we return to our regularly scheduled coverage of the all-seeing eye....,

 slate | Last night the Washington Post published a major scoop, one showing that the the NSA has "broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year" since 2008. If you're only going to read one NSA story today, make it that one. But for those who want a sneak peek inside the often-frustrating world of national security reporting, journalist Barton Gellman provides it with a complementary post detailing how the Obama administration responded when asked to comment on the leaked documents at the heart of the paper's rather damning report.

In short, the administration directed all questions to John DeLong, NSA's director of compliance, who then proceeded to speak with Gellman at length—albeit with some pre-established conditions—about the internal audit given to the paper by Edward Snowden. DeLong, in the paper's words, "answered questions freely in a 90-minute interview," with the agreement that he could be quoted by name and title on at least some of his answers. But following the interview, and before the story went live, the White House stepped in and more or less redacted the entire interview. Instead, the administration offered a prepared statement to be attributed to DeLong—written remarks that the Postrefused to run in its main story.

Here's the relevant passage from the Post's rundown on the government statements:

The Obama administration referred all questions for this article to John DeLong, the NSA’s director of compliance, who answered questions freely in a 90-minute interview. DeLong and members of the NSA communications staff said he could be quoted “by name and title” on some of his answers after an unspecified internal review. The Post said it would not permit the editing of quotes. Two days later, White House and NSA spokesmen said that none of DeLong’s comments could be quoted on the record and sent instead a prepared statement in his name. The Post declines to accept the substitute language as quotations from DeLong. The statement is below.

We want people to report if they have made a mistake or even if they believe that an NSA activity is not consistent with the rules. NSA, like other regulated organizations, also has a “hotline” for people to report — and no adverse action or reprisal can be taken for the simple act of reporting. We take each report seriously, investigate the matter, address the issue, constantly look for trends, and address them as well — all as a part of NSA’s internal oversight and compliance efforts. What’s more, we keep our overseers informed through both immediate reporting and periodic reporting. Our internal privacy compliance program has more than 300 personnel assigned to it: a fourfold increase since 2009. They manage NSA’s rules, train personnel, develop and implement technical safeguards, and set up systems to continually monitor and guide NSA’s activities. We take this work very seriously.

Gellman says that he would have normally refused to allow the administration to review the quotes in the first place, but reluctantly agreed given he was dealing with classified information. Still, he says, he made it crystal clear to everyone involved that he would draw the line at the editing of DeLong's quotes—a promise he lived up to.

Main WaPo story here; NSA comment timeline here.

consumption

Excerpted from the documentary Samsara

because they can...,

eater | Ray's & Stark Bar, the Patina Group's restaurant and bar located at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will be adding a 20-item Water Menu to its beverage list next week. Eater LA reports that Ray's & Stark GM and water sommelier Martin Riese created the list which includes waters from ten different countries including Spain, France, Germany, and Canada. The bottles range in size from .75 - 1 liter, and are priced from $8 - $16. The most expensive bottle is Riese's own California-made water 9OH2O. Eater LA had previously reported that 9OH2O retails for $14 per bottle because it's made "in limited editions of 10,000 individually numbered glass bottles."

According to a press release, waters on "LA's most extensive Water Menu" will be for sale by the bottle and also as part of a $12 water tasting menu. Riese is quoted in the press release saying: "We are already accustomed to pairing food with wine or beer, but many people don't know that water is just as important to the entire dining experience." The menu is a booklet that features descriptions of each water varietal, including information on origin, mineral content, and tasting notes. Here's the water menu in full and the press release:

defcon 20 documentary

DEFCON is the world's largest hacking conference, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2012 it was held for the 20th time. The conference has strict no-filming policies, but for DEFCON 20, a documentary crew was allowed full access to the event. The film follows the four days of the conference, the events and people (attendees and staff), and covers history and philosophy behind DEFCON's success and unique experience.

the all-seeing eye only wants to protect you...,

this writing has been on the wall for a while, but I reminded you of this fact two weeks ago...,

Logical outcomes from this?

1. FBI/NSA just shut down the #1 biggest hosting site and #1 most wanted person on Tor

2. Silkroad is next on their list, being the #2 most wanted (#1 was Child Porn, #2 is drugs)

3. Bitcoin and all crypto currenecies set to absolutely CRASH as a result since the feds can not completely control this currency as they please.

I don't always call the Feds agenda transparent, but when i do, I say they can be trying harder. 

Once you grok the fact that the bankster $$ system is the ultimate technology for governance and control, then you can easily understand why they're fitna loosen up their 80 year weed prohibition (cause people will transact for weed in traceable dollars and schmoking is likely to blunt a little bit of the riotous reaction to continuing economic contraction and malaise). Genuine anonymization and well-established virtual currencies are a response to the ever-tightening grip of the "top which lives off the yield of the bottom." Matter fact, they're the only pure genius games in progress at this moment in time - and constitute a genuine and growing threat to unilateral top-down governance and the system of 1% global supremacy. (psychedelics do too, but they'll be easy enough to track and monitor as they'll be an epiphenomenal component of the larger ebb and flow of legalized weed)

NYTimes | State and federal officials are starting broad investigations into shortcomings in the oversight of upstart virtual currencies like bitcoin.

The Senate’s committee on homeland security sent a letter this week to the major financial regulators and law enforcement agencies asking about the “threats and risks related to virtual currency.” These currencies, whose popularity has grown in recent years, are often used in online transactions that are not monitored by traditional financial institutions.

“This is something that is clearly not going away, and it demands a whole government response,” said a person involved in the Senate committee’s investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing.

The Senate letter went out the same day that New York’s top financial regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, sent subpoenas to 22 companies that have had some involvement with bitcoin, according to a person briefed on the investigation.

Previously, there have been isolated efforts to crack down on those who took advantage of virtual currencies. But the two investigations made public this week appear to be the most wide-ranging government efforts to exert more coordinated control over what has been a largely faceless and borderless phenomenon.

Bitcoin, the most well-known digital currency, was started by anonymous Japanese computer programmers in 2009 and was intended to serve as an alternative to national currencies. Only a limited number of bitcoins can be created. And an online community has bid up the price of individual bitcoins, which are stored digitally on a decentralized network of computers. On Tuesday, a bitcoin was being sold for about $108 online.

Lawmakers are worried that bitcoin and other alternative forms of money can be used to evade taxes, defraud investors and assist trade in illegal products like drugs and pornography.

laura poitras: smiting the all-seeing eye

 

NYTimes | This past January, Laura Poitras received a curious e-mail from an anonymous stranger requesting her public encryption key. For almost two years, Poitras had been working on a documentary about surveillance, and she occasionally received queries from strangers. She replied to this one and sent her public key — allowing him or her to send an encrypted e-mail that only Poitras could open, with her private key — but she didn’t think much would come of it. 

The stranger responded with instructions for creating an even more secure system to protect their exchanges. Promising sensitive information, the stranger told Poitras to select long pass phrases that could withstand a brute-force attack by networked computers. “Assume that your adversary is capable of a trillion guesses per second,” the stranger wrote. 

Before long, Poitras received an encrypted message that outlined a number of secret surveillance programs run by the government. She had heard of one of them but not the others. After describing each program, the stranger wrote some version of the phrase, “This I can prove.” 

Seconds after she decrypted and read the e-mail, Poitras disconnected from the Internet and removed the message from her computer. “I thought, O.K., if this is true, my life just changed,” she told me last month. “It was staggering, what he claimed to know and be able to provide. I just knew that I had to change everything.” 

Poitras remained wary of whoever it was she was communicating with. She worried especially that a government agent might be trying to trick her into disclosing information about the people she interviewed for her documentary, including Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks. “I called him out,” Poitras recalled. “I said either you have this information and you are taking huge risks or you are trying to entrap me and the people I know, or you’re crazy.” 

The answers were reassuring but not definitive. Poitras did not know the stranger’s name, sex, age or employer (C.I.A.? N.S.A.? Pentagon?). In early June, she finally got the answers. Along with her reporting partner, Glenn Greenwald, a former lawyer and a columnist for The Guardian, Poitras flew to Hong Kong and met the N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, who gave them thousands of classified documents, setting off a major controversy over the extent and legality of government surveillance. Poitras was right that, among other things, her life would never be the same.

sigurdur thordarson: greazy grima wormtongue serving the all seeing eye...,

slate | When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder’s attitude and quickly signed up to the cause. But little more than a year later, Thordarson was working as an informant spying on WikiLeaks for the U.S. government—embroiling himself as a teenager in one of the most complicated international events in recent history.

In a series of interviews with Slate, Thordarson has detailed the full story behind how, in an extraordinary sequence of events, he went from accompanying Assange to court hearings in London to secretly passing troves of data on WikiLeaks staff and affiliated activists to the FBI. The 20-year-old Icelandic citizen’s account is partly corroborated by authorities in Iceland, who have confirmed that he was at the center of a diplomatic row in 2011 when a handful of FBI agents flew in to the country to meet with him—but were subsequently asked to leave after a government minister suspected they were trying to “frame” Assange.

Thordarson, who first outed himself as an informant in a Wired story in June, provided me with access to a pseudonymous email account that he says was created for him by the FBI. He also produced documents and travel records for trips to Denmark and the United States that he says were organized and paid for by the bureau.

The FBI declined to comment on Thordarson’s role as an informant or the content of the emails its agents are alleged to have sent him. In a statement, it said that it was “not able to discuss investigative tools and techniques, nor comment on ongoing investigations.” But emails sent by alleged FBI agents to Thordarson, which left a digital trail leading back to computers located within the United States, appear to shine a light on the extent of the bureau’s efforts to aggressively investigate WikiLeaks following the whistle-blower website’s publication of classified U.S. military and State Department files in 2010.

Late last month, Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was convicted on counts of espionage, theft, and computer fraud for passing the group the secrets.  During the Manning trial, military prosecutors portrayed Assange as an “information anarchist,” and now it seems increasingly possible that the U.S. government may next go after the 42-year-old Australian for his role in obtaining and publishing the documents. For the past 14 months, Assange has been living in Ecuador’s London Embassy after being granted political asylum by the country over fears that, if he is sent to Sweden to face sexual offense allegations, he will be detained and subsequently extradited to the United States.

Meanwhile, for more than two years, prosecutors have been quietly conducting a sweeping investigation into WikiLeaks that remains active today. The FBI’s files in the Manning case number more than 42,000 pages, according to statements made during the soldier’s pretrial hearings, and that stack of proverbial paper likely continues to grow. Thordarson’s story offers a unique insight into the politically-charged probe: Information he has provided appears to show that there was internal tension within the FBI over a controversial attempt to infiltrate and gather intelligence on the whistle-blower group. Thordarson gave the FBI a large amount of data on WikiLeaks, including private chat message logs, photographs, and contact details of volunteers, activists, and journalists affiliated with the organization. Thordarson alleges that the bureau even asked him to covertly record conversations with Assange in a bid to tie him to a criminal hacking conspiracy. The feds pulled back only after becoming concerned that the Australian was close to discovering the spy effort.

dr. sanjay gupta changed his mind...,

CNN | Over the last year, I have been working on a new documentary called "Weed." The title "Weed" may sound cavalier, but the content is not.

I traveled around the world to interview medical leaders, experts, growers and patients. I spoke candidly to them, asking tough questions. What I found was stunning.

Long before I began this project, I had steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive. Reading these papers five years ago, it was hard to make a case for medicinal marijuana. I even wrote about this in a TIME magazine article, back in 2009, titled "Why I would Vote No on Pot."

Well, I am here to apologize.

I apologize because I didn't look hard enough, until now. I didn't look far enough. I didn't review papers from smaller labs in other countries doing some remarkable research, and I was too dismissive of the loud chorus of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved on cannabis.

Instead, I lumped them with the high-visibility malingerers, just looking to get high. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have "no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse."

They didn't have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn't have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. Take the case of Charlotte Figi, who I met in Colorado. She started having seizures soon after birth. By age 3, she was having 300 a week, despite being on seven different medications. Medical marijuana has calmed her brain, limiting her seizures to 2 or 3 per month.

I have seen more patients like Charlotte first hand, spent time with them and come to the realization that it is irresponsible not to provide the best care we can as a medical community, care that could involve marijuana.

We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.

 I hope this article and upcoming documentary will help set the record straight. Fist tap Arnach.

An Oral History of the War on Drugs & The American Criminal Justice System

vimeo | The Land of the Free punishes or imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation. This collection of testimonials from criminal offenders, family members, and experts on America’s criminal justice system puts a human face on the millions of Americans subjugated by the US Government's 40 year, one trillion dollar social catastrophe: The War on Drugs; a failed policy underscored by fear, politics, racial prejudice and intolerance in a public atmosphere of "out of sight, out of mind."

The United States has only 5% of the world's population, yet a full 25% of the world's prisoners. At 2.5 million, the US has more prisoners than even China does with five times the population of the United States. 8 million Americans (1 in every 31) languish under some form of state monitoring known as "correctional supervision." On top of that, the security and livelihood of over 13 million more has been forever altered by a felony conviction. 

The American use of punishment is so pervasive, and so disproportionate, that even the conservative magazine The Economist declared in 2010, "never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little."

The project will unfold over a two year period, beginning with the release of this feature-length documentary and then continuing on with the release of short films and complete interviews from each of the 100 participants in the project, meant to represent the 1 in 100 Americans that are currently sitting behind bars.

The Exile Nation Project is made possible by a generous grant from the Tedworth Charitable Trust and the openDemocracy group, in association with Exile Nation Media. All content produced is non-commercial and available for free distribution under a Creative Commons license.

cause the federal penitentaries are too crowded?

AP | With the U.S. facing massive overcrowding in its prisons, Attorney General Eric Holder called Monday for major changes to the nation's criminal justice system that would scale back the use of harsh sentences for certain drug-related crimes.

In remarks to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, Holder said he also favors diverting people convicted of low-level offenses to drug treatment and community service programs and expanding a prison program to allow for release of some elderly, non-violent offenders.

"We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate — not merely to convict, warehouse and forget," Holder said.

In one important change, the attorney general said he's altering Justice Department policy so that low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels won't be charged with offenses that impose mandatory minimum sentences.

Mandatory minimum prison sentences, a product of the government's war on drugs that began in the 1980s, limit the discretion of judges to impose shorter prison sentences.

Under the changed policy, the attorney general said defendants will be charged with offenses for which accompanying sentences "are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins."

how has this been allowed to go on for so long?

the hon.bro.preznit caricatures himself...,

has the gubmint lied about its snooping?

propublica | Since Edward Snowden leaked a trove of documents detailing the NSA's sweeping surveillance programs, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that part of his congressional testimony in March was "erroneous." But that's not the only questionable comment by administration officials about the programs.

Here are six claims by administration officials about NSA surveillance that have been undermined by recent disclosures.

feature, benefit, what exactly?

dailymail | Apple is following Google's lead by adding a feature to its upcoming operating system that can track a user's every step.

German security firm Protecus has found a setting in the fifth beta release of Apple's iOS 7 software called Feature Locations that tracks a user's GPS coordinates over time and plots them on a map.

This news comes after code was discovered in Google's Android 4.3 software that lets devices scan for nearby networks, in order to determine a person's location, even when Wi-Fi is turned off.

The Apple feature is relatively hidden away on the iOS 7 software - due to be released in October - in Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services and Frequent Locations.

It is unclear whether the feature is turned on by default but according to the Protecus security expert: '[The feature] kept track of my complete movement profile (location and time tracking) without me knowing anything.'

9/11 in the academic community...,

911inacademia | Coming this fall, “9/11 in the Academic Community,” a Winner of the University of Toronto Film Festival, is a unique film that documents academia’s treatment of critical perspectives on 9/11 by exploring the taboo that shields the American government’s narrative from scholarly examination. Through a powerful reflection on intellectual courage and the purpose of academia, the film aims at changing intellectual discourse on 9/11 and the War on Terror.

As well as probing the repercussions several scholars have endured due to their investigation of 9/11, this documentary provides an analysis of impairments in professional inquiry, ranging from the failure to critically reflect on terms functioning as thought-stoppers (such as “conspiracy theory”) to the structural approach that restricts inquiry to the broad implications of 9/11 while shutting out enquiry into the events of the day itself. Morton Brussel, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has stated: “The main thesis of the film concerns the silence of the academic community on this vital issue. I think it is extremely important and very well produced.”

As 9/11 served as the rationale for the Global War on Terror, the expansion of the military and intelligence complex, the invasion of other countries in violation of international law, and the curtailing of civil liberties, the film provides an inspiring demonstration of intellectual courage that will cause many scholars to reflect on the academy’s role and strength to dismantle the war system. As Alvin A. Lee, President Emeritus of McMaster University, has stated in his endorsement of the film: academics should “stand sufficiently outside society intellectually to see, understand, and interpret what is going on.”

operation everyone talk like a terrorist all the time...,

does C=hf?

quiet as it's kept, 1% sprang a leak too...,

NYTimes | Hervé Falciani is a professed whistle-blower — the Edward Snowden of banking — who has been hunted by Swiss investigators, jailed by Spaniards and claims to have been kidnapped by Israeli Mossad agents eager for a glimpse of the client data he stole while working for a major financial institution in Geneva. 

“I am weak and alone,” Mr. Falciani said, as three round-the-clock bodyguards provided by the French government looked on with hard stares. The protection was needed, he insisted, because he faces constant risk as the sole key to decipher the encrypted data — five CD-ROMs containing a list of nearly 130,000 account holders that may be the biggest leak ever in the secretive world of Swiss banking. 

But as he settled into a deserted bistro for a two-hour lunch, Mr. Falciani, a former computer technician who has been on the run since 2008, seemed oddly relaxed for a fugitive. And why not? 

He is in high demand these days, having cast himself as a crusader against the murky world of Swiss banking and money laundering. Once dismissed by many European authorities, he and other whistle-blowers are now being courted as the region’s governments struggle to fill their coffers and to stem a populist uprising against tax evasion and corruption. 

“It’s an economic war,” said Mr. Falciani, an angular man of 41 with a dark goatee who sometimes dons disguises, though on a muggy summer afternoon favored an innocuous beige tie and short-sleeved dress shirt. “In Switzerland, the banks are so organized that they are able to circumvent new rules and laws to continue to enable tax evasion.” 

Critics, not least at his former employer HSBC, dismiss Mr. Falciani as a manipulator more dazzled by money than high ideals. The data he has leaked — some say sold — since 2008 has wreaked havoc within the banking world, as well as the moneyed and political classes of Europe. 

Mr. Falciani’s information formed the basis for the now famous “Lagarde list” that has roiled Greek politics with its revelations of oligarchs and politicians who avoided taxes by stashing millions in Switzerland.

His data is also credited with helping Spain collect 260 million euros ($345 million) in taxes and identify more than 650 tax evaders, including the president of Banco Santander.

 

In 2012, Mr. Falciani passed his information to American authorities. They, in turn, used the data to pursue an investigation into whether HSBC flouted controls on money laundering, eventually forcing a $1.92 billion settlement with the bank in December. 

More than a few rich and powerful people await his next move. Mr. Falciani asserts that only a small portion of the data has been decrypted and used.

nbc's pasty lester calls snowden "alleged american spy"

HuffPo | Esquire's Charles Pierce wrote Thursday that Lester Holt, filling in for Brian William as "NBC Nightly News" anchor, described former NSA contractor Edward Snowden the night before as an "alleged American spy."

While the Obama administration has invoked the Espionage Act in charging Snowden, part of a pattern in cracking down on unsanctioned leaks to the media, there's no evidence Snowden spied for any foreign country.

News organizations typically go with the more neutral "leaker" rather than "whistleblower," as many view Snowden. So did Holt really use "spy"?

Here's what Holt said at the beginning of Wednesday's 6:30 p.m. broadcast in New York, according to TVEyes, a service that allows for searching past TV broadcasts: (emphasis mine)

"While the cold war has been over for more than 20 years, the growing chill of late between Washington and Moscow became downright frosty today as President Obama called off his planned meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin, a response to Russia's grant of asylum to accused American spy Edward Snowden..."

But a clip of the broadcast on the NBC News website features Holt using a different description:

"While the cold war has been over for more than 20 years, the growing chill of late between Washington and Moscow became downright frosty today as President Obama called off his planned meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin, a response to Russia's grant of asylum to admitted NSA leaker Edward Snowden..."

It appears that NBC News tweaked the language for the West Coast broadcast, which would air three hours later. Holt describes Snowden as an "admitted NSA leaker" in the broadcast that aired in Los Angeles, according to a TVEyes search. 

Update: An NBC spokesperson confirmed the language was changed. The spokesperson added that while the original language is correct, based on the espionage charges against Snowden, the network "made an editorial decision to update the broadcast for the sake of clarity and consistency with past reporting." Fist tap Dale.

two providers of secure email shutdown rather than submit...,

NYTimes | Two major secure e-mail service providers on Thursday took the extraordinary step of shutting down service. 

A Texas-based company called Lavabit, which was reportedly used by Edward J. Snowden, announced its suspension Thursday afternoon, citing concerns about secret government court orders. 

By evening, Silent Circle, a Maryland-based firm that counts heads of state among its customers, said it was following Lavabit’s lead and shutting its e-mail service as a protective measure. 

Taken together, the closures signal that e-mails, even if they are encrypted, can be accessed by government authorities and that the only way to prevent turning over the data is to obliterate the servers that the data sits on.

Mike Janke, Silent Circle’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview late Thursday that his company had destroyed its server. “Gone. Can’t get it back. Nobody can,” he said. “We thought it was better to take flak from customers than be forced to turn it over.” 

The company, in a blog post dated Friday, Aug. 9, said it had taken the extreme measure even though it had not received a search order from the government. 

Ladar Levison, the owner of Lavabit, suggested — though did not say explicitly — that he had received a search order, and was opting to shut the service so as not to be “complicit in crimes against the American people.”

a free man is a dangerous man at the end of the constitutional era...,

reuters | "What bothers me is the hypocritical bit - we demonize China when we've been doing these things and probably worse."

Alexander took a conciliatory tone during his Black Hat speech, defending the NSA but saying he looked forward to a discussion about how it could do things better.

Black Hat attracts professionals whose companies pay thousands of dollars for them to attend. Def Con costs $180 and features many of the same speakers.

At Black Hat, a casual polling station at a vendor's exhibition booth asking whether Snowden was a villain or a hero produced a dead heat: 138 to 138. European attendees were especially prone to vote for hero, the vendor said.

Def Con would have been much rougher on Alexander, judging by interviews there and the reception given speakers who touched on Snowden and other government topics.

Christopher Soghoian, an American Civil Liberties Union technologist, drew applause from hundreds of attendees when he said the ACLU had been the first to sue the NSA after one of the spy programs was revealed.

Peiter Zatko, a hacker hero who funded many small projects from a just-departed post at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, told another large audience that he was unhappy with the surveillance programs and that "challenging the government is your patriotic duty."

The disenchanted give multiple reasons, citing previous misleading statements about domestic surveillance, the government's efforts to force companies to decrypt user communications, and the harm to U.S. businesses overseas.

"I don't think anyone should believe anything they tell us," former NSA hacker Charlie Miller said of top intelligence officials. "I wouldn't work there anymore."

Stamos and Moss said the U.S. government is tilting too much toward offense in cyberspace, using secret vulnerabilities that their targets can then discover and wield against others.

Closest to home for many hackers are the government's aggressive prosecutions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which has been used against Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in January, and U.S. soldier Bradley Manning, who leaked classified files to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

A letter circulating at Def Con and signed by some of the most prominent academics in computer security said the law was chilling research in the public interest by allowing prosecutors and victim companies to argue that violations of electronic "terms of service" constitute unauthorized intrusions.

Researchers who have found important flaws in electronic voting machines and medical devices did so without authorization, the letter says.

If there is any silver lining, Moss said, it is that before Snowden's leaks, it had been impossible to have an informed discussion about how to balance security and civil liberties without real knowledge of government practices. Fist tap Arnach.

"The debate is just starting," he said. "Maybe we can be a template for other democracies."

cyberattacks an unprecedented (and non-falsifiable) threat to u.s. national security...,

energyskeptic | Here are excerpts from this 75-page document, some of which I’ve paraphrased [brackets], consolidated, or shortened.  Read this document for a greater, more nuanced, understanding.

CYBER ATTACKS: AN UNPRECEDENTED THREAT TO U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

Hearing before the subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and emerging threats of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. House of Representatives 113^th Congress 2^nd session   MARCH 21, 2013

Mr. Rohrabacher: The type of targets hackers assault are often placed in 2 categories:

1) Strategic targets attacked by military means in a war such as transportation systems, power grids, defense industries, communications, and government centers.

2) Commercial warfare. The scale upon which it is being conducted is beyond anything we have experienced and far exceeds traditional espionage. [Last month the Mandiant report identified a military unit of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army that has been conducting commercial warfare since 2006, hacking business and industry targets.  These attacks cost the American economy $250 billion per year and affect our economy and the balance of power.]

Over the last 10 years the United States trade deficit in goods with China was over $2.4 trillion. Entire industries have been moved across the Pacific to create what we see as the rise of China. We cannot just rely on technology to defend against these type of attacks. We must use diplomacy to deter them by telling Beijing and others in clear terms that we will not allow their hacking to continue without retaliation. We should sanction states that support hacking just as we sanction states that support terrorism or engage in other hostile actions. This war will not just be waged in cyberspace, but across every front and using every lever of American power to defeat an aggressor and to take the profit out of attacking our businesses, our defenses, and yes, our country.

There have been several Congressional hearings on cyber warfare, but most have concentrated on the technology involved and how we can devise defenses to block hackers from breaking into our government and business computer networks. The greatest dangers to our nation are not, however, really about technology. It is about international relations. Foreign governments that employ cyber warriors to attack other countries, or which “allow” hackers to attack other countries should be considered as hostile as governments which support terrorism. These are acts which put our country in severe jeopardy and must be met with the same national security and diplomatic measures that we use to meet any other external threat.

Chinese firms are dominated by state-owned enterprises with ties to Communist Party officials and their families. It is a matrix that not only serves to grow the wealth and power of China but also the personal fortunes of its leaders. The transfer of wealth by the theft of technology and other information vital to the development of industry is then used to gain a competitive advantage in world trade, which brings even more wealth to China.

The people of China are being cheated in that the apparatus that has been set up to protect them is being used to enrich the elite, and at the same time put China into a hostile relationship with the United States and other free countries of the world. And on top of that, the elite in China are using this not to protect China, not to make it more prosperous, but also to repress their own people.  The elite in China, their vanity and their desire for more wealth and power has led China down a wrong path, and I would urge those people in China, which is the vast majority, the people of goodwill there, to push this elite that is running their country that is raping their country and putting us on a path to conflict, to push them out of power.

Yesterday, several banks and broadcast outlets in South Korea were attacked, and apparently the assumption was that the cyber attacks were from North Korea. However, the news this morning is that South Korea is claiming that these attacks were located, the attacker was located in China. [This] raises questions as to whether China and North Korea are cooperating in cyber warfare against people that they think are their enemies.

Duncan: The director of National Intelligence on 12 March, James Clapper, said “there is a remote chance of a major cyber attack against U.S. critical infrastructure systems during the next 2 years that will result in a long-term, wide-scale disruption of services such as regional power outage.’’

If they are stealing the plans of an F–35 and so we have to send F–35s against a comparable aircraft, that is taking some of that competitive advantage away that we have militarily to protect this country.

Mr. STOCKMAN. My district encompasses everything from NASA to petrochemical plants. We were touring some of the plants, and they said they were getting very little cooperation from the government to help deter cyber attacks, which could cripple our nation. Just by turning off a few valves a plant could be blown up.  One plant alone in my district produces about 600,000 barrels a day. If that were to be taken off the market you would see a quick crisis occur. And if you took off several plants it would shut down the United States.

This reminds me of 9/11 when we knew about the Philippines. We picked up documents which showed that they wanted to use planes as weapons, yet we ignored all the signs. I feel like we are ignoring all the signs.  I have plant managers telling me their concerns and I am asking you, is there any kind of game plan to help critical infrastructure?  

6th Post Ever REDUX - Information and Biological Revolutions

Global Governance Challenges — Summary of a Study Group

It was this subtitle that really, really baked my noodle and sent me down the rabbit hole of spiraling cogitations and digital collaborations concerning the nature of things as they presently stand - and the shape of things to come.

This report summarizes the issues that arose and the discussions held during the meetings of a 1998-1999 study group focusing on global governance of information technology and biotechnology. The goal was to bring a policy perspective to bear on a discussion of new technological developments through a series of free-flowing and exploratory presentations and discussions.

Download it and read it in its entirety when you get a chance...,

This repost is a public service to any and all readers who may wonder concerning the fundamental purpose and motivation underlying this exercise in "current events" (l'actualité) review and summarization. I am obsessively curious about - and more than a little rebellious toward - that human micro-minority which has arrogated to itself the prerogative of two-legged livestock management. Decades of observation and analysis have disinclined me toward the belief that this micro-minority identifies itself as our "good shepherds". Instead, I suspect that something far more Kanamitic is afoot in the Empyrean reaches of human governance. 

enjoy the show and never become distracted...,

The Capitalist Network that Runs the World

theinternetpost | According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?

This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.

One important repository for the wealth of the global oligarchy that owns these bank holding companies is US Trust Corporation – founded in 1853 and now owned by Bank of America. A recent US Trust Corporate Director and Honorary Trustee was Walter Rothschild. Other directors included Daniel Davison of JP Morgan Chase, Richard Tucker of Exxon Mobil, Daniel Roberts of Citigroup and Marshall Schwartz of Morgan Stanley. [2]

J. W. McCallister, an oil industry insider with House of Saud connections, wrote in The Grim Reaper that information he acquired from Saudi bankers cited 80% ownership of the New York Federal Reserve Bank- by far the most powerful Fed branch- by just eight families, four of which reside in the US. They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.

CPA Thomas D. Schauf corroborates McCallister’s claims, adding that ten banks control all twelve Federal Reserve Bank branches. He names N.M. Rothschild of London, Rothschild Bank of Berlin, Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Warburg Bank of Amsterdam, Lehman Brothers of New York, Lazard Brothers of Paris, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Israel Moses Seif Bank of Italy, Goldman Sachs of New York and JP Morgan Chase Bank of New York. Schauf lists William Rockefeller, Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and James Stillman as individuals who own large shares of the Fed. [3] The Schiffs are insiders at Kuhn Loeb. The Stillmans are Citigroup insiders, who married into the Rockefeller clan at the turn of the century.

Eustace Mullins came to the same conclusions in his book The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, in which he displays charts connecting the Fed and its member banks to the families of Rothschild, Warburg, Rockefeller and the others. [4]

The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy. Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory”. Yet the facts remain.

playing with that rahowa fire...,

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

please don't judge all caucasians by the actions of a few...,

HuffPo | Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev befriended a brain-damaged anti-U.S. government conspiracy theorist through their mother's health care aide job years before the deadly attack, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Jason Rosenberg, who represents the family of Donald Larking, said Larking shared publications with the brothers and discussed theories including that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting didn't happen or the U.S. government was behind them.

The attorney said the Tsarnaev family had a relationship with the Larkings that started years ago when the brothers' mother began working as a personal care assistant for Larking's wife, a quadriplegic since birth.

Rosenberg said Larking, who lives in West Newton, just west of Boston, was shot in the head in 1974 in an attempted robbery while working in a convenience store. He said Larking suffered brain damage that led to problems with his decision-making and judgment.

Authorities say the Tsarnaev brothers orchestrated the April 15 marathon bombing, in which two pressure cookers loaded with shrapnel exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty last month to charges including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police a few days after the bombing.

Rosenberg said Tuesday the Tsarnaev brothers got to know Larking while substituting for their mother sometimes by helping to care for his wife. The attorney said the brothers "helpful" and "kind" to the couple and Larking shared his views with them as he found anti-U.S. government websites and became angrier and irrational.

The lawyer's account first emerged in a Wall Street Journal article, which included Tamerlan Tsarnaev's former landlady talking about publications that had been in his Cambridge apartment.

Landlady Joanna Herlihy told The Associated Press she salvaged publications after authorities had searched the apartment and items were discarded. She confirmed that among them were an Alabama-based publication that uses a Confederate flag on its website and a weekly publication that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls anti-Semitic.

Rosenberg said Tuesday he doesn't think Larking helped the Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia, formulate ideas but may have made them believe others felt as they did.

"(They) were seeing someone who was Caucasian and was born in America who was saying the same things," the attorney said.

right wing extremism and peasanthood don't mix...,

theatlanticwire | Alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev become absorbed in magazines about wild conspiracy theories, mass killings and white supremacy, all courtesy of a convalescent older gentleman who has trouble facing "the realities of the world," according to his lawyer.

Yesterday, the BBC program Panorama reported on the telling reading material authorities found in the dead Tsarnaev brother's apartment. There were, for example, magazines that sympathized with Hitler, promoted a white supremacist agenda, and outlined how other mass murderers had performed their crimes.

The Wall Street Journal tracked down the individual who gave those magazines to Tsarnaev: 67-year-old Donald Larking. Larking was a client of Zubeidat Tsarnaev, who made a living in the U.S. caring for the elderly. Larking had been left with disabilities after surviving being shot in the face during a robbery at his job 40 years ago.

Larking subsequently became interested in magazines that pushed right-wing conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombings, and the Newtown school massacre. Tsarnaev, already a fan of conspiracy sites like InfoWars and Islamist websites, became close with the older man:

Ms. Tsarnaev began asking Tamerlan Tsarnaev or his brother to care for Mr. Larking when she wasn't available to work. Mr. Larking's wife, Rosemary, a quadriplegic, also needed help at home. Mr. Tsarnaev seemed to have found a kindred spirit in Mr. Larking. They became friends and had animated talks about politics, people close to the Larking family said.

Tamerlan started reading the anti-Semitic American Free Press and absorbed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

unspeakable busy mumbling about "terra" again...,

atimes | When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going.

The end of Ramadan was imminent. The jihadi chattering classes of that fuzzy entity, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), went on overdrive. It was jailbreak galore from Libya to Pakistan via Iraq. And all this in perfect synch with two successive fatwas issued by that perennial bogeyman, former Osama bin Laden sidekick Ayman "Doctor Evil" al-Zawahiri.

Imagine a rushed crisis meeting at the highest levels of the Orwellian/Panopticon complex: "Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here. We are under siege by defector spy Edward Snowden - liberated by the Soviets - and that terrorist hack Greenwald. Snowden may be winning: even among US public opinion, there's a growing perception we may be more of a threat than al-Qaeda.

So we must show we are vigilantly protecting our freedoms. Yes; we're gonna scream Terra, Terra, Terra!"

The bottom line is that the Bush-Obama continuum never ceases to reassure us - not to mention that old fox al-Zawahiri. Doctor Evil, as warped a strategist as he is, figured out a while ago that if the "al-Qaeda" global bogeyman myth is now "stronger than ever" it's thanks to the Obama administration and its poodles, European and Persian Gulf-based, with their Three Stooges strategy from Libya to Syria. Afghanistan is a completely different story; there's no "historical" al-Qaeda left, only a handful in the Pakistani tribal areas.

So al-Zawahiri knew the bogeyman would inevitably be resurrected, in total synch with his recent fatwas, because "long" - or "infinite" - war equals perpetual funding for the Orwellian/Panopticon complex. And a convenient foreign enemy is essential; no one in Washington could possibly admit on the record the real "enemy", as in strategic competitor, is the Chinese dragon.

Doctor Evil and the Orwellian/Panopticon complex are on the same side - and that explains why he'll be allowed to be a motor mouth fatwa machine for as long as he wants, and won't be nabbed like some patsy in the underwear bomber mould. The complex is back in offense. Reform the NSA? Interfere with our metadata? What for? We have just alerted the US government to "pre-9/11" levels of terrorist chatter!

AQAP might well decide not to participate in this worldwide "pre-9/11" script. Real jihadis, after all, are not foolish enough to be caught by XKeystroke. So here's a Dylanesque riddle for you. All along the watchtower, a false flag is approaching - said the joker to the thief. There's too much Terra confusion, and we won't get no relief.

what if your country begins to change and no one notices? welcome to post-constitutional america...,

tomdispatch | Close your eyes for a moment, think about recent events, and you could easily believe yourself in a Seinfeldian Bizarro World [5].  Now, open them and, for a second, everything looks almost familiar... and then you notice that a dissident is fleeing a harsh and draconian power, known for its global surveillance practices [6], use of torture, assassination campaigns [7], and secret prisons [8], and has found a haven in a heartless world in... hmmm... Russia.  That dissident, of course, is Edward Snowden, just granted a year’s temporary asylum [9] in Russia, a.k.a. the defender of human rights and freedom 2013, and so has been released from a Washington-imposed imprisonment in Moscow’s international air terminal and the threat of far worse [10].

Now, close your eyes, open them again, and for just a moment, doesn’t the world look a little more orderly?  After all, a draconian imperial power has taken one of its own dissidents, who wanted to reveal the truth about its cruel war practices and global diplomatic maneuverings, thrown him in prison without charges, abused and mistreated him, brought him before a drumhead military court and, on essentially trumped up charges of “espionage,” convicted him [11] of just what its leaders wanted to convict him of.  That power, of course, must be Russia and all’s right with the world... oops, I mean, that’s U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning [12] and the “evil empire” that mistreated him is... gulp... the United States.

Think about it for a moment: if Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a place of asylum for American dissidents and the U.S. is doing a reasonable job of imitating aspects of the old USSR, we are on Bizarro Earth, aren't we?

Today, former State Department whistleblower [13] Peter Van Buren, author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People [14], considers how America’s distant wars have come home and how, under that pressure, this country is morphing into something unrecognizable.  Worse yet, it’s quite possible that we’re only at the beginning of that transformation.  To give but a small example of what the future might hold, psychiatrist and author [15] Jonathan Shay, famous for his work with traumatized Vietnam veterans, suggested in Daedalus [16] in 2011 that no one knows what it means for similarly traumatized employees of our Warrior corporations [17], the rent-a-gun “veterans” of our recent war zones to come home to no health care and no support system.  And he offered an eerie, if provocative, comparison to the footloose German veterans of World War I who, in the 1920s, joined the Freikorps [18] and played their part in the radicalization and then Nazification of that country. 

“I am not saying,” he wrote, “that I know that the Weimar Republic would still exist today, with all that implies about a different course to history, if Germany had had Vet Centers and VA Mental Health Clinics. But historians generally agree that the Freikorps contributed to the weakening of the new German political fabric in the immediate aftermath of World War I.”  His is a chilling reminder that, wherever we are now, it might just be a rest stop on some bizarro road to hell. -Tom

in 2011 the fbi allowed informants to commit 5600 crimes

usatoday | The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

The U.S. Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin tracking crimes by its informants more than a decade ago, after the agency admitted that its agents had allowed Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger to operate a brutal crime ring in exchange for information about the Mafia. The FBI submits that tally to top Justice Department officials each year, but has never before made it public.

Agents authorized 15 crimes a day, on average, including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies. FBI officials have said in the past that permitting their informants — who are often criminals themselves — to break the law is an indispensable, if sometimes distasteful, part of investigating criminal organizations.

"It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in context," said Shawn Henry, who supervised criminal investigations for the FBI until he retired last year. "This is not done in a vacuum. It's not done randomly. It's not taken lightly." 

USA TODAY obtained a copy of the FBI's 2011 report under the Freedom of Information Act. The report does not spell out what types of crimes its agents authorized, or how serious they were. It also did not include any information about crimes the bureau's sources were known to have committed without the government's permission.

Crimes authorized by the FBI almost certainly make up a tiny fraction of the total number of offenses committed by informants for local, state and federal agencies each year. The FBI was responsible for only about 10% of the criminal cases prosecuted in federal court in 2011, and federal prosecutions are, in turn, vastly outnumbered by criminal cases filed by state and local authorities, who often rely on their own networks of sources.

"The million-dollar question is: How much crime is the government tolerating from its informants?" said Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who has studied such issues. "I'm sure that if we really knew that number, we would all be shocked." Fist tap Arnach.