a bombshell Metropolitan Police report leaked to The Independent.

• Revelations About Massive UK Police Corruption Shows Why We Cannot — And Must Not — Trust The Spies

  As Mike reported recently, the NSA has presented no credible evidence that its bulk metadata collection is stopping terrorist attacks, or keeping people safe. Instead, the argument in support of the secret activities of the NSA and its friends abroad has become essentially: “Trust us, we really have your best interests at heart.” But that raises the question: Can we really do that? New revelations from The Independent newspaper about massive and thorough-going corruption of the UK police and judiciary a decade ago show that we can’t…

• Deadly Argentina looting spreads as police go on strike

  At least five people have been killed as looting spreads through Argentina.

  Hundreds have been injured as people took advantage of a police strike to rob shops and homes.

  Police have refused to go on patrol until their demands for a salary rise are met.

• Unbelievably lenient sentence for cop who fingered suspects’ anuses

• Legal challenge questions reliability of police dogs (last year but relevant)

• Police seize possessions of rough sleepers in crackdown on homelessness

  Police in north London have seized blankets, sleeping bags and food donations from rough sleepers in a crackdown on homelessness.

  A local paper reported that the belongings, mostly donated by sympathetic members of the community, were snatched by police from a group of homeless people as they sheltered in an abandoned public baths for the night.

  The nine people, including a man in his sixties, were seeking cover from a cold night in Redbridge and were left stunned when their worldly possessions disappeared into the back of a police car.

  One of the men targeted in the action, Adam Jaskowiak, pleaded with officers to be allowed to keep his possessions for warmth. The 34-year-old said: “They [the police officers] were just taking the sleeping bags and chucking out everything. I asked to keep it, and the food, but they said ‘No’.

• Jury Finds Two Officers Charged In Beating Death Of Homeless Man Not Guilty

  The incident, which began with Officer Ramos putting on gloves and announcing to Thomas that his “fists” were getting ready to “fuck him up,” and ended with Thomas in an irreversible coma, was caught on surveillance tape and synched to Ramos’ body mic recording. The tortured screams and gasps of the 135-lb. Thomas were unable to convince the jury find one of the cops guilty of lesser charges (Officer Cicinelli — charged with involuntary manslaughter and use of excessive force). Even Cicinelli’s own words — “I ran out of options and just started bashing the hell out of [Thomas'] face [with the butt end of his taser]” — failed to persuade the jury that the force used was excessive.

• Fullerton police officers not guilty in homeless man’s death, prosecutors won’t try 3rd cop

• Police: Cops who pulled Cushingberry over wanted to arrest him

  Police officials are refuting City Council President Pro Tem George Cushingberry’s claim that officers pulled him over Tuesday because he was black, pointing out that one of the officers involved was African-American.

• He Stood Up Against the Steubenville ‘Rape Crew’, Now Let’s Stand Up For Him

  Lostutter believes that the FBI investigation and raid of his house been motivated by local officials in Steubenville. “They want to make an example of me.” Now, he is facing 10 years in prison for his “crime” of exposing the Steubenville rapists.

• Teen Reported to Police After Finding Security Hole in Website

  A teenager in Australia who thought he was doing a good deed by reporting a security vulnerability in a government website was reported to the police.

• Kid who found PTV website flaw deserves a medal

• Cops kill mentally ill teen after parents call police to help him

  A Boiling Springs Lakes, North Carolina family is looking for answers after local police shot and killed their mentally ill teenage son while responding to a call for help.

  The family contends that Keith Vidal, 18, was “killed in cold blood” after police were requested to help calm the teenager down during a schizophrenic episode.

• UVa Student Arrested and Jailed For Water Mistaken for Beer Plans Civil Lawsuit Against State

  Stemming from an incident in June where plainclothes Alcoholic Beverages Control (ABC) agents attempted to apprehend her, Elizabeth Daly is now planning on pursuing legal action for a wrongful arrest and a night spent in jail.

• Using Mirrors To Show Police What They Have Become

  At noon on Dec. 30, protesters in central Kyiv held mirrors in front of police for 30 minutes to commemorate the night of Nov. 30 when riot police used excessive force to breakup a peaceful rally on Independence Square consisting mostly of university students.

• Police impose martial law, locking section of Hamburg into “danger zone”

  Police obtained legal permission to impose a curfew by conservative politicians a while ago, and they use it to retaliate against people who defend Rote Flora from being evicted in the name of capitalist gentrification policies. Cops claimed that they were attacked at their police station “Davidswache” on December 20th and on December 28th, in separate clashes from the demonstration on December 21st, but a lawyer in Hamburg says there was no second attack at the police station Davidswache on the 28th. He has demanded the videos of the incident from the surveillance cameras.

• Dozens of police injured as eviction protest turns violent in Hamburg (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

  Zeit Online has reported, citing a non-government organization, that about 500 protesters being injured, 20 of them seriously. However, this information cannot be independently verified.

  The cultural center’s squatting history dates back to 1989, when the Schanzenviertel area’s Rote Flora center was first occupied. Since then, its reputation as the central point for leftist rallying has been further cemented.

  But the public anger itself had also to do with the wider issue of migrant and refugee rights, including those of the squatters at a run-down apartment block in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn area – also the city’s red-light district, which contains the so-called Esso Houses. The buildings, also often home to Germany’s Lampedusa refugees, were evacuated last weekend because of their poor condition.

  After the initial chaos at the Rote Flora had subsided, the crowds migrated toward the Reeperbahn, where they were chased around the streets by the police.

• Tortured Bahraini photographer freed, victory for campaigners

  Reporters Without Borders is relieved by yesterday’s announced release of Ahmed Al-Fardan, a photojournalist who had been held arbitrarily in deplorable conditions since 26 December. He is nonetheless still facing prosecution on a charge of “trying to participate in an illegal demonstration”: here.

• ‘Tortured’ Britons Cannot Sue Saudi Arabia

  European court rules that alleged torture in Riyadh jails did not breach Convention on Human Rights.

• Ex-CIA lawyer says Bush not told at first about waterboarding

  John Rizzo disputes former President George W. Bush’s claim that the CIA sought his permission to use waterboarding and other techniques on Al Qaeda suspects.

• Book review: Should we? CIA memoir reveals what wasn’t asked

• CIA Lawyer: Waterboarding Wasn’t Torture Then, And Isn’t Torture Now

  In the years following Sept. 11, many Americans heard the term waterboarding for the first time — a technique aimed to simulate the act of drowning. Waterboarding was at the center of the debate about what the CIA called “enhanced interrogation techniques” — and what critics called “torture.”

• Bush not told of waterboarding: book

• CIA Torture Whistleblower to Resume Letters from Prison

  Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is serving a thirty-month jail sentence in the federal correctional institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has resumed writing letters from prison after the Bureau of Prisons failed to give him nine months in a halfway house to finish out his sentence.

• The Case of John Kiriakou

  To date, only one person has been jailed in connection to the US torture program. One man has been put behind bars for the part that the United States has played in torturing prisoners of war around the globe. On January 25th, 2013, John Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He reported to a Federal correction facility in Loretto, Pennsylvania in late February, 2013. Kiriakou was the only person jailed in connection to the US torture program, but ironically, John has never tortured anyone. His crime: he revealed classified information to a reporter confirming the use of torture as an official US government policy, specifically, the CIA use of waterboarding in interrogations.

• Secret Reports Reveal All. The “Efficacy” of CIA Torture, Saudi Involvment in 9/11

• Former CIA lawyer says Bush didn’t know about waterboarding

• CIA Blocks Inquiries on Torture

• CIA Blocks More Inquiries

• Senate Intelligence Committee must make public its report on CIA torture

  Shortly after the Abu Ghraib photographs became public, Secretary of State Colin Powell described telling foreign audiences, “Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. Watch what a nation of values and character, a nation that believes in justice, does to right this kind of wrong.” Powell assured them that “they will see a free press and an independent Congress at work,” that there would be “multiple investigations to get to the facts,” and that “the world will see that we are still a nation with a moral code that defines our national character.”

• Snowden Controversy Highlights Risk to Obama’s Legacy on Torture

  On his second day in office, President Obama signed an executive order banning the use of torture in interrogation, and has consistently spoken out against torture. The president has adopted a policy of “looking forward, not backward,” but several members of the Bush administration and Bush-era CIA have looked backward in memoirs (such as CIA counsel John Rizzo’s forthcoming “Company Man”) and asserted that torture “worked.” Whenever the topic resurfaces, as it did with the release of “Zero Dark Thirty,” they jump into the spotlight to defend torture.

• Former Top CIA Lawyer John Rizzo Hails Agency’s ‘Special Relationship’ with Hollywood Figures

• CIA routinely recruits Hollywood stars as spies

• Hollywood figures spied for CIA, book asserts

• Movie star wanted cocaine To Work For CIA: New Tell-All Book

• Hitler’s Women and Ours

  Zero Dark Thirty is torture porn.

  I’m so intimidated by Homeland’s Emmys and fan loyalty, not to mention almost unanimous critical praise, I hesitate to connect this show and its reckless, self-confessed “bipolar” CIA heroine with Bigelow’s austere heroine with her taste for sadism. And – what a stretch, right? – to Hitler’s furies.

  Homeland did three full seasons of multi-episodes. So it’s no spoiler to reveal that the heroine “Carrie” (Claire Danes), a creepy, ethics-challenged, guilt-scarred young CIA counter-intelligence employee, has a “crazy” womanly intuition that a returned Marine hero (Damian Lewis), who has been an Al Queda captive for eight years, is actually a sleeper double or is it triple agent?

• Ex-CIA lawyer Rizzo details interrogation techniques

  Talking to Gordon Corera on Newsnight, he also said capturing and interrogating terrorists was a better method than killing people through drone strikes.

  John Rizzo, who retired in 2009, was the CIA’s chief legal officer for seven years.

• Book review: Shedding light on CIA decision to use torture

  There is a moment in John Rizzo’s new memoir when the longtime CIA lawyer has the chance to change history. It is March 2002, and Rizzo has just been briefed on the agency’s proposals for interrogating suspected terrorists.

• Russia sees no progress in probe on secret CIA prisons in East Europe
  

  The Russian foreign ministry has said the investigation on the so-called CIA “black sites” in Poland and Lithuania has lost its steam.

• US drone warfare breeds terrorists around the globe – Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize winner

  The future has sneaked up on us unnoticed. What was science fiction a couple of decades ago is now everyday reality. But it’s not only computers and smartphones – the progress has brought us new war machines – unmanned drones striking from the skies are no surprise for anyone today. But what has the progress of warfare prepared for us in the coming years? Today we speak to a Nobel Peace Prize-winning woman, who has fought against landmines – and won. Now she is on a crusade against the new deadly threat – killer robots. Jody Williams is today’s guest on Sophie&Co.

• The United States’ bloody messes in Yemen

  Yemeni legislators are aware that the drone war is deeply unpopular. Since the Dec,. 12 strike, our parliament has unanimously voted to ban drone flights in Yemeni airspace, declaring them a “grave breach” of the country’s sovereignty. For a country so often divided, this unanimity from Yemen’s most representative bodies testifies to the strength of opinion against drones. But their calls have thus far met only with more bombings from the skies. How can the people of Yemen build trust in their fledgling democracy when our collective will is ignored by democracy’s greatest exponent?

• When will drones stop killing innocent people in Yemen?

  On December 12 a bride and groom traveled to their wedding in al-Baitha province, Yemen. It was supposed to be a day of celebration. Instead, in a few seconds, their happiness was obliterated. A U.S. drone fired at the wedding procession, destroying five vehicles and killing most of their occupants. Not even the bride’s car, beautifully decorated with flowers, was spared from the carnage.

• The Slaughter of a Wedding Party in Yemen: Anatomy of a Bad Drone Strike (apologist of drones)

• RICHARD HERMANN: Have we lost our will to right wrongs?

  First it was “extraordinary rendition,” sending people we suspected of being terrorists or being affiliated in some vague way with terrorists, to friendly countries whose enthusiasm for brutalizing folks exceeded our proclaimed standards. That policy emerged in the Clinton administration. Second was condoning torture (a Bush-Cheney policy). Next, drones that kill our enemies and also cause “collateral damage,” a sanitized term for murdering innocent bystanders, including babies (refined to a high art in the Obama administration).

• Life in the Emerging American Police State: What’s in Store for Our Freedoms in 2014?

  Invasion of the drones. As corporations and government agencies alike prepare for their part in the coming drone invasion–it is expected that at least 30,000 drones will occupy U.S. airspace by 2020, ushering in a $30 billion per year industry–it won’t be long before Americans discover first-hand that drones–unmanned aerial vehicles–come in all shapes and sizes, from nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to middle-sized copter drones that can deliver pizzas to massive “hunter/killer” Predator warships that unleash firepower from on high.

• Killing by US drones questionable

• Exclusive: MoD tightens security at American spy bases linked to drone strikes

• Pentagon plans to weaponize more drones

• Drones Are the Future of War, So Why Is the Pentagon Spending Over $1 Trillion on the F-35 Fighter J

  To the left is an F-35. It is — at least in theory — the pinnacle of American military aviation.

• Now it’s Middle Eastern regimes fighting al-Qa’ida, while the US ties itself up in knots

  And so, for the first time in recent history, it seems that the “war against terror” – and specifically against al-Qa’ida – is being fought by Middle East regimes rather than their foreign investors.

  Sure, American drones still smash into al-Qa’ida operatives, wedding parties and innocent homes in Pakistan. But it’s General al-Sisi of Egypt, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran – even powerless President Michel Sleiman of Lebanon – who are now fighting “terrorists”.

• US drone attacks in Yemen protect no one but Al Qaeda

  But then, on the following night after the government began broadcasting the videos, and as rage against Aqap was reaching a fevered pitch, an unmanned American military drone flying over the Radaa province, some 150 kilometres south-east of Sanaa, fired a missile into Yemen. It struck a vehicle in a wedding procession, killing 12 people and wounding dozens more. Almost instantly, the public discourse shifted, the anger redirected. Al Qaeda had almost destroyed itself but America came to its rescue.

• Drones Will Be Tested in 10 US States – Is Yours One?

  At least ten states will be sites for testing drones — unmanned aircraft — in the next couple of years, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) announced on Monday. Six institutions have been authorized to operate test locations for the use of drones and for studying how they will interact with air traffic systems.

  The drones are not the Predators, Global Hawks or other government-operated long-range planes but aircraft with potentially commercial and other uses. For instance, a Styrofoam helicopter powered by lighter fluid could be sent over fields to detect agricultural pests. An electric helicopter could be dispatched to the roof of a building to check on a water tower.

• Time to prepare for drones in New Jersey: Opinion

• Pentagon looks for new ways to weaponize 11K drones

  A recent report by the U.S. Department of Defense highlights the Pentagon’s desire to adapt roughly 11,000 drones for “lightweight, precision-guided weapons” for emerging threats in the Asia-Pacific region,

• US defence dept. plans to arm more drones with guided weapons for combat missions

• Killer robots: The possible future of wars

• The Drones of New York

  The Syracuse Post-Standard reports: “For protesters of U.S. military drone use in Afghanistan, [the recent FAA] announcement that Central New York would become a test site for integrating drones into commercial air space was unwelcome news.

• Haiti: Drones and Slavery

  The drones which today indiscriminately kill men, women and children in Pakistan and Yemen appeared first in the history of the technology as children’s toys, not weapons.

• Putting Drones to the Test

  Drones will soon take to the skies across the United States in federally approved tests that are meant to clear the way for the commercial use of unmanned aircraft. But before that happens, lawmakers and regulators need to deal with a host of unresolved privacy and safety concerns.

• Domestic Drone Launch Date Approaches; Drones to Be Autonomous

  Drones will soon be buzzing over every city in America.

• US drones: War above the law

  The US is due to release a new national security strategy early this year to define targets for the next stage of fighting Al-Qaeda. The document is being drafted amid the growing criticism of the ways of the fighting in question. The extensive use of drones in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen raises numerous legal and other questions.

• Alleged AQAP members killed in drone strike in Abyan

  Two alleged Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) affiliates were killed in a drone strike on Tuesday in the Al-Mahfad district of Abyan governorate in southern Yemen, according to the Interior Ministry. Three others, also alleged to be associated with AQAP, were injured in the aerial attack.

• Pakistani civilians pay high price in drone war

• Our Orwellian reality: Drone wars, surveillance, a lapdog media — and you

  Our government lies to itself — and to us. Like Edward Snowden, it is time for us all to stand up for our values

• Obama Ignores Human Rights Accusations Following Botched Wedding Strike

  Members of the Yemeni Tays and Bin Amr tribes were returning home from a wedding ceremony on December 12. The convoy of cars was heavily armed, which isn’t surprising in a country where gun ownership is as culturally acceptable as it is in the United States.

• U.S. Drone Strike In Yemen Kills Two Suspected Al Qaeda Militants

  Two suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in a U.S. drone strike in the southeastern province of Hadramout on Wednesday, residents and local officials said.

• U.S. government dishonest about drone use?

• A changing drone campaign: US covert actions in 2013

• From the frontier: Waldron declares itself ‘drone-free zone’, lobbies County Council to follow suit

• NATO supply blocked to protest drone attacks

• New York will be a drone research site

• Former Air Force Analyst: Drone Pilots Can’t Tell The Difference Between A Shovel And A Weapon

• Bad decisions mean more violence ahead

  It is troubling that the American, Israeli, Iraqi and Egyptian governments last week have all signaled their determination to make poor policy decisions that are certain to lead to higher levels of violence, resistance, militancy, terror and instability in the months and years ahead. These and other governments have been doing this for years, without learning the lessons of their own sustained failures.

• US military officials predict drone throng – report

• CIA-waged drone war ‘spreads anarchy’ around the world

  The US said it is mapping out a new national security strategy that will be announced in early 2014. The white paper on the next stage of Washington’s war on al-Qaeda will be released at the time of mounting international criticism of US drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

• The Top 4 Threats to World Peace

  Nearly 25 percent of the 68 countries surveyed by WIN/Gallup International named the US the biggest threat to world peace today.

• Murder By Internet Still On Track For 2014

• Stanford philosophy professor calls for a generation of more responsible thinkers

  Finding inspiration from the ancients, Stanford philosopher Christopher Bobonich underscores the moral consequences of reflecting upon bad means to good ends.

Summary: How Western censorship proved itself to be all about protecting the villains while blocking justice

WHEN society is run by businesses (which is true in the West), then censorship by businesses is natural; it’s only to be expected.

Here in the UK we now officially have Internet censorship, just like in China, Iran, Russia etc. Our government would be too hypocritical to criticise those nations over censorship. One leading British civil rights groups asks rhetorically [1], “what could possibly go wrong?”

Here is what goes wrong.

Recently we saw a news site getting censored by the British Web filters [2]. Why? Probably because it delivers an alternative message that puts in jeopardy the copyright monopoly/cartel.

“UK ISPs Need To Be Sued Way Out Into Atlantic,” said the founder of the original Pirate Party after this incident [3]. We are gradually getting rather petty and becoming no better than Russia, which “Orders Pirate Party to Drop ‘Pirate’ From Its Name” (according to the censored news site) [4]. Notice what they do here; it is clear that when language is policed we are basically losing our ability to express ourselves. The censored news site also says that “Record Label Asks Google to Censor Artists’ Twitter Accounts” [5] (censorship for the copyright monopoly/cartel), helping to shed light on he sheer abuse of those companies and proving the value/importance of such news sites.

“In other words, the filters are now being turned from tools of law enforcement into tools of protecting criminals and banning those who report crime.”There are some other new examples of censorship (by intimidatiob) for business reasons, courtesy of Digital Ocean [6] and SeaWorld [7,8].

Isn’t it funny that those who engage in misconduct or unethical behaviour get to use censorship in their favour? In other words, the filters are now being turned from tools of law enforcement into tools of protecting criminals and banning those who report crime. That’s what government- and corporations-controlled filters are bound to achieve. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Blocking: what could possibly go wrong?

2. Internet Censors Came For TorrentFreak & Now I’m Really Mad

   ISPs exist to provide us with unfettered access to the Internet, not the version they or their technology partners feels is appropriate for us. Their ‘parental controls’ do not achieve their stated aim of “protecting children” and are already causing collateral damage by blocking totally innocent sites such as the one you are reading now. It’s hard not to get angry when you realize your website’s accessibility is becoming disabled by default.

3. Censorship Triggers Liability: UK ISPs Need To Be Sued Way Out Into Atlantic

4. Russia Orders Pirate Party to Drop ‘Pirate’ From Its Name

   A long-running battle between the Pirate Party of Russia and the Russian Government has concluded with disappointment for the Pirates. In an announcement yesterday that finally brings an end to a number of appeals, the Ministry of Justice declared that since piracy – sea piracy – is a crime under Russian law, no political party may have that word as part of its name. As a result the Pirate Party can never become officially recognized unless it calls itself something else.

5. Record Label Asks Google to Censor Artists’ Twitter Accounts

   Spinnin’ Records, one of the largest independent dance music labels, has been sending several unusual takedown requests to Google. The record label asked the search engine to take down the Twitter pages of several of its own top artists, including Afrojack, as well as its own account. Google, thus far, has refused to help out with this blatant attempt at self-censorship.

6. Digital Ocean said it would shut down my blog if I didn’t remove or edit a blog post.

   This is a story about how the VPS provider Digital Ocean required me to either delete a blog post or make it anonymous by removing any reference to the person I was writing about. If I refused to do it, Digital Ocean said they would terminate my account. The person I wrote about (Googler Travis Collins) in the blog post happened to be a friend of a Digital Ocean executive, but Digital Ocean said the only reason the blog post needed to be removed was due to a terms of service violation. Here’s the blog post in its original form. I describe below how this whole incident came to pass and provide screenshots of Digital Ocean’s communications. Digital Ocean promotes itself as a great place to setup a blog, and they provide instructions to make it easy for you, but you might want to learn how Digital Ocean applies its terms of service before investing a lot of time in writing blog posts.

7. F-O-R-B-E-S

   Well folks, I suppose it was bound to happen. I wrote a dozen pieces for Forbes.com and enjoyed it very much. But the 13th–an article critical of SeaWorld (a 2.5 billion dollar company partially owned by the Blackstone Group) and praiseworthy of ‘Blackfish” (made on a small budget)–rattled some corporate cages.

   After I posted, editorial management demanded changes that I could not, in good conscience, make. So the article got pulled (after 77,000 hits in one day) and I left my position.

8. Op-Ed: How low can you can go? Did SeaWorld skew online poll?

Summary: Censorship and discrimination in access/speech increase on the Internet after a US court rules against net neutrality

WITH Western censorship, DRM in standards, and surveillance by design, the Web is already a dying medium as an independent, neutral ground for communication. Now comes another blow to net neutrality, basically jeopardising non-discrimination and introducing a form of ‘soft’ censorship. We have already written a great deal about net neutrality, including for example the following articles:

• Microsoft is a Threat to Privacy and Net Neutrality But Accuses Google of Those Same Threats
• New Threats of ‘Gentle’ Internet Censorship as Even Regulators Speak for Corporations
• Net Neutrality Mischiefs?
• Links: Net Neutrality and Digital Economy Act Under Fire
• Microsoft is Against Net Neutrality
• Politicians in Europe and the United States Are Giving up on Net Neutrality
• One Urgent Link – Net Neutrality Attack in US
• Net Neutrality is Under Attack in the US (Verizon Strikes Again), Neelie Kroes Helps Abolish Net Neutrality in Europe

Here in Europe net neutrality is dying [1], but in the US it is already dead, officially so after this new court decision [2,3]. It might be possible to get net neutrality back [4], but it’s going to be extremely hard and the future looks grim [5] (the press of Rupert Murdoch, who is an opponent of the Internet and net neutrality, pretends nothing has changed [6]). This latest travesty [7] is following outrageous moves by AT&T just a week earlier [8-11], turning data caps into profits although there is no real capacity issue, just an imaginary issue, an excuse. The saddest thing is that not only the Web is affected; if an alternative to the Web was made and was designed to sit on top of the Internet, then too discrimination per protocol or content would be permitted. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. SaveTheInternet.eu: Act Now For Net Neutrality!

   A broad coalition of civil Liberties NGOs launched SaveTheInternet.eu, a campaign to protect Net neutrality in upcoming EU legislation. A recent proposal from the European Commission will restrict freedom of speech on the Internet, increase prices and stifle online innovation unless urgent action is taken. Citizens should contact parliamentarians in the European Parliament’s Industry Committee and urge them to defend the open Internet.

2. U.S. appeals court kills net neutrality

3. Key provision of net-neutrality law struck down by court

4. Net Neutrality Is Dead — Here’s How to Get It Back

   Three judges in D.C. just killed Net Neutrality.

   This could be the end of the Internet as we know it. But it doesn’t have to be.

   The big news: A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order. This decision means that companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon — which brought the lawsuit — are now free to block or slow down any website, application or service they like.

   These companies will rush to change the Web and line their own pockets at our expense — creating new tolls for app makers, expensive price tiers for popular sites, and fast lanes open only to the few content providers that can afford them.

5. Net neutrality gets a kick in the teeth

   A US court has ruled against the FCC’s Open Internet regulations, putting the future of net neutrality completely up in the air.

6. Open Internet Ruling: No Change for Consumers’ Ability to Access and Use the Internet

7. Federal Court Strikes Down Net Neutrality Rules, Sides with Big Telecom

   A U.S. Appeals Court just invalidated the FCC’s net neutrality rules that would’ve made it illegal for telecom companies to favor certain types of traffic over others. The court ruled that the commission lacked the authority to implement and enforce such rules which were embedded in a complicated legal framework.

8. AT&T Says Sponsored Data Doesn’t Violate Net Neutrality: Internet Advocates Argue Mobile Practices Are Unfair

   AT&T’s (NYSE:T) Sponsored Data announcement at 2014 International CES instantly drew concerns from Internet advocates and even the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC. However, the wireless communications giant is unfazed by public response, maintaining that Sponsored Data complies with FCC Net neutrality rules.

9. AT&T Thumbs Nose at Net Neutrality With ‘Sponsored’ Bandwidth Scheme

10. AT&T’s ‘Sponsored Data’ Program An Admission That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion

11. AT&T turns data caps into profits with new fees for content providers

• Google begins to merge Google+, Gmail contacts

• Google links social network contacts to Gmail

• Man Jailed for Gmail Invite to Ex-Girlfriend

• Stephen Colbert urged to cancel speech for NSA-linked privacy firm RSA

  Privacy rights groups are calling on comedian Stephen Colbert to cancel his guest speaker appearance at a conference organised by RSA, the security firm accused of accepting millions from the National Security Agency to weaken encryption software.

• Ron Wyden: the future of NSA programs is being determined now

  A key US senator left one meeting at the White House with the impression that President Obama has yet to decide on specific reforms. “The debate is clearly fluid,” senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a longtime critic of bulk surveillance, told the Guardian after the meeting. “My sense is the president, and the administration, is wrestling with these issues,” Wyden said.

• Advocacy groups plan day of protest against NSA surveillance

  The protest, called the Day We Fight Back, comes a month after the anniversary of Internet activist Aaron Swartz’s death. Swartz committed suicide last January while facing a 35-year prison sentence for hacking into a Massachusetts Institute of Technology network and downloading research articles.

  Among the organizations participating in the protest are Demand Progress, an activist group Swartz co-founded, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, Reddit and Mozilla.

• Introducing the TGM SecureDrop Vault

  Today The Global Mail introduces a new, secure way for sources to work with our journalists to expose wrongdoing. The TGM Vault is powered by SecureDrop, “an open-source whistleblower submission system”, managed by Freedom of the Press Foundation. The Vault is a discreet, private place to share information the public has a right to know about; think of it as the digital age equivalent of the parking garage where Bob Woodward met Deep Throat. It’s the most sophisticated of many ways sources can communicate with The Global Mail.

  [...]

  The code for SecureDrop was originally written by the late Aaron Swartz, a 26-year-old computer programmer and open-government activist who – facing prosecution for downloading paywalled academic research articles – committed suicide a year ago today, January 11, 2013. In creating SecureDrop, Swartz was assisted by Wired editor Kevin Poulsen and security expert James Dolan, who has continued to refine the program’s code with the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The Foundation continually audits and tests SecureDrop’s security.

• Hacking of MIT website marks first anniversary of Aaron Swartz’s death

  Saturday marked one year since the death of the internet activist Aaron Swartz. The 26-year-old, who was one of the builders of Reddit, killed himself in New York City on Friday 11 January 2013.

  At the time of his death, Swartz was facing trial over charges of hacking arising from the downloading of millions of documents from the online research group JSTOR. He faced up to 50 years in prison.

  On Saturday, the home page of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was hacked, reportedly by the Anonymous group. Last year Swartz’s family accused MIT and government prosecutors of being complicit in his death.

• White House meets with privacy advocates to discuss NSA surveillance

• EU report reveals massive scope of secret NSA surveillance

• MEPs seek video link with Snowden for NSA spying probe

• NSA spy scandal dissuading firms from using the US cloud

• Snowden NSA Leaks: India’s Election Commission Dumps Google

• Former NSA Officials Detail Failures of Agency Programs in Memo to Obama

  The details of the THINTHREAD development and the decision by senior NSA officials eventually to discard it are part of a new memo sent to President Barack Obama by a group of former agency officials, some of whom were directly involved in the system’s development. The memo, signed by William Binney, Thomas Drake, Edward Loomis and J. Kirk Wiebe, asks Obama to meet with the former intelligence officers to discuss the recent NSA revelations and the recommendations of the president’s own review group on how to fix the agency.

• NSA makes final push to retain most mass surveillance powers

• Privacy as last line of defense: Snowden’s revelations changed the world in 2013

  For the actions of Snowden have indeed laid bare the fact that we are living in a global crisis of civilization. To date it is estimated that we have only seen about 1 percent of the documents he disclosed – the merest hint of the tip of a monstrous iceberg. What further horrors await us in 2014 and beyond?

• France Inter radio interview at CCC

• FBI Director ‘Confused’ By Reports Calling Snowden A Hero

  FBI Director Jim Comey says he’s “confused” by reports that characterize NSA contractor Edward Snowden as a “whistleblower” or a “hero” because, he says, all three branches of America’s government have approved the bulk collection of U.S. phone records, one of the most important revelations in Snowden’s cascade of leaks.

• Jesse ‘The Mind’ Ventura: Snowden A Patriot, Hero

  Edward Snowden is a hero and a patriot says ex-Minnesota governor and wrestling star Jesse Ventura.

• E.U. Panel Invites Snowden to Testify on Privacy Breaches

  A European Parliament committee has invited Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked classified government documents and is now in hiding in Russia, to testify via video link as part of an investigation into how to protect the privacy of European citizens.

• Hackers gain ‘full control’ of critical SCADA systems

• GPG, subkeys, the genius of it!

• Opinion: Social security without the surveillance

  This past year has been the one when it finally came out in the open that we’re all under surveillance – on the internet, on the phone – 24 hours a day.

• Two decades on, we must preserve the internet as a tool of democracy

  Some 25 years after Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote his proposal, the challenge is to protect rights to privacy and freedom of opinion online

• EU Parliament committee report

• European Parliamentary rapporteur denounces NSA/GCHQ spying as illegal

• NSA Snooping Triggers Foreign Business Flight From US Cloud Services

  A survey conducted by Vancouver, British Columbia-based web hosting service PEER 1 finds that a quarter of Canadian and UK businesses are looking outside of US borders for data storage. Companies outside of the US are leery of using data services hosted in the country due to the spying activities of the US National Security Agency (NSA).

• Obama legacy on line with NSA

• Internet chieftains press Obama over NSA spy swoops

  Bosses from Internet giants including Twitter and Facebook Tuesday pressed President Barack Obama for reforms of US spy agency snooping, adding to rising heat from the courts and American allies.

• The Gang Of Eight: Chris Hedges and William Binney on Obama NSA Guidelines

  Chris Hedges and NSA whistle-blower William Binney tell Paul Jay, in his “Reality Asserts Itself” program, that there should be accountability, including the President himself, for the criminal practices used by the NSA against the American people.

• Aaron Swartz’s spirit animates NSA protest movement a year after his death

  One year ago today, internet activist and technologist Aaron Swartz ended his life. For over a year, Swartz had been fighting a brutal federal case stemming from his sneaky placement of a laptop in an MIT wiring closet, which pilfered stores of academic articles from the JSTOR database. The goal: give 4.8 million scholarly articles to the masses, which Swartz argued was humanity’s birthright in his “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto“:

• Goodman: The FBI, the NSA and a long-held secret revealed

  This week, more news emerged about the theft of classified government documents, leaked to the press, that revealed a massive, top-secret surveillance program. No, not news of Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency, but of a group of anti-Vietnam war activists who perpetrated one of the most audacious thefts of government secrets in U.S. history, and who successfully evaded capture, remaining anonymous for more than 40 years. Among them: two professors, a day-care provider and a taxi driver.

• RSA Show Boycott Spreads in Wake of NSA Allegations

• NSA Leaks Continue to Pose Challenges for U.S. Firms

  One nation asks for new parts on two satellites for fear of U.S. eavesdropping. Other companies spend money to show that their products do not contain “spycraft.”

• Letter: Edward Snowden is a whistleblower

  Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA routinely lied to Congress, which is a serious federal crime. These revelations make him a whistleblower who should be protected under U.S. law.

• Former NSA worker whistleblower in finest U.S. tradition

  Snowden is by definition a whistleblower because his revelations have inspired widespread public ire, curiosity, debate and political action. It appears that citizens needed to know what the NSA was hiding. Snowden is simply more famous than the nuclear plant workers and the documents he leaked were more highly classified. He is also more vulnerable to severe punishment because he worked in the U.S. intelligence industry.

  [...]

  My wish is for the custodians of these documents to deliver bundles – or megabytes – to good reporters.

• Aaron Swartz documentary clip reveals his thoughts on the ‘spying program’ & the NSA (video)

  One year after the death of Aaron Swartz, a group of Internet activists joined up to protest against what they call “mass suspicionless surveillance.”

• Spying on Congress

  Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote to Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, and asked plainly whether the NSA has been or is now spying on members of Congress or other public officials.

  The senator’s letter was no doubt prompted by the revelations of Edward Snowden to the effect that the federal government’s lust for personal private data about all Americans and many foreigners knows no bounds and its respect for the constitutionally protected and statutorily enforced right to privacy is nonexistent.

• Snowden evidence to European Parliament risks damaging EU-US relations

  The decision by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties to invite ex-CIA worker Edward Snowden to give evidence by video link from Moscow on the US National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance of EU citizens has divided MEPs amid fears of damaging US-EU relations.

• More DHS-funded Police Surveillance Cameras; No Drop in Crime

  Thousands of surveillance cameras are showing up in cities across the country without a corresponding reduction in crime. Citizens are taking notice of this fact of the federal takeover of local police, and they are speaking out.

  On January 8, for example, the Texas Civil Rights Project-Houston issued a statement on its Facebook page criticizing their city’s participation in the construction of the surveillance state.

• The Source of the Section 702 Limitations: Special Needs?

• The EU Parliamentary Inquiry’s Report on Mass Surveillance

  After about five months of hearings and investigating, the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee has published its report on the revelations about mass surveillance leaked by the American former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

• NSA Phone Spying is Useless in Preventing Terrorist Attacks, Study Says

  As you probably suspected, the NSA’s massive phone record collection “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism,” according to a new study. In fact—and perhaps more interestingly—the agency’s real problem isn’t a lack of information. It’s an excess of secrecy.

• NSA snooping fails to prevent terrorist attacks, watchdog group says

• Here’s Another Analysis of How Useless the NSA’s Metadata Collection Program Is

• NSA mass surveillance pretty useless in battle against terrorism – research

• NSA Surveillance Rarely Useful, Study Shows

• NSA ‘Spying Stopped Terrorism’ Claims ‘Overblown and Misleading’

  The NSA’s controversial spying programs have had “no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism,” a new study by the New America Foundation has claimed.

• John McCain seeks congressional investigation into ‘broken’ NSA

• Edward Snowden worked at US Embassy in Delhi as NSA contractor: Report

  He stayed there till September 9 while he took classes, and then returned for one more night at the Hyatt before leaving India on September 11, the school was quoted as saying.

• Revealed: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden worked at U.S. embassy in India

• Researcher describes ease to detect, derail and exploit NSA’s Lawful Interception

• NSA Goes From Saying Bulk Metadata Collection ‘Saves Lives’ To ‘Prevented 54 Attacks’ To ‘Well, It’s A Nice Insurance Policy’

• MLK: Also a victim of NSA surveillance

  Martin Luther King Jr. day is being celebrated on January 20th 2014 amid heated debate on massive dragnet surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). Ironically, he was himself a victim of NSA surveillance as unveiled by declassified documents in September last year. Dr. King’s status as an NSA target has been known since the 1970s; nevertheless, this was probably the first time that the U.S. government had declassified it.

• EU parliamentary inquiry finds NSA and GCHQ snooping activities ‘illegal’

  The investigation ruled that activities of NSA and GCHQ have ‘profoundly shaken’ the faith between countries that believed themselves supporters.

• I Spent Two Hours Talking With the NSA’s Bigwigs. Here’s What Has Them Mad

  My expectations were low when I asked the National Security Agency to cooperate with my story on the impact of Edward Snowden’s leaks on the tech industry. During the 1990s, I had been working on a book, Crypto, which dove deep into cryptography policy, and it took me years — years! — to get an interview with an employee crucial to my narrative. I couldn’t quote him, but he provided invaluable background on the Clipper Chip, an ill-fated NSA encryption runaround that purported to strike a balance between protecting personal privacy and maintaining national security.

  [...]

  Why the turnaround? Apparently, the rep told me, Crypto has some fans at Fort Meade. But my professional credentials were obviously not the sole reason for the invite. The post-Snowden NSA has been forced to adopt a more open PR strategy. With its practices, and even its integrity, under attack, its usual Sphinx-like demeanor would not do.

• Congress Defers to President on NSA Reform

  Congress’s decline from the Founders’ vision as “first among equals” in government to an echo chamber of the unitary executive, has been a slow but steady process. In the process we have seen a steady stream of unconstitutional wars and civil liberties abuses at home. Nowhere is this decline more evident than in the stark contrast between the Congressional response to intelligence agencies’ abuses during the post-Watergate era and its response to the far more serious NSA abuses uncovered in recent years.

• NSA revelations prompt Canadian, UK businesses to reconsider US cloud

  As revelations of the US’s widespread digital intelligence gathering techniques continue to populate headlines worldwide, non-US businesses’ trust in American providers of cloud services continues to plummet. A study published at the end of last week suggests one in four Canadian and UK businesses are moving their data outside the US in a bid to evade the NSA’s watchful eye, a significant increase on results reported just six months ago.

• Out in the Open: An NSA-Proof Twitter, Built With Code From Bitcoin and BitTorrent

  When mass political protests erupted throughout Brazil in June, Miguel Freitas did what countless others did: He followed the news on Twitter. Tweets revealed information he couldn’t get anywhere else, including the mainstream media. “Brazilian media is highly concentrated,” says Freitas, an engineer based in Rio de Janeiro. “I have been able to read news that a lot of friends never heard about.”

• Ten Myths About the NSA, Debunked

• NSA apologists misunderstand true privacy

  Maintaining the public’s side of that equation means that the public must be in a continuing state of rebellion against the forces working against the public interest. That’s where whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden come in.

• 500 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent

  While the Fourth Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution] was most immediately the product of contemporary revulsion against a regime of writs of assistance, its roots go far deeper. Its adoption in the Constitution of this new Nation reflected the culmination in England a few years earlier of a struggle against oppression which had endured for centuries. The story of that struggle has been fully chronicled in the pages of this Court’s reports, and it would be a needless exercise in pedantry to review again the detailed history of the use of general warrants as instruments of oppression from the time of the Tudors, through the Star Chamber, the Long Parliament, the Restoration, and beyond.

• Posting a child’s life for the world to see is a privacy issue

• Top Secret NSA in 1953: We Need Better Spies, Please

  More than a half-century before Edward Snowden slipped out the door with the National Security Agency’s most closely held secrets, a panel convened by the then-fledgling agency warned of a Soviet nuclear attack and said there was a big vulnerability in the NSA’s ability to see it coming: its own people.

• NSA phone data collection ‘not essential’, judiciary chair says – live

• With NSA review ‘near completion,’ German media hold little hope of ‘no spy’ deal

  The White House has said that its review of NSA spying in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations is “near completion,” but reports in Germany suggest several of Berlin’s demands are already off the table.

• Germans abandon hope of US ‘no-spy’ treaty

• Stalemate in US-Germany talks over ‘no spy’ agreement – report

• Phone companies wary of change to NSA spying

  Telephone companies are quietly balking at the idea of changing how they collect and store Americans’ phone records to help the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. They’re worried about their exposure to lawsuits and the price tag if the U.S. government asks them to hold information about customers for longer than they already do.

• You Had One Job to Do: The NSA Doesn’t Actually Stop Terrorism

  For supporters of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, the monitoring of American phone and web activity is a cheap price to pay for keeping our country safe from terrorist attacks. But how many terrorists attacks does the NSA’s eavesdropping actually prevent? Seeing as the intelligence organization is spending time and money listening to the German chancellor’s cell phone calls, it’s a little hard to believe that they are also shutting down terrorist cells around the globe.

• Privacy Advocates Want Colbert to Cancel a Speech at an NSA-Linked Company

  Stephen Colbert has done tons of sarcastic and critical segments about the NSA (“The more I learn the safer I feel,” he said in October), but now he’s being called on to put those words into action. Colbert is scheduled to speak at an annual conference organized by security firm RSA, but privacy advocates are agitating for him to withdraw because of reports that the NSA paid RSA $10 million to weaken one of its own encryption algorithms.

• If You Want Obama to Rein In the NSA, You’re About to Be Disappointed

  The president will embrace some surveillance reforms, but he’s not about to scale back the national security state.

• The Presidential Task Force on the NSA, A Diversionary Tactic Not Meant to Uncover All The Wrongdoing

  What seems par for the course in America, after a serious trauma affects the nation such as the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 or now over revelations of government wrongdoing exposed by Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing of the NSA’s collection of electronic communications of just about everyone here and abroad, what usually happens is the president calls for a commission to investigate.

  Call it something to soothe the public’s anguish, (Kennedy and 9/11) or indignation over violation of people’s privacy rights (NSA) but in reality these commissions are a sideshow, a diversionary tactic where the investigation isn’t thorough and complete and the truth behind the wrongdoing is far from being discovered.

  As to the latest commission, a presidential task force looking into the NSA’s data mining operation, has recently concluded there is no evidence in any instance where the NSA’s snooping operations prevented a terrorist attack. None!

• NSA official: mass spying has foiled one (or fewer) plots in its whole history

  During an NPR interview, the NSA’s outgoing deputy director John C Inglis — the top civilian official in the NSA hierarchy — admitted that the NSA’s mass surveillance program had foiled a total of one terrorist plot (an attempt to wire some money to al-Shabaab in Somalia) in its entire history. But he doesn’t want to get rid of his agency’s program of spying on everything every American does, because it’s an “insurance policy” in case someone tries the kind of terrorist attack that it might foil.

• February 11 Will Be A Bad Day For The NSA But A Good Day For Freedom

  Edward Snowden revealed last summer that the U.S. is conducting mass surveillance of our internet activity, and now the internet is fighting back. On Feb. 11, a collection of popular sites and activist groups are staging a mass protest against the National Security Administration (NSA) and the blanket, warrantless spying that they do in the name of security.

• NSA’s Preference for Metadata

  A slide from material leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden to the Washington Post, showing what happens when an NSA analyst ·tasks· the PRISM system for information about a new surveillance target.

  [...]

  Former NSA Director Michael Hayden long ago made it clear that – given the rapid changes in networked communications and associated technologies – NSA needed to master the “net.” There was no mistaking the intent. He even said he consulted with large Internet companies and their experts in Silicon Valley.

• NSA Snooping Had ‘Minimal’ Impact On Fighting Terrorism

  The US National Security Agency’s (NSA) dragnet that drew in masses of ordinary citizens’ communications data only supplied “minimal” assistance in catching terrorists, according to a report from the New America Foundation.

• Did the NSA kill Hugo Chavez?

  Hugo Chavez was always a stone in the imperial shoe. Underestimated by analysts and consultants ‘Cold War mind’ in Washington, Chavez ended the influence and domination of the United States in Latin America in less than a decade. Transformed Venezuela from a dependent country and delivered to American culture and politics to be a sovereign, free, independent, dignified and proud of its roots, its history and its Indo-Afro-American culture.He rescued the control of strategic resources not only in Venezuela, but throughout Latin America, always with the banner of social justice. He promoted regional integration and the creation of organizations such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), among others. His stand against U.S. aggression hand gave an example and an inspiration to millions around the world, who viewed with hope the revolution in Venezuela and its regional expansion.

• Did the NSA kill Hugo Chavez?

  The leaked documents from the NSA by Edward Snowden revealed that President Chavez and his government were on the list of the six main targets of U.S. intelligence since at least 2007. Just one year ago, the White House created a special intelligence mission to Venezuela that reported directly to the National Director of Intelligence, above the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies in the United States. A special mission was completely illegal, with great resources and capabilities. There were only two other missions that style: for Iran and North Korea. Venezuela include two enemy countries was held in Washington indicator of threat posed by Hugo Chavez to U.S. power.

• Reddit, Mozilla And Others To Protest NSA Spying, Honor Aaron Swartz On ‘The Day We Fight Back’

  A coalition of Internet activist groups has announced a worldwide day of solidarity and activism opposing the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs and honoring the memory of open-Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

• Brazilian hacker creates Twitter-like app shielded from NSA gaze

• Debunking the “NSA Mass Surveillance Could Have Stopped 9/11″ Myth

  It’s something that we’re hearing a lot, both from NSA Director General Keith Alexander and others: the NSA’s mass surveillance programs could have stopped 9/11. It’s not true, and recently two people have published good essays debunking this claim.

• Obama Would Have To Unveil ‘Black Budget’ For Spy Agencies Under New Bipartisan Bill

• Dangerous Ruling In Virginia Allows Cleaning Company To Identify Anonymous Yelp Critics

  Last year, we wrote about a troubling case in Virginia, in which a cleaning company, Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, sued seven anonymous Yelp reviewers in an attempt to discover who they were. Hadeed did not dispute the contents of the negative reviews, but rather said that, comparing the information to their own database, they could not identify the reviewers, and thus believed that they might not actually have been customers. Thus, Hadeed claims, the reviews would be defamatory since they didn’t actually represent the experiences of actual customers. Yelp fought back on behalf of its users, pointing out that the First Amendment protects anonymous speech. Yelp pointed out that 11 different states had adopted the so-called Dendrite rules concerning the high bar necessary to force a company to reveal anonymous commenters. The basic idea is that you need to really show that the law has almost certainly been broken before you can identify the individuals.

• Announcing Our New Freedom of the Press Foundation Board Member, Edward Snowden

  Edward Snowden said:

  It is tremendously humbling to be called to serve the cause of our free press. . . on FPF’s Board of Directors. The unconstitutional gathering of the communications records of everyone in America threatens our most basic rights, and the public should have a say in whether or not that continues. Thanks to the work of our free press, today we do, and if the NSA won’t answer to Congress, they’ll have to answer to the newspapers, and ultimately, the people.

Summary: The past week’s news about the NSA, its partners, and corporate spying

• Not So Anonymous VPN Uses Edward Snowden For PR

  After the Snowden revelations interest in privacy services including VPNs has skyrocketed. This hasn’t gone unnoticed to HideMyAss, one of the largest VPN providers, who are now using Snowden’s name to promote their product. Some may think that’s a clever move, but it is rather ironic since HideMyAss previously handed over personal details of a Lulzsec member to the U.S. Government.

• Suggestion To NSA Employees Who Actually Respect Civil Liberties: Do A ‘Quarter Snowden With A Twist’

• Yes, we have Snowden to thank for NSA surveillance debate

• Two newspapers urge Obama to help NSA whistleblower

• NYT Wants Clemency For ‘Whistle-Blower’ Snowden

• Snowden leaks ‘justified,’ NSA violated public trust: media editorials

• Napolitano rejects idea of clemency for NSA leaker Snowden

  Former Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano flatly rejected the idea of clemency for Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whom the Obama administration has charged with theft of government property and unauthorized disclosure of defense secrets.

• Napolitano: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should not be given clemency

• The three types of NSA snooping that Edward Snowden revealed

  These aren’t just three categories of leaks; they’re three different ways to think about Snowden. People who care a lot about U.S. foreign policy are going to give more weight to Singer’s first category: leaks revealing espionage against U.S. adversaries and rival. They’re going to be more likely to view Snowden through that lens and to judge him harshly for, as they see it, carelessly and needlessly setting back the United States. The constituency of people who follow U.S. foreign policy closely is relatively small, but it also tends to be deeply passionate not to mention disproportionately represented in Washington, D.C.

• ‘The NSA’s Version Of Patriotism Is Corroding Silicon Valley’

• Can European Telcos Protect Customers From The NSA?

• Businesses Deny Helping NSA Plant Bugs in Americans’ Gadgets

• Disney can track your every move with new NSA-style ‘Magic Bands’

• Disney introduces new NSA-style bands that track visitors everywhere they go

• Disney World Creepily Tracks Visitors NSA-Style With Magic Wristbands

• Now Disney Can Track Your Every Move with NSA-Style Wristbands

• Hackers vs the NSA in 1986

• Judge on NSA Case Cites 9/11 Report, but It Doesn’t Actually Support His Ruling

• Mark Udall feels vindicated by new signs of NSA reform

• ACLU appeals judge’s decision to throw out NSA lawsuit

• The NSA’s Trying to Build a Quantum Computer That Cracks All Encryption

• NSA surveillance is Not Securing Anybody

  Security is a word often used but rarely defined. Does it mean to be protected by others? Does it mean personal freedom and autonomy? Or something else, like being free from fear or worry, or having food and shelter? Sadly, in public discourse the term has become jingoistic, used more to instill fear and establish control than to promote actual security. Consider NSA surveillance.

• NSA building a quantum computing encryption-killer

  Quantum computing gets brought up in all kinds of conversations, usually when it does it is for causes like weather, medical, research – things like that. The NSA however looks at the technology as an opportunity to defeat almost every form of encryption possible. It’s an interesting application of the technology because of the overwhelming computational capacity that quantum computing introduces and as most people know, there is comfort in most encryption methods that is based on the notion that it would take x years to compute and crack the safeguards put in place with certain standards. If the NSA’s $79.7 million research program called “Penetrating Hard Targets” has its way, then that statistical assurance is decimated.

• Snowden Reveals NSA’s Classified Quantum Computing Project

• NSA developing computer to crack privacy codes: report

• NSA ‘developing code-cracking quantum computer’

• NSA secretly funds quantum computer research to break global codes

  The National Security Agency (NSA) has received a lot of publicity recently. News just broke that the NSA has been privately funding research in order to build a quantum computer of its own. This is all well and good but why would they want to build such a computer? The answer lies in their desire to be able to crack the codes of banking, medical, business and government codes around the world.

• NSA eyes encryption-breaking ‘quantum’ machine: report

• Report: NSA looking to crack all encryption with quantum computer

• NSA accused of developing encryption-busting computer

• NSA developing computer to crack privacy codes

• Report: NSA seeking to develop ‘quantum computer’

• “Surveillance breeds conformity”: Salon’s Glenn Greenwald interview

• Michael Hayden Calls Clemency For Snowden ‘Outrageous,’ Says It Sends ‘Wrong Message’ To Potential Whistleblowers

  We’ve already seen one reaction to the New York Times’ call for clemency for whistleblower Ed Snowden. That one came courtesy of the terminally-perturbed Rep. Peter King, a man who cares so much for this country that he believes Snowden should be imprisoned for “appeasing terrorists.” Calling Snowden a traitor only gains you so much political traction these days, but King’s in no hurry to give up his antagonistic calls for Snowden’s head, even when his assertions of “terrorist appeasement” clash with his own background as a terrorist appeaser.

• US court allows NSA phone ‘metadata’ collection for 3 months more

• The NSA Will Keep On Collecting Your Telephone Data (At Least) Through March

• NSA Gets Nod to Continue Phone Tapping from US Secret Court

• US Spy Court FISC Allows NSA To Collect Telephone Metadata For 3 More Months

• FISA court re-authorizes NSA’s bulk phone metadata collection program

• Stop Letting NSA’s Defenders Lie; There Have Been Many Significant Abuses

• DOJ will appeal judge’s ruling against NSA phone program

  The U.S. Department of Justice will appeal a district judge’s opinion saying a phone records collection program at the National Security Agency likely violates the U.S. Constitution.

• US govt appeals ruling denouncing NSA’s mass phone surveillance as unconstitutional

  ​The US Justice Department appealed Friday a federal judge’s December ruling that advanced a legal challenge to the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records.

• DOJ will appeal judge’s ruling against NSA phone program

  The U.S. Department of Justice will appeal a district judge’s opinion saying a phone records collection program at the National Security Agency likely violates the U.S. Constitution.

• US challenges ruling on ‘Orwellian’ NSA snooping

  The US government said Friday it has lodged an appeal against a judge’s ruling that the National Security Agency’s “almost Orwellian” bulk collection of telephone records is illegal.

  Separately, spy chief James Clapper revealed that a secret court had renewed the NSA’s authority to gather call “metadata,” despite the controversy triggered when the program came to light.

• Issa: DOJ must probe NSA’s director

  House Judiciary Committee Member Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) recently pressed Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate National Intelligence Director James Clapper for allegedly lying to Congress while testifying before a committee.

• Testimony of the National Intelligence Director

  “Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower” (editorial, Jan. 2) repeats the allegation that James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, “lied” to Congress about the collection of bulk telephony metadata. As a witness to the relevant events and a participant in them, I know that allegation is not true.

  Senator Ron Wyden asked about collection of information on Americans during a lengthy and wide-ranging hearing on an entirely different subject. While his staff provided the question the day before, Mr. Clapper had not seen it. As a result, as Mr. Clapper has explained, he was surprised by the question and focused his mind on the collection of the content of Americans’ communications. In that context, his answer was and is accurate.

  When we pointed out Mr. Clapper’s mistake to him, he was surprised and distressed. I spoke with a staffer for Senator Wyden several days later and told him that although Mr. Clapper recognized that his testimony was inaccurate, it could not be corrected publicly because the program involved was classified.

• Out in the Open: Ex-Google Ad Man Saves You From Ad Hell

  As the World Privacy Forum just told Congress, the bottom feeders of the data brokerage world are making big money selling lists of everything from rape victims and AIDS patients to alcoholics, giving marketers the power to hit those folks with emails, phone calls, and ads — and much of this data is coming from the net. In a report of its own, Senator John Rockefeller and his senate investigation committee highlight the massive amounts of consumer data that brokers collect online and off, starkly criticizing how little we know about how this data is collected and used.

• Facebook sued over alleged private message ‘scanning’

• Facebook sued for allegedly making private messages into public “Likes”

• FISA Court Rubberstamps Yet Another Renewal Of NSA’s Collecting All Your Phone Data

• Rand Paul To Lead Class-Action Lawsuit Against Obama Over NSA Spying

  Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is leading a class-action lawsuit with hundreds of thousands of Americans against President Barack Obama’s National Security Agency (NSA) over its spying on the American people, Breitbart News has learned.

• Senator presses NSA to reveal whether it spies on members of Congress

  A US senator has bluntly asked the National Security Agency if it spies on Congress, raising the stakes for the surveillance agency’s legislative fight to preserve its broad surveillance powers.

• Bernie Sanders Asks: “Is the NSA Spying on Congress?”

• Bernie Sanders asks NSA if agency is spying on Congress

  “Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked in a letter to NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander released from the senator’s office.

• Bernie Sanders to NSA: Spying on Hill?

• Bernie Sanders Demands That The NSA Come Clean About Spying on Congress

• Sen. Bernie Sanders asks the NSA: Are you spying on Congress?

• Senator demands to know if NSA spies on Congress

• Senator Bernie Sanders’s letter to NSA director dated January 3, 2014

• PRISM: Fallout from NSA internet spying scandal will linger throughout 2014

• Sens. Wyden and Udall Call for End to NSA Dragnet Phone Surveillance

• Snowden to Increase Public Profile in 2014

  Edward Snowden (shown) isn’t finished exposing damning details of the federal government’s unconstitutional surveillance programs.

  In an article published in the Wall Street Journal, Benjamin Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer working with the whistleblower, reveals that in 2014 the world “can expect to see [Snowden] engage a little more in the public debate.”

• Germany eyes parliamentary inquiry into NSA activities

• German Chancellor Merkel agrees to public inquiry into NSA revelations

  Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government agreed Friday to a public inquiry into surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA), but it was unclear if the panel would invite testimony from Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who exposed the snooping.

• Merkel agrees to public inquiry into NSA revelations

  Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government agreed Friday to a public inquiry into surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA), but it was unclear if the panel would invite testimony from Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who exposed the snooping.

  Merkel had tried to head off a parliamentary inquiry, conscious of the tension it would cause with Germany’s most powerful ally. But her top parliamentary aide yielded Friday to pressure from opposition parties to appoint a commission.

• U.S. Intelligence Planning to Oust the President of Ecuador

  Rafael Correa is one of those Latin American presidents which ruling circles in the U.S. consider uncontrollable and thus especially dangerous. To get rid of such politicians, Washington makes use of a wide arsenal of means, from interfering in election processes to physical elimination. After the strange death of Hugo Chavez, who led Latin America’s resistance against the Empire, it is Correa who is increasingly seen as his successor, the leader of the «populist forces» on the continent… – See more at: http://www.ingeniouspress.com/2013/12/29/u-s-intelligence-planning-oust-president-ecuador/#sthash.qnLgw3y1.dpuf

• SecOps failure: GPG+Gmail on OSX Mavericks may store unencrypted drafts

  If you’re sending encrypted e-mail with the default Mail app on OS X Mavericks, your setup may be saving plaintext messages on the mail server. Mac-based users of the GPG encryption app began noticing this unfortunate behavior in October when using Gmail. Even after unchecking the “Store draft messages on the server” and “Store sent messages on the server” checkboxes, the changes would mysteriously vanish.

• At Least We’re Not Alone: NSA Spies on Members of Congress, Too

• The NSA refuses to deny spying on members of Congress

• NSA statement does not deny ‘spying’ on members of Congress

  The National Security Agency on Saturday released a statement in answer to questions from a senator about whether it “has spied, or is … currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials”, in which it did not deny collecting communications from legislators of the US Congress to whom it says it is accountable.

• Clapper did not lie to Congress on NSA, says national intelligence counsel

  Robert Litt, the general counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has written to the New York Times to deny the allegation that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, lied to Congress about the collection of bulk phone records by the National Security Agency (NSA).

• AMAZONS $600 million contract with CIA is a conflict of interest

  The founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post for $250 million. It was expressed at the time that there might be possible conflicts of interest between Bezos’ business at Amazon and the Post’s coverage of commerce and politics.

• NSA Warns of Rogue System Administrators 1996

  This is fully 17 years before Edward Snowden purloined the NSA’s Crown Jewels from the NSA’s Hawaii RSOC.

  Remarkably, the article’s author also later describes a 1994 incident at an NSA RSOC when a contractor employee was caught accessing restricted files on a classified system!

• Rand Paul to file class action suit against the NSA

  Because of the scope of the NSA’s activities, Paul added, “every person in America who has a cell phone would be eligible for this suit.”

• US Senator Rand Paul to Sue President Obama Over NSA Spying

  Paul said he is urging all US citizens with mobile phones to join a group action aimed at preventing Obama from “snooping on the American people”.

• NSA Spying: Rand Paul Plans Obama Lawsuit

• Moves to Curb Spying Help Drive the Clemency Argument for Snowden

• Are Other NSA Employees Leaking Documents Under The Cover Of Snowden? (we covered this before)

  While we were just suggesting that there are ways that NSA employees who believe the organization has gone too far can make a difference without also leaking documents, some are beginning to suspect that Snowden’s activities may be creating at least some copycats — and the interesting tidbit is that they may be less likely to get caught, because everyone assumes any new leaks are from Snowden. Matt Blaze recently noted that the most recent bombshell concerning the NSA’s catalog of exploits, didn’t actually name a source. And Glenn Greenwald has hinted strongly that the information is not from Snowden.

• CCC talk — the Four Wars

  Here is my recent talk at the CCC in Ham­burg, dis­cuss­ing the war on ter­ror, the war on drugs, the war in the inter­net and the war on whis­tleblowers…

• Wikileaks founder Julian Assange derides Catholic confessional system

  Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stirred a new controversy this week when he denounced the Catholic Church’s confessional system as a means to spy on its congregants for the sake of power.

• Wikileaks Documents Reveal Just How Toxic Rush Limbaugh Is

  Yesterday Kossack Mike Stark posted this diary about Stratfor emails posted by Wikileaks.

  Stratfor is a Texas-based global intelligence firm whose list of clients includes Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

  [...]

  Decent folks who believe in tolerance and equality are no longer powerless against Rush Limbaugh’s efforts to spread intolerance on the radio. StopRush is making a major impact by convincing advertisers on this show to withdraw their ads–and with your help we can do even more. Just a few emails, tweets, or Facebook messages a week to Limbaugh’s advertisers can go a long way toward making hatred less profitable. It is our collective voice that makes us strong.

• 240″ TV in a contact lens: Revolutionary eyewear rivaling Google Glass to be unveiled

  Google Glass has a rival: Nano-tech contact lenses that work with a pair of glasses and provide wearers with a virtual canvas on which any media can be viewed or application run, projected onto human eyes, are set to be unveiled in the US.

• Leaders Update – A New Year, Looking Backward and Forward

  In our country suspicion is now our way of life.

• The Case Against Clemency for Snowden Involves Prioritizing Secrecy ‘Oaths’ Over Truth-Telling

  A column on why former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden should not be granted clemency—and will not be given clemency—was written by Slate’s Fred Kaplan on January 3. It quickly became regarded as a sharp well-argued rebuttal to The New York Times’ editorial, which labeled Snowden a whistleblower and urged President Barack Obama to show him leniency so he could come back to the United States.

• GAP Statement on Edward Snowden and NSA Domestic Surveillance

  In June 2013, the American public learned conclusively about the wholesale surveillance of virtually all Americans through secretive programs by the National Security Agency (NSA) that continue to be implemented today. These programs collect the phone records, email exchanges, and internet histories of people all over the world who would have no knowledge of this were it not for the disclosures of former federal contractor Edward Snowden.

• “NSA gate” makes global expansion a sticky wicket for U.S. cloud providers …

• The county sheriff who keylogged his wife

  On April 22, 2013, Miles J. Stark of Clay County, West Virginia made a bad decision. Stark was going through a divorce at the time and had grown concerned about his wife’s relationship with an “unnamed individual.” So he entered his wife’s workplace after normal business hours, located her PC, and installed a tiny keylogger between her keyboard cable and her computer. The keylogger would record his wife’s e-mails and her instant messaging chats as she typed them out letter by letter, along with the usernames and passwords she used for various online services. Stark left the office without getting caught.

• Did Edward Snowden Break His Oath?

  This is an odd and flawed argument—logically and legally…

• Peter King: Rand Paul ‘Doesn’t Deserve’ His Spot In The Senate (VIDEO)

• The Innocuous Face of Government Criminality

  Former NSA and CIA leader Michael Hayden is indicative of the horrors of the coming American authoritarian state. He is a bookish, cherubic, nondescript, avuncular man who nonetheless has contributed greatly to those programs of such a degree of enormous potential for evil are only waiting for the correct political climate and leadership to trigger a reign of darkness and terror unique to this country’s history.

• Rand Paul: One single warrant should not apply to everybody who has a cell phone

  Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul sharpened his rhetoric against the National Security Agency’s snooping on American citizens Sunday, comparing the agency’s programs to the British actions that provoked the American Revolution 230 years ago.

• 2014, the year that infosec gets political

  2013 has certainly been a watershed year for information security. But to understand how things might subsequently unfold in 2014, it’s worth remembering that each and every revelation of 2013 will be processed and acted upon by humans. Humans with their unchanging human nature, and organisations created by us humans, with their similarly unchanging nature.

  Centre stage must of course go to Edward Snowden and the ongoing revelations about comprehensive surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

  [...]

  Combine that with the fact that even a headline in conservative US magazine “Foreign Policy” described NSA chief General Keith Alexander as a “cowboy”.

  Combine all that, and I think we’re looking at a groundswell of opposition to what some have called the “surveillance state” at a level seen in Western nations only once a generation — like the Vietnam Moratorium or, in Australia and especially New Zealand, opposition to French nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa.

• NSA spying: Obama shouldn’t duck behind court ruling

  Obama and Congress should rein in this government surveillance program.

• Former UK government CIO defends NSA spying practices

  The UK government’s former chief information officer has defended the rights of nations to gather data and spy on citizens, although warned that there must be clear oversight into these practices.

  John Suffolk, who left a post in the UK government in 2011 to become global cyber security officer for Chinese vendor Huawei, wrote in a blog post that nations must have the ability to scan data and try to protect citizens from any threats.

• NSA mimicks Uganda Telecom infrastructure to tap cell phones

  The catalogue further says that Mobile phone SIM cards can also be easily hacked using a tool dubbed MONKEYCALANDER. This exploits a flaw, only recently spotted by security researchers but used by the NSA since 2007, that allows code to be installed on a SIM card that will track and monitor an individual user’s calls and location.

• Bruce Schneier Departs BT For Startup Co3 Systems

  Schneier, who previously had served on Co3 Systems’ advisory board and has helped shape the look and feel of the software-as-a-service firm’s architecture, says the time had come for him to make a change and leave BT. He had been the security futurologist for BT since it purchased his network monitoring services firm Counterpane Internet Security in October of 2006.

• The Fight of Our Lives

  The battle to beat back the NSA – and restore our old republic

• Lieu to introduce bill to ban state from assisting feds with warrantless spying

• Lies, lies and more presidential lies

  After Edward Snowden spilled the National Security Agency’s beans three months later, Mr. Clapper retreated to his Ministry of Truth persona when asked by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on June 10 why he lied to Mr. Wyden: “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying, ‘no.’”

• NSA encryption backdoor proof of concept published

  Although weaknesses in one pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) at the heart of a US National Security Agency (NSA) scandal have been known for years, recent media attention has given light to proof-of-concept code.

• Being a Patriot

  While mega IT behemoths including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco, Juniper, et al, may, or may not deny any knowledge of, or cooperation with, the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its international counterparts, or nemeses, the fact is that near ubiquitous, secret backdoor access to networks and computing and communications devices has been gained.

• NSA Documents from the Spiegel Story

• The WikiLeaks Mole

  How a teenage misfit became the keeper of Julian Assange’s deepest secrets – only to betray him

• Can judiciary rein in NSA?

• This NSA Document Predicted Edward Snowden 23 Years Ago

• Can the NSA be trusted?

• Boy of 12 hauled out of class by police over David Cameron Facebook protest

  A schoolboy trying to save his youth club was hauled from class after his plan to protest outside David Cameron’s constituency office was spotted – by anti-terror police.

  In an astonishing over-reaction, 12-year-old Nicky Wishart was warned he faced ARREST.

• Girl, 12, Among Those Arrested In Sea World Protest At Rose Parade

• Text Message ‘Miscommunication’ Puts Three New Jersey Schools On Lockdown

  Today’s dose of paranoia and confusion comes to us courtesy of RyanNerd. We’ve seen schools react badly to perceived threats before, but the lack of a single crucial detail makes it impossible to determine whether this incident is one of those cases. What we do know is that three New Jersey schools were locked down and swarmed by police officers as the result of a single text from a student to a parent.

• How the NSA Threatens National Security

  Our choice isn’t between a digital world where the agency can eavesdrop and one where it cannot; our choice is between a digital world that is vulnerable to any attacker and one that is secure for all users.

• Huawei’s security chief and ex-government CIO defends PRISM and NSA surveillance

  AN EX-UK GOVERNMENT CIO has waded into the security debate about NSA and GCHQ surveillance of the internet and told everyone to chill out.

  John Suffolk, the global head of Cyber Security for Huawei and a former UK government CIO and CISO, penned his thoughts in a blog post with the title, ‘Let’s get real about the NSA. Not all technology and data is born equal.’

  Suffolk said that he has followed the debate about government surveillance and can see why some people might have some concerns. His concern is that people are worrying about the wrong thing, adding that he can’t see a problem with a data-hungry government that won’t stop eating.

• Palo Alto Networks snaps up NSA-trained security company

  Government-trained security company Morta Security has been snapped up by Palo Alto Networks for an undisclosed sum.

  The acquisition was announced on Monday and arms Palo Alto Networks with a company whose staff hail from the National Security Agency, US Army, US Air Force, and others.

  “The Morta team brings additional valuable threat intelligence experience and capabilities to Palo Alto Networks,” Palo Alto Networks chief Mark McLaughlin said in a canned statement.

• NSA revelations: the ‘middle ground’ everyone should be talking about

  The NSA’s Tailored Access Operations show there’s a way to be safe and get good intelligence without mass surveillance

• Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid: Dreaming of Privacy in 2014

  “I hope that with Microsoft’s collusion with government agencies now public knowledge, businesses will start to look at alternative options,” suggested blogger Mike Stone. Indeed, “I would like more transparency from those IT giants,” echoed Google+ blogger Alessandro Ebersol. “They are dealing with our lives, and there’s not much we can do to protect ourselves.”

• How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet

  Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the other tech titans have had to fight for their lives against their own government. An exclusive look inside their year from hell—and why the Internet will never be the same.

• How the NSA nearly destroyed the internet

• California Legislators Introduce Bill To Banish NSA

  Bipartisan duo wants to cut NSA’s utilities, ban research at state schools and impose sanctions on contractors

• The Danger of NSA Spying on Members of Congress

  Access to that telephone metadata would be extremely useful for manipulating the legislature. So is it wise to collect it and make it accessible to a secretive executive-branch agency? Even if the NSA has never abused the temptation, will they resist it forever? Operating on that assumption seems both reckless and needless, given the scant evidence that the Section 215 program is necessary and the significant public interest in maintaining the integrity and legitimacy of the legislature.

• Dianne Feinstein Admits That Her ‘NSA Reform’ Bill Is About Protecting Existing Surveillance Programs

  See, there’s a problem when you lie: you always forget how to keep your story straight. You may remember, for example, that Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the end of October, released a bill that pretended to be about reforming the NSA and its surveillance programs. The bill was spun in a way that was designed to make people think it was creating real reforms, with a fact sheet claiming that it “prohibited” certain actions around bulk data collection, but which actually codified them in the law, by including massive loopholes. It was an incredibly cynical move by Feinstein and her staff, pretending that their bill to actually give the NSA even greater power and to legalize its abuses, was about scaling back the NSA. But that’s the spin they put on it — which almost no one bought.

• MEPs release draft report damning blanket Internet surveillance

  Tomorrow MEPs on the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee will present their draft report on the Internet surveillance of the UK and USA as well as other EU states. Its recommendations are damning and the UK Government comes in for particularly strong criticism.

• As Obama Holds Meetings, NSA Whistleblowers Warn Reforms to Preserve the Surveillance State

  The White House is holding a number of meetings on possible National Security Agency reforms. President Barack Obama reportedly met with staffers for intelligence officials on January 8 in a meeting that was classified “top secret.”

• Lawmakers Skeptical Obama Will Reform NSA After White House Summit

  The president sat down with a small group of lawmakers Thursday to discuss NSA surveillance. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

• Incest Desk: Bezos in bed with CIA, org wants WaPo readers to explicitly know

• Snowden downloaded 1.7 million intelligence files, Pentagon report concludes

  A classified Pentagon report concludes that former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden downloaded 1.7 million intelligence files from U.S. agencies in the single largest theft of secrets in the history of the United States, according to lawmakers.

• Intel Committee Published Fact-Free Press Release About Secret ‘Damage’ Assessments of NSA Leaks

• NSA and GCHQ activities appear illegal, says EU parliamentary inquiry

  Civil liberties committee report demands end to indiscriminate collection of personal data by British and US agencies

• Obama nears decision on NSA reforms as spy leaders meet at White House

  The leaders of the US intelligence agencies were holding talks at the White House on Wednesday as US president Barack Obama neared a decision on curbing the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk surveillance powers.

• Campaign to kick NSA man from crypto standards group fails

  National Security Agency employee Kevin Igoe is to keep his position on the panel of an influential internet standards working group, the powers-that-be decided last weekend.

  Igoe, who co-chairs the Internet Research Task Force’s Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG), had been accused by those campaigning for his removal of pushing for the adoption of a weakened version of the “Dragonfly” key exchange protocol.

• Obama Approves Releasing Classified Information to Attack Snowden for Leaking Classified Information

• Congressmen Reveal Secret Report’s Findings to Discredit Snowden

• Sources: We were pressured to weaken the mobile security in the 80′s

  Four men who were part of a group that wrote mobile history tell for the first time how strong protection against eavesdropping of cell phones was weakened.

• The NSA Views Privacy As Damage And Routes Around It

Japan

• Yup … They’re Going to Dump It

  Tepco is planning on dumping all of the radioactive water stored at Fukushima into the ocean. The industry-controlled nuclear regulators are pushing for dumping the radiation, as well.

• Surge in cancers among young in Fukushima, but experts divided on cause

• Thyroid Cancers Surge Among Fukushima Youths

• Homeless recruited to decontaminate Fukishima; paid less than minimum wage

United States

• Billion-dollar climate denial network exposed

• Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change

  Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.

• Not Just the Koch Brothers: New Drexel Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort

  Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.

• Wikileaks Disclosure Reveals Energy Company Strategy Against Anti-Keystone Pipeline Activists

• WikiLeaks reveals energy giants’ strategies to suppress anti-Keystone activists

  The presentation created by global intelligence firm Stratfor divides environmental groups into four categories: radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists. The document then offers strategic ways of dealing with each type.

• Wikileaks: Anti-Fracking Movement in NYS Started with ProPublica

• Winter storm closes part of US government

• US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet

  The extensive global operations of the US military (wars, interventions, and secret operations on over one thousand bases around the world and six thousand facilities in the United States) are not counted against US greenhouse gas limits. Sara Flounders writes, “By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.”

• US Fails in Using Renewable Energy to its Full Potential

  The Pacific Ocean is warming at a rate faster than anything seen in the last 10,000 years and we may have the warmest Arctic in the last 120,000 years. Our burning of fossil fuels is the big thing pushing us toward the brink. Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, claims that we have enough wind and solar to power the world. The question is why aren’t we using it? This isn’t a matter of changing how we get energy, it means shifting the power dynamic in this country—and across the world for that matter—and literally putting power in the hands of individual people and communities. Not only will renewable resources cut down global warming but also, as fossil fuel costs rise, the cost for wind and solar power is actually decreasing.

United Kingdom

• UK’s worst winter storms for two decades set to continue

  Met Office issues yellow weather warnings of ice and rain, with 96 flood warnings in place and a further 244 areas on flood alert

• Half of Britain to be offered for shale gas drilling as fracking areas face 50 trucks passing each day

  Ministers “stepping up the search for shale” with new exploration rights to be offered to fracking firms next summer

Canada

• Right Now, It’s as Cold in Canada as Where Our Rover Is On Mars

  Canada is having a cold snap at the moment. This week, in Southern Manitoba, the temperature reached a blisteringly frigid -31 degrees Celsius, or nearly -24 Fahrenheit. (Wind chill values in Winnipeg—in case you were curious and/or in need of some meteorological schadenfreude—dipped to -58 Fahrenheit.) Which is crazy, and which makes for, as Yahoo’s Geekquinox blog puts it, “the coldest afternoon temperatures the area has seen in several years.”

• Canadian libraricide: Tories torch and dump centuries of priceless, irreplaceable environmental archives

  Back in 2012, when Canada’s Harper government announced that it would close down national archive sites around the country, they promised that anything that was discarded or sold would be digitized first. But only an insignificant fraction of the archives got scanned, and much of it was “>simply sent to landfill or burned.

  Unsurprisingly, given the Canadian Conservatives’ war on the environment, the worst-faring archives were those that related to climate research. The legendary environmental research resources of the St. Andrews Biological Station in St. Andrews, New Brunswick are gone. The Freshwater Institute library in Winnipeg and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland: gone. Both collections were world-class.

  An irreplaceable, 50-volume collection of logs from HMS Challenger’s 19th century expedition went to the landfill, taking with them the crucial observations of marine life, fish stocks and fisheries of the age.

• Naomi Klein: climate movement needs radicals like Mandela

Africa

• Ugandans fear curse of oil wealth as it threatens to blight ‘pearl of Africa’

  Oil drilling may bring benefits in healthcare and education, but critics are concerned about corruption and the effect on wildlife

• Toxic ‘e-waste’ dumped in poor nations, says United Nations

  Millions of tonnes of old electronic goods illegally exported to developing countries, as people dump luxury items

Chevron

• Indigenous Groups Win Right to Seize Chevron’s Canadian Assets over $18 Billion in Amazon Pollution

  A court in Canada has ruled Ecuadorean farmers and fishermen can try to seize the assets of oil giant Chevron based on a 2011 decision in an Ecuadorean court found it liable for nearly three decades of soil and water pollution near oil wells, and said it had ruined the health and livelihoods of people living in nearby areas of the Amazon rainforest.

• Chevron suspends shale gas exploration in Romania

  U.S. oil company Chevron has suspended exploration for shale gas in northeastern Romania after hundreds of anti-fracking protesters tore down fences.

  Chevron won approval to drill exploratory wells in the town of Pungesti, but halted work for a second time Saturday after residents blocked access to the site.

Deep Sea and Sea Traffic

• An ecosystem-based approach to protect the deep sea from mining

  Five hundred miles southeast of Hawai’i, in international waters far out of sight of any land, there are vast mineral resources 5,000 meters below the sea.

• Shrimp Fishing Banned In Gulf Of Maine For 2014 Due To Overfishing, Warming Oceans

  Shrimp populations in northern New England have declined so quickly that a regulatory agency has banned all shrimp fishing for the 2014 season in order to allow the small crustaceans to replenish themselves. The sharp fall-off in shrimp stock is due to overfishing and worsening environmental conditions, experts say.

• Shell’s record-breaking Prelude takes to the water

  A floating vessel that is longer than the Empire State Building is high has taken to the water for the first time.

Australia

• Greg Hunt approves dredging off Queensland to create huge coalport

  ‘Strictest conditions in Australian history’ to safeguard Great Barrier Reef while building three terminals at Abbot Point

• Japanese killing fleet sets sail for the Australian Antarctic Whale Sanctuary

  The Japanese Whale Poaching Fleet has left Japan, setting sail for the Australian Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. The factory vessel, the Nisshin Maru left Innoshima Port today and the refuelling vessel, the Sun Laurel, left just days prior. The harpoon ships no longer have their AIS (Automatic Identification System) on and it appears that they are underway as well.

Middle East/Persian Gulf

• Israel Violates International Law by Selling Oil Drilling Rights in Occupied Syria

  Israel has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild.

• Google Earth reveals Persian gulf fish catch is six times larger than thought

  Google Earth has been once again used by researchers for scientific discovery.

  Researchers from the University of British Columbia scoured Google Earth in search of fishing weirs along the coasts of seven Persian Gulf nations. They found some 1,900 fish traps, suggesting that the total fish catch in the Persian Gulf may be up to six times the officially reported level of 5,260 metric tons per year.

Other

• Dust to Dust: a man-made Malthusian crisis

  We must wake up to the global land crisis or face a very real threat of famine

• Water shortages may make fracking impractical, industry says

  Quantities required for the fracking process may make it problematic in areas of the UK where resources are scarce

• FBI can secretly turn on laptop cameras without the indicator light

  Scary. Insane. Ridiculous. Invasive. Wrong. The Washington Post reports that the FBI has had the ability to secretly activate a computer’s camera “without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording” for years now. What in the hell is going on? What kind of world do we live in?

  Marcus Thomas, the former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division, told the Post that that sort of creepy spy laptop recording is “mainly” used in terrorism cases or the “most serious” of criminal investigations. That doesn’t really make it less crazy (or any better) since the very idea of the FBI being able to watch you through your computer is absolutely disturbing.

• FBI’s search for ‘Mo,’ suspect in bomb threats, highlights use of malware for surveillance

  The FBI team works much like other hackers, using security weaknesses in computer programs to gain control of users’ machines. The most common delivery mechanism, say people familiar with the technology, is a simple phishing attack — a link slipped into an e-mail, typically labeled in a misleading way.

• Dual_EC_DRBG backdoor: a proof of concept

• Are Your Windows Error Reports Leaking Data?

• NSA ‘Intercepted PC Shipments To Install Malware’

• The NSA regularly intercepts laptop shipments to implant malware, report says

• Report: NSA intercepts computer deliveries to plant spyware

• NSA intercepts laptop deliveries to install spyware

• NSA Reportedly Put Spyware on Consumer Tech Products

Snowden

• Edward Snowden is revealed as the NSA whistleblower

  Along with journalist colleagues Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, I spent six days with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong. He had spent almost all of his short adult life working in America’s spy agencies, but at the end of those six days, the unknown 29-year-old became one of the most famous faces on the planet. He went public in a Guardian video, revealing himself as the source of one of the biggest leaks in western intelligence history.

• FreeBSD rethinks encryption after Snowden leaks

  Only three months after the Snowden leaks on NSA snooping began, we learn from Ars Technica that the developers at FreeBSD have decided to rethink the way they access random numbers to generate cryptographic keys. Starting with version 10.0, users of the operating system will no longer be relying solely on random numbers generated by Intel and Via Technologies processors. This comes as a response to reports that government spooks can successfully open some encryption schemes.

• Snowden: ‘Surveillance of the Public Must Be Debated by the Public’

• NSA Moves to Prevent Snowden-Like Leaks

  Agency Implementing 2-Person Rule, Increasing Encryption Use

Greenwald

• Glenn Greenwald Says NSA, GCHQ Dismayed They Don’t Have Access To In-Flight Internet Communication

• Saving the Net from the surveillance state: Glenn Greenwald speaks up (Q&A)

Machon

• NSA: An Orwellian surveillance system gone global

  While British politics and media display a strong reluctance to confront the harsh realities of UK spying, we should be worried about further revelations of a dystopian, Orwellian surveillance system gone global, former MI5 agent Annie Machon told RT.

• Snowden, privacy and the CCC

  Here’s an RT inter­view I did about the media response to Edward Snowden, the media response, pri­vacy and what we can do.

Obama

• President Obama claims the NSA has never abused its authority. That’s false

  The facts that we know so far – from Fisa court documents to LOVEINT – show that the NSA has overstepped its powers

• Obama’s Defining Fight: How He Will Take On the NSA’s Surveillance State in 2014

  Before he left for Hawaii, the president was sending signals that government surveillance programs need an overhaul to restore the public’s faith on issues of national security.

Judgement

• Ruling In Favor Of NSA’s Program Relied On Claims In 9/11 Report That Aren’t Actually In That Report

• Judge Falls for The Big Lie About NSA Spying

  The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda.

  Prior to the September 11th attacks, the National Security Agency (“NSA”) intercepted seven calls made by hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who was living in San Diego, California, to an al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen. The NSA intercepted those calls using overseas signals intelligence capabilities that could not capture al-Mihdhar’s telephone number identifier. Without that identifier, NSA analysts concluded mistakenly that al-Mihdhar was overseas and not in the United States. Telephony metadata would have furnished the missing information and might have permitted the NSA to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) of the fact that al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from inside the United States.

• Zimbabwe: U.S. Hypocrisy On Access to Information Shameful

1984

• NSA forces novelist to can his book

  A Scottish sci-fi writer has cancelled the last instalment in a trilogy about high-tech government spying after discovering that the NSA has been doing exactly what he described in his books.

• NSA forces novelist to scrap book

• This too shall pass

  Snowden in 2013 revealed what George Orwell in 1949 had already revealed in 1984: that Big Brothers who spy on their citizens will go on to do very bad things. He then asked for asylum in a country with a long history of its own citizens seeking asylum from his country.

Sci-FI Made Real

• NSA’s top-secret cyber squad: The hackers at the Office of Tailored Operations are one of the strongest weapons in America’s formidable arsenal

• The primary NSA issue isn’t privacy, it’s authority

• The NSA’s elite hackers can hijack your Wi-Fi from 8 miles away

• NSA can hack WiFi devices from eight miles away (video)

• You Won’t Believe All the Crazy Hardware the NSA Uses for Spying

• 2014 Will Bring More Social Collapse

  Many Americans might never notice or care. I remember when telephone calls were considered to be private. In the 1940s and 1950s the telephone company could not always provide private lines. There were “party lines” in which two or more customers shared the same telephone line. It was considered extremely rude and inappropriate to listen in on someone’s calls and to monopolize the line with long duration conversations.

• Silicon Valley Is Going to Hate the Latest NSA Revelations—Unless It Already Knew About Them

• How the NSA hacks PCs, phones, routers, hard disks ‘at speed of light’: Spy tech catalog leaks

  A leaked NSA cyber-arms catalog has shed light on the technologies US and UK spies use to infiltrate and remotely control PCs, routers, firewalls, phones and software from some of the biggest names in IT.

  The exploits, often delivered via the web, provide clandestine backdoor access across networks, allowing the intelligence services to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks that conventional security software has no chance of stopping.

Corporate and Other

• Will De Blasio Scale Back the N.Y.P.D.’s C.I.A.?

  Kelly hired David Cohen, the former head of the C.I.A.’s spy division, to run the force’s intelligence outfit. Cohen, a trained economist known to be intensely loyal to his superiors (and profane with everyone else), created the Demographics Unit, which imbedded special recruits in eighteen Muslim neighborhoods to monitor every aspect of daily life. At the same time, Kelly created the International Liaison Program, which posted detectives in eleven hot spots overseas, including London, Paris, Madrid, Abu Dhabi, and Tel Aviv. “We’ve reorganized the department to accommodate this world view,” Kelly said. “You might say that the N.Y.P.D. has aspired to become a Council on Foreign Relations with guns.”

• NSA and Government Spying: Are These the Only Groups Collecting Information on Us?

  We have all heard by now of the massive surveillance being conducted by the NSA and other governments across the world. China is a well-known anti-privacy country and others have decided to also spy on their citizens’ social network activities amongst other things. The Internet censorship trends are getting pretty bad.

• ‘Embarrassed’ to use Facebook: Teens shift to other sites to ‘unfriend’ with parents

  Older teenagers have turned their backs on Facebook, an EU-funded study has found. Young people are opting for alternative social networks like Twitter and WhatsApp, while the “worst people of all, their parents, continue to use the service.”

THE CAUSE of human rights (and general dignity) seems to have been lost. It often seems like we are moving backwards — not forward — when it comes to values which are not so relative. In this post we share some troubling recent news (from December), highlighting the type of practices we’re now inclined to view as “normal”. Thankfully, the Internet and especially the Web are not yet thoroughly censored, so now there’s an opportunity to fight back with information. Become active and be vocal while it’s still permissible, legal, and not censored (more on censorship in another future article). We may be running out of time.

Police in north America is not enjoying much positive publicity these days, with sexual perverts [1-3] misusing their power in the police forces. Guess who needs to pay for warrantless cavity searches [4-5]? It’s breathtaking! Don’t just blame states like Texas [6-7]. Excessive policing against dissent [8-13], journalists [14-16], students [17-20], young people [21-23], babies/parents [24] or minorities is still an issue [25] that’s without borders. It’s happening in supposedly ‘progressive’ places like Toronto as well. Some cops act like drunken military commanders [26] and shoot people sparingly [27-30] (because they think they can get away with anything). It’s not much better in the UK [31]. It has become a subject of great ridicule [32]. In the East there is a lot of police brutality too, as demonstrated in a supposedly ‘Westernised’ country like South Korea last week [33]. In the ‘Westernised’ Middle East, notably Israel, people are now turned into numbers [34-35]. Russia is still up to oppression, so not much changes there, except the PR stunts [36-40]. So much for progress, eh? The sad thing is that Snowden, Manning and other voices of consciousness hardly appear in the radar [41-42]; people are too busy watching sports and celebrities. Some focus on gender segregation issues [43-44] and other aspects of repression [45-46].

Many still think that sarin gas was used by Syria’s government, despite evidence to the contrary from the UN’s Syrian chemical weapons report [47]. It is starting to look like a plot to destabilise and start a war by falsely blaming leaders of nations yet again. It happened decades ago in Korea [48] and a decade ago in Iraq, where contractors like Blackwater (now feeling betrayed by the CIA [49]), made a killing. There’s a lot of money in this black budget [50-56], even when there’s poor intelligence [57] (provided it serves the agenda). A lot of people still believe, especially now that there’s more disclosure, that the CIA was also behind the killing of JFK [58-59] (most American citizens already believe so based on polls). Now that the Washington Post is visibly connected to the CIA [60-62] and the New York Times rewrites history on behalf of the CIA [63-65] it oughtn’t be too shocking that level of trust in the CIA — just like the NSA — has hit bottom low. “NYT and ABC News lied about CIA operative,” says another source [66-67], having shown complicity between the corporate press and the CIA (the corporate press is trying to cover this scandal up [68]). Looking back at CIA role in the Middle East in the 1940s and 1950s [69], one author recalls and tells the story of malicious intervention. A lot of people still don’t know why Iranians don’t like the West, especially the UK and the US (coup against democratically-elected leadership for foreign oil interests).

Now that an “Interrogation Manual” of the FBI is accidentally out [70-71] we might as well consider how it is connected to the CIA, where the word interrogation (among other euphemisms) often means torture. CIA agents in Iran turn out to have had roots in the FBI [72] (he is said to have ‘retired’ from it). The CIA’s zeal for secrecy [73-75] — just like in notorious Soviet equivalents [76] — is not without victims [77-79]. This is a “colossal flop” and as an anti-terrorism mechanism the CIA has done a terrible job [80-82], mostly decreasing national security by making new enemies, not making peace with those who ask for it [83] and are in peace with 99% of the world (literally 99%), thereby singling out the US [84]. In Latin American countries, including in Colombia and at the border of Ecuador, the CIA continues to bomb people [85-90] (by proxy this time, unlike in previous decades). Is Uruguay next to suffer from foreign intervention because it its new marijuana laws [91-93]? In countries like Pakistan this leads to blowback [94] and oustings [95-96]]. No amount of torture [97-111] (even in Poland) and coverup of torture [112-118] is going to stop (secrets come out sooner or later [119]); usually it only contributes to blowback, a term which the CIA itself coined. This is why we need WikiLeaks [120], bringing accountability to those who abuse power.

The US has become known for drone assassinations due to the bad strategy ‘championed’ by the CIA [121-123]; WikiLeaks proponents are outraged given what they know [124]. Iraq is probably next as a place in which to carry out such assassination, based on the shipment of Hellfire missiles [125-127] (not noticed much because of the Christmas vacation, just like the bombings of Gaza [128-129]). The Pentagon shows no signs of stopping this assassination policy [130-131] and Obama’s promise of reducing drones use are as useless as ever, as an article from Boxing Day [132] helps explain. It was first published (now in many Web sites) after Obama’s drones had killed people on Christmas Day [133-138] (Obama personally orders these strikes [139]) for the first time ever, leading to much anger even at a political level [140-143], which means that the wrath of political espionage/retaliation by NSA is possible (Pentagon chief Hagel had been trying to dodge this public backlash [144-146]). This wasn’t the only attack by drones at that time [147-148] and it happened in multiple nations. Sincerity is a huge casualty [149-152] because the secrecy here works against the CIA, not for it. This breeds a lot of excess suspicion [153-154]. In Yemen, lack of communication [155-157] does a huge damage after imprecise methods (air strikes [158]) rendered yet another botched attack on wedding goers [159-176]. The New York Times’ CIA-leaning coverage of this was exceptionally disgusting [177]. People in Western nation [178-182] and also in the Arab world strongly condemn this [183-185], but the strategy evidently carries on, even on Christmas day (shortly afterwards). It’s the Pentagon’s “Weapon of choice” [186-188] as it breeds hatred [189], even from journalists [190-191] (whom Obama wanted arrested or killed). Don’t be deceived by Obama exploiting Nelson Mandela’s death for publicity; remember the CIA’s role in the attacks on Mandela [192-198] (the corporate press belittles this fact [199]). “As engineers, we must consider the ethical implications of our work,” one writer recently stressed [200], so all these criticisms of the drones war [] should be taken into account in this context. The people who want to use technology against people are usually not technical people; they have leverage and control over some who are. We need to refuse to obey such people. Whenever we are told that a “militant” dies we should read that as “adult male” (the New York Times already admitted that this is what it means by “militant”). The corporate press is very much in this killing game, especially press with CIA ties. Anger over drones has become too easy to find in the news [201-205], even Western news channels (although usually in sections written by readers and authorised reluctantly by editors for ‘balance’).

There is some hope though. In the UK, there is an unprecedented legal challenge to CIA’s drones strikes. It has reached the Court of Appeal [206]. Bribes from the CIA to various obedient leaders are being discovered now; these help discredit the work of those merciless assassins [207]. $2.5 million of taxpayers’ money also gets given to ‘disappear’ CIA agents that got caught [208]. How will taxpayers react now? Nice employers, eh? Overnight is needed here [209].

Through Bezos and Amazon contracts, the CIA has been getting closer to the private sector (Amazon can help track book reading habits, purchasing history, etc. [210]), so there is clearly an expansionary issue here — a shift of power from government-protected (impunity) thugs to the private sector. This ought to worry not just non-US citizen because with NDAA 2014 (also passed the over Christmas vacation [211-]216) a lot of the above policies are now applicable universally, i.e. the CIA can ‘disappear’ US citizens, even those to whom it gives bait [217]. Jailing is becoming a selection process that’s motivated politically and so is assassination. This is hugely worrisome. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Toronto police officer strips naked “hundreds” of people

   Const. Sasa Sljivo told court on Dec. 11 he has stripped “hundreds” of people completely naked, which is against police policy as laid out by the Supreme Court.

2. Officer who forced dozens of anal cavity searches for fun gets only 2 years in prison

3. Outraged India backs retaliation against US after strip search of its country’s diplomat

4. Lawsuit: police and doctors at UMC El Paso forced innocent woman to endure multiple warrantless cavity searches

5. Lawsuit: Woman Faced Illegal Body Cavity Search, Observed Bowel Movement

   Federal agents wrongfully strip-searched a New Mexico woman at the El Paso border crossing, then took her to a hospital where she was forced to undergo illegal body cavity probes in an attempt to find drugs, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.

6. Texas Court Allows Cops To Search First, Acquire Warrants Later

   There are several problems with what went on here, not the least of which is the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ determination that these officers (in effect) did nothing wrong. According to the court, the pre-warrant search may have been illegal but the evidence can’t be excluded because its existence was confirmed by an “independent source.”

7. Judicial activism allows police to get away with illegal conduct

   The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last week adopted yet another court-created federal exception to the exclusionary rule in state-level search and seizure cases that allows evidence to be admitted in the face of clear police misconduct, even though Texas has a statutory exclusionary rule that – unlike the court-created federal version – includes no exceptions on its face. See Judge Elsa Alcala’s opinion (pdf) on behalf of the majority, a concurrence (pdf) from Judge Tom Price, and a dissent (pdf) from Judge Lawrence Meyers.

8. Mom as the New Face of Anarchy? Police Terrorize Americans Who Object to Right-Wing Lunacy by Using “Anarchist” Label

   Dissent is once again a criminal act in America. People who object to right-wing lunacy used to be called “communists” and treated as enemies of the state. Now “anarchist” is the label of choice used to harass those who disagree.

9. Private security guards to get powers to arrest people on the street

10. More Protesters Arrested As Obama’s Deportation Record Nears 2 Million

    Eight demonstrators tied themselves to one another wrist-to-wrist in the falling snow Tuesday morning, and lay down across the road in a human chain, blocking access to an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, N.J. Detention officers on their way to work waited in a line of cars stretching down the street.

11. Feel free to annoy me

    We have previously warned that everyone from Christian street preachers to peaceful protesters will be subject to new draconian powers proposed by the Home Office which mean that individuals that are considered annoying can be driven from the streets. That is why we are very happy to support the newly formed Reform Clause 1 campaign which was launched in Parliament yesterday.

12. The war on democracy

    How corporations and spy agencies use “security” to defend profiteering and crush activism

13. TSA Agent: Give Me That Toy Monkey Gun Or I’m Calling The Real Cops

14. NYPD Now Preventing Journalists From Accessing Police Blotters

15. DHS Interrogates NY Times Reporters At Border, Then Denies Having Any Records About Them

16. Police Who Seized Woman’s Phone As ‘Evidence’ Of Bogus Crime Now Complaining About Criticism

    Photography Is Not A Crime is in the middle of another police department vs. citizen feud and this one, like the last, is based on dubious “crimes” and a police department’s disingenuous legal response to being slammed with phone calls as a result of its own actions.

    The story starts out with a Louisiana woman (Theresa Richard) being arrested by Crowley Police Dept. officers for recording inside a police station. This was the latest in a long line of attempts by the CPD to silence and intimidate Richard after she filed a lawsuit against the department for false arrest and imprisonment stemming from an incident last year, when she (along with other members of her family) were accosted by police officers and accused of stealing a safe.

17. Brutal Repression of Students in UK Amid Mainstream Media Blackout

    UK students protesting corporate attacks against their rights to education, control over their universities, and freedom of expression were brutally repressed by the British police in cooperation with university officials.

18. London’s Students Reclaimed Their Campus Yesterday

19. London’s biggest university bans student protests

    Students protesting in an area at the centre of London’s student district could be imprisoned or fined, after the University of London obtains a court order banning protests on campus for six months.

20. #CopsOffCampus Protest: LIVE BLOG

21. ‘Sexual harassment’ dropped from boy’s record

    Officials at a Colorado school where a 6-year-old boy was suspended for kissing a girl have dropped the term “sexual harassment” from the boy’s record, instead calling the behavior misconduct.

    The change was made after the boy’s parents and the principal met to discuss the issue.

22. Texas cops handcuff and take 13-year-old white girl from black guardians

23. Three black students waiting for bus arrested after cops order them to ‘disperse’

24. Child taken from womb by social services

    Exclusive: Essex social services have obtained a court order against a woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and for her child to be taken from her womb by caesarean section

25. In Katrina killing of Henry Glover, jury verdict sends one father home while family grieves for another

26. Group of soldiers ‘mutinied over hungover bosses’, court martial hears

    The group of 16 soldiers who felt they were being “led by muppets” staged a mutiny by sitting down on parade and refusing to get up, a court martial hears

27. ‘Oh you’re gonna shoot me?’ The sarcastic last words of straight-A student shot dead by college cop after being stopped for speeding

28. Cops: “If we have to get a warrant…we’re gonna shoot and kill your dogs”

    Eric Crinnian, an attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, says police came to his door looking for parole violators, and got upset when he refused them permission to tramp through his house and paw through his possessions. In fact, he claims, one cop went so far as to threaten to shoot his dogs if he made them abide by the requirements of the law by getting a search warrant to look through his home. Remarkably, a criminal justice professor says the police actions may not be illegal, though they could be awkward in court.

29. Kansas City Cops Tell Man They’ll Kill His Dogs And Destroy His Home If Forced To Obtain A Search Warrant

30. Unarmed Man Charged With Assault Because NYC Police Shot At Him And Hit Random Pedestrians

31. Khan attacks Cameron’s stance on European court of human rights

32. New London police powers: the right to bite

33. PHOTOS: 100,000 South Koreans Protest Election Scandal, Labor Clampdown

    From noon till late at night, about 100,000 citizens and labor workers angrily demonstrated against the current government’s election manipulation scandal and clampdowns on labor groups as well as moves toward privatization of the nation’s railway system, though the administration denies such claims. Some observers are calling the outbreak of demonstrations proof that public anger has nearly “reached its boiling point” [ko].

34. Holocaust survivor: How can Israel make people into numbers?

35. In official document, Israeli authorities refer to asylum seekers as numbers

    Sometimes it’s kind of scary how Israel treats asylum seekers. From jailing them with no trial to brutal arrests and now, referring to them as numbers. It’s as if they don’t think they’re human beings, with names.

    Yuval Goren, a journalist from the daily Maariv, got hold of a document in which the state asks the court to sentence the 153 asylum seekers who recently marched from the Holot “open detention facility” in the Negev to Tel Aviv to three months in jail.

36. Jailed Pussy Riot members could be released under Kremlin amnesty

    Russian newspaper reports bill submitted by Vladimir Putin would apply to Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina

37. Freed Pussy Riot members say they still want to remove Vladimir Putin

38. Two members of Russia punk band Pussy Riot freed from prison

    Two jailed members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were released Monday following an amnesty law that both of them described as Kremlin’s public relations stunt ahead of the Winter Olympics.

39. Pussy Riot Member: Release Is PR Stunt

    A member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot who was released from prison Monday denounced her release within hours.

40. Pussy Riot members and Arctic 30 protesters set to walk free

    Russia expected to pass amnesty law with amendment extending scope to include those arrested on Greenpeace ship

41. Shocker: Snowden, Manning, NSA not on Google’s 2013 top trends

42. Snowden, Manning, NSA didn’t hit Google’s 2013 top trends list

43. Gender segregation not ‘alien to our culture’, says Universities UK chief

44. On Feminism, Anti-Feminism, and the Things That Mystify Me

45. Sweden Is Closing Prisons Due to Lack of People to Put In Them

46. Huge Threats to Fundamental Freedoms and Rights Consolidated in the French Parliament

    Despite the strong citizen mobilisation and the numerous reactions [fr] voiced against it, the French Senate just voted in second reading the controversial 2014-2019 Defense Bill and its dangerous terms without any changes. This vote closes parliamentary debate on this text: the French Constitutional Council alone can now alter the application of these measures infringing the basic rights of citizens. La Quadrature du Net strongly calls the members of the French Parliament to formally place the matter before the Constitutional Council for a decision on the conformity of this law to the French Constitution.

47. UN Syrian chemical weapons report exposes Washington’s lies

    The release of a United Nations chemical weapons inspectors’ report pointing to multiple sarin gas attacks carried out by so-called “rebel” forces further exposes the Obama administration’s lies about Syrian government responsibility for an August 21 chemical shelling of the Ghouta area outside of Damascus.

48. CIA Document Suggests U.S. Lied About Biological, Chemical Weapon Use in the Korean War

    According to a CIA document declassified in March 2006, the U.S. government lied publicly about pushing for a United Nations “on-the-spot” investigation into Soviet, Chinese and North Korean charges of U.S. use of biological weapons (BW) during the Korean War.

    According to the document, a “Memorandum of Conversation” from the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) dated July 6, 1953, the U.S. was not serious about conducting any investigation into such charges, despite what the government said publicly. The reason the U.S. didn’t want any investigation was because an “actual investigation” would reveal military operations, “which, if revealed, could do us psychological as well as military damage.”

49. CIA chief betrayed me, says ex-boss of tainted security firm

    THE former head of the US security contractor Blackwater, vilified as a mercenary who personified the excesses of the war on terror, has spoken of his feeling of “ultimate betrayal” after being outed by the Obama administration as a CIA agent.

    With his all-American good looks, assured manner and a powerful physique that befits a former US Navy Seal, Erik Prince is a difficult man to feel sorry for. He arrives for an interview wearing Kaenon sunglasses and a leather flying jacket with the insignia of Presidential Airways — one of his former companies.

50. Lawyer Suing Bank of China Brings ‘Private CIA’ to Boies

51. The Jason Bourne Strategy: CIA Contractors Do Hollywood

52. CIA’s Global Shadow War: Hiring Private Mercenaries And Former Guantanamo Inmates

    Think of it as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) 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.

53. Globally Renowned Activist Collaborated with Stratfor

    These revelations come in the aftermath of thousands of new emails released by Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files.” The emails reveal Popovic worked closely with Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based private firm that gathers intelligence on geopolitical events and activists for clients ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and Archer Daniels Midland to Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Intel and Coca-Cola.

54. CIA-backed Palantir Technologies raises $107.5 million

    Palantir Technologies, the data-mining company that is partly backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, has raised another $107.5 million, according to a filing.

55. CIA-backed Palantir valued at $9bn

56. CIA-backed Palantir reportedly worth $9 billion, jumping 50 percent in two months

57. It’s An Interesting World Where Wikipedia Is More Accurate Than Both The CIA And The Wall Street Journal

58. Golders Green historian believes the CIA killed US president JFK

    Historian Dr Helen Fry believes the CIA is responsible for JFK’s assassination

59. Three of Six Shooters of JFK Had Ties to CIA | Sherwood Ross

    Six shooters who participated in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including three with ties to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), were named by a prominent critic of the Warren Commission Report (WCR). Remarkably, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Warren Commission’s lone-assassin-designate, was not among them.

60. Washington Post Urged to Disclose New Owner’s CIA Ties

    The Washington Post, one of the premier mouthpieces for the establishment, is facing a tsunami of criticism and calls for full disclosure after the newspaper’s new owner, Amazon CEO and Bilderberg luminary Jeff Bezos, secured a $600 million contract with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for “cloud” services. According to critics, the Washington Post boss’s CIA ties represent a serious conflict of interest that, under basic ethical standards in journalism, must be disclosed to readers — at least whenever the paper is reporting on the “intelligence community” and its activities. So far, however, the Post has not publicly announced whether or not it will acknowledge what analysts say is a cut-and-dry conflict of interest.

61. Amazon, ‘The Washington Post’ and That $600 MIllion CIA Contract

62. 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.

63. Ex-CIA analyst: NYT Benghazi article ‘an effort to revive discredited theory’ of anti-Islam video

    A former CIA analyst poured cold water over the New York Times’ new report suggesting al-Qaida was not involved in the September 11, 2012 attack against American targets in Benghazi, Libya — calling the article “an effort to revive this discredited theory that the anti-Islam video was behind it.”

    Fred Fleitz spoke with Fox News’ Jamie Colby about the “bombshell” New York Times report published Saturday, which claims the murder of Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was carried out by Libyans angry over an American-made anti-Islamic video posted on Youtube.com months before the attack.

64. CIA Benghazi Team Clash Led to ‘Stand Down’ Report

65. American shot in Benghazi is allegedly CIA agent – Libyan sources

    Sources within Libya, including intelligence sources within the Libyan Tribal system have reported that the American shot in Benghazi today Ronald Thomas Smith II was not a teacher as was widely reported. Tribal elders report that currently there are no foreign teachers employed in Libya and that Ronald Smith was in Tripoli meeting John McCain on Tuesday and Wednesday according to sources who were present during the meetings.

66. NYT and ABC News lied about CIA operative

    Since 2007, ABC News and the New York Times have known that ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, missing in Iran, was spying there for the CIA.

67. ABC, NYT Repeatedly Lied About CIA Operative Robert Levinson

68. Should the AP And Washington Post Have Published Their Scoop On The CIA?

69. A nascent CIA in the 1940s and 1950s helped shape the Middle East, author says

    Given the number of books and articles about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its controversial undertakings across the globe, it’s surprising that the US spy agency’s first encounters with the Arab and Muslim world have not garnered more attention. Hugh Wilford’s new account, America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, is an attempt to illuminate this dark and murky terrain.

70. You’ll Never Guess Where This FBI Agent Left a Secret Interrogation Manual

71. FBI Agent Tries To Register Copyright On Top Secret Interrogation Manual… Making It Available To Anyone

72. A retired FBI agent goes on an unauthorized CIA mission to Iran, then disappears

73. Senators clash with justice department lawyer over CIA intelligence memos

    CIA nominee Caroline Krass angers intelligence committee by claiming legal opinions on surveillance are beyond its scope

74. CIA probe into Bay of Pigs should be kept secret – Obama admin

    Over 50 years after the Bay of Pigs invasion went awry, the US federal government is still attempting to keep secrets about the failed overthrow of the Cuban government, with an Obama administration lawyer arguing this week to keep a document classified.

75. Attorney targets CIA in his war on secrecy

    Kuzma’s suit against the CIA came just six months after he filed a freedom of information suit against the FBI on behalf of Leslie Pickering, a former spokesman for the press office of the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group.

    Pickering knows the FBI is watching him but says he wants to know how and whether others have been targeted.

    Kuzma also is working with Irwin on a federal freedom of information suit brought by members of Occupy Buffalo.

    The group is seeking information documenting the extent of the government’s surveillance of the protest group.

76. Former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko: William Hague wins secrecy fight over inquest

    Foreign Secretary William Hague today won a ruling to keep documents relating to the death of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko out of the public domain ahead of a proposed inquest.

    Sir Robert Owen, the coroner presiding over the inquest into Mr Litvinenko’s murder, ruled earlier this year that a cache of Government papers concerning matters of relating to the death could not be withheld on grounds of national security.

77. Obama pressured to locate missing CIA contractor in Iran

    Associated Press’ national security writer, Lara Jakes, wrote on Friday evening that the CIA paid Levinson’s family about $120,000, the value of the new contract the agency was preparing for him when he left for Iran, and the government gave the family a $2.5 million annuity, which provides tax-free income, multiple people briefed on the deal said. No one wanted a lawsuit that would air the secret details.

78. Robert Levinson: Used by CIA, Forgotten by USA, Burned by Media, Left in Iran

    Robert Levinson was used by the CIA, forgotten by the USA, recently burned by media revelations, and left in Iran nearly seven years ago. The details surrounding the Levinson case are complex and his present whereabouts and physical condition are unconfirmed. It was back in 2007 that the retired FBI agent went missing in Iran. The story at the time was that he was simply a business man who had traveled there for private purposes. This idea has since been discounted as recent media revelations clearly assert that Levinson was in fact contracted in some capacity by the CIA. The revelations go on to show that, contrary to past statements by U.S. officials denying his connection to the government, Levinson had indeed been working on an unsanctioned intelligence gathering mission when he went missing.

79. A disappearing US spy, and a scandal at the CIA

    Robert A. Levinson was an overweight bear of a man who once worked as an FBI 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.

80. CIA’s anti-terrorism effort called ‘colossal flop’

    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.”

81. How the CIA Bungled the War on 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.

82. Truman’s True Warning on the CIA

    National security secrecy and a benighted sense of “what’s good for the country” can be a dangerous mix for democracy, empowering self-interested or misguided officials to supplant the people’s will, as President Truman warned and ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.

83. Cuba’s Raul Castro calls for ‘civilised relations’ with US

    Cuban President Raul Castro has called for “civilised relations” with the United States, saying the two countries should respect their differences.

84. Elian Gonzalez Leaves Cuba, Slams the U.S.

85. This is the lethal electronic kit that changed Colombia’s history

    The war against Colombia’s socialist insurgency has turned on a campaign of targeted assassinations of rebel leaders using technology provided by the US.

86. Beyond Plan Colombia: Covert CIA Program Reveals Critical U.S. Role in Killings of Rebel Leaders

    A new report has exposed a secret CIA program in Colombia that has helped kill at least two dozen rebel leaders. According to the Washington Post, the program relies on key help from the National Security Agency and is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It began under former President George W. Bush, but continues under President Obama. The program has crippled the FARC rebel group by targeting its leaders using bombs equipped with GPS guidance. Up until 2010, the CIA controlled the encryption keys that allowed the bombs to read GPS data. In one case, in 2008, the United States and Colombia discovered a FARC leader hiding in Ecuador. According to the report, “To conduct an airstrike meant a Colombian pilot flying a Colombian plane would hit the camp using a U.S.-made bomb with a CIA-controlled brain.” The attack killed the rebel leader and sparked a major flareup of tensions with Ecuador and Venezuela. The U.S. role in that attack had not previously been reported. We’re joined by the reporter who broke this story, Dana Priest of the Washington Post. Priest is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter whose work focuses on intelligence and counterterrorism.

87. Correa slams report on CIA role in Ecuador strike

    Ecuador President Rafael Correa warned Monday that reports US intelligence played a role in a 2008 Colombian attack on FARC rebels in his country could threaten regional peace efforts.

    Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that a secret Central Intelligence Agency program had helped Colombia kill at least two dozen leftist guerrilla leaders.

88. CIA Fuels Decades-Long Class Conflict by Helping Colombian Military Drop ‘Smart Bombs’ on Rebel Leaders

89. ‘Eavesdropping and smart bombs’: CIA secret program helped Colombia kill FARC rebels

    A secret US intelligence program has helped Colombia’s government kill at least two dozen leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the rebel insurgency also known as FARC, The Washington Post reported.

90. CIA helps Colombia kill rebel leaders: Report

    And the paper says the US provided Colombia with GPS equipment that can be used to transform regular munitions into “smart bombs” that can accurately home in on specific targets, even if they are located in dense jungles.

91. Uruguay Marijuana Law Signed By President Jose Mujica

92. Uruguay legalizes sale and production of marijuana

93. UN Agency Pissed Off That Uruguay Legalized Marijuana

    Here comes the backlash: one day after Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalize marijuana, a United Nations drug control agency issued a press release condemning the country’s decision.

94. Pakistan Outs Three US CIA Station Chiefs in Three Years

    For the third time in three years, a CIA station chief has been outed in Pakistan, a country where the CIA is running one of its largest covert operations. It’s a remarkable record of failure by the CIA, since each outing, which has required a replacement of the station chief position, causes a breakdown in the agency’s network of contacts in the country.

95. Controversy over CIA station chief

    To a question, Mazari said if the PTI discovered the name of pilot who had operated the drone, then the name will be shared with the police and ostensibly he or she will also be nominated in the FIR.

96. US Congress, CIA still feuding over secret prisons

97. MPs take over inquiry into use of Scottish airports for CIA flights

    An inquiry into whether Scottish airports were used by the CIA to transport terror suspects to secret prisons for torture has been scrapped and handed over to MPs.

98. Rights court to examine claims of CIA torture in Poland

    The European Court of Human Rights will on Tuesday examine claims that Poland turned a blind eye to the torture on its territory of two Guantanamo-bound prisoners of the CIA. Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah, a 42-year-old Palestinian, and Saudia Arabian national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 48, will tell the court that the government in Warsaw authorised the US intelligence agency to detain their clients in Poland for several months in 2002-03 and that they were repeatedly tortured by waterboarding during that time.

99. Europe rights court hearing on secret CIA prisons

    Europe’s human rights court shone a rare public light Tuesday on the secret network of European prisons that the CIA used to interrogate terror suspects, reviving memories and questions about the “extraordinary renditions” that angered many on this continent.

100. Two terror suspects sue Poland over ‘CIA torture’

     The European Court of Human Rights is hearing a case brought by two terror suspects who accuse Poland of conniving in US human rights abuses.

101. First ever open court hearing held on the CIA ‘black site’ prison in Poland

102. Guantanamo Detainees Accuse Poland of Role in Extraordinary Rendition and CIA Torture

     Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri bring first case against Poland at ECHR

103. Guantánamo Bay detainees claim Poland allowed CIA torture

     Terror suspects subjected to extraordinary rendition tell European court of human rights they were waterboarded

104. Europe rights court hears of CIA prisons

     Lawyers say a Saudi national and a Palestinian were tortured in a secret US facility in a remote part of Poland.

105. CIA Torture Report Poised for Release — At Least Some of It

106. Poland allowed CIA to torture two Gitmo men, court told

107. Rendition and torture — interview on RT

108. MPs take over inquiry into use of Scottish airports for CIA flights

     An inquiry into whether Scottish airports were used by the CIA to transport terror suspects to secret prisons for torture has been scrapped and handed over to MPs.

109. MI6 ‘turned blind eye’ to torture of rendered detainees, finds Gibson report

     Britain’s intelligence agencies ‘totally unprepared’ for US response to 9/11 and years later ‘co-operated with interrogations’

110. European judges grill Poland over allegations of CIA jail

     But Polish envoys said they could not share information with the court because that could compromise a separate investigation by Polish prosecutors, and because the court could not guarantee the information would be kept confidential.

     “The government does not wish to confirm or deny the facts cited by the applicants,” Artur Nowak-Far, under-secretary of state in the Polish foreign ministry, told the court.

111. European court hears claims Poland turned blind eye to CIA torture

     The European Court of Human Rights yesterday heard claims that Poland had turned a blind eye to the torture of two Guantanamo-bound prisoners of the CIA on its soil.

     The case marks the first time Europe’s role in the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” of terror suspects reached the European Court of Human Rights.

     Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah, a 42-year-old Palestinian, and Saudi Arabian national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 48, told the court that Warsaw authorised the US intelligence agency to detain their clients in Poland for several months in 2002-03.

112. ACLU Files Suit Against CIA For Failure To Release Reports On Torture Program

113. Senate intelligence committee presses CIA to release torture report

114. Senators: CIA ‘Misleading’ Public Over Secret Torture Report

115. Senate committee asks CIA to hand over report on interrogation

116. Senators: CIA Deliberately Misleading Public on Torture Report

     Three years, $40 million and 6,000+ pages later, the report on CIA torture and secret prisons during the Bush era is still stuck in the declassification process, with CIA officials fighting the Senators calling for its release.

117. Internal CIA Report on Torture Agrees with Senate Report That the CIA Disagreed With

118. The 6,000-Page Report on CIA Torture Has Now Been Suppressed for 1 Year

     It cost $40 million to produce, documents serious wrongdoing, and doesn’t threaten national security. Team Obama won’t release it.

119. CIA interfered with Lockerbie case, says former US prosecutor

120. ‘Not real James Bonds’: Assange explains why ‘small publisher’ WikiLeaks beat the Pentagon

     WikiLeaks’ major achievement is in weakening the authority of US intelligence, according to the whistleblowing website founder, Julian Assange, who has just marked three years under virtual house arrest in the UK.

     Julian Assange believes that the WikiLeaks website he founded represents “an example of a small publisher beating the Pentagon” and by doing so reducing the public fear of government institutions.

121. Known by our drones

     U.S. drone attacks have killed 2,446 civilians in the last decade in Pakistan alone. The Pakistanis know us by our drones, not by our love.

122. America in 2013: Impressions from around the world

     “To me, America means drones, and drones mean the death of our people. How can we be friends with those who kill our people?” says Murad Ali, a rickshaw driver in Peshawar, Pakistan. “When Obama became the president, I hoped that there would be a positive change in American policies. I am surprised that Obama proved himself to be the enemy of Pakistani people and Muslims.”

123. Medea Benjamin talks “Drone Warfare” with VOR, part 2

124. Imran shocked over Nawaz Sharif’s statement on drones

     Chairman PTI Imran Khan expressed shock and disappointment over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s statement that PTI’s drone protest was isolating Pakistan.
     Khan, in a statement, reminded the PM that PML-N, along with the PPP had not only been a party to the parliamentary resolutions (present and previous) against drones, but also party to the anti-drone resolution in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provincial Assembly.

125. U.S. sending missiles drones to Iraq

126. US sending missiles, drones to Iraq

     The daily wrote that 10 ScanEagle reconnaissance drones — smaller versions of the larger Predator drones that once were frequently flown over Iraq — are expected to be sent by March. Administration sources told the Times that the delivery comes as the Iraqis had virtually run out of Hellfire missiles.

127. US sending missiles, drones to Iraq to battle al-Qaida

128. Israel launches airstrike in Gaza

129. The Killings Fields of Gaza

130. The Pentagon’s Vision for the Future of Military Drones

131. DoD: To conquer nations and budgets, combat must go totally autonomous

132. President Obama’s new normal: the drone strikes continue

     Americans abhor mass shootings in our communities, but why do we allow our government to kill so many innocents abroad?

133. Four killed in fresh North Waziristan drone attack

134. US drones kill 4 ‘militants’ in North Waziristan strike

135. 4 Killed in U.S. Drone Strike in NW Pakistan

136. Drone Strike in Pakistan Was First to Be Launched by Obama Administration on Christmas Day

137. Aerial violation: US drone kills four in North Waziristan

138. 4 killed in U.S. drone strike in NW Pakistan

139. Former drone pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel: Obama personally orders drone killings

     Unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as ‘drones’, are in high demand and are a multimillion dollar industry. They are praised for not risking pilot’s lives and are formidable weapon – a nightmare for the enemy. But there are loud voices that label them as unaccountable killing machines and demand they be banned. Today we talk about the drone controversy with a former drone pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Black.

140. PAKISTAN TO RAISE DRONES ISSUE AT U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL

141. Pakistan condemns North Waziristan drone strike

142. Pakistan says drone strikes constitute dangerous precedent in inter-state relations

143. Pakistan to table anti-drone resolution at UN rights council

     Pakistan is planning to introduce an anti-drone resolution at an upcoming meeting of the UN Human rights Council in Geneva, Press TV reports.

144. Pentagon chief Hagel in Pakistan for talks on security, drones

     Islamabad says drone strikes kill too many civilians and violate its sovereignty.

145. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel talks drones with Pakistan PM amid tensions

146. Pentagon chief in rare Pakistan visit amid more rows over CIA drone strikes

     Chuck Hagel wants to bolster fraught relations with Pakistan as airstrikes continue to cause anger and suspicion

147. Drone Strike Kills Two Qaida Suspects in Yemen

     An alleged U.S. drone strike killed two al-Qaida suspects in Yemen’s southeastern province of Hadramawt Friday, an official said, a day after U.N. rights experts expressed “serious concern” over such attacks.

     “The drone raid targeted a vehicle in which two al-Qaida suspects were travelling completely destroying it and killing them,” the government official in Hadramawt — an al-Qaida stronghold — told Agence France Presse.

     The source could not immediately identify the suspects.

148. Yemen drone strike kills two Al Qaida suspects

     Sana’a: At least two alleged Al Qaida fighters were killed on Friday in the Yemen’s southeastern Hadramout province, security official told Gulf News.

149. Is al Qaeda outdoing the U.S. on truth telling?

     It has long been said that in war, “truth is the first casualty.”

     It is generally accepted, however, that the United States, the world’s leading democracy, should try to make truth-telling a common practice when it goes to war.

     When Gen. David Petraeus was U.S. commander in Afghanistan in 2010 he issued guidance to his troops, one of the key points of which was to “be first with the truth.” The guidance explained, “Avoid spinning, and don’t try to ‘dress up’ an ugly situation. Acknowledge setbacks and failures, including civilian casualties, and then state how we’ll respond and what we’ve learned.”

150. Philip Hammond ignores the truth about drone atrocities

151. Drone Killings Show Numbers, Not Bodies

152. Obama Run Amuck

     The Ishaq Principle has the weight of mathematical law: Kill, kill, kill, profess no knowledge of the killing, throw a curtain of extreme secrecy around the event, and make special provision for wedding parties, more especially traversing remote areas. Drone murder is a WAR CRIME. Its personal authorization by POTUS makes him a war criminal. Period. We may pretend, as is now happening, that Putin is evil incarnate, but if so, I contend that Obama is keeping up with him, atrocity for atrocity.

153. Was the CIA involved in the Jonestown Massacre?

154. Reagan administration, CIA complicit in DEA agent’s murder, say former insiders

     Former DEA El Paso boss: Agent 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.

155. Latest Drone Strikes Shows How U.S. Strategy in Yemen Is Backfiring

156. U.S. drone strikes in Yemen likely to continue despite parliamentary ban

     Yemen’s parliament has voted for a ban on drone strikes, but experts said Monday lawmakers have limited powers and their vote is unlikely to impact Washington’s bid to crush Al-Qaeda militants.

157. Letter: Drones kill indiscriminately

     These drone strikes are NOT the antiseptic, surgical strikes claimed by the administration. It is NOT only an unknown number of terrorists that are being killed, it is also ordinary people trying to live lives like you and me. What could possibly give the United States the right to send our deadly weapons into other countries and kill its citizens? Just imagine how the U.S. would react if another country were to send its drones here with the excuse it is killing people who may do harm to their country. How many of us would not want to turn our fury on the invading country?

158. The Drone Next Door

     “Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

     “‘Did we just kill a kid?’ he asked the man sitting next to him.

     “‘Yeah, I guess that was a kid,’” the pilot replied.

     “‘Was that a kid?’ they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.

     “Then someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. ‘No. That was a dog,’ the person wrote.

     “They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?”

     Welcome to pixel war.

159. A Yemeni tribal leader yesterday denied that there were Al Qaida members in the wedding convoy

160. The Aftermath of Drone Strikes on a Wedding Convoy in Yemen

161. Killing Two Birds With One Drone

162. US Drone Strike Targets Yemeni Wedding

     “Before any strike is taken,” President Obama assured us in his speech this May on U.S. Drone and Counter-terrorism policy, “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” Nice words, but as Jon Snow remarks in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, “Men are men, vows are words, and words are wind.” Sorry, I can’t help it if a GOT quote most aptly fit there.

163. Column: When your drones kill people at a wedding, an apology might be in order

164. Yemeni move unlikely to end US drone strikes

     Yemen’s parliament has voted for a ban on drone strikes, but experts said Monday lawmakers have limited powers and their vote is unlikely to impact Washington’s bid to crush Al-Qaeda militants.

     The United States operates all unmanned aircraft flying over Yemen in support of Sanaa’s attempts to break Al-Qaeda, and intensified strikes this year have killed dozens of militants.

165. U.S. Drone Strike “Mistakenly” Murders 15 Wedding Guests in Yemen

     For those of us concerned with the Constitution, due process, and the rule of law, however, “suspected militant” is just a euphemism for a person not charged with any crime, not afforded even the most perfunctory due process protections, but executed by presidential decree anyway. In this way, we are no better than those we kill in the name of safety.

166. U.S. drone strike on Yemen wedding party kills 17

     Anger over the American drone campaign against militants in Yemen swelled Friday with word that most of those killed in a strike a day earlier were civilians in a wedding party.

     The death toll reached 17 overnight, hospital officials in central Bayda province said Friday. Five of those killed were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda, but the remainder were unconnected with the militancy, Yemeni security officials said.

167. Officials: US drone strike kills 13 in Yemen wedding convoy

     Missiles fired by a U.S. drone slammed into a convoy of vehicles traveling to a wedding party in central Yemen on Thursday, killing at least 13 people, Yemeni security officials said.

168. Drone strike kills 15 ‘wedding party-goers’ in Yemen

     Fifteen people who had been heading to a wedding in Yemen have been killed in an air strike. Local media reported that a drone attack had been responsible, and the party-goers had been hit instead of an Al-Qaeda convoy

169. Yemen: The CIA Has No Idea Who The 13 People They Just Killed With a Drone Are

     Missiles fired by a US drone struck a convoy of vehicles on their merry way to a wedding in Yemen on Thursday, killing AT LEAST 13 people, and leaving charred bodies and vehicles littering a road. Thing is, nobody really knows whether these were good guys or bad guys. Either way, they’re dead.

     One military official told the Associated Press that the drone mistook the wedding party for an al-Qaida convoy, killing local tribesmen instead of terrorists. In other words, a bunch of innocent civilians just got toasted by the good, ole U S of A.

170. U.S. Drone Strikes Kill 18 Yemeni Civilians In One Week

     Eighteen Yemeni civilians have been killed this week in two separate attacks by U.S. military drones.

171. Yemen: Death of 15 civilians in airstrike underscores serious lack of accountability

172. We Still Don’t Know How Many Civilians Have Been Killed by Drones

     A truck full of 14 people is bumping its way down rural Yemen when, out of nowhere, a missile strikes. And then another. Children are killed, officials argue with local tribesmen over whether or not the 11 killed in the strike were members of al-Qaeda. The US, which doesn’t take ownership of the strike for months, refuses to comment further.

173. Attack on Wedding Convoy One of the Worst in History of Drone War in Yemen

     A drone strike by the United States, which targeted a wedding convoy, reportedly killed anywhere from ten to seventeen people and injured as many as thirty individuals.

174. U.S. drone strike kils more than a dozen people on their way to a wedding

175. Dilemma deepens as drones kill more civilians

176. Unmanned and Undiscerning

     With the development of robotic warfare, accountability has virtually gone extinct.

177. The Official Story: How NY Times Covers Yemen Drone Strikes

     So most of the dead appeared to be people suspected of being linked to Al Qaeda. That’s a whole lot of qualifiers to make the point that those who were killed were the intended targets.

     But there’s a pattern of the Times doing this.

     In August of this year there were several suspected US drone attacks. Strikes on August 1 and August 8 reportedly killed several civilians, including children, part of a series of drone strikes around that time.

178. A Modest Opinion – Amazon: Primed to Kill

179. My Turn: Drones show folly of War on Terrorism policy

     Another bill, HR-1083, called the “No Armed Drones Act” (NADA), would establish prohibitions to prevent the use of an unmanned aircraft system as a weapon while operating in US airspace. Rep.Welch signed onto this bill on Oct. 22, 2013.

180. Killing with drones is not ‘easy’

     States that have already acquired lethal, remotely piloted aircraft have at least a moral responsibility to use the technology wisely. As a result of CIA actions, the US is creating generations of enemies in some regions of Pakistan – and perhaps at home as well – for no discernible strategic advantage.

181. First Person: Targeted kills are step away from anarchy

     In a recent BBC documentary, it was alleged a short-lived British Army unit called the Military Reaction Force (MRF) had assassinated suspected Republican terrorists on the streets of west Belfast. It was suggested that some of those killed were unarmed.

     One of the interviewed soldiers said: “We were not there to act like an Army unit. We were there in a position to go after IRA and kill them when we found them.”

     Perhaps those of us who criticise the CIA’s activities in Pakistan should ponder what the MRF allegedly did. The agents of the British State – the armed forces and police – are there to uphold the rule of law. Assassination moves us one step closer to anarchy.

182. Letters from Readers: Illegality of drones

     It is difficult to comprehend how our Nobel Peace Prize President can defend lethal unmanned drone Predators and Reapers that deliver Hellfire missiles that kill, maim and terrorize thousands, are hideously immoral and counterproductive. Drones have assassinated wedding parties, children, farmers and rescuers, and murder people who have not been tried in a court of law. They are illegal.

     Drone killings are acts of “premeditated murder.” Murder by sudden or secret attack is a crime in all 50 states, and was banned by Presidents Ford and Reagan.

183. Dear leaders, if you can’t protect drone victims, let the K-P government do it

     We saw our prime minister’s (PM) silence over drones in his visit to the US.

184. The Obama administration needs more transparency in its drone use

     Afghan President Hamid Karzai has referred to civilian casualties caused by U.S. forces as a reason for not signing the agreement. “For years,” Karzai said in a statement issued after the strike, “our people are being killed and their houses are being destroyed under the pretext of the war on terror.”

185. Top comments: “How can a machine honor human rights?”

     Our audience debate whether the U.S. should halt the use of drones in warfare.

186. Weapon of choice

     During the Bush presidency, there were 48 recorded drone strikes in Pakistan; during Obama’s there have been more than 300. Although we would never know the ascertainable number of casualties by drones in Pakistan, commonsense does make some suggestions. The population of a typical village in Fata is not segregated in a manner that militants live on one side while women, children, old and sick people live on the other. Therefore, when a drone kills two or three militants as is often claimed, it must kill many more. That ‘precision kill’ story is humbug.

     More so when, following Israel’s strategy in Palestine, the drones return to target the rescuers gathered to pick up the dead and wounded by the first strike. Are all rescuers militants? And how does one distinguish between a militant and a non-combatant? The New York Times in March 2012 made it easy to define a militant: “All military-age males, armed or unarmed, are considered to be combatants unless there is posthumous evidence proving otherwise.”

187. Kill Decision

     The 21st century with flying cars and android servants envisioned in the likes of The Jetsons and Back to the Future have yet to become a reality, but flying robots do exist—just not in the forms we expected.

188. War from afar: How the Pentagon fell in love with drones

189. Civilian Afghan Deaths from U.S. Drone Strikes Continue to Build Hatred of U.S.

190. Jailed Yemeni journalist receives Human Rights Defenders award

     Abdulelah Haider Shaye, who shed light on US drones in Yemen, is not permited to attend ceremony to receive award

191. Drone film director decries U.S. strikes

     Tahir also talked about how she has experienced the hatred of people who are for the use of drones and how she is often attacked for being a “Taliban sympathizer.” She said that it sometimes goes so far that the topic becomes almost taboo.

192. How Nelson Mandela betrayed us, says ex-wife Winnie

193. Convenient to Ignore

     When Obama took office, it seemed like Africa was finally going to get the serious attention that it deserved in terms of American foreign policy. After generations of neglect from the American government, maybe, just maybe, the United States would recognize the strategic value of the African continent, not to mention the basic need to treat the people of that continent as something more than a basket case full of failed states. Curious that when the United States has been energized, in places such as Libya, the country at issue is more Arab than African, and the man who the United States helped overthrow in Libya was actually emerging as America’s best friend in Africa against the growing threat of extremist Islamic influence and terrorism.

194. Dick Cheney Didn’t Regret His Vote Against Freeing Nelson Mandela, Maintained He Was A ‘Terrorist’

195. Who is a terrorist?

     Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. And as he emerged from prison, he did not seek revenge. He instantly forgave. He sought peace not war. Cheney said he was a terrorist. Was he? Cheney loved war. Mandela loved peace. Who was — who is — the terrorist?

196. Crocodile Tears: It was the CIA that helped jail Nelson Mandela

197. New York Times June 10, 1990 Report: CIA tie in Mandela’s 1962 arrest

198. CIA behind Mandela’s arrest nearly fifty years ago

     The White House has announced President Obama and the First Lady will travel to South Africa next week to honor South African President Nelson Mandela.

199. The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA

     The CIA’s involvement in these activities is unclear, but Leach claims the agency sent South Africans to a facility in Taiwan for advanced psychological warfare training. The Telcom auditing official called the CIA’s alleged wiretap training “very sinister.” He suspects the CIA used the program to develop its own spies in Telcom, to protect its assets in the country at this time.

200. As engineers, we must consider the ethical implications of our work

     Engineers are behind government spying tools and military weapons. We should be conscious of how our designs are used

201. Drones and dirty politics [ad hominem attack on Imran Khan]

202. Community Roundtable: Support U.S. drone use?

203. America’s Drone dilemma

     Congressional representatives and government officials met Jaber and expressed their condolences, but provided no explanations. Nor has the US admitted that it made a mistake.

     A week later, Gen Joseph Dunford, Jr., the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, did apologise for a drone attack that killed a child and seriously wounded two women in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

204. Drone Wars: What’s the Right Policy?

     The United States’ use of lethal drones to kill terrorists in foreign countries began in the Bush administration and has significantly widened under the Obama administration.

205. Fighting terror with a joystick won’t help

     The US must also not forget that the soldiers who slay the innocent from their computer screens will return to their own communities either psychologically damaged or as ruthless killers. It must not be forgotten that 350 US troops returned from Iraq and took their own lives in 2012. Societies that become too comfortable with killing inevitably bear the tragedy themselves. It is in our hands to fill this world with communities of peace through education, rather than communities of war perpetrating random attacks. Time has come for the superpowers to change their plans in the Middle East. They must use education as a weapon, not drones. If they really desire peace, that is.

206. First UK legal challenge to CIA drones reaches Court of Appeal

     An unprecedented attempt to discover if British officials are complicit in the CIA drone campaign in Pakistan reached the Court of Appeal this week.

     The case is brought by Noor Khan, a Pakistani tribesman whose father was among over 40 civilians killed in a March 2011 drone strike.

     Khan’s lawyers are attempting to get English courts to examine whether UK officials at GCHQ share information about targets in Pakistan with the CIA, and whether this could therefore make British spies complicit in murder or war crimes.

207. CIA handed over suitcases and plastic bags full of cash to corrupt Afghan officials

     On December 5, 2013 Rep. Barbara Lee of California asked for and was granted permission to address the United States House of Representatives for one minute regarding the war in Afghanistan. What she said was absolutely shocking!

     “Mr. Speaker, as most of us joined family and friends over Thanksgiving week last week, 2,500 Afghan elders voted on a security agreement that could potentially leave thousands of United States troops in Afghanistan for at least another decade.”

208. CIA Paid Missing American’s Family $2.5 Million to Avoid Lawsuit

     The Associated Press revealed today that “retired” FBI agent Robert Levinson was recruited by a band of rogue CIA analysts to run a totally unauthorized spying operation. He’d been working with them for years, and had a contract since 2006 related to writing articles about his “travels.”

209. CIA: a powerful agency should receive powerful oversight

     Barret details how the CIA was created out of WWII and the failure of intelligence at Pearl Harbor. He said that over the years there have been a number of efforts to keep the power of the CIA in check.

210. 6 Things To Keep In Mind While Shopping On Amazon Black Friday

     If you plan on looking for online deals this Black Friday — and if 2013 is anything like 2012, more than 57 million Americans will — you’ll likely visit a little website called Amazon.com. From the outside, the world’s largest online store works like magic: Click a button and in few days, some chosen item will miraculously show up at your doorstep.

211. Senate setting dangerous precedent on Defense Authorization Bill

212. NDAA draft contains big changes on Gitmo, military sexual assault

     Since 2011, the NDAA has contained provisions for the indefinite detention of American citizens.

213. Cyber and the NDAA

     Congress is in recess now (that’s why it’s so quiet here in Washington) and when they return the first order of business for the Senate is to take up the 2014 NDAA. The bill, authorizing activities of the Department of Defense, is one of the few bills that routinely gets a full hearing in the Senate and has a high likelihood of being passed into law.

     [...]

     In short, S. 1353 does very little of note. Indeed, I am comfortable predicting that it will be added to the NDAA with nary a dissent. And thereafter, Congress may well wash its hands of cybersecurity and mark the problem “sovled” — which, come to think of it, might very well be the best possible result.

214. Obama signs NDAA 2014, indefinite detention remains

     The troubling NDAA provision first signed into law in 2012, which permits the military to detain individuals indefinitely without trial, remains on the books for 2014.

215. Ted Cruz: Indefinite Detention Retained in NDAA 2014

     Eighty-five of 100 U.S. senators voted to renew the president’s power to indefinitely detain Americans, denying them of their fundamental right to due process.

216. BREAKING NEWS: Michigan nullifies NDAA’s indefinite detention

     Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan signed Senate Bill No. 94 into law yesterday. The bill seeks to nullify section 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). “It is important to recall that indefinite detention first appeared in section 1021 of the 2012 NDAA, which provided warrant for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens,” said Snyder.

217. The feds’ guide to bringing down a hacker from the inside

     Jeremy Hammond faces 10 years in prison for hacking Stratfor Global, but many details of his conviction don’t add up