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Paul Merrell

NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes with Children, C... - 1 views

  • New York Police Department detectives and prosecutors working an alleged underage sexting case against former Congressman Anthony Weiner have turned over a newly-found laptop he shared with wife Huma Abedin to the FBI with enough evidence “to put Hillary (Clinton) and her crew away for life,” NYPD sources told True Pundit. NYPD sources said Clinton’s “crew” also included several unnamed yet implicated members of Congress in addition to her aides and insiders. The NYPD seized the computer from Weiner during a search warrant and detectives discovered a trove of over 500,000 emails to and from Hillary Clinton, Abedin and other insiders during her tenure as secretary of state. The content of those emails sparked the FBI to reopen its defunct email investigation into Clinton on Friday.
  • But new revelations on the contents of that laptop, according to law enforcement sources, implicate the Democratic presidential candidate, her subordinates, and even select elected officials in far more alleged serious crimes than mishandling classified and top secret emails, sources said. NYPD sources said these new emails include evidence linking Clinton herself and associates to: Money laundering Child exploitation Sex crimes with minors (children) Perjury Pay to play through Clinton Foundation Obstruction of justice Other felony crimes NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department’s highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices. “What’s in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach,” the NYPD Chief said. “There is not going to be any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold my own press conference if it comes to that.”
  • The NYPD Chief said once Comey saw the alarming contents of the emails he was forced to reopen a criminal probe against Clinton. “People are going to prison,” he said. Meanwhile, FBI sources said Abedin and Weiner were cooperating with federal agents, who have taken over the non-sexting portions the case from NYPD. The husband-and-wife Clinton insiders  are both shopping for separate immunity deals, sources said. “If they don’t cooperate they are going to see long sentences,” a federal law enforcement source said. NYPD sources said Weiner or Abedin stored all the emails in a massive Microsoft Outlook program on the laptop. The emails implicate other current and former members of Congress and one high-ranking Democratic Senator as having possibly engaged in criminal activity too, sources said. Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Weiner’s cell phones and travel records, law enforcement sources confirmed. NYPD said it planned to order the same phone and travel records on Clinton and Abedin, however, the FBI said it was in the process of requesting the identical records. Law enforcement sources are particularly interested in cell phone activity and travel to the Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands and other locations that sources would not divulge.
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  • The new emails contain travel documents and itineraries indicating Hillary Clinton, President Bill Clinton, Weiner and multiple members of Congress and other government officials accompanied convicted pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on his Boeing 727 on multiple occasions to his private island in the U.S Virgin Islands, sources said. Epstein’s island has also been dubbed Orgy Island or Sex Slave Island where Epstein allegedly pimps out underage girls and boys to international dignitaries. Both NYPD and FBI sources confirm based on the new emails they now believe Hillary Clinton traveled as Epstein’s guest on at least six occasions, probably more when all the evidence is combed, sources said. Bill Clinton, it has been confirmed in media reports spanning recent years, that he too traveled with Epstein over 20 times to the island.
  • According to other uncovered emails, Abedin and Clinton both sent and received thousands of classified and top secret documents to personal email accounts including Weiner’s unsecured campaign web site which is managed by Democratic political consultants in Washington D.C. Weiner maintained little known email accounts that the couple shared on the website anthonyweiner.com. Weiner, a former seven-term Democratic Congressman from New York, primarily used that domain to campaign for Congress and for his failed mayoral bid of New York City. At one point, FBI sources said, Abedin and Clinton’s classified and top secret State Department documents and emails were stored in Weiner’s email on a server shared with a dog grooming service and a western Canadian bicycle shop. However, Weiner and Abedin, who is Hillary Clinton’s closest personal aide, weren’t the only people with access to the Weiner’s email account. Potentially dozens of unknown individuals had access to Abedin’s sensitive State Department emails that were stored in Weiner’s email account, FBI sources confirmed. FEC records show Weiner paid more than $92,000 of congressional campaign funds to Anne Lewis Strategies LLC to manage his email and web site. According to FBI sources, the D.C.-based political consulting firm has served as the official administrator of the anthonyweiner.com domain since 2010, the same time Abedin was working at the State Department. This means technically Weiner and Abedin’s emails, including top secret State Department emails, could have been accessed, printed, discussed, leaked, or distributed by untold numbers of personnel at the Anne Lewis consulting firm because they can control where the website and it emails are pointed, FBI sources said.
  • According to FBI sources, the bureau’s newly-minted probe into Clinton’s use and handling of emails while she served as secretary of state, has also been broadened to include investigating new email-related revelations, including: Abedin forwarded classified and top secret State Department emails to Weiner’s email Abedin stored emails, containing government secrets, in a special folder shared with Weiner warehousing over 500,000 archived State Department emails. Weiner had access to these classified and top secret documents without proper security clearance to view the records Abedin also used a personal yahoo address and her Clintonemail.com address to send/receive/store classified and top secret documents A private consultant managed Weiner’s site for the last six years, including three years when Clinton was secretary of state, and therefore, had full access to all emails as the domain’s listed registrant and administrator via Whois email contacts. Because Weiner’s campaign website is managed by the third-party consultant and political email guru, FBI agents are burdened with the task of trying to decipher just how many people had access to Weiner’s server and emails and who were these people. Or if the server was ever compromised by hackers, or other actors.
  • Abedin told FBI agents in an April interview that she didn’t know how to consistently print documents or emails from her secure Dept. of State system. Instead, she would forward the sensitive emails to her yahoo, Clintonemail.com and her email linked to Weiner. Abedin said, according to FBI documents, she would then access those email accounts via webmail from an unclassified computer system at the State Dept. and print the documents, many of which were classified and top secret, from the largely unprotected webmail portals. Clinton did not have a computer in her office on Mahogany Row at the State Dept. so she was not able to read timely intelligence unless it was printed out for her, Abedin said. Abedin also said Clinton could not operate the secure State Dept. fax machine installed in her Chappaqua, NY home without assistance. Perhaps more alarming, according to the FBI’s 302 Report detailing its interview with Abedin, none of the multiple FBI agents and Justice Department officials who conducted the interview pressed Abedin to further detail the email address linked to Weiner. There was never a follow up, according to the 302 report. But now, all that has changed, with the FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation and the husband and wife seeking immunity deals to testify against Clinton and other associates about the contents of the laptop’s emails.
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    "New York Police Department detectives and prosecutors working an alleged underage sexting case against former Congressman Anthony Weiner have turned over a newly-found laptop he shared with wife Huma Abedin to the FBI with enough evidence "to put Hillary (Clinton) and her crew away for life," NYPD sources told True Pundit. NYPD sources said Clinton's "crew" also included several unnamed yet implicated members of Congress in addition to her aides and insiders. The NYPD seized the computer from Weiner during a search warrant and detectives discovered a trove of over 500,000 emails to and from Hillary Clinton, Abedin and other insiders during her tenure as secretary of state. The content of those emails sparked the FBI to reopen its defunct email investigation into Clinton on Friday. But new revelations on the contents of that laptop, according to law enforcement sources, implicate the Democratic presidential candidate, her subordinates, and even select elected officials in far more alleged serious crimes than mishandling classified and top secret emails, sources said. NYPD sources said these new emails include evidence linking Clinton herself and associates to: Money laundering Child exploitation Sex crimes with minors (children) Perjury Pay to play through Clinton Foundation Obstruction of justice Other felony crimes NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department's highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices. "What's in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach," the NYPD Chief said. "There is not going to be any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold my own press conference if it comes to that." The NYPD
Paul Merrell

CURIA - Documents - 0 views

  • 37      It must be stated that the interference caused by Directive 2006/24 with the fundamental rights laid down in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter is, as the Advocate General has also pointed out, in particular, in paragraphs 77 and 80 of his Opinion, wide-ranging, and it must be considered to be particularly serious. Furthermore, as the Advocate General has pointed out in paragraphs 52 and 72 of his Opinion, the fact that data are retained and subsequently used without the subscriber or registered user being informed is likely to generate in the minds of the persons concerned the feeling that their private lives are the subject of constant surveillance.
  • 43      In this respect, it is apparent from recital 7 in the preamble to Directive 2006/24 that, because of the significant growth in the possibilities afforded by electronic communications, the Justice and Home Affairs Council of 19 December 2002 concluded that data relating to the use of electronic communications are particularly important and therefore a valuable tool in the prevention of offences and the fight against crime, in particular organised crime. 44      It must therefore be held that the retention of data for the purpose of allowing the competent national authorities to have possible access to those data, as required by Directive 2006/24, genuinely satisfies an objective of general interest.45      In those circumstances, it is necessary to verify the proportionality of the interference found to exist.46      In that regard, according to the settled case-law of the Court, the principle of proportionality requires that acts of the EU institutions be appropriate for attaining the legitimate objectives pursued by the legislation at issue and do not exceed the limits of what is appropriate and necessary in order to achieve those objectives (see, to that effect, Case C‑343/09 Afton Chemical EU:C:2010:419, paragraph 45; Volker und Markus Schecke and Eifert EU:C:2010:662, paragraph 74; Cases C‑581/10 and C‑629/10 Nelson and Others EU:C:2012:657, paragraph 71; Case C‑283/11 Sky Österreich EU:C:2013:28, paragraph 50; and Case C‑101/12 Schaible EU:C:2013:661, paragraph 29).
  • 67      Article 7 of Directive 2006/24, read in conjunction with Article 4(1) of Directive 2002/58 and the second subparagraph of Article 17(1) of Directive 95/46, does not ensure that a particularly high level of protection and security is applied by those providers by means of technical and organisational measures, but permits those providers in particular to have regard to economic considerations when determining the level of security which they apply, as regards the costs of implementing security measures. In particular, Directive 2006/24 does not ensure the irreversible destruction of the data at the end of the data retention period.68      In the second place, it should be added that that directive does not require the data in question to be retained within the European Union, with the result that it cannot be held that the control, explicitly required by Article 8(3) of the Charter, by an independent authority of compliance with the requirements of protection and security, as referred to in the two previous paragraphs, is fully ensured. Such a control, carried out on the basis of EU law, is an essential component of the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (see, to that effect, Case C‑614/10 Commission v Austria EU:C:2012:631, paragraph 37).69      Having regard to all the foregoing considerations, it must be held that, by adopting Directive 2006/24, the EU legislature has exceeded the limits imposed by compliance with the principle of proportionality in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 52(1) of the Charter.
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  • 58      Directive 2006/24 affects, in a comprehensive manner, all persons using electronic communications services, but without the persons whose data are retained being, even indirectly, in a situation which is liable to give rise to criminal prosecutions. It therefore applies even to persons for whom there is no evidence capable of suggesting that their conduct might have a link, even an indirect or remote one, with serious crime. Furthermore, it does not provide for any exception, with the result that it applies even to persons whose communications are subject, according to rules of national law, to the obligation of professional secrecy. 59      Moreover, whilst seeking to contribute to the fight against serious crime, Directive 2006/24 does not require any relationship between the data whose retention is provided for and a threat to public security and, in particular, it is not restricted to a retention in relation (i) to data pertaining to a particular time period and/or a particular geographical zone and/or to a circle of particular persons likely to be involved, in one way or another, in a serious crime, or (ii) to persons who could, for other reasons, contribute, by the retention of their data, to the prevention, detection or prosecution of serious offences.
  • 1        These requests for a preliminary ruling concern the validity of Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC (OJ 2006 L 105, p. 54).
  • Digital Rights Ireland Ltd (C‑293/12)vMinister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources,Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform,Commissioner of the Garda Síochána,Ireland,The Attorney General,intervener:Irish Human Rights Commission, andKärntner Landesregierung (C‑594/12),Michael Seitlinger,Christof Tschohl and others,
  • JUDGMENT OF THE COURT (Grand Chamber)8 April 2014 (*)(Electronic communications — Directive 2006/24/EC — Publicly available electronic communications services or public communications networks services — Retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of such services — Validity — Articles 7, 8 and 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union)In Joined Cases C‑293/12 and C‑594/12,
  • 34      As a result, the obligation imposed by Articles 3 and 6 of Directive 2006/24 on providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks to retain, for a certain period, data relating to a person’s private life and to his communications, such as those referred to in Article 5 of the directive, constitutes in itself an interference with the rights guaranteed by Article 7 of the Charter. 35      Furthermore, the access of the competent national authorities to the data constitutes a further interference with that fundamental right (see, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, Eur. Court H.R., Leander v. Sweden, 26 March 1987, § 48, Series A no 116; Rotaru v. Romania [GC], no. 28341/95, § 46, ECHR 2000-V; and Weber and Saravia v. Germany (dec.), no. 54934/00, § 79, ECHR 2006-XI). Accordingly, Articles 4 and 8 of Directive 2006/24 laying down rules relating to the access of the competent national authorities to the data also constitute an interference with the rights guaranteed by Article 7 of the Charter. 36      Likewise, Directive 2006/24 constitutes an interference with the fundamental right to the protection of personal data guaranteed by Article 8 of the Charter because it provides for the processing of personal data.
  • 65      It follows from the above that Directive 2006/24 does not lay down clear and precise rules governing the extent of the interference with the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter. It must therefore be held that Directive 2006/24 entails a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with those fundamental rights in the legal order of the EU, without such an interference being precisely circumscribed by provisions to ensure that it is actually limited to what is strictly necessary.66      Moreover, as far as concerns the rules relating to the security and protection of data retained by providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks, it must be held that Directive 2006/24 does not provide for sufficient safeguards, as required by Article 8 of the Charter, to ensure effective protection of the data retained against the risk of abuse and against any unlawful access and use of that data. In the first place, Article 7 of Directive 2006/24 does not lay down rules which are specific and adapted to (i) the vast quantity of data whose retention is required by that directive, (ii) the sensitive nature of that data and (iii) the risk of unlawful access to that data, rules which would serve, in particular, to govern the protection and security of the data in question in a clear and strict manner in order to ensure their full integrity and confidentiality. Furthermore, a specific obligation on Member States to establish such rules has also not been laid down.
  • 60      Secondly, not only is there a general absence of limits in Directive 2006/24 but Directive 2006/24 also fails to lay down any objective criterion by which to determine the limits of the access of the competent national authorities to the data and their subsequent use for the purposes of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions concerning offences that, in view of the extent and seriousness of the interference with the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, may be considered to be sufficiently serious to justify such an interference. On the contrary, Directive 2006/24 simply refers, in Article 1(1), in a general manner to serious crime, as defined by each Member State in its national law.61      Furthermore, Directive 2006/24 does not contain substantive and procedural conditions relating to the access of the competent national authorities to the data and to their subsequent use. Article 4 of the directive, which governs the access of those authorities to the data retained, does not expressly provide that that access and the subsequent use of the data in question must be strictly restricted to the purpose of preventing and detecting precisely defined serious offences or of conducting criminal prosecutions relating thereto; it merely provides that each Member State is to define the procedures to be followed and the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain access to the retained data in accordance with necessity and proportionality requirements.
  • 55      The need for such safeguards is all the greater where, as laid down in Directive 2006/24, personal data are subjected to automatic processing and where there is a significant risk of unlawful access to those data (see, by analogy, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, S. and Marper v. the United Kingdom, § 103, and M. K. v. France, 18 April 2013, no. 19522/09, § 35).56      As for the question of whether the interference caused by Directive 2006/24 is limited to what is strictly necessary, it should be observed that, in accordance with Article 3 read in conjunction with Article 5(1) of that directive, the directive requires the retention of all traffic data concerning fixed telephony, mobile telephony, Internet access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony. It therefore applies to all means of electronic communication, the use of which is very widespread and of growing importance in people’s everyday lives. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 3 of Directive 2006/24, the directive covers all subscribers and registered users. It therefore entails an interference with the fundamental rights of practically the entire European population. 57      In this respect, it must be noted, first, that Directive 2006/24 covers, in a generalised manner, all persons and all means of electronic communication as well as all traffic data without any differentiation, limitation or exception being made in the light of the objective of fighting against serious crime.
  • 62      In particular, Directive 2006/24 does not lay down any objective criterion by which the number of persons authorised to access and subsequently use the data retained is limited to what is strictly necessary in the light of the objective pursued. Above all, the access by the competent national authorities to the data retained is not made dependent on a prior review carried out by a court or by an independent administrative body whose decision seeks to limit access to the data and their use to what is strictly necessary for the purpose of attaining the objective pursued and which intervenes following a reasoned request of those authorities submitted within the framework of procedures of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions. Nor does it lay down a specific obligation on Member States designed to establish such limits. 63      Thirdly, so far as concerns the data retention period, Article 6 of Directive 2006/24 requires that those data be retained for a period of at least six months, without any distinction being made between the categories of data set out in Article 5 of that directive on the basis of their possible usefulness for the purposes of the objective pursued or according to the persons concerned.64      Furthermore, that period is set at between a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of 24 months, but it is not stated that the determination of the period of retention must be based on objective criteria in order to ensure that it is limited to what is strictly necessary.
  • 52      So far as concerns the right to respect for private life, the protection of that fundamental right requires, according to the Court’s settled case-law, in any event, that derogations and limitations in relation to the protection of personal data must apply only in so far as is strictly necessary (Case C‑473/12 IPI EU:C:2013:715, paragraph 39 and the case-law cited).53      In that regard, it should be noted that the protection of personal data resulting from the explicit obligation laid down in Article 8(1) of the Charter is especially important for the right to respect for private life enshrined in Article 7 of the Charter.54      Consequently, the EU legislation in question must lay down clear and precise rules governing the scope and application of the measure in question and imposing minimum safeguards so that the persons whose data have been retained have sufficient guarantees to effectively protect their personal data against the risk of abuse and against any unlawful access and use of that data (see, by analogy, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, Eur. Court H.R., Liberty and Others v. the United Kingdom, 1 July 2008, no. 58243/00, § 62 and 63; Rotaru v. Romania, § 57 to 59, and S. and Marper v. the United Kingdom, § 99).
  • 26      In that regard, it should be observed that the data which providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks must retain, pursuant to Articles 3 and 5 of Directive 2006/24, include data necessary to trace and identify the source of a communication and its destination, to identify the date, time, duration and type of a communication, to identify users’ communication equipment, and to identify the location of mobile communication equipment, data which consist, inter alia, of the name and address of the subscriber or registered user, the calling telephone number, the number called and an IP address for Internet services. Those data make it possible, in particular, to know the identity of the person with whom a subscriber or registered user has communicated and by what means, and to identify the time of the communication as well as the place from which that communication took place. They also make it possible to know the frequency of the communications of the subscriber or registered user with certain persons during a given period. 27      Those data, taken as a whole, may allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained, such as the habits of everyday life, permanent or temporary places of residence, daily or other movements, the activities carried out, the social relationships of those persons and the social environments frequented by them.
  • 32      By requiring the retention of the data listed in Article 5(1) of Directive 2006/24 and by allowing the competent national authorities to access those data, Directive 2006/24, as the Advocate General has pointed out, in particular, in paragraphs 39 and 40 of his Opinion, derogates from the system of protection of the right to privacy established by Directives 95/46 and 2002/58 with regard to the processing of personal data in the electronic communications sector, directives which provided for the confidentiality of communications and of traffic data as well as the obligation to erase or make those data anonymous where they are no longer needed for the purpose of the transmission of a communication, unless they are necessary for billing purposes and only for as long as so necessary.
  • On those grounds, the Court (Grand Chamber) hereby rules:Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC is invalid.
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    EU Court of Justice decision in regard to a Directive that required communications data retention by telcos/ISPs, finding the Directive invalid as a violation of the right of privacy in communications. Fairly read, paragraph 59 outlaws bulk collection of such records, i.e., it requires the equivalent of a judge-issued search warrant in the U.S. based on probable cause to believe that the particular individual's communications are a legitimate object of a search.  Note also that paragraph 67 effectively forbids transfer of any retained data outside the E.U. So a barrier for NSA sharing of data with GCHQ derived from communications NSA collects from EU communications traffic. Bye-bye, Big Data for GCHQ in the E.U. 
Paul Merrell

Secret is out: Americans murdered Liaquat Ali Khan! | Pakistan Today - 0 views

  • Americans murdered the first elected prime minister of Pakistan through the Afghan government, declassified documents of US State Department disclosed. Like a number of other high-profile killings, the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, has also remained a mystery. Conspiracy theories abound, yet are difficult to substantiate. It was revealed in the documents declassified a few years ago that two people killed the murderer of Liaquat Ali Khan at the spot while crowd also massacred the two persons in order to leave no sign of the conspiracy. According to the documents, the United States wanted to get contracts of oil resources in Iran. Pakistan and Iran enjoyed cordial ties and Afghanistan used to be an enemy of Pakistan during 1950-51. The neighbouring Afghanistan was the only country that did not accept Pakistan at that time. The US demanded Pakistan use its influence in Tehran and persuade it to transfer control of its oil fields to the US. Liaquat Ali Khan declined to accede to the request, saying he would not use his friendship for dishonest purposes and not interfere in personal affairs of Iran.
  • On which, then US President Harry Truman had threatened to Liaquat Ali Khan. Not only that, Liaquat Ali Khan also demanded that the US vacate air bases in Pakistan, dropping a bombshell on Americans. Following the development, American started search of murderer for assassinating Khan. They did not find a suitable person in Pakistan and then turned to Afghanistan for this purpose, according to the documents. Washington contacted the US Embassy in Kabul, offering Zahir Shah to search an assassin for Khan and in return they will ensure Pashtoonistan’s freedom. Afghan government had found a man, Syed Akbar, to take the job and also made arrangements for him to be killed immediately after, so as to conceal the conspiracy. All three stayed at a local hotel in Rawalpindi one day before the meeting of party in Company Bagh. Akbar fired at Khan when he started his speech at dais and he fell on the stage, saying “Allah help Pakistan”. The cartridges recovered from Khan’s body were US made. The type of bullets used to kill the Pakistani prime minister was in use by high-ranking American officers and were not usually available in the market.
  • Some people claimed that Governor General Ghulam Muhammad was behind Khan’s murder while some blamed Mushtaq Ahmed Gormani. Different committees and commission were constituted but failed to conclude any results. After a span of over 60 years, the US State Department have disclosed all the secrets and a video of Dr Shabir about disclosures also appeared in which he gave reaction over the declassified documents. When Online contacted Muazzam Ali Khan, the grandson of Liaquat Ali Khan, he said they are aware about the report and it is true. He also said they also have supporting documents in this regard.
Gary Edwards

JW: Obama Admin Knew About Benghazi Before It Happened - 0 views

  • The State Department has yet to turn over any documents from the secret email accounts of Hillary Clinton and other top State Department officials. “These documents are jaw-dropping. No wonder we had to file more FOIA lawsuits and wait over two years for them.  If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president. And why would the Obama administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood even after it knew it was tied to the Benghazi terrorist attack and to al Qaeda? These documents also point to connection between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war – and confirm that the U.S. knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists,” stated Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president.  “These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits. The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
  • The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms: Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo. The DIA document further details: The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.  The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.] The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.
  • Another DIA report, written in August 2012 (the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS: The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows: This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory. Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”
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  • From a separate lawsuit, the State Department produced a document created the morning after the Benghazi attack by Hillary Clinton’s offices, and the Operations Center in the Office of the Executive Secretariat that was sent widely through the agency, including to Joseph McManus (then-Hillary Clinton’s executive assistant).  At 6:00 am, a few hours after the attack, the top office of the State Department sent a “spot report” on the “Attack on U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” that makes no mention of videos or demonstrations: Four COM personnel were killed and three were wounded in an attack by dozens of fighters on the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi beginning approximately 1550 Eastern Time….
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    "Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq  Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria (Washington, DC) - Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified "Secret" documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked "Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman" (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts.  The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria.  The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria. The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders "on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi." Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections. A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group "to kill as many Americans as possible."  The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon P
Paul Merrell

US House of Reps: Europe Can't Boycott Israel - International Middle East Media Center - 0 views

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The United States House of Representatives has fast-tracked a bill regarding a free trade agreement between the US and Europe which would include a section barring EU countries from any form of commercial boycott against Israel and Israeli goods.
  • According to the PNN, Israel’s Ynetnews indicated that two versions of the law had been presented to the House of Representatives and the Senate, clarifying that both versions included the section obligating EU countries to refrain from the boycott of Israeli products. This section states that any affiliation and cooperation with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on the part of EU countries is in violation of the “principle of non-discrimination’ statute in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). According to Ynetnews, the second law did not pass at this stage due to disputes with respect to compensation for businesses in Europe. There was also severe opposition from Obama’s own Democrats, but it is expected that an agreement will be reached between the House of Representatives and the Senate during the coming days. From the moment that an agreement is reached, a unified document will be presented to the American President, Barack Obama, for a review of the trade agreement as soon as possible. He will then sign the document and it will be put to the vote in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
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    see also http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4667914,00.html I'd love to see this wind up in the WTO Dispute Resolution Process. The Israeli production of goods and services in the Occupied Territories is a war crime under international law. Dealing in such goods is also a war crime. It is actually illegal for European nations to allow their import. Moreover, the right to participate in a boycott is protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. The judges at the WTO are very good and have previously held that trade agreements have to give way to human rights established under international law. And of course boycotts are also protected as human rights under international law. The WTO judges would have a field day with this situation. That is no guarantee that the EU will not succumb to US pressure but this will guarantee lots of press coverage for the U.S.A.'s continued support for Israeli war crimes. And that is publicity that Israel's right-wing government does not want.
Paul Merrell

Fisa court oversight: a look inside a secret and empty process | Glenn Greenwald | Comm... - 0 views

  • Since we began began publishing stories about the NSA's massive domestic spying apparatus, various NSA defenders – beginning with President Obama - have sought to assure the public that this is all done under robust judicial oversight. "When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls," he proclaimed on June 7 when responding to our story about the bulk collection of telephone records, adding that the program is "fully overseen" by "the Fisa court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them". Obama told Charlie Rose last night:"What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls … by law and by rule, and unless they … go to a court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it's always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause."The GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, told CNN that the NSA "is not listening to Americans' phone calls. If it did, it is illegal. It is breaking the law." Talking points issued by the House GOP in defense of the NSA claimed that surveillance law only "allows the Government to acquire foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S.-persons (foreign, non-Americans) located outside the United States."
  • The decisions about who has their emails and telephone calls intercepted by the NSA is made by the NSA itself, not by the Fisa court, except where the NSA itself concludes the person is a US citizen and/or the communication is exclusively domestic. But even in such cases, the NSA often ends up intercepting those communications of Americans without individualized warrants, and all of this is left to the discretion of the NSA analysts with no real judicial oversight.
  • The NSA's media defenders have similarly stressed that the NSA's eavesdropping and internet snooping requires warrants when it involves Americans. The Washington Post's Charles Lane told his readers: "the government needs a court-issued warrant, based on probable cause, to listen in on phone calls." The Post's David Ignatius told Post readers that NSA internet surveillance "is overseen by judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" and is "lawful and controlled". Tom Friedman told New York Times readers that before NSA analysts can invade the content of calls and emails, they "have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress."This has become the most common theme for those defending NSA surveillance. But these claim are highly misleading, and in some cases outright false.
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  • What is vital to recognize is that the NSA is collecting and storing staggering sums of communications every day. Back in 2010, the Washington Post reported that "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." Documents published by the Guardian last week detail that, in March 2013, the NSA collected three billions of pieces of intelligence just from US communications networks alone.In sum, the NSA is vacuuming up enormous amounts of communications involving ordinary Americans and people around the world who are guilty of nothing. There are some legal constraints governing their power to examine the content of those communications, but there are no technical limits on the ability either of the agency or its analysts to do so. The fact that there is so little external oversight is what makes this sweeping, suspicion-less surveillance system so dangerous. It's also what makes the assurances from government officials and their media allies so dubious.
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    Glenn Greenwald strikes again with hard proof from NSA documents, dissecting procedures used throughout the intelligence establishment from the NSA to the President to Congress, casting severe doubt on what we have been told by those defending the NSA surveillance program. I have highlighted only a few points from this lengthy article. As to Greenwald's discussion of the FISA Court's weaknesses, he omitted one that I believe is incredibly, the lack of an adversarial system with a lawyer opposing what the government asks the Court to authorize. True, search warrants are normally issued in the U.S. with only the government represented in the process. But there is a crucial difference: once someone is charged with a crime, the warrant must be disclosed to the defendant who can ask the court to suppress all evidence unlawfully obtained not only through the warrant but also the fruits of any unlawfully obtained evidence, meaning subsequently discovered evidence that would not have been found absent the unlawfully obtained evidence. The same result can happen if the warrant is found to be invalid for any of a variety of reasons, or the officers exceeded the scope of the search authorized.  So in the normal search warrant process, the participation of an adversary attorney is only delayed; it is not virtually eliminated as it is in the FISA Court. Thus far, only those ordered to disclose records to the NSA have been granted standing to oppose disclosure, not those who have been surveilled. The entire U.S. judicial system is built around the principle of an adversarial process. Judges are expected to be neutral arbiters between two or more sides to a dispute. We do not have an inquisitorial system, as is used for example in some European nations, where the judge is also the investigator. The FISA court is presently composed of 11 federal district court judges who also preside over normal cases in their individual districts. Steeped in the adversarial system and th
Gary Edwards

Feds confiscate investigative reporter's confidential files during raid | The Daily Caller - 3 views

  • A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter. A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.
  • But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said. Outraged over the seizure, Hudson is now speaking out. She said no subpoena for the notes was presented during the raid and argues the confiscation was outside of the search warrant’s parameter. “They took my notes without my knowledge and without legal authority to do so,” Hudson said this week. “The search warrant they presented said nothing about walking out of here with a single sheet of paper.”
  • After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security.
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    If reality is as stated, the reporter has a pretty strong civil rights case against the government officials who knowingly participated in the theft and retention of the reporter's notes, two distinct conspiracies. Under the 4th Amendment, officers executing a search and seizure warrant may lawfully seize the items particularly described in the warrant and any other evidence of crime that is in plain view during the search. It's a big push of credibility to argue that reading documents stored in a bag in search for a gun falls within the "plain view" doctrine. The officer could instead just reach his hand into the bag and feel around for a gun. Quite a few extra steps involved in removing the documents and reading them simply to determine whether the bag contains a gun. Add in the facts that: [i] the supposed recognition of government documents argument does not explain why the officers seized personal handwritten notes too; and [ii] the evidence that the officer who discovered the docs had learned that the reporter was one who had called the conduct of his agency into question, and it comes out smelling a lot more like an attempt to discover the reporters' sources than a legitimate search for guns when the bag was searched.   Only one side heard from so far, of course. But this sounds more like low-level government officials who were ignorant of their legal obligations than a White House-driven scandal. But I wouldn't want to be the government lawyer who authorized the retention of the seized notes and other documents. They should have been returned without retaining copies the instant the lawyer learned of the circumstances of their seizure. There's not only a 4th Amendment liberty interest but also a 1st Amendment freecdom to communicate anonymously right protecting those documents and notes. 
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    I listened to an interview with Audrey Hudson last night. It seems to me the key fact is in this clip; "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said." Audrey had written a series of articles describing how the Homeland Security and Transportation agency had been lying about air marshalls and the post 911 program to secure passenger flights. The documents that were stolen listed her sources - the whistle blowers inside the Homeland Security administration who leaked information about the lies and the many problems with the program that the Obama administration was covering up. This sounds to me like another example of Obama hunting down and persecuting whistleblowers. A direct violation of the 1989 - 2007 Whistleblower Protection Act. Not surprisingly, Ms Hudson had not tried to contact any of her whistleblowing sources for fear that the NSA would be watching and that this persecution would happen. Interestingly, the warrant was to seize a "potato launcher". No kidding! It seems Ms. Hudson's husband had, at one time been a licensed arms dealer. He lost that license having sold a gun with faulty paperwork. This event had occurred years earlier, and Mr. Hudson had long since moved on and was currently working for the Coast Guard as an outside contractor/consultant. So they seized the toy "potato launcher", as described in the warrant. But they also ransacked the home looking for the key documents that listed Ms Hudson's inside Homeland Security sources behind her air marshal scandal articles. These documents were the only items seized - other than the "potato launcher" that was the only item listed in the warrant. Seems we've been here before. From wikipedia, the story of Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller: ........................... Arrested on 1 July 1937, N
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    "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said."
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    What troubles me the most about this event, assuming the truth of what's reported, is how well known the limitations on execution of a search warrant are within the law enforcement community. If it happened as described, it seems very unlikely that the officer who grabbed the documents did not know he was violating the 4th Amendment. Ditto for the lawyer or other official(s) who learned of what went down shortly thereafter, but kept the documents anyway. There's an arrogance that goes with government and corporate officials who don't have to personally pay damage awards. With no personal monetary liability (in reality, since the government or corporation picks up the tab), it becomes a matter of personal ethics and whether the misbehavior will anger or please the boss. If the ethics are weak, that becomes a pretty simple choice.
Paul Merrell

For sale: Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe - T... - 0 views

  • Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent. The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer, according to company marketing documents and experts in surveillance technology.
  • The world’s most powerful intelligence services, such as the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ, long have used cellphone data to track targets around the globe. But experts say these new systems allow less technically advanced governments to track people in any nation — including the United States — with relative ease and precision.
  • It is unclear which governments have acquired these tracking systems, but one industry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive trade information, said that dozens of countries have bought or leased such technology in recent years. This rapid spread underscores how the burgeoning, multibillion-dollar surveillance industry makes advanced spying technology available worldwide. “Any tin-pot dictator with enough money to buy the system could spy on people anywhere in the world,” said Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, a London-based activist group that warns about the abuse of surveillance technology. “This is a huge problem.”
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  • Yet marketing documents obtained by The Washington Post show that companies are offering powerful systems that are designed to evade detection while plotting movements of surveillance targets on computerized maps. The documents claim system success rates of more than 70 percent. A 24-page marketing brochure for SkyLock, a cellular tracking system sold by Verint, a maker of analytics systems based in Melville, N.Y., carries the subtitle “Locate. Track. Manipulate.” The document, dated January 2013 and labeled “Commercially Confidential,” says the system offers government agencies “a cost-effective, new approach to obtaining global location information concerning known targets.”
  • tracking systems that access carrier location databases are unusual in their ability to allow virtually any government to track people across borders, with any type of cellular phone, across a wide range of carriers — without the carriers even knowing. These systems also can be used in tandem with other technologies that, when the general location of a person is already known, can intercept calls and Internet traffic, activate microphones, and access contact lists, photos and other documents. Companies that make and sell surveillance technology seek to limit public information about their systems’ capabilities and client lists, typically marketing their technology directly to law enforcement and intelligence services through international conferences that are closed to journalists and other members of the public.
  • Security experts say hackers, sophisticated criminal gangs and nations under sanctions also could use this tracking technology, which operates in a legal gray area. It is illegal in many countries to track people without their consent or a court order, but there is no clear international legal standard for secretly tracking people in other countries, nor is there a global entity with the authority to police potential abuses.
  • (Privacy International has collected several marketing brochures on cellular surveillance systems, including one that refers briefly to SkyLock, and posted them on its Web site. The 24-page SkyLock brochure and other material was independently provided to The Post by people concerned that such systems are being abused.)
  • Verint, which also has substantial operations in Israel, declined to comment for this story. It says in the marketing brochure that it does not use SkyLock against U.S. or Israeli phones, which could violate national laws. But several similar systems, marketed in recent years by companies based in Switzerland, Ukraine and elsewhere, likely are free of such limitations.
  • The tracking technology takes advantage of the lax security of SS7, a global network that cellular carriers use to communicate with one another when directing calls, texts and Internet data. The system was built decades ago, when only a few large carriers controlled the bulk of global phone traffic. Now thousands of companies use SS7 to provide services to billions of phones and other mobile devices, security experts say. All of these companies have access to the network and can send queries to other companies on the SS7 system, making the entire network more vulnerable to exploitation. Any one of these companies could share its access with others, including makers of surveillance systems.
  • Companies that market SS7 tracking systems recommend using them in tandem with “IMSI catchers,” increasingly common surveillance devices that use cellular signals collected directly from the air to intercept calls and Internet traffic, send fake texts, install spyware on a phone, and determine precise locations. IMSI catchers — also known by one popular trade name, StingRay — can home in on somebody a mile or two away but are useless if a target’s general location is not known. SS7 tracking systems solve that problem by locating the general area of a target so that IMSI catchers can be deployed effectively. (The term “IMSI” refers to a unique identifying code on a cellular phone.)
  • Verint can install SkyLock on the networks of cellular carriers if they are cooperative — something that telecommunications experts say is common in countries where carriers have close relationships with their national governments. Verint also has its own “worldwide SS7 hubs” that “are spread in various locations around the world,” says the brochure. It does not list prices for the services, though it says that Verint charges more for the ability to track targets in many far-flung countries, as opposed to only a few nearby ones. Among the most appealing features of the system, the brochure says, is its ability to sidestep the cellular operators that sometimes protect their users’ personal information by refusing government requests or insisting on formal court orders before releasing information.
  • Another company, Defentek, markets a similar system called Infiltrator Global Real-Time Tracking System on its Web site, claiming to “locate and track any phone number in the world.” The site adds: “It is a strategic solution that infiltrates and is undetected and unknown by the network, carrier, or the target.”
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    The Verint company has very close ties to the Iraeli government. Its former parent company Comverse, was heavily subsidized by Israel and the bulk of its manufacturing and code development was done in Israel. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comverse_Technology "In December 2001, a Fox News report raised the concern that wiretapping equipment provided by Comverse Infosys to the U.S. government for electronic eavesdropping may have been vulnerable, as these systems allegedly had a back door through which the wiretaps could be intercepted by unauthorized parties.[55] Fox News reporter Carl Cameron said there was no reason to believe the Israeli government was implicated, but that "a classified top-secret investigation is underway".[55] A March 2002 story by Le Monde recapped the Fox report and concluded: "Comverse is suspected of having introduced into its systems of the 'catch gates' in order to 'intercept, record and store' these wire-taps. This hardware would render the 'listener' himself 'listened to'."[56] Fox News did not pursue the allegations, and in the years since, there have been no legal or commercial actions of any type taken against Comverse by the FBI or any other branch of the US Government related to data access and security issues. While no real evidence has been presented against Comverse or Verint, the allegations have become a favorite topic of conspiracy theorists.[57] By 2005, the company had $959 million in sales and employed over 5,000 people, of whom about half were located in Israel.[16]" Verint is also the company that got the Dept. of Homeland Security contract to provide and install an electronic and video surveillance system across the entire U.S. border with Mexico.  One need not be much of a conspiracy theorist to have concerns about Verint's likely interactions and data sharing with the NSA and its Israeli equivalent, Unit 8200. 
Paul Merrell

Civil Rights Coalition files FCC Complaint Against Baltimore Police Department for Ille... - 0 views

  • This week the Center for Media Justice, ColorOfChange.org, and New America’s Open Technology Institute filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission alleging the Baltimore police are violating the federal Communications Act by using cell site simulators, also known as Stingrays, that disrupt cellphone calls and interfere with the cellular network—and are doing so in a way that has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Stingrays operate by mimicking a cell tower and directing all cellphones in a given area to route communications through the Stingray instead of the nearby tower. They are especially pernicious surveillance tools because they collect information on every single phone in a given area—not just the suspect’s phone—this means they allow the police to conduct indiscriminate, dragnet searches. They are also able to locate people inside traditionally-protected private spaces like homes, doctors’ offices, or places of worship. Stingrays can also be configured to capture the content of communications. Because Stingrays operate on the same spectrum as cellular networks but are not actually transmitting communications the way a cell tower would, they interfere with cell phone communications within as much as a 500 meter radius of the device (Baltimore’s devices may be limited to 200 meters). This means that any important phone call placed or text message sent within that radius may not get through. As the complaint notes, “[d]epending on the nature of an emergency, it may be urgently necessary for a caller to reach, for example, a parent or child, doctor, psychiatrist, school, hospital, poison control center, or suicide prevention hotline.” But these and even 911 calls could be blocked.
  • The Baltimore Police Department could be among the most prolific users of cell site simulator technology in the country. A Baltimore detective testified last year that the BPD used Stingrays 4,300 times between 2007 and 2015. Like other law enforcement agencies, Baltimore has used its devices for major and minor crimes—everything from trying to locate a man who had kidnapped two small children to trying to find another man who took his wife’s cellphone during an argument (and later returned it). According to logs obtained by USA Today, the Baltimore PD also used its Stingrays to locate witnesses, to investigate unarmed robberies, and for mysterious “other” purposes. And like other law enforcement agencies, the Baltimore PD has regularly withheld information about Stingrays from defense attorneys, judges, and the public. Moreover, according to the FCC complaint, the Baltimore PD’s use of Stingrays disproportionately impacts African American communities. Coming on the heels of a scathing Department of Justice report finding “BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law,” this may not be surprising, but it still should be shocking. The DOJ’s investigation found that BPD not only regularly makes unconstitutional stops and arrests and uses excessive force within African-American communities but also retaliates against people for constitutionally protected expression, and uses enforcement strategies that produce “severe and unjustified disparities in the rates of stops, searches and arrests of African Americans.”
  • Adding Stingrays to this mix means that these same communities are subject to more surveillance that chills speech and are less able to make 911 and other emergency calls than communities where the police aren’t regularly using Stingrays. A map included in the FCC complaint shows exactly how this is impacting Baltimore’s African-American communities. It plots hundreds of addresses where USA Today discovered BPD was using Stingrays over a map of Baltimore’s black population based on 2010 Census data included in the DOJ’s recent report:
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  • The Communications Act gives the FCC the authority to regulate radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable communications in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. This includes being responsible for protecting cellphone networks from disruption and ensuring that emergency calls can be completed under any circumstances. And it requires the FCC to ensure that access to networks is available “to all people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex.” Considering that the spectrum law enforcement is utilizing without permission is public property leased to private companies for the purpose of providing them next generation wireless communications, it goes without saying that the FCC has a duty to act.
  • But we should not assume that the Baltimore Police Department is an outlier—EFF has found that law enforcement has been secretly using stingrays for years and across the country. No community should have to speculate as to whether such a powerful surveillance technology is being used on its residents. Thus, we also ask the FCC to engage in a rule-making proceeding that addresses not only the problem of harmful interference but also the duty of every police department to use Stingrays in a constitutional way, and to publicly disclose—not hide—the facts around acquisition and use of this powerful wireless surveillance technology.  Anyone can support the complaint by tweeting at FCC Commissioners or by signing the petitions hosted by Color of Change or MAG-Net.
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    An important test case on the constitutionality of stingray mobile device surveillance.
Gary Edwards

Oklahoma House Passes Bill to Ban UN Agenda 21 - 0 views

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    The State of Oklahoma looks to be well on its way towards joining Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee as States passing laws to block any efforts to implement the insidious United Nations socialist initiative known as Agenda 21.   Excerpts: lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Tennessee adopted a resolution blasting the dubious UN agenda as a radical "socialist" plot at odds with individual liberty, private-property rights, and the U.S. Constitution. Lawmakers in Kansas followed suit. Numerous other state governments, under heavy pressure from activists across the political spectrum, are also working to ban the "sustainable development" scheme in their jurisdictions. City and county governments, meanwhile, are taking action to protect residents, too.  "One of the goals of the United Nations Agenda 21 Initiative is to influence governments," Kern explained. "My constituents are concerned about that influence and about their property rights being infringed upon by government regulations that originated from Agenda 21. My legislation addresses those concerns by protecting individual property rights." "The Oklahoma bill passed by the House last week reads: "The state or any political subdivision of the state shall not adopt or implement policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe upon or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in, or traceable to United Nations Agenda 21/Sustainable Development." Also prohibited under the measure is state or local government participation in "any other international law or ancillary plan of action that contravenes the Constitution of the United States or the Oklahoma Constitution." The legislation also ensures that state and local governments are barred from working with UN-linked groups promoting the controversial agenda. "Since the United Nations has accredited or enlisted numerous nongovernmental and intergovernmen
Gary Edwards

I Am a Peaceful AR-15 Assault Rifle Owner | Casey Research - 0 views

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    ""Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurances and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." George Washington I can't think of any reason I need to own my AR-15 assault[1] rifle. I don't pretend to need it for self defense. I also own several handguns. Any one of my handguns would be adequate to allow me an opportunity to defend myself, or another person, from virtually any act of aggression by another individual. Indeed, I could have easily halted any of the recent gun based rampages, by any of those deranged lunatics, with just one of my handguns. I wish I had been there. I have needlessly and peacefully owned my AR-15 for many years. I keep my AR-15 securely locked in a gun safe in the very same home where my young children live. My children are aware of my AR-15. Like many other things in life, I have taught my children about guns. Recently, some of my kids attended a private gun safety class given by a highly experienced gun expert. I enjoyed watching my kids learn about my AR-15. I admit being a bit nostalgic about my AR-15. I spent lots of time learning about every aspect of the AR-15 when I was in Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina. I also carried an AR-15 when I served my country in Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia. I had it with me when I lived in a dirt hole on the border of Kuwait. It is the weapon I know better than any other. I own lots of dangerous things I don't need. I don't need my highly modified 600+ hp Z06 Corvette, or my Harley Davidson motorcycle, or that crazy looking knife I sometimes jokingly say was imported directly from the Klingon Empire.[2] Al
Paul Merrell

1,217 Militants in Aleppo Surrendered, Thousands of Civilians Evacuated, Fighting Conti... - 0 views

  • Syrian, Russian and allied forces have suspended most of their military operations against insurgents in the remaining “rebel-held” area in eastern Aleppo to facilitate the evacuation of more civilians and to give insurgents an additional opportunity to decide whether they want to surrender of continue a lost battle. However, sporadic fighting continued.
  • The Russian Defense Ministry, on Saturday, noted that military operations against insurgents in eastern Aleppo had been suspended to facilitate the evacuation of non-combatant civilians. The pause in combat operations also gave insurgents an additional chance to lay down their arms. Insurgents had been given the choice to evacuate to other “rebel-held” areas. Syrian citizens were also given the opportunity to surrender to have their status settled, be granted an amnesty and to return to a normal life.
  • Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov stated that “More than 20,000 residents left eastern Aleppo in the first part of Saturday, and 1,217 militants laid down their weapons.” No details about the exact whereabouts of those who surrendered were provided. The evacuation was monitored by drones and webcams and broadcast life. Remaining insurgents are holding on to about ten percent of the area of Aleppo they controlled about three weeks ago. nsnbc could not independently verify that 20,000 have been evacuated, but an nsnbc correspondent located in Aleppo confirmed that “a substantial number of civilians were evacuated to relatively safe places such as makeshift evacuation centers in the Jebrin area. nsnbc’s correspondent noted that “the 20,000 mentioned in some State media reports appear strongly exaggerated and that the number of those who were evacuated on Saturday is closer to about 5,000 – 6,000 persons. Last week the International Committee of the Red Cross commented that some 30,000 civilians had fled eastern Aleppo to government-controlled areas. Russian officers in Aleppo are also coordinating aid efforts with the Red Cross, the Red Crescent and other internationally recognized aid organizations. Meanwhile, a statement issued by the Russian Reconciliation Center said the Russian mine disposal experts continue their work alongside the engineering members within the Syrian army to clear liberated areas in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo. The Center noted that mines have been removed in an area of 8 hectares, while explosive devices have also been removed from 24 buildings, bakery, two schools, two mosques, power stations and 4.5 km of roads. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also said that the decision for taking all of Aleppo has been taken, adding that the army recapture of rebel-held areas in Aleppo will change the course of the battles in Syria. The Syrian government also strongly condemned the United States’ decision to legalize the increased transfer of weapons to “rebels” in Syria under the banner of fighting terrorism. It is noteworthy that the U.S. administration has not published any details about how exactly it wants to monitor whom exactly it transfers weapons to and which mechanisms it will put in place to assure that these weapons would be used in the “fight against terrorism”.
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  • Syrian, Russian and allied forces have suspended most of their military operations against insurgents in the remaining “rebel-held” area in eastern Aleppo to facilitate the evacuation of more civilians and to give insurgents an additional opportunity to decide whether they want to surrender of continue a lost battle. However, sporadic fighting continued.
Gary Edwards

Saul Alinsky Leaves the White House | The American Spectator - 0 views

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    "When Barack Obama leaves the White House tomorrow, he leaves with his worst dreams unrealized. Still, what he leaves behind is awful. Thank goodness he'll be gone. The very day after Obama was elected in 2008, I predicted in this space that his team would steal the Senate by hook and crook (see: Al Franken); nuke the filibuster at least for judicial nominees; liberalize voting laws (or enforcement thereof) to make fraud easier while charging opponents with "vote suppression"; drum up spurious allegations of civil rights violations; punish anti-abortion protesters; enact "copious new regulations, especially environmental, to be used selectively to ensnare other conservative malcontents"; invasively use the IRS to harass conservative organizations; and tacitly encourage civil unrest in furtherance of Obamite goals. All those predictions of course came true. Obama and company also waged bureaucratic war against independent inspectors general; tried their hardest (even illegally) to hobble fossil fuels industries; evaded Congress's intent by sending cash and uranium to a near-nuclear-ready Iran; fumbled and stumbled while veterans suffered virtually criminal neglect; wasted hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on projects that were not "shovel-ready" and did not create many jobs; oversaw an economy in which the workforce participation rate dropped to historically low levels while real median household income also fell and personal debt rose, and in which food stamp rolls grew to a number larger than the population of Spain; horrendously politicized the Justice Department; and saw race relations worsen for the first time in decades. In what should have been treated by the media as major scandals (or more major than the media represented them), the Obama administration encouraged illegal gun-running to Mexican cartels, with untold numbers of resultant deaths; failed to provide adequate security before or rescue during the Benghazi tragedy; provide
Paul Merrell

DOJ's Motion to Dismiss in Smith v. Obama, the case challenging the legality of the war... - 0 views

  • As I noted in an earlier post, Nathan Smith, a U.S. Army captain deployed to Kuwait as part of the campaign against ISIL, Operation Inherent Resolve, has sued the President, seeking a declaration that Congress has not authorized the hostilities in Iraq and Syria and that therefore the War Powers Resolution requires the President to remove U.S. forces from hostilities in those nations. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the case. Its brief in support of the motion includes one argument that I think is correct (albeit not for all the reasons the government offers) — namely, that Smith lacks standing to sue. That ought to be sufficient to have the case dismissed. The brief also includes an argument on the merits (albeit not designated as such) that is very interesting and potentially important — an account of how Congress has allegedly authorized Inherent Resolve in three ways: (i) in the 2001 AUMF; (ii) in the 2002 AUMF; and (iii) in current appropriations statutes. The heart of the brief, however, is devoted to a third argument — that Judge Koller-Kotelly must dismiss the case on the basis of the political question doctrine — that is not only wrong, but that simply ignores the Supreme Court’s recent (and repeated) repudiation of that very argument.
  • On page 39 of its 45-page brief, the government finally gets around to the reason why the court should dismiss the complaint: Smith lacks standing. Importantly, Smith’s theory of standing is not that he — an Army captain deployed to perform intelligence services in Kuwait — is more likely to be injured or killed by virtue of the President’s decision to deploy troops into hostilities in Iraq and Syria. It is, instead, that the President’s alleged failure to comply with the War Powers Act results in Captain Smith’s own violation of his officer’s oath to “support and defend” the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution.
  • The government’s standing argument begins (p. 35) by suggesting that “[p]laintiff’s claim that he is being forced to betray his oath is insufficient to establish standing because the violation of an oath, by itself, is not an injury in fact.” The cases the government cites for that proposition, however, do not say that a forced oath violation would not be an injury in fact — and that’s not a question the judge needs to resolve. What the cases establish, instead, is the point the government finally argues at page 39 — namely, that a government officer does not violate his oath by complying with superiors’ orders, even if it turns out that the law prohibits the military operation in which those orders are issued. Indeed, Smith would not violate his oath of office even if his superiors’ orders themselves were unauthorized, or if the intelligence activities he is ordered to performed were unauthorized. But he does not allege even those things (as I discuss below, he does not, for instance, alleged that he is being ordered to do anything unlawful). Instead, he merely argues that because President Obama should have withdrawn troops from Syria and Iraq 60 days after their deployment, Smith himself is violating his oath to “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution.” This is a non sequitur: Even if Smith is right that the continuation of Operation Inherent Resolve is unlawful, that would not mean that he is acting in violation of his oath. (Much more on this in my earlier post.) And that simple fact is reason enough for Judge Koller-Kotelly to dismiss the case.
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  • One of Smith’s counsel, Professor Bruce Ackerman, argues that this reason for rejecting the oath-based theory of standing ignores the Supreme Court’s 1804 decision in Little v. Barreme. Little, however, is not on point. In that case, Navy Captain Little was sued by the owners of a Danish ship for damages caused when Little seized that neutral ship. The Court held that Little could be liable, notwithstanding the fact that he was following orders, because the capture violated a implicit statutory prohibition on the military’s seizure of ships sailing from France to the United States. In this case, however, Captain Smith has not argued — nor could he — that he has been ordered to do anything unlawful (in violation of a statute), let alone that he has been ordered to do something that would subject him to possible liability for damages. He is, instead, arguing that President Obama violated a statute. That is not enough to establish Smith’s standing to sue.
  • The government’s main argument, to which it devotes far too many pages, is that the judge must dismiss the case because it raises a “political question” that courts cannot answer. This is flatly wrong — and it ignores several controlling precedents, including the Supreme Court’s recent 8-1 rejection of virtually the same government argument in Zivotofsky v. Clinton.
  • The most interesting thing about the government’s brief — and by far the most important aspect of it, for public purposes apart from the lawsuit itself — is that, in the section ostensibly arguing that the case is nonjusticiable (see pp. 25-30, and also pp. 4-14), DOJ actually offers the Executive branch’s most detailed defense yet about why Operation Inherent Resolve is congressionally authorized. As some of us predicted, the government relies on three arguable authorizations, any one of which would be sufficient to defeat Smith’s WPR claim if the courts were to reach the merits. In this post I’m not going to assess the merits of the three arguments. For now, my purpose is only to describe them, and to raise one issue with respect to the third. i. First, the government argues that the 2001 AUMF authorizes the operation against ISIL.
  • Second, the government argues that the 2002 AUMF also authorizes Operation Inherent Resolve, just as it authorized operations in Iraq against AQI (which became ISIL) from 2003 to 2011, after the Hussain regime fell.
  • Finally, and most interestingly (in part because the government has not previously made this argument), DOJ argues that a recent “unbroken stream” of appropriations statutes not only confirm the authorities allegedly conferred by the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs, but also offer their own, independent congressional authorization.
  • Two things are fairly clear from this: The members of Congress approve of Operation Inherent Resolve — indeed, there’s virtually no opposition. And Congress has (most likely) appropriated funds to pay for it. The operative question, however, is whether Congress’s appropriations also serve as an authorization that would supersede the requirement of WPR section 5(b). The government brief alludes to one important argument that the plaintiff will undoubtedly raise: Section 8(a)(1) of the WPR provides that, for purposes of tolling the 60-day clock of section 5(b), “[a]uthority to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations wherein involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances shall not be inferred (1) from any provision of law . . . including any provision contained in any appropriations Act, unless such provision specifically authorizes the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into such situations and states that it is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of this chapter.” Obviously, the 2016 Act does not satisfy that requirement. Is that fatal to the appropriations-as-authorization argument?
  • As the Office of Legal Counsel 50 U.S.C. 1542 and 1543). These provisions might be read simply to convey that the executive must continue to comply with the consultation and reporting requirements of WPR sections 3 and 4, even after the 2016 Act authorizes the introduction of troops into hostilities in Iraq and Syria. Or they might alternatively be construed to also specify that the Act is not providing the authority that section 5(b) of the WPR calls for.
  • Not surprisingly, DOJ argues for the former view (pp. 27-28 of the brief): “[I]n the few provisions in which Congress did reference the War Powers Resolution, to clarify that no funds made available for Operation Inherent Resolve are to be used ‘in contravention’ of the Resolution, Congress signaled its agreement that the President’s counter-ISIL military actions were authorized by simultaneously funding Operation Inherent Resolve. If Congress believed that the United States had been conducting airstrikes and other counter-ISIL military activities ‘in contravention of the War Powers Resolution,’ it would have made no sense for Congress to use the ‘in contravention’ proviso in the same laws that make funds available for the express purpose of continuing those military activities.” That’s not a bad argument, at least at first glance; but it’s not a slam-dunk, either, in part because appropriations provisions do not necessarily establish authorizations. It’ll be interesting to see how Captain Smith’s lawyers respond to this particular aspect of the merits argument. I doubt Judge Koller-Kotelly will reach it, however, because she is likely to dismiss the case for want of standing.
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    I've read the brief. I don't think the implied partial repeal of the War Powers Resolution argument should fly. The relevant provision establishes a rule of interpretation of later statutes and the appropriations bills neither reject the rule of interpretation nor specifically provide authorization for use of military force. They just authorize funding. On the standing issue, I think the DoJ position is correct; the oath of office applies only to senior officers who make the decision to initiate a war. But DoJ may have opened the door to a more compelling standing argument by arguing that the war does not constitute a war crime, a crime against peace, or a crime against humanity under international law. DoJ did not need to make that argument because Smith had not alleged in his complaint that he was being ordered to commit such crimes, but by doing so DoJ waives any argument that such issues are beyond the scope of Smith's standing and the evidence that the Iraq and Syrian wars are illegal under international law is, to say the least, strong.
Gary Edwards

A New Reserve Currency to Challenge the Dollar | Veterans Today - 0 views

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    Author David Malone digs into world events, suggesting that all the saber rattling over Iran and nuclear weapons is really about GOLD!   He argues that the dollar is rapidly being replaced as the world's "settlement" currency.  As a function, "settlement" is different than "reserve", but since WWII and the Basel Conference, the USA Dollar has been both the currency of "reserve" and settlement".  That is now changing, and fast! David further suggests that the Iraqi wars with Saddam Hussein were also about his use of the Euro to "settle" oil purchases.  It could also be argued that Muamma Gaddafi in Lybia was removed because he was organizing all of Africa to "settle" oil and other commodity purchases in GOLD, and not the USA Dollar. Are the Islamic wars really about oil?  Or are they about how oil purchases are "settled"? David further argues that Russia, India, China and Japan are actively pursuing a GOLD based settlement currency agreement series where the Chinese Yuan plays a central role.  Interestingly, all of these countries have cut agreements with Iran.  Which seems to have triggered the December 2011 Obama response banning any banks, both private and government controlled, from dealings with Iran.   It's increasingly looking like it's not the Iranian nuclear weapons program that is upsetting to Obama and his Bankster buddies.  It's the rapid replacement of the worthless paper USA dollar as a settlement currency. One of the interesting points the venerable "Veterans Today" news sight is making is that our military is being used to forcefully prop up an inflationary Bankster Dollar, and force oil producing countries into accepting that inflated Bankster Dollar as payment.  The one thing the International Bankster Cartel doesn't want is for the trade of important commodities, especially energy, to be paid for in GOLD instead of the worthless paper they control. excerpt: I think the stand-off with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz over sanctions is a
Paul Merrell

NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep | World news ... - 0 views

  • The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents. The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.
  • The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets. The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity. An agency presentation from 2011 – subtitled “SMS Text Messages: A Goldmine to Exploit” – reveals the program collected an average of 194 million text messages a day in April of that year. In addition to storing the messages themselves, a further program known as “Prefer” conducted automated analysis on the untargeted communications.
  • The Prefer program uses automated text messages such as missed call alerts or texts sent with international roaming charges to extract information, which the agency describes as “content-derived metadata”, and explains that “such gems are not in current metadata stores and would enhance current analytics”. On average, each day the NSA was able to extract:
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  • • More than 5 million missed-call alerts, for use in contact-chaining analysis (working out someone’s social network from who they contact and when) • Details of 1.6 million border crossings a day, from network roaming alerts • More than 110,000 names, from electronic business cards, which also included the ability to extract and save images.
  • • Over 800,000 financial transactions, either through text-to-text payments or linking credit cards to phone users The agency was also able to extract geolocation data from more than 76,000 text messages a day, including from “requests by people for route info” and “setting up meetings”. Other travel information was obtained from itinerary texts sent by travel companies, even including cancellations and delays to travel plans.
  • Communications from US phone numbers, the documents suggest, were removed (or “minimized”) from the database – but those of other countries, including the UK, were retained. The revelation the NSA is collecting and extracting personal information from hundreds of millions of global text messages a day is likely to intensify international pressure on US president Barack Obama, who on Friday is set to give his response to the report of his NSA review panel.
  • While US attention has focused on whether the NSA’s controversial phone metadata program will be discontinued, the panel also suggested US spy agencies should pay more consideration to the privacy rights of foreigners, and reconsider spying efforts against allied heads of state and diplomats. In a statement to the Guardian, a spokeswoman for the NSA said any implication that the agency’s collection was “arbitrary and unconstrained is false”. The agency’s capabilities were directed only against “valid foreign intelligence targets” and were subject to stringent legal safeguards, she said.
  • “In contrast to [most] GCHQ equivalents, DISHFIRE contains a large volume of unselected SMS traffic,” it states (emphasis original). “This makes it particularly useful for the development of new targets, since it is possible to examine the content of messages sent months or even years before the target was known to be of interest.” It later explains in plain terms how useful this capability can be. Comparing Dishfire favourably to a GCHQ counterpart which only collects against phone numbers that have specifically been targeted, it states “Dishfire collects pretty much everything it can, so you can see SMS from a selector which is not targeted”.
  • The document also states the database allows for broad, bulk searches of keywords which could result in a high number of hits, rather than just narrow searches against particular phone numbers: “It is also possible to search against the content in bulk (e.g. for a name or home telephone number) if the target’s mobile phone number is not known.” Analysts are warned to be careful when searching content for terms relating to UK citizens or people currently residing in the UK, as these searches could be successful but would not be legal without a warrant or similar targeting authority. However, a note from GCHQ’s operational legalities team, dated May 2008, states agents can search Dishfire for “events” data relating to UK numbers – who is contacting who, and when.
Paul Merrell

N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.
  • The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.
  • The N.S.A. and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command have implanted nearly 100,000 “computer network exploits” around the world, but the hardest problem is getting inside machines isolated from outside communications.
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  • the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A. map that indicates sites of what the agency calls “computer network exploitation.”“What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” said James Andrew Lewis, the cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the U.S. a window it’s never had before.”
  • A program named Treasure Map tried to identify nearly every node and corner of the web, so that any computer or mobile device that touched it could be located.
  • Over the past two months, parts of the program have been disclosed in documents from the trove leaked by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. A Dutch newspaper published the map of areas where the United States has inserted spy software, sometimes in cooperation with local authorities, often covertly. Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, published the N.S.A.'s catalog of hardware products that can secretly transmit and receive digital signals from computers, a program called ANT. The New York Times withheld some of those details, at the request of American intelligence officials, when it reported, in the summer of 2012, on American cyberattacks on Iran.
  • A 2008 map, part of the Snowden trove, notes 20 programs to gain access to big fiber-optic cables — it calls them “covert, clandestine or cooperative large accesses” — not only in the United States but also in places like Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Middle East. The same map indicates that the United States had already conducted “more than 50,000 worldwide implants,” and a more recent budget document said that by the end of last year that figure would rise to about 85,000. A senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the actual figure was most likely closer to 100,000.
  • The N.S.A.'s efforts to reach computers unconnected to a network have relied on a century-old technology updated for modern times: radio transmissions.In a catalog produced by the agency that was part of the Snowden documents released in Europe, there are page after page of devices using technology that would have brought a smile to Q, James Bond’s technology supplier.
  • One, called Cottonmouth I, looks like a normal USB plug but has a tiny transceiver buried in it. According to the catalog, it transmits information swept from the computer “through a covert channel” that allows “data infiltration and exfiltration.” Another variant of the technology involves tiny circuit boards that can be inserted in a laptop computer — either in the field or when they are shipped from manufacturers — so that the computer is broadcasting to the N.S.A. even while the computer’s user enjoys the false confidence that being walled off from the Internet constitutes real protection.The relay station it communicates with, called Nightstand, fits in an oversize briefcase, and the system can attack a computer “from as far away as eight miles under ideal environmental conditions.” It can also insert packets of data in milliseconds, meaning that a false message or piece of programming can outrace a real one to a target computer. Similar stations create a link between the target computers and the N.S.A., even if the machines are isolated from the Internet.
  • Computers are not the only targets. Dropoutjeep attacks iPhones. Other hardware and software are designed to infect large network servers, including those made by the Chinese.Most of those code names and products are now at least five years old, and they have been updated, some experts say, to make the United States less dependent on physically getting hardware into adversaries’ computer systems.
  • But the Stuxnet strike does not appear to be the last time the technology was used in Iran. In 2012, a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps moved a rock near the country’s underground Fordo nuclear enrichment plant. The rock exploded and spewed broken circuit boards that the Iranian news media described as “the remains of a device capable of intercepting data from computers at the plant.” The origins of that device have never been determined.
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    Even radio transceivers emplanted in USB jacks. So now to be truly secure, we need not only an air gap but also a Faraday cage protecting the air gap. 
Gary Edwards

Who Benefits From A War Between The United States And Syria? - BlackListedNews.com - 0 views

  • Someone wants to get the United States into a war with Syria very, very badly.  Cui bono is an old Latin phrase that is still commonly used, and it roughly means "to whose benefit?"  The key to figuring out who is really behind the push for war is to look at who will benefit from that war. 
  • If a full-blown war erupts between the United States and Syria, it will not be good for the United States, it will not be good for Israel, it will not be good for Syria, it will not be good for Iran and it will not be good for Hezbollah. 
  • The party that stands to benefit the most is Saudi Arabia, and they won't even be doing any of the fighting.  They have been pouring billions of dollars into the conflict in Syria, but so far they have not been successful in their attempts to overthrow the Assad regime.  Now the Saudis are trying to play their trump card - the U.S. military. 
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  • If the Saudis are successful, they will get to pit the two greatest long-term strategic enemies of Sunni Islam against each other - the U.S. and Israel on one side and Shia Islam on the other.  In such a scenario, the more damage that both sides do to each other the happier the Sunnis will be.
  • it is well-known that Qatar wants to run a natural gas pipeline out of the Persian Gulf, through Syria and into Europe.  That is why Qatar has also been pouring billions of dollars into the civil war in Syria.
  • Someone should ask Barack Obama why it is necessary for the U.S. military to do the dirty work of his Sunni Muslim friends.
  • For the United States, there really is no good outcome in Syria. If we attack and Assad stays in power, that is a bad outcome for the United States. If we help overthrow the Assad regime, the rebels take control.  But they would be even worse than Assad.  They have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda, and they are rabidly anti-American, rabidly anti-Israel and rabidly anti-western.
  • This war would not be good for Israel either.  I have seen a number of supposedly pro-Israel websites out there getting very excited about the prospect of war with Syria, but that is a huge mistake. Syria has already threatened to attack Israeli cities if the U.S. attacks Syria.  If Syrian missiles start landing in the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel will respond. And if any of those missiles have unconventional warheads, Israel will respond by absolutely destroying Damascus. And of course a missile exchange between Syria and Israel will almost certainly draw Hezbollah into the conflict.  And right now Hezbollah has 70,000 rockets aimed at Israel. If Hezbollah starts launching those rockets, thousands upon thousands of innocent Jewish citizens will be killed.
  • Even if Assad is overthrown, the rebel government that would replace him would be even more anti-Israel than Assad was.
  • If the Saudis want this war so badly, they should go and fight it.  Everyone knows that the Saudis have been bankrolling the rebels.  At this point, even CNN is openly admitting this... It is an open secret that Saudi Arabia is using Jordan to smuggle weapons into Syria for the rebels. Jordan says it is doing all it can to prevent that and does not want to inflame the situation in Syria.
  • Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have admitted to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak that they were responsible for last week’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.
  • “From numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families….many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack,” writes Gavlak.
  • The Voice of Russia has also been reporting on Gavlak's bombshell findings... The rebels noted it was a result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them. “My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. As Gavlak reports, Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels died in a weapons storage tunnel. The father stated the weapons were provided to rebel forces by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, describing them as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.” “They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K’. “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.” “When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.
  • Gavlak also refers to an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks stating that Prince Bandar threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with terror attacks at next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if Russia doesn’t agree to change its stance on Syria. “Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” the article stated. “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Saudi Prince allegedly told Vladimir Putin.
  • The Saudis are absolutely determined to make this war happen, and they expect us to do the fighting. And Barack Obama plans to go ahead and attack Syria without the support of the American people or the approval of Congress.
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    This article wins my award as the best analysis to date.  Hits like a macchine gun, and laying the blame on the Saudis makes sense to me.  Chalk up 911 and the Boston Marathon Massacre also.  And don't miss the coverage of the recent talks between Russia and the Saudis.  Very eye opening stuff.
Paul Merrell

Senate Investigation of Bush-Era Torture Erupts Into Constitutional Crisis | The Nation - 0 views

  • Here’s what Feinstein described Tuesday morning: At some time after the committee staff identified and reviewed the Internal Panetta Review documents, access to the vast majority of them was removed by the CIA. We believe this happened in 2010 but we have no way of knowing the specifics. Nor do we know why the documents were removed. The staff was focused on reviewing the tens of thousands of new documents that continued to arrive on a regular basis. […] Shortly [after Udall’s comments], on January 15, 2014, CIA Director Brennan requested an emergency meeting to inform me and Vice Chairman Chambliss that without prior notification or approval, CIA personnel had conducted a “search”—that was John Brennan’s word—of the committee computers at the offsite facility. This search involved not only a search of documents provided to the committee by the CIA, but also a search of the ”stand alone” and “walled-off” committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal work product and communications. According to Brennan, the computer search was conducted in response to indications that some members of the committee staff might already have had access to the Internal Panetta Review. The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the Internal Review, or how we obtained it. Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee’s computers.
  • If what Feinstein alleges is true, it essentially amounts to a constitutional crisis. And she said as much during her speech, describing “a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence community.” “I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the Speech and Debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function,” Feinstein said. “Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”
  • There’s also the issue of intimidation. The media reports that have been bubbling up recently around this issue have suggested that Senate investigators illegally obtained the Panetta review—some even raised the specter of hacking by the Senate investigators. The CIA went so far as to file a crime report with the Department of Justice, accusing Senate staffers of illegally obtaining the Panetta review. Tuesday morning, Feinstein strenuously denied the review was illegally obtained, and asserted it was included in the 6.2 million files turned over by the CIA and describing at length why Senate lawyers felt it was a lawful document for the committee to possess. And, in a remarkable statement, Feinstein accused the CIA of intimidation by filing the crime report. “[T]here is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting general counsel’s referral [to DoJ] as a potential effort to intimidate this staff—and I am not taking it lightly.” Feinstein went on to note one fairly amazing fact. The (acting) general counsel she referred to, who filed the complaint with DoJ, was a lawyer in the CIA’s counterterrorism center beginning in 2004. That means he was directly involved in legal justifications for the torture program. “And now this individual is sending a crimes report to the Department of Justice on the actions of congressional staff,” she noted gravely. “The same congressional staff who researched and drafted a report that details how CIA officers—including the acting general counsel himself—provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice about the program.”
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  • Feinstein included an interesting aside in her speech. “Let me note: because the CIA has refused to answer the questions in my January 23 letter, and the CIA inspector general review is ongoing, I have limited information about exactly what the CIA did in conducting its search.”
  • Also: remember that earlier this year, in response to a question from Senator Bernie Sanders, the National Security Agency did not expressly deny spying on Congress. The NSA may just have been being careful with its language, reasoning that since bulk data collection exists, perhaps members of Congress were caught up in it. But the question remains: if the CIA felt justified spying on Senate computers, may it have listened in on phone calls as well?
  • Feinstein’s grave concerns were echoed Tuesday morning by Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This is not just about getting to the truth of the CIA’s shameful use of torture. This is also about the core founding principle of the separation of powers, and the future of this institution and its oversight role,” Leahy said in a statement. “The Senate is bigger than any one Senator. Senators come and go, but the Senate endures. The members of the Senate must stand up in defense of this institution, the Constitution, and the values upon which this nation was founded.”
  • Underlying this constitutional crisis is a desire by many at the CIA to sweep the Bush-era torture abuses under the rug. That logically would be the clear motivating factor in seizing the Panetta review from Senate investigators. And Brennan wasn’t afraid to keep pushing that approach—even during the same Tuesday interview with NBC’s Mitchell in which he denied “spying” on the Senate. Brennan also said that the CIA’s history of detention and interrogation should be “put behind us.” (It should be noted, of course, that there is strong circumstantial evidence that Brennan himself was complicit in the illegal torture program when he served in the Bush administration.) In the wake of her revelations on Tuesday, Feinstein renewed her desire to declassify the Senate report. “We’re not going to stop. I intend to move to have the findings, conclusions and the executive summary of the report sent to the president for declassification and release to the American people,” she said, and suggested the findings will shock the public. “If the Senate can declassify this report, we will be able to ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.”
  • Obama has long said he supports declassification, and it seems it will happen soon. Tuesday, Feinstein was already moving to hold a committee vote on declassification. Committee Republicans will likely oppose it, but independent Senator Angus King, the swing vote, told reporters he is inclined to vote for declassification.
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    Note the error in the last quoted paragraph: Obama has said he supports declassification of the Senate report's *findings," not the entire report. That's likely over a 6,000-page difference.
Gary Edwards

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet' | World ne... - 1 views

  • The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.
  • The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10
  • "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."
  • But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.
  • XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.
  • Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity.
  • Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets.
  • But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.
  • One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst's ability to query the databases at any time.
  • The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a "selector" in NSA parlance) associated with the individual being targeted.
  • Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.
  • One document notes that this is because "strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability" because "a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous."
  • Email monitoring
  • One top-secret document describes how the program "searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents", including the "To, From, CC, BCC lines" and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites".
  • To search for emails, an analyst using XKS enters the individual's email address into a simple online search form, along with the "justification" for the search and the time period for which the emails are sought.
  • One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by NSA analysts for general surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications.
  • Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications:
  • Chats, browsing history and other internet activity
  • Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.
  • An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.
  • The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.
  • The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn "call events" collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.
  • William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had "assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens", an estimate, he said, that "only was involving phone calls and emails". A 2010 Washington Post article reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications."
  • The ACLU's deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans' communications without individualized warrants.
  • "The government doesn't need to 'target' Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications," said Jaffer. "The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans" when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance.
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    "One presentation claims the XKeyscore program covers 'nearly everything a typical user does on the internet' ................................................................. A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do." But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks - what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One
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    "But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. " Note in that regard that Snowden said in an earlier interview that use of this system rarely was audited and that when audited, the most common request if changes were requested was to beef up the justification for the search. The XScore system puts the lie to just about everything the Administration has claimed about intense oversight by all three branches of federal government and about not reading emails or listening to (Skype) phone calls. The lies keep stacking up in an ever-deepening pile.
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