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Gary Edwards

Bernanke Scolds Congress/Keeps Bailouts Details Secret | Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog - 0 views

usawatchdog.com/keeps-bailout-details-secret-2

Bernanke federal-reserve financial-oligarchs financial-collapse Banksters banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 10 - Cached
  • The Fed was sued by financial news network Bloomberg two years ago.  Bloomberg wants the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bloomberg won the case and the Fed appealed.  Bloomberg, also, won the appeal in March 2010!  The precedent setting case would force the Fed to reveal the details of secret bank bailouts–including $500 billion given to foreign financial firms!!    In a Bloomberg story earlier this week, lawyers representing the Federal Reserve (which is made up in part by big U.S. banks) said, “U.S. commercial banks will take their fight against disclosure of Federal Reserve (documents) in 2008 to the Supreme Court if necessary . . .”  Lawyers representing the Fed say they are worried that if details of trillions of dollars in bailouts are revealed, it could cause another financial meltdown.  General Council for the Fed, Paul Saltzman, says, “Our member banks are very concerned about real-time disclosure of information that could cause a run on the banks.”  This is another story, with dire implications, the mainstream media is ignoring.  (Click here for the complete Bloomberg story)
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 10
     
    This article has two parts.  The first is Bernanke's waarnign to Congress that the Federal debt is out of control and they need to raise taxes AND cut spending.  The second part however is far more interesting.  Author Greg Hunter describes the Bloomberg Media court quest to force the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bernanke of course is fighting in the courts to keep this secret.   excerpts:  Earlier this week, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke told Congress to basically raise taxes and cut the federal budget.  The inference was, if Congress doesn't get its financial house in order, it will be their fault if the economy tanks.  Here is how Bernanke actually said it, ". . . Maintaining the confidence of the public and the financial markets requires policy makers more decisively to put the budget on a sustainable fiscal balance."   Bernanke also said the federal debt ". . .is already expected to be greater than 70%" of Gross Domestic Product, ". . . at the end of 2012."  And if that is not bad enough, Bernanke said that by 2020, ". . .federal debt would balloon to more than 100% of GDP," provided  taxes are not raised and budgets are not cut.  The Fed was sued by financial news network Bloomberg two years ago.  Bloomberg wants the Fed to reveal which banks received $2 trillion in bailout money and why.  Bloomberg won the case and the Fed appealed.  Bloomberg, also, won the appeal in March 2010!  The precedent setting case would force the Fed to reveal the details of secret bank bailouts-including $500 billion given to foreign financial firms!!    In a Bloomberg story earlier this week, lawyers representing the Federal Reserve (which is made up in part by big U.S. banks) said, "U.S. commercial banks will take their fight against disclosure of Federal Reserve (documents) in 2008 to the Supreme Court if necessary . . ."  Lawyers representing the Fed say they are worried that if details of tril
Paul Merrell

Congress Repeals Financial Disclosure Requirements For Senior U.S. Officials : The Two-... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ments-for-senior-u-s-officials

corruption financial disclosures legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Joining the Senate, the House of Representatives approved a measure today that repeals a requirement that top government officials post financial disclosures on the Internet. The House, like the Senate, acted quietly without a vote. Instead, they sent the measure to the president's desk by unanimous consent. The provision was part of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (Stock), which became law in March of 2012. The act was intended to stop members of congress from profiting from nonpublic information.
  • : "That law mainly addressed conflict-of-interest policies for members of Congress and their staffs, but it also included a requirement that the financial disclosure forms filed by some 28,000 high-ranking federal employees be posted online. "While those forms are public records, they must be requested individually from employing agencies. The Stock Act envisions online posting first on agency sites and later in a central, searchable database. "The posting requirement was delayed three times out of concerns about the potential for identity theft and other crimes against career employees, as well as security risks to the government."
  • The Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for a more open government, called today's repeal an "epic failure." The foundation explained that instead of addressing specific security concerns, Congress has acted broadly. For instance, they note, the president, vice president, members of Congress, congressional candidates and individuals subject to Senate confirmation are still required to make their financial disclosures public. But the change in law now makes the posting of those disclosures on the Internet optional.
Paul Merrell

Keeping Dark Money in the Shadows - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...ping-dark-money-in-the-shadows

Auction 2016 dark-money legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • With the Supreme Court knocking down regulations with a wrecking ball, the FEC out of commission, and an election heating up that will likely redefine the term “big money,” there are few avenues left for regulation of American elections. And now, Congress is set to close one off.On June 17, the House Appropriations Committee passed 2016 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill including a collection of provisions that ensure that the so-called “dark money” of elections—money that passes through supposedly non-political social welfare nonprofits, such as the Koch Brothers’ Crossroads GPS or the League of Conservation Voters, and is therefore free from disclosure—remains very much dark.Section 129 of the bill prevents the IRS from taking any action to investigate whether these social welfare groups are acting exclusively for social welfare; Section 625 prevents the SEC from requiring disclosure of political donations for publicly traded companies; Section 735 prevents a rule requiring that government contractors disclose their contributions to political groups, nonprofits, and trade unions.
  • Rules like these are aimed at preventing what some campaign watchdog groups refer to as the dark money system. Though Federal Election Commission regulations require disclosure of all donations to political candidates, 501(c)(4) groups—groups determined by the IRS to be for social welfare, not political campaigning, and exempt from taxes and donor disclosure—can be used as a workaround. Corporations and individuals do not have to disclose their donations to these groups, meaning that these groups can make donations to political campaigns using money donated by others without those original donors revealing it.An executive order requiring disclosure rules of this sort had been one of the last hopes for election watchdogs looking for a way to keep campaign finance under control in the coming election. This action by the House Appropriations—part of a large government funding bill for which passage will likely not hinge on such small sections—has left them even more enraged at the state of current campaign finance regulations.
Gary Edwards

Chris Dodd's carve-outs for cronies - NYPOST.com - 0 views

www.nypost.com/...cronies_MT1U7GBEPvzX3QXProqC9L

chris-dodd financial-reform-joke corpratism crony-capitalism

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Apr 10
     
    Dangerous and sickening!  In Dodd's Bill, The Property Transaction Industry (Mortgage, Real Estate, Insurance, Legal, Appraisal, and Title) are exempted from the 1974 RESPA full disclosure act!   Regulators are authorized to take over and "bail out" any financial operation they deem troubled. excerpt: The financial-regulatory bill now before the Senate is so filled with special-interest loopholes and exclusions that it makes the health-care "reform" bill, with its "Cornhusker Kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase," look like a model of rectitude.The Senate bill, sponsored by Democrat Chris Dodd, claims to subject all "too big to fail" institutions to greater federal supervision, but in fact it only mandates such regulation for bank-holding companies. Regulators would have to make a case-by-case decision on whether to apply it to other financial companies.The Senate financial-regulation bill offers a stark choice: Do we aspire to be a country where everyone is subject to the same rules? Or do we accept a system where power, influence and money can buy exclusions and exemptions?The public needs to understand that, far from protecting the little guy and sticking it to the fat cats, this bill keeps good, old-fashioned political patronage alive and well. Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/chris_dodd_carve_outs_for_cronies_MT1U7GBEPvzX3QXProqC9L#ixzz0mKJmEdn4 Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/chris_dodd_carve_outs_for_cronies_MT1U7GBEPvzX3QXProqC9L#ixzz0mKJmEdn4Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/chris_dodd_carve_outs_for_cronies_MT1U7GBEPvzX3QXProqC9L#ixzz0mKJcsmlN
Paul Merrell

NSA Data Will Soon Be Used By Domestic Law Enforcement - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...214734

surveillance state NSA raw-data-sharing

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • If you’re reading this, then I’m willing to bet that you’ve been called many different names throughout your life. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say they were names like kook, paranoid, conspiracy theorist, alarmist, insane, or gullible. And after this week, you can go by a new name: Vindicated. I’m of course talking about recent revelations from the NSA. Long before Edward Snowden came along, it was no secret that the NSA was spying on everyone without good cause. Anyone who believed that fact was called a conspiracy theorist, but their fears were eventually validated. These same people also understood that the NSA’s surveillance powers would never be used exclusively against terrorists and hostile governments. The power they have is just too tempting for any government. If various government agencies weren’t using the NSA’s surveillance apparatus to solve domestic crimes, it was only a matter of time before it was used for just that.
  • And again, they called us conspiracy theorists for believing that. And again, we were right all long. A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important: What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes.
  • Anybody who knows anything about how governments work, should not surprised. You can’t give them any kind of power, and expect them to use it responsibly. You can’t give them any stipulations. Eventually they’ll find a legal loophole to work around any limitations that have been placed on them. In other news, the Pentagon admitted this week that they’ve been deploying military drones over the United States for domestic surveillance purposes. Much like the NSA’s surveillance apparatus, we were assured that drones were for terrorists in faraway lands. Nothing so Orwellian would ever be used against ordinary American citizens at home. Yet here we are, with more to come.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16
     
    The Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, provides in relevant part: "(a)(4) the term "record" means any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency, including, but not limited to, his education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and that contains his name, or the identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual, such as a finger or voice print or a photograph[.] ... "(b) Conditions of Disclosure.-No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, unless disclosure of the record would be- ... "(7) to another agency or to an instrumentality of any governmental jurisdiction within or under the control of the United States for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity if the activity is authorized by law, and if the head of the agency or instrumentality has made a written request to the agency which maintains the record specifying the particular portion desired and the law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" So a separate written request for each "portion" of any individual record that describes the "law enforcement activity for which the record is sought[.]" That doesn't sound like the contemplated unfettered access to bulk raw data. And it gets even better, with a right to sue for any violation, attorney fees and expenses, and a statutory minimum of $1,000 damages per violation just for winning the case.  
Paul Merrell

Investigation Finds World's Largest Coal Company Misled Public On Climate Change | Thin... - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...ttlement-new-york-schneiderman

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • The world’s largest private coal company misled its investors and the public about the financial risks of climate change, New York state’s attorney general announced on Monday. In a press release, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Peabody Energy violated New York laws prohibiting “false and misleading conduct” in public statements about its business. Specifically, Schneiderman found that Peabody failed to tell its investors about how regulations to fight climate change could hurt the coal industry. Instead, Peabody insisted it had no idea how climate regulations would affect its business, and provided its investors with “incomplete and one-sided discussions” of the future of coal in a climate-concerned world, Schneiderman said.
  • “As a publicly traded company whose core business generates massive amounts of carbon emissions, Peabody Energy has a responsibility to be honest with its investors and the public about the risks posed by climate change, now and in the future,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “I believe that full and fair disclosures by Peabody and other fossil fuel companies will lead investors to think long and hard about the damage these companies are doing to our planet.” The state laws Peabody was found to have violated are the Martin Act and Executive Law, both of which “prohibit false and misleading conduct in connection with securities transactions,” the attorney general said. Peabody did not admit or deny those findings, but signed a document on Sunday agreeing to revise its shareholder disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Per that document, Peabody will have to correct its financial statements to be honest about how a global climate deal or other carbon regulation could hurt its business. The document can be found in full here.
  • Peabody’s violations will not result in financial punishment, as both laws only allow monetary penalties if shareholders need to be reimbursed for financial losses. It’s difficult to know what, if any, financial harm was passed on to shareholders due to Peabody’s misleading statements, since this particular situation was about the future risks of climate change. If in the future, however, investors find that Peabody’s misleading statements cost them money, they would likely have the option to sue. The settlement comes just a few days after the two-year investigation became public. On Friday, Scheiderman announced that his office had issued subpoenas to both Peabody and oil company ExxonMobil, both related to the fossil fuel giants’ public statements on climate change.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Environmentalists and Democratic politicians have accused ExxonMobil of engaging in a cover-up to mislead the public about the risks of human-caused climate change in order to sell more of its carbon-intensive product. Exxon has vehemently denied the accusation. Either way, Schneiderman’s two investigations are sparking serious legal discussion about how honest fossil fuel companies must be when it comes to the carbon emissions they create — especially if honesty might mean knowingly lowering profits. Should coal companies be forced to admit that their coal is creating a climate risk? If so, should they be allowed to fund politicians who advocate against climate action? Are these corporate activities protected free speech? Bloomberg View columnist Matt Levine offered a nuanced discussion of those questions on Friday. And ultimately, he said, it may just come down to whether these companies lied to their own investors — even if the lie was in their investors’ financial interest. “If you lie to the public about the risks that fossil fuel use poses to life on earth, you are just exercising your right as a citizen,” Levine wrote. “But if you lie to your investors about the risks that fossil fuel regulation poses to your stock price, you are committing fraud and will get in bad trouble.”
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Nov 15
     
    "If you lie to the public about the risks that fossil fuel use poses to life on earth, you are just exercising your right as a citizen," Levine wrote. Correction. Corporations are not citizens; only human beings can achieve that status.  
Paul Merrell

Wyden, Udall Statement on the Disclosure of Bulk Email Records Collection Program | Pre... - 0 views

www.wyden.senate.gov/...ail-records-collection-program

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback efficacy email Udall Wyden

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • U. S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the following statement regarding the recent disclosure by intelligence officials that the NSA operated a bulk email records collection program under the authority of the Patriot Act until 2011.  This program is distinct from the internet-related collection carried out under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (which involves the PRISM computer system).   “We are quite familiar with the bulk email records collection program that operated under the USA Patriot Act and has now been confirmed by senior intelligence officials.  We were very concerned about this program’s impact on Americans’ civil liberties and privacy rights, and we spent a significant portion of 2011 pressing intelligence officials to provide evidence of its effectiveness.  They were unable to do so, and the program was shut down that year.  
  • “As we have noted, the Patriot Act’s surveillance authorities are not limited to phone records.  In fact, section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any type of records whatsoever.  The fact that Patriot Act authorities were used for the bulk collection of email records as well as phone records underscores our concern that this authority could be used to collect other types of records in bulk as well, including information on credit card purchases, medical records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.  These other types of collection could clearly have a significant impact on Americans’ constitutional rights.   “Intelligence officials have noted that the bulk email records program was discussed with both Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  In our judgment it is also important to note that intelligence agencies made statements to both Congress and the Court that significantly exaggerated this program’s effectiveness.  This experience demonstrates to us that intelligence agencies’ assessments of the usefulness of particular collection programs – even significant ones – are not always accurate.  This experience has also led us to be skeptical of claims about the value of the bulk phone records collection program in particular.  
  • “We believe that the broader lesson here is that even though intelligence officials may be well-intentioned, assertions from intelligence agencies about the value and effectiveness of particular programs should not simply be accepted at face value by policymakers or oversight bodies any more than statements about the usefulness of other government programs should be taken at face value when they are made by other government officials.  It is up to Congress, the courts and the public to ask the tough questions and press even experienced intelligence officials to back their assertions up with actual evidence, rather than simply deferring to these officials’ conclusions without challenging them.   “We look forward to continuing the debate about the effectiveness of the ongoing Patriot Act phone records collection program in the days and weeks ahead.”
Paul Merrell

How Wall Street Money Is Driving Out the Last Populist House Republican | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...last-populist-house-republican

banksters Auction-2014 North-Carolina Jones Griffin

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Congressman Walter Jones, a Republican who represents a wide swath of eastern North Carolina, might not strike you as a populist. But as a lawmaker, the veteran politician with a slow Southern drawl has become a gadfly in his own party for thumbing his nose at powerful political interests. He is the only GOP co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, a measure to reveal the donors of dark-money campaign advertisements. He is among the loudest critics of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, telling an audience one that “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.” And Speaker John Boehner removed Jones from the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees Wall Street. His sin? Bucking leadership and supporting many bills to further regulate the financial sector, along with serving as the last remaining House Republican to have voted for the Dodd-Frank reform package. The Republican establishment has attempted to remove Jones from office by dispatching a number of primary challengers over the years. For this cycle, a former Bush administration aide named Taylor Griffin is the party favorite to finally wipe out Jones. Several outlets, such as Bloomberg News, have reported that Griffin’s candidacy is being heavily promoted by the financial industry. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other banks helped fuel the $114,000 fundraising haul Griffin reported in his first campaign disclosure report. Earlier this week, a Super PAC financed in part by hedge fund titan Paul Singer went on air with a negative ad against Jones.
  • What hasn’t been reported, however, is that Griffin himself is a longtime political consultant for the biggest predators on Wall Street. Republic Report has obtained a disclosure report that shows that Griffin’s client list reads like a who’s who of financial interests that have preyed upon North Carolina families for short term gain.
Gary Edwards

States negotiating immunity for banks over foreclosures - 0 views

newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/...ty_for_banks_over_foreclosures

MERS financial-collapse Banksters Mortgage-fraud Liar-Loans Undocumented-mortgages

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Jul 11
     
    Thanks to Marbux.  Seems like nothing will stop the Banksters from seizing it all.  I think i've previously posted that when i was with Virtual Realty (VRi), we were forever trying to crack into the MERS electronic database.  Wow did the Banksters screw this one up.  Now only their corrupt sycophants in Congress and the Coursts can save them.  Not even the lap dog media will touch this. excerpt: A coalition of all 50 states' attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and commitments to follow new rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development, which have participated in the talks. State and federal officials declined to say if any form of immunity from criminal prosecution also is under discussion. The banks involved in the talks are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CitiGroup, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial. REUTERS REPORT PROMPTS LETTER Reuters reported Monday that major banks and other loan servicers have continued to file questionable documents in foreclosure cases. These include false mortgage assignments, and promissory notes with suspect or missing "endorsements," which prove ownership. The Reuters report also showed continued "robo-signing," in which lenders' employees or outside contractors churn out reams of documents without fully understanding their content. The report turned up several cases involving individuals who were publicly identified as robo-signers months ago. Reuters found that such activity has continued even after 14 major mortgage lenders signed settlements with federal bank regulators promising to halt such practices and give remediation to some homeowners who were harmed. In response to these disclosures, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Trans
Gary Edwards

Fanniegate: Gamechanger For The GOP? | Via Meadia - 0 views

blogs.the-american-interest.com/...iegate-gamechanger-for-the-gop

financial-collapse obammunism fanniegate

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The story doesn’t just attack a failure of Democratic policy execution; it exposes a key flaw in New Democratic thinking.  The Third Way as dreamed up by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sought to harness the power of financial markets to a public service agenda.  Old style command and control liberalism believed in directly mandating business to do what politicians thought should be done.  AT&T had to serve rural communities, but in exchange it had a phone monopoly and regulators made sure that it made a good profit.  The airlines and bus companies had to service unprofitable routes, but regulators made sure that their route networks as a whole were profitable.
  • a new and updated liberalism appeared.
  • The sad fact remains that the current president, according to longstanding government clearance protocols, could not be hired as a janitor in a federal building with the amount of personal background information that he has provided. Run for President? No problem. Get any other federal job? No way. Quite apart from the issue of any sort of birth certificates, real or imagined, genuine or forged, is the fact that Barack Obama’s school records, SAT and LSAT scores, college and law school admission records and scholarship paperwork and grade transcripts and thesis papers, medical records, passport history, Illinois state senate tenure records, presidential campaign foreign donor lists, complete White House visitor logs and many other relevant records and documents have all never been released or allowed to be subjected to any sort of scrutiny, despite several years of repeated requests for disclosure by numerous individuals and non-traditional media organizations. Virtually the entire paper trail of Barack Obama’s existence has always been deeply hidden away in a tight shroud of secrecy. The Obama 2008 campaign and subsequent administration have to date spent a substantial sum on legal fees, estimated in the millions of dollars, to fight Freedom of Information Act filings and other motions and requests to examine some of this material. The powerful international law firm Perkins Coie, the counsel of record to the Democractic National Committee, has been their primary provider of these services and continues in that role.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 11
     
    excerpt:  Democrats, watch out. The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction - and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener's rogue body parts.  If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle - a big if - then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981. The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form:  Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. By Gretchen Morgenson, one of America's best business journalists who is currently at The New York Times, and noted financial analyst Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment gives the best available account of how the growing chaos in the mortgage and personal finance markets and the rampant bundling of dubious loans into exotically toxic securities plunged the world, and millions of American families, into the gravest financial crisis since World War Two. It is gripping reading as well, and its explanations are clear enough that readers without any background in finance will have no trouble following the plot.  The villains?  An unholy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic establishment, community organizing groups like ACORN and La Raza, and politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Cisneros.  (Frank got a cushy job for a lover, Pelosi got a job and layoff protection for a son, Cisneros apparently got a license to mint money bilking Mexican-Americans of their life savings in cheesy housing developments.)
Paul Merrell

Jamie Dimon's $13 Billion Secret | The Nation - 0 views

m.thenation.com/...jamie-dimons-13-billion-secret

financial-collapse banksters fraud litigation settlement JPMorgan

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • In the end, the abject fear of Ben Wagner got Jamie Dimon to cave.For much of 2013, Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of the formidable JPMorgan Chase & Company, was telling anyone who would listen that it was unfair and unjust for federal and state prosecutors to blame him and his bank for the manufacture and sale of mortgage-backed securities that occurred at Bear Stearns & Company and at Washington Mutual in the years leading up to the financial crisis. When JPMorgan Chase bought those two failing firms in 2008, Dimon argued, he was just doing what Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner had asked him to do. Why should his bank be held financially accountable for the bad behavior at Bear and WaMu?It was a clever argument—and wrong. Dimon's relentless effort to spin his patriotic story soon collided with the fact that Wagner, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of California, had uncovered evidence that JPMorgan itself was guilty of many of the same greedy and irresponsible behaviors. Piles of subpoenaed documents and e-mails revealed that JPMorgan bankers and traders had underwritten billions of dollars' worth of questionable mortgage-backed securities that Dimon had been telling everyone had originated at Bear Stearns and WaMu. Worse, the bad behavior had occurred on Dimon's watch.
  • The likelihood that the Justice Department would file Wagner's civil complaint last fall—exposing publicly for the first time the litany of wrongdoing at JPMorgan and threatening to push it off the perch that Dimon had so artfully constructed for it over the years—ultimately brought Dimon to the table. On September 26, just weeks after the Justice Department shared a draft copy of Wagner's complaint with Dimon, the two sides arranged for a summit meeting between Dimon and Attorney General Eric Holder. By mid-November, the bank had agreed to pay $13 billion in a comprehensive settlement of mortgage-related securities claims with various branches of the federal government and a group of states, led by the attorneys general of New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Delaware.It was the largest financial settlement of all time, and it kept Wagner's complaint away from the prying eyes of the public. One thing is clear: Dimon's claim that his own bankers and traders had done nothing wrong in the years leading up to the financial crisis wasn't true. "The investigators and the lawyers were uncovering very viable evidence," explains Associate Attorney General Tony West, who headed up the settlement negotiations on behalf of the Justice Department. "I think there was recognition that we had enough evidence there that would support the complaint and would support a robust lawsuit."
  • [A disclosure of my own: after JPMorgan Chase fired me as a managing director in January 2004, I brought—and lost—a wrongful-dismissal arbitration against the bank. Separately, I remain in litigation with the bank as the result of a soured investment I made in 1999.]
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Dimon was more circumspect. In a conference call the day the settlement was announced, he mostly kept quiet while Marianne Lake, the firm's CFO, led financial analysts through the details, including how $7 billion of the $13 billion fine would be tax-deductible.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Aug 14
     
    In a Matt Taibbi-quality lengthy report, William Cohan takes the reader inside the lengthy negotiations of JPMorgan's $13 billion settlement with state and federal prosecutors. JPMorgan admitted to criminal wrongdoing, and the settlement does not include immunity from criminal prosecution for anybody. But the author notes that there is not even a hint that anyone is working on criminal charges. There's a lot of discussion of dissension within the ranks of different state and federal attorneys involved. The article paints Ben Wagner, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of California, as the hero.  In my book, no one involved deserves hero status because no criminal charges have been filed against any JPMorgan managers or board members, hence there is still no incentive for any of the fraudsters who brought down the economy in 2008 to behave differently in the future. JPMorgan emains not too big to fail but too politically connected for its principals to be jailed. According to the article, the government lawyers had iron-clad proof that a group of JPMorgan managing directors had been informed that pools of mortages they were planning to buy were toxic but "buy two of the loan pools anyway, including those with the squirrelly mortgages. JPMorgan then proceeded to bundle "hundreds of millions of dollars of loans from those pools into one security." Wagner found that between the start of 2006 and the middle of 2007-when the mortgage securitization frenzy was at its peak-JPMorgan packaged and sold securities containing thousands of mortgages that were rated by a third-party evaluator to be of extremely low quality, meeting few, if any, of the bank's underwriting standards." If true, that is very serious fraud deserving of the directors' prosecution for criminal fraud and lengthy prison sentences.   The article touches on A.G. Holder's too big to jail argument but that argument, in my opinion, deserves no credibility before antitrust actions are filed to c
Paul Merrell

Forget Metadata ... The NSA Is Spying On EVERYTHING Washington's Blog - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ata-nsa-spying-everything.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-targets must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The NSA’s spying on everyone’s metadata can tell them just about everything about us … and it violates our Constitutional right to freedom of association. But people are getting distracted from the big picture by focusing on metadata. As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote yesterday: What frustrates me about all of this — [the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board] report, the president’s speech, and so many other things — is that they focus on the bulk collection of cell phone call records. There’s so much more bulk collection going on — phone calls, e-mails, address books, buddy lists, text messages, cell phone location data, financial documents, calendars, [smartphone apps] etc. — and we really need legislation and court opinions on it all. But because cell phone call records were the first disclosure, they’re what gets the attention. Indeed, Schneier confirmed last October what we’ve been saying for years … don’t get too distracted by the details, because the government is spying on everything:
  • Honestly, I think the details matter less and less. We have to assume that the NSA has EVERYONE who uses electronic communications under CONSTANT surveillance. New details about hows and whys will continue to emerge …but the big picture will remain the same. He’s right. As just one example, there is substantial evidence from top NSA and FBI whistleblowers that the government is recording the content of our calls and emails … word-for-word. So what should we make of the government’s denials that it records content? Given that the government has been caught lying about spying again and again, I’m not sure how much weight we should give to such denials. NSA whistleblower Russ Tice notes: They’re collecting content … word-for-word. *** You can’t trust these people. They lie, and they lie a lot.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Feb 14
     
    Personally, I don't think the focus is on metadata because it was the first target exposed. I see it more as a propaganda weapon to divert attention from the other NSA targets.  In any event, this page offers a very comprehensive list of the types of data the NSA is collecting, with links to further information on each type.
Paul Merrell

Glenn Greenwald: The NSA Can "Literally Watch Every Keystroke You Make" - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37255.htm

surveillance state NSA NSA-backdoors China

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • On Sunday, the German publication Der Spiegel revealed new details about secretive hacking—a secretive hacking unit inside the NSA called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. The unit was created in 1997 to hack into global communications traffic. Still with us, Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden. Glenn, can you just talk about the revelations in Der Spiegel?
  • And one of the ways that they’re doing it is that they intercept products in transit, such as if you order a laptop or other forms of Internet routers or servers and the like, they intercept it in transit, open the box, implant the malware, factory-seal it and then send it back to the user. They also exploit weaknesses in Google and YouTube and Yahoo and other services, as well, in order to implant these devices. It’s unclear to what extent, if at all, the companies even know about it, let alone cooperate in it. But what is clear is that they’ve been able to compromise the physical machines themselves, so that it makes no difference what precautions you take in terms of safeguarding the sanctity of your online activity.
  • But we’ve actually been working, ourselves, on certain stories that should be published soon regarding similar interdiction efforts. And one of the things that I think is so amazing about this, Amy, is that the U.S. government has spent the last three or four years shrilly, vehemently warning the world that Chinese technology companies are unsafe to purchase products from, because they claim the Chinese government interdicts these products and installs surveillance, backdoors and other forms of malware onto the machinery so that when you get them, immediately your privacy is compromised. And they’ve actually driven Chinese firms out of the U.S. market and elsewhere with these kinds of accusations. Congress has convened committees to issue reports making these kind of accusations about Chinese companies. And yet, at the same time, the NSA is doing exactly that which they accuse these Chinese companies of doing. And there’s a real question, which is: Are these warnings designed to steer people away from purchasing Chinese products into the arms of the American industry so that the NSA’s ability to implant these devices becomes even greater, since now everybody is buying American products out of fear that they can no longer buy Chinese products because this will happen to them?
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  • And the final thing I want to say is, you know, all this talk about amnesty for Edward Snowden, and it’s so important that the rule of law be applied to him, it’s really quite amazing. Here’s Michael Hayden. He oversaw the illegal warrantless eavesdropping program implemented under the Bush administration. He oversaw torture and rendition as the head of the CIA. James Clapper lied to the face of Congress. These are felonies at least as bad, and I would say much worse, than anything Edward Snowden is accused of doing, and yet they’re not prosecuted. They’re free to appear on television programs. The United States government in Washington constantly gives amnesty to its highest officials, even when they commit the most egregious crimes. And yet the idea of amnesty for a whistleblower is considered radical and extreme. And that’s why a hardened felon like Michael Hayden is free to walk around on the street and is treated on American media outlets as though he’s some learned, wisdom-drenched elder statesman, rather than what he is, which is a chronic criminal.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13
     
    Greenwald asks a very good question about the U.S. government accusing the Chinese government of cyber-espionage and the government's finding that Chinese-manufactured ware pose a security risk. Was that intended to drive people to purchase hardware that comes equipped with NSA backdoors? The flip side, of course, is whether the world should be beating feet to purchase their hardware from the Chinese in order to escape the NSA backdoors. Then there is the question of how those backdoors might have made their way into the hardware devices without the acquiescence of their manufacturers, who surely would have realized that their businesses might take enormous financial hits if knowledge of the backdoors became public? Bribing key staff? The manufacturers named in the Der Spiegel article surely are going to face some hard questions and they may face some very unhappy shareholders if their stock prices take a dive. It would be fun to see a shareholder's derivative class action against one of these companies for having acquiesced to NSA implantation of backdoors, leading to the disclosure and the fall in stock price. Caption the case as Wall Street, Inc. v. National Security Agency, dba Seagate Technology, PLC, then watch the feathers and blood fly.  "Seagate is the company the world trusts to store our lives - our files and photos, our libraries and histories, our science and progress."   Yes, and your stockholders trusted you not to endanger their investment by adding NSA backdoors in your products.
Gary Edwards

Who owns the Bank of England? |Dark Politricks - 0 views

www.darkpolitricks.com/...who-owns-the-bank-of-england

banksters Banksters-of-America Rothschild-Bank-of-England

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Sep 13
     
    "Who owns the Bank of England? A brief history of World Banksters By Dark Politricks First a few historical comments by people who helped create two of the worlds most famous central banks, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." - Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence The Bank of England was created in 1694 by a Scotsman William Paterson who famously said: The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing. - William Paterson The history of the Bank of England and how it was taken over by one powerful family hundreds of years ago. Up until 1946 when it was nationalised the Bank of England was a private run bank that lent money it created out of nothing to the English government and was paid back with interest. A very famous story relates to the Bank of England and the infamous Rothschilds, that all powerful banking family. This story was re-told recently in a BBC documentary about the creation of money and the Bank of England. It revolves around the Battle of Waterloo in which Nathan Rothschild used his inside knowledge of the outcome and his faster horses and couriers to play the market by getting the result of the battle before anyone else knew the outcome. He quickly sold his English bonds and gave all the traders who looked to him for guidance the impression that the French had won at Waterloo. The other traders all rus
Paul Merrell

Senators accuse government of using 'secret law' to collect Americans' data | World new... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...es-clapper-nsa-data-collection

surveillance state NSA blowback senators Clapper

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • A bipartisan group of 26 US senators has written to intelligence chiefs to complain that the administration is relying on a "secret body of law" to collect massive amounts of data on US citizens.The senators accuse officials of making misleading statements and demand that the director of national intelligence James Clapper answer a series of specific questions on the scale of domestic surveillance as well as the legal justification for it.In their strongly-worded letter to Clapper, the senators said they believed the government may be misinterpreting existing legislation to justify the sweeping collection of telephone and internet data revealed by the Guardian."We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the Patriot Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law," they say.
  • "This and misleading statements by intelligence officials have prevented our constituents from evaluating the decisions that their government was making, and will unfortunately undermine trust in government more broadly."This is the strongest attack yet from Congress since the disclosures began, and comes after Clapper admitted he had given "the least untruthful answer possible" when pushed on these issues by Senators at a hearing before the latest revelations by the Guardian and the Washington Post.In a press statement, the group of senators added: "The recent public disclosures of secret government surveillance programs have exposed how secret interpretations of the USA Patriot Act have allowed for the bulk collection of massive amounts of data on the communications of ordinary Americans with no connection to wrongdoing."
  • They said: "Reliance on secret law to conduct domestic surveillance activities raises serious civil liberty concerns and all but removes the public from an informed national security and civil liberty debate." A spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) acknowledged the letter. "The ODNI received a letter from 26 senators this morning requesting further engagement on vital intelligence programs recently disclosed in the media, which we are still evaluating. The intelligence and law enforcement communities will continue to work with all members of Congress to ensure the proper balance of privacy and protection for American citizens."The letter was organised by Oregan Democrat Ron Wyden, a member of the intelligence committee, but includes four Republican senators: Mark Kirk, Mike Lee, Lisa Murkowski and Dean Heller.
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  • The senators said they were seeking public answers to the following questions in order to give the American people the information they need to conduct an informed public debate. The specific questions include:• How long has the NSA used Patriot Act authorities to engage in bulk collection of Americans' records? Was this collection underway when the law was reauthorized in 2006?• Has the NSA used USA Patriot Act authorities to conduct bulk collection of any other types of records pertaining to Americans, beyond phone records?• Has the NSA collected or made any plans to collect Americans' cell-site location data in bulk?• Have there been any violations of the court orders permitting this bulk collection, or of the rules governing access to these records? If so, please describe these violations.
  • They ask Clapper to publicly provide information about the duration and scope of the program and provide examples of its effectiveness in providing unique intelligence, if such examples exist.The senators also expressed their concern that the program itself has a significant impact on the privacy of law-abiding Americans and that the Patriot Act could be used for the bulk collection of records beyond phone metadata."The Patriot Act's 'business records' authority can be used to give the government access to private financial, medical, consumer and firearm sales records, among others," said a press statement.In addition to raising concerns about the law's scope, the senators noted that keeping the official interpretation of the law secret and the instances of misleading public statements from executive branch officials prevented the American people from having an informed public debate about national security and domestic surveillance.
  • A bipartisan group of 26 US senators has written to intelligence chiefs to complain that the administration is relying on a "secret body of law" to collect massive amounts of data on US citizens.The senators accuse officials of making misleading statements and demand that the director of national intelligence James Clapper answer a series of specific questions on the scale of domestic surveillance as well as the legal justification for it.In their strongly-worded letter to Clapper, the senators said they believed the government may be misinterpreting existing legislation to justify the sweeping collection of telephone and internet data revealed by the Guardian."We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the Patriot Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law," they say."This and misleading statements by intelligence officials have prevented our constituents from evaluating the decisions that their government was making, and will unfortunately undermine trust in government more broadly."
Paul Merrell

ACLU Demands Secret Court Hand Over Crucial Rulings On Surveillance Law - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...221667

surveillance state FISA-Court opinions disclosure litigation ACLU

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a motion to reveal the secret court opinions with “novel or significant interpretations” of surveillance law, in a renewed push for government transparency. The motion, filed Wednesday by the ACLU and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, asks the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which rules on intelligence gathering activities in secret, to release 23 classified decisions it made between 9/11 and the passage of the USA Freedom Act in June 2015. As ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Patrick Toomey explains, the opinions are part of a “much larger collection of hidden rulings on all sorts of government surveillance activities that affect the privacy rights of Americans.” Among them is the court order that the government used to direct Yahoo to secretly scanits users’ emails for “a specific set of characters.” Toomey writes: These court rulings are essential for the public to understand how federal laws are being construed and implemented. They also show how constitutional protections for personal privacy and expressive activities are being enforced by the courts. In other words, access to these opinions is necessary for the public to properly oversee their government.
  • Although the USA Freedom Act requires the release of novel FISA court opinions on surveillance law, the government maintains that the rule does not apply retroactively—thereby protecting the panel from publishing many of its post-9/11 opinions, which helped create an “unprecedented buildup” of secret surveillance laws. Even after National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the scope of mass surveillance in 2013, sparking widespread outcry, dozens of rulings on spying operations remain hidden from the public eye, which stymies efforts to keep the government accountable, civil liberties advocates say. “These rulings are necessary to inform the public about the scope of the government’s surveillance powers today,” the ACLU’s motion states.
  • Toomey writes that the rulings helped influence a number of novel spying activities, including: The government’s use of malware, which it calls “Network Investigative Techniques” The government’s efforts to compel technology companies to weaken or circumvent their own encryption protocols The government’s efforts to compel technology companies to disclose their source code so that it can identify vulnerabilities The government’s use of “cybersignatures” to search through internet communications for evidence of computer intrusions The government’s use of stingray cell-phone tracking devices under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) The government’s warrantless surveillance of Americans under FISA Section 702—a controversial authority scheduled to expire in December 2017 The bulk collection of financial records by the CIA and FBI under Section 215 of the Patriot Act Without these rulings being made public, “it simply isn’t possible to understand the government’s claimed authority to conduct surveillance,” Toomey writes. As he told The Intercept on Wednesday, “The people of this country can’t hold the government accountable for its surveillance activities unless they know what our laws allow. These secret court opinions define the limits of the government’s spying powers. Their disclosure is essential for meaningful public oversight in our democracy.”
Gary Edwards

George Soros Hacked, Connections To Global 'Dissident Groups' Revealed - 1 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...219531

Soros New-World-Order Globalist Banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • The documents are from multiple departments of Soros’ organizations. Soros’ the Open Society Foundations seems to be the group with the most documents in the leak. Files come from sections representing almost all geographical regions in the world, from the USA, to Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Latin, America, Africa, the World Bank “the President’s Office”, as well as an unknown entity named SOUK. As the Daily Caller notes, there are documents dating from at least 2008 to 2016. Documents in the leak range from research papers such as “EUROPEAN CRISIS: Key Developments of the Past 48 Hours” focusing on the impact of the refugee crisis, to a document titled “The Ukraine debate in Germany“, to an update specific financials of grants. They reveal work plans, strategies, priorities and other activities by Soros, and include reports on European elections, migration and asylum in Europe.
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 16
     
    "Last Thursday, as Bloomberg was gingerly setting the stage, and the preemptive damage control for what was about to be a historic leak, it did everything in its power to deflect attention from the key topic, namely that prominent liberal billionaire and Hillary supporter, George Soros had been hacked and countless documents were about to be leaked, and instead focus on the alleged identity of the hackers, the so-called DCLeaks, which - like all other "experts" - it positioned as yet another Russian government-sponsored operation. To this we had one retort: "Far more important than the inane speculation on the hackers' identity, is the now official disclosure - and warning - that Soros himself was hacked. Bloomberg writes that Open Society Foundations, the Soros group, reported the breach to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in June, according to spokeswoman Laura Silber, who added that an investigation by a security firm found the intrusion was limited to an intranet system used by board members, staff and foundation partners." And, sure enough, over the weekend that is precisely what DCLeaks revealed as it disclosed over two thousand internal documents from groups run by George Soros were leaked online Saturday after hackers infiltrated the groups. The 2,576 files were released by DCLeaks, a website which claims to be "launched by the American hacktivists who respect and appreciate freedom of speech, human rights and government of the people.""
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Aug 16
     
    The leaked documents are here. http://soros.dcleaks.com/
Paul Merrell

Obama to Place Some Restraints on Surveillance - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hamper-surveillance-court.html

surveillance state NSA Obama Obama-decision

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • President Obama will issue new guidelines on Friday to curtail government surveillance, but will not embrace the most far-reaching proposals of his own advisers and will ask Congress to help decide some of the toughest issues, according to people briefed on his thinking.Mr. Obama plans to increase limits on access to bulk telephone data, call for privacy safeguards for foreigners and propose the creation of a public advocate to represent privacy concerns at a secret intelligence court. But he will not endorse leaving bulk data in the custody of telecommunications firms, nor will he require court permission for all so-called national security letters seeking business records.
  • President Obama will issue new guidelines on Friday to curtail government surveillance, but will not embrace the most far-reaching proposals of his own advisers and will ask Congress to help decide some of the toughest issues, according to people briefed on his thinking.Mr. Obama plans to increase limits on access to bulk telephone data, call for privacy safeguards for foreigners and propose the creation of a public advocate to represent privacy concerns at a secret intelligence court. But he will not endorse leaving bulk data in the custody of telecommunications firms, nor will he require court permission for all so-called national security letters seeking business records.
  • The emerging approach, described by current and former government officials who insisted on anonymity in advance of Mr. Obama’s widely anticipated speech, suggested a president trying to straddle a difficult line in hopes of placating foreign leaders and advocates of civil liberties without a backlash from national security agencies. The result seems to be a speech that leaves in place many current programs, but embraces the spirit of reform and keeps the door open to changes later. The decision to provide additional privacy protections for non-American citizens or residents, for instance, largely codifies existing practices but will be followed by a 180-day study by the director of national intelligence about whether to go further. Likewise, instead of taking the storage of bulk data out of government hands, as recommended by a review panel he appointed, Mr. Obama will leave it in place for now and ask lawmakers to weigh in.The blend of decisions, to be outlined in a speech at the Justice Department and in a presidential guidelines memorandum, will be Mr. Obama’s highest-profile response to the disclosures about the National Security Agency made in recent months by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor who has fled to Russia.
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  • The developments came as the nation’s judiciary waded into the highly charged debate. In a letter made public on Tuesday, a judge designated by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to express the views of the judicial branch warned that some changes under consideration would have a negative “operational impact” on a secret foreign intelligence court.Judge John D. Bates, a former chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, urged Mr. Obama and Congress not to alter the way the court is appointed or to create an independent public advocate to argue against the Justice Department in secret proceedings. Any such advocate, he wrote, should instead be appointed only when the court decided one was needed.Judge Bates objected to the workload of requiring that courts approve all national security letters, which are administrative subpoenas allowing the F.B.I. to obtain records about communications and financial transactions without court approval. And he raised concerns about greater public disclosure of court rulings, arguing that unclassified summaries would be “likely to promote confusion and misunderstanding.”
  • The judge’s letter, versions of which he sent to the leaders of several congressional committees, was released as all five members of Mr. Obama’s surveillance review group testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, seeking support for their recommendations.Illustrating the cross-pressures on the president, the advisers argued for the appointment of the independent version of a public advocate, a recommendation the president is expected to follow, though it is not clear how he will structure the position.
  • The judge’s objection to the proposal on national security letters dovetailed with that of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who argued it would be inefficient to have to go to a judge each time records were sought. Mr. Obama has decided not to require court approval in every case, but might still require it in some circumstances, according to one administration official.Mr. Obama will cut back on the number of people whose phone records can be examined by the N.S.A. through its bulk data program. Currently the agency can scrutinize call records of people as far as three steps, or “hops,” removed from a suspect. Mr. Obama’s review panel proposed limiting searches to people just two steps removed. He is also likely to cut down the number of years such data can be retained; currently it is deleted after five years.
  • But the president will not, at least for now, back the panel’s suggestion that telecommunications firms keep such data and that the government be allowed to tap into those databases only when necessary. Intelligence officials complained it would be inefficient to have to go to multiple companies, so some officials proposed creating an independent consortium to store the data instead.Mr. Obama has decided against keeping the data at the private providers because they do not want that responsibility, officials said, and no independent consortium currently exists. As a result, he will ask Congress to work with him to determine the best way to store the data.
  • The letter by Judge Bates was accompanied by 15 pages of often specific comments about possible surveillance reforms.It is highly unusual for judges to weigh in on public policy debates involving the other two branches of government, but Judge Bates, the director of the Administrative Office of the United States Court, said that Chief Justice Roberts had designated him to “act as a liaison” and that he had consulted other judges.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Jan 14
     
    I keep wondering if Barack Obama just might be the most timid President the U.S. has ever had. Certainly, he lacks the courage to lead the nation. 
Paul Merrell

Spies Infiltrate a Fantasy Realm of Online Games - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...field-of-elves-and-trolls.html

surveillance state NSA GCHQ NSA-targets online-games mobile-apps

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.
  • Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels. The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.
  • Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 N.S.A. document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!” another 2008 N.S.A. document declared. But for all their enthusiasm — so many C.I.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat. The documents, obtained by The Guardian and shared with The New York Times and ProPublica, do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the effort. Former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations.
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  • In the 2008 N.S.A. document, titled “Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments,” the agency said that “terrorist target selectors” — which could be a computer’s Internet Protocol address or an email account — “have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft” and other games. But that document does not present evidence that terrorists were participating in the games. Still, the intelligence agencies found other benefits in infiltrating these online worlds. According to the minutes of a January 2009 meeting, GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers, scientists and other foreign intelligence operatives to be World of Warcraft players — potential targets for recruitment as agents.
  • The surveillance, which also included Microsoft’s Xbox Live, could raise privacy concerns. It is not clear exactly how the agencies got access to gamers’ data or communications, how many players may have been monitored or whether Americans’ communications or activities were captured. One American company, the maker of World of Warcraft, said that neither the N.S.A. nor its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had gotten permission to gather intelligence in its game. Many players are Americans, who can be targeted for surveillance only with approval from the nation’s secret intelligence court. The spy agencies, though, face far fewer restrictions on collecting certain data or communications overseas.
  • “The Sigint Enterprise needs to begin taking action now to plan for collection, processing, presentation and analysis of these communications,” said one April 2008 N.S.A. document, referring to “signals intelligence.” The document added, “With a few exceptions, N.S.A. can’t even recognize the traffic,” meaning that the agency could not distinguish gaming data from other Internet traffic. By the end of 2008, according to one document, the British spy agency, known as GCHQ, had set up its “first operational deployment into Second Life” and had helped the police in London in cracking down on a crime ring that had moved into virtual worlds to sell stolen credit card information. The British spies running the effort, which was code-named Operation Galician, were aided by an informer using a digital avatar “who helpfully volunteered information on the target group’s latest activities.”
  • Even before the American government began spying in virtual worlds, the Pentagon had identified the potential intelligence value of video games. The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command in 2006 and 2007 worked with several foreign companies — including an obscure digital media business based in Prague — to build games that could be downloaded to mobile phones, according to people involved in the effort. They said the games, which were not identified as creations of the Pentagon, were then used as vehicles for intelligence agencies to collect information about the users. Eager to cash in on the government’s growing interest in virtual worlds, several large private contractors have spent years pitching their services to American intelligence agencies. In one 66-page document from 2007, part of the cache released by Mr. Snowden, the contracting giant SAIC promoted its ability to support “intelligence collection in the game space,” and warned that online games could be used by militant groups to recruit followers and could provide “terrorist organizations with a powerful platform to reach core target audiences.”
  • In spring 2009, academics and defense contractors gathered at the Marriott at Washington Dulles International Airport to present proposals for a government study about how players’ behavior in a game like World of Warcraft might be linked to their real-world identities. “We were told it was highly likely that persons of interest were using virtual spaces to communicate or coordinate,” said Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California who received grant money as part of the program. After the conference, both SAIC and Lockheed Martin won contracts worth several million dollars, administered by an office within the intelligence community that finances research projects.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13
     
    Coming soon: disclosure of the NSA's public bathroom cams and microphones because people talk there and exchange germs that might have DNA in them that can be used to track terrorists. 
Paul Merrell

The Missing Pages of the 9/11 Report - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...-pages-of-the-9-11-report.html

war & peace 9-11 28-pages Saudis

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The lead author of the Senate’s report on 9/11 says it’s time to reveal what’s in the 28 pages that were redacted from it, which he says will embarrass the Saudis.A story that might otherwise have slipped away in a morass of conspiracy theories gained new life Wednesday when former Sen. Bob Graham headlined a press conference on Capitol Hill to press for the release of 28 pages redacted from a Senate report on the 9/11 attacks. And according to Graham, the lead author of the report, the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier” of the 9/11 hijackers.
  • “This may seem stale to some but it’s as current as the headlines we see today,” Graham said, referring to the terrorist attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris. The pages are being kept under wraps out of concern their disclosure would hurt U.S. national security. But as chairman of the Senate Select Committee that issued the report in 2002, Graham argues the opposite is true, and that the real “threat to national security is non-disclosure.” Graham said the redacted pages characterize the support network that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, and if that network goes unchallenged, it will only flourish. He said that keeping the pages classified is part of “a general pattern of coverup” that for 12 years has kept the American people in the dark. It is “highly improbable” the 19 hijackers acted alone, he said, yet the U.S. government’s position is “to protect the government most responsible for that network of support.”   The Saudis know what they did, Graham continued, and the U.S. knows what they did, and when the U.S. government takes a position of passivity, or actively shuts down inquiry, that sends a message to the Saudis. “They have continued, maybe accelerated their support for the most extreme form of Islam,” he said, arguing that both al Qaeda and ISIS are “a creation of Saudi Arabia.”
  • It all signals that the decades-long bipartisan policy of always keeping the Saudis happy, and never rocking the boat, may be coming to an end. In Sarasota, Florida, a federal judge is reviewing 80,000 pages of documents that relate to a prominent Saudi family and its extensive contacts with three of the hijackers when they attended flight school in Sarasota.
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  • When the 800-page Senate report was made public in 2002, Graham recalled that he and Republican Sen. Richard Shelby were “shocked to see an important chapter in the report has been redacted.” All but three Senate Democrats, joined by one Republican and one independent, signed a letter calling on President Bush to declassify the 28-page section detailing the role of foreign governments in bankrolling the 9/11 attackers. “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters,” the redacted portion, begins midway through the report, on page 395. Despite the title, then-CIA Director Porter Goss and the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission all called for it to be declassified, yet it has stayed secret for a dozen years, fueling conspiracy theories that Graham says can only be put to rest by its release.   
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 15
     
    Graham went farther than before, now saying that the deleted section is about Saudi Arabia's involvement in the 9-11 attack. But is this all to reinforce the narrative of 19 Islamic hijackers -- none of whom had the necessary pilot skills, flying airliners into targets on 9-11? Why no investigation of Israeli and U.S. government participation in the attack?  
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