Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged Personal-Information

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Paul Merrell

Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ound-by-strengthening-web.html

surveillance state NSA Silicon-Valley Skype Microsoft revolving-door

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency. Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans. The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.
  • Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality. Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly. “We are all in these Big Data business models,” said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. “There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.” Although Silicon Valley has sold equipment to the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies for a generation, the interests of the two began to converge in new ways in the last few years as advances in computer storage technology drastically reduced the costs of storing enormous amounts of data — at the same time that the value of the data for use in consumer marketing began to rise. “These worlds overlap,” said Philipp S. Krüger, chief executive of Explorist, an Internet start-up in New York. The sums the N.S.A. spends in Silicon Valley are classified, as is the agency’s total budget, which independent analysts say is $8 billion to $10 billion a year.
  • Despite the companies’ assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers’ information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies. Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011. A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011. Microsoft executives are no longer willing to affirm statements, made by Skype several years ago, that Skype calls could not be wiretapped. Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, declined to comment.
Paul Merrell

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

www.mintpressnews.com/...221667

surveillance state FISA-Court opinions disclosure litigation ACLU

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

State Department Told to Speed Latest Clinton E-Mail Review - Bloomberg Politics - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...expedite-clinton-e-mail-review

Auction 2016 Hillary emails FOIA- litigation Judicial_Watch

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • A federal judge has ordered the U.S. State Department to accelerate its review of almost 15,000 previously undisclosed documents recovered by the FBI from private e-mail servers used by Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state.Those documents are among tens of thousands of records the State Department is sifting through to cope with the demands of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch as the presidential race between Democrat Clinton and Republican Donald Trump enters a crucial phase.U.S. District James Boasberg on Monday ordered the State Department to process that first batch of records by Sept. 22 and report back to him that day. While he didn’t set a schedule for their being made public, a Justice Department lawyer proposed a phased release beginning Oct. 14, a rate that raised the ire of Judicial Watch lawyer Lauren Burke.
  • The slow trickle of disclosures virtually ensures Clinton’s private e-mail use during her term as the top U.S. diplomat will hobble her for the 78 days remaining until Election Day. Bloomberg poll results released Aug. 10 show at least 58 percent of likely voters say they are troubled by the issue, which has been a centerpiece of Trump’s attacks on her trustworthiness.FBI Director James Comey said last month that the agency had found what he described as “several thousand work-related e-mails” that weren’t among the 30,000 she had turned over from her time as secretary of state.While Clinton has said her lawyers provided all work-related e-mails and destroyed the remaining personal communications, Comey contradicted that account, saying the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered documents from several servers that Clinton had used for her private e-mails as well as by scanning the archives of other U.S. officials.
  • He also said that Clinton’s lawyers had searched only the headings at the top of e-mails to find relevant messages, while agents looked at the entire communications. He said the FBI found no evidence that work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted to conceal them.Justice Department attorney Lisa Olson told Boasberg the State Department review process requires “appraisal” of the public records to determine whether they relate to official business, and a review for responsiveness to the Judicial Watch document demand and whether or not some or all of their content should be deemed exempt from disclosure.“The State Department has concocted a completely new review program under the Freedom of Information Act that we’ve never heard before,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told reporters after the hearing, adding that his organization wants as many documents as possible made public before election day.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The judge acted in one of several suits filed by Judicial Watch, which on Monday released the latest batch of e-mails that it says showed improper efforts by the State Department to aid donors to the Clinton Foundation. A Clinton campaign spokesman said “Hillary Clinton never took actions as Secretary of State because of donations to the Clinton Foundation.”The case is Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of State, 15-cv-687, U.S. District Court, District of Washington. (Washington).
Paul Merrell

Hillary Clinton Blames F.B.I. Director for Election Loss - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...llary-clinton-james-comey.html

Auction 2016 Hillary kill-the-messenger FBI Comey

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Hillary Clinton on Saturday cast blame for her surprise election loss on the announcement by the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, days before the election that he had revived the inquiry into her use of a private email server.In her most extensive remarks since she conceded the race to Donald J. Trump early Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton told donors on a 30-minute conference call that Mr. Comey’s decision to send a letter to Congress about the inquiry 11 days before Election Day had thrust the controversy back into the news and had prevented her from ending the campaign with an optimistic closing argument.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 16
     
    Jeez! No blame to be cast on Hillary herself for setting up the private server; blame the FBI instead? That's blaming the messenger instead of the information in the message.
Paul Merrell

CNN apologizes for commentator who called WikiLeaks founder a 'pedophile' | McClatchy DC - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...article124566504.html

WIkileaks Assange libel Dark-State harrassment

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • In fact, the pedophile allegation has little to do with Assange’s plight that has kept him in the embassy in London, which involves incidents in Stockholm in the summer of 2010.
  • Rather, it is a bizarre tale involving a Houston-based dating website and its global and well-funded efforts to discredit Assange around the globe. The byzantine saga involves disconnected telephones and mystery websites. The website, toddandclare.com, launched and ramped up its efforts against Assange during the U.S. presidential campaign, as WikiLeaks released hacked emails related to the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.The dating site’s campaign sought to thwart WikiLeaks’ efforts and discredit Assange, who played a role in a presidential campaign season that deeply divided the U.S. electorate and illuminated Russia as a major cyber adversary of the U.S. government.One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.
  • WikiLeaks claims the dating site is “a highly suspicious and likely fabricated” company. In turn, the company has lashed out at Assange and “his despicable activities against American national security,” and warned journalists to “check with your libel lawyers first before printing anything that could impact or endanger innocent people’s lives.”For nearly two months after the October allegations, toddandclare.com went off line. But it recently reappeared, repeating charges about the 8-year-old Canadian girl. The website did not immediately respond Thursday to a new query from McClatchy, and no respondent in the past has given a name or allowed telephone contact.The online company paints itself as all-American. Online material says its founders, Todd and Clare Hammond, “are an average American couple from Michigan, who met in the eighth grade.” In 2011, the company says, the Christian couple started an email dating service, and “have married 3,000 couples to date.” Their online network began in 2015, and a statement it filed to a U.N. body says it has “100,000+ female singles” in six countries. The company’s operating address is a warehouse loading dock in Houston. Its mail goes to a Houston drop box. Its phone numbers no longer work. WikiLeaks says Texas officials tell it the entity is not registered there either under toddandclare.com or a parent company, T&C Network Solutions.A person who answered emails to the website in November declined to identify him or herself.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The people behind toddandclare.com persuaded a U.N. body known as the Global Compact to give it status as a participant in May, and it submitted an eight-page report to the U.N. group Oct. 4 carefully laying out its allegations against Assange. The firm was delisted by the U.N. body eight days later amid controversy over its claims. The report was later taken off the internet. An Australian lawyer, Melinda Taylor, said the report’s precise language raised additional suspicions at WikiLeaks, where she assists Assange in human rights litigation.“This is not a report that’s been drafted by a dating agency. It’s highly legalistic and very structured. It’s the language of someone who has drafted complex legal submissions,” she said.Under Todd Hammond’s name, the report alleged that Assange’s Swedish lawyer had reached out in June to offer Assange’s services on a campaign against rape in exchange for an undisclosed amount of bitcoin. It said the two sides held two videoconferences.Then came the bombshell: It said the company had ended ties with Assange following “pedophile crimes” he had committed in the Bahamas in late September. It charged that the victim was the 8-year-old daughter of a Canadian couple on a monthlong yachting vacation. The father went to police in Nassau on Sept. 28, the report claimed, charging that his family held video and chat logs showing Assange “internet grooming” the child and “propositioning the 8-year-old juvenile ‘to perform oral and anal sex acts.’ ”It said Assange made a connection to the child’s 22-year-old sister, who was a client of the online dating site, from his refuge in London, eventually gaining access to the young girl.
  • An assistant commissioner for the Royal Bahamas Police Force, Stephen Dean, said “there is no investigation” into any such incident and that the police have received no evidence that such an incident occurred.“We got a phone call of someone giving us some information. But we never had a face-to-face. It could have been a hoax,” Dean said. “We don’t know.”If someone were in possession of video or chat logs about a pedophile crime, he or she did not provide them to Bahamian police, Dean said, which he said would be odd: “If you have something so significant, I think you’d want to leave a report.”Assange’s Swedish lawyer, Per Samuelson, wrote to the U.N. body on Oct. 10 alleging that Hammond’s report against Assange was “entirely false” in all its facets and that he had had no contact with the dating site or Hammond.Even as authorities in the Bahamas dismissed the report, the dating site sent a fax Oct. 17 to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying the Canadian family had fled the Bahamas due to “anti-white, racist abuse by Bahamian police.”“Julian Assange ... has started a smear campaign to claim our dating company is behind an elaborate scam. It is fully to be expected. Pedophiles are devious and cunning,” the fax said.The company said it would “continue to protect the family’s identity, until either the (Royal Bahamas Police Force) conduct a proper investigation, or hell freezes over. Whichever comes first.”
  • The fax was signed, “The Todd and Clare Team,” and left no way to contact the firm.While the founders of toddandclare.com say they’ve been in the matchmaking business since 2011, their internet presence dates only to September 2015 and really got going only early last year. Those who have done work for the company say they were kept at arm’s length.By summer, in the run-up to what many expected to be an “October surprise” from WikiLeaks to make an impact on the U.S. election, toddandclare.com began moving against Assange in multiple countries simultaneously. The DNC and a cyber-threat intelligence firm it had hired, CrowdStrike, were already fingering Russia as behind the hacks that would provide the fodder for WikiLeaks. They’d said in June that Russian hackers had access to DNC servers for about a year.A company representative, identifying herself as Hannah Hammond, emailed Assange’s Swedish and British legal agents offering $1 million for him to appear in a five-minute tongue-in-cheek television advertisement. In a subsequent exchange Sept. 19, the representative wrote that “the source of the $1,000,000 is the Russian government.”In a curious twist, she offered what she said were three facts about Assange’s London attorney that are “unknown to the public,” including details inside her home and an event in her son’s life, suggesting a capability to conduct surveillance.Taylor, the Assange lawyer, said the details appeared “to create the impression that the members of his team were under close surveillance and/or to bolster the bona fides of the claim that the offer was linked to a State. Its inclusion does appear quite menacing.”
  • A lawyer identifying himself only as “James” responded the next day, slamming the offer as an “elaborate scam designed to entrap” Assange and embarrass him for ties to Russia.The dating site representative sought to pull the veil off “James.”“Julian: We know it’s you writing. The offer expires at midnight, October 31st 2016,” she wrote back on Sept. 21, according to copies of the emails posted by WikiLeaks on its website.By early October, toddandclare.com went on the offensive. It filed a civil complaint in a British court against Assange, seeking 295 pounds sterling – about $359 – in damages because it said it could no longer use his services due to the “child sex offenses in Nassau.”The suit, said Taylor, Assange’s lawyer, “seems to be designed to evade defamation law in the U.K. They’ve put highly noxious information knowing that it would be made public.”The global tussle between the online dating company and WikiLeaks went public in mid-October when the anti-secrecy group voiced public doubt on whether toddandclare.com actually existed, or served only as a vehicle to attack Assange.
  • The announcement opened the gates for a disparate crew of internet sleuths – some motivated by hatred of Clinton and others impelled by support for WikiLeaks – to probe into the history of toddandclare.com, suspicious that the dating site might be an undercover operation with links to the Clinton campaign.Posting their findings on the discussion websites like Reddit.com, they unearthed some curious coincidences. A perusal into the archives of the internet revealed that the Hammonds had once occupied a San Francisco building later rented to a company, Premise Data, whose co-founder has ties to Clinton and her top supporters.Moreover, a telephone number once registered to a Todd Hammond later was registered to a former Premise employee, Aaron Dunn, although with a different area code.Premise co-founder David Soloff said such findings could only be coincidences.“I want to reiterate that Premise has no connection with this case. And beyond confirming that Aaron Dunn worked at Premise until 2014, I don’t know the answer to any of your questions,” Soloff wrote in an email.
Paul Merrell

The Use of FBI's Facial Recognition Is Growing, Despite Rampant Inaccuracy and Privacy ... - 0 views

theintercept.com/...r-privacy-protections-accuracy

surveillance state FBI facial-recognition

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • The FBI’s use of facial recognition technology is exploding, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office — and its growth is largely unchecked, unaudited, and possibly flawed. “FBI should better ensure privacy and accuracy” of its facial recognition technology and the databases that photographs are stored in, urged the GAO. According to the report, the FBI has never reviewed its facial recognition searches for misuse — on either state databases or its own massive biometric database, known as the Next Generation Identification system. The FBI has access to 16 different state databases of driver’s license photos – almost 173 million people — not just criminal mug shots.
  • The FBI also hasn’t run any tests on how accurate the facial recognition technology is when searching state databases, and whether those searches come back with false positives, which could lead to misidentifying an innocent person as a criminal suspect. According to a National Institute of Standards and Technology report on facial recognition, error rates of technology surveyed can range between a few percent to more than 50. And the bureau has repeatedly dragged its feet when assessing the privacy impact of its facial recognition technology — information that would “improve the public’s understanding” of the FBI’s efforts to protect privacy, according to the GAO. “When people go to the DMV to take their driver’s license photos, they don’t expect that their faces will be scanned and searched tens of thousands of times by the FBI. They don’t expect that their faces will become part of a permanent, digital line-up. What the FBI is doing may be legal, but it isn’t right,” Alvaro Bedoya, the executive director of Georgetown Law School’s Center on Privacy and Technology, wrote in a statement.
  • In the meantime, the FBI has requested that its own biometric database be exempt from legal provisions in the Privacy Act that would require the agency to tell people their fingerprints, faces, and more have been collected so they can challenge the accuracy of the information.
Gary Edwards

My Doctor Is Now the IRS : Dr. IIeana Johnson Paugh - 0 views

www.canadafreepress.com/...47942

Dr-Paugh ObamaCare-TAX IRS-care

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Jul 12
     
    Dr. Paugh provides us with the best summary yet of what the monstrous Obamacare Tax will do to destroy the world's best healthcare system. excerpt: The Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, "A Brief Overview of the Law, Implementation, and Legal Challenges," gives a new definition to Nancy Pelosi's statement that we had "to pass Obamacare to find out what's in it." Not only did Congressmen not read the 2,700-page law before they voted and passed it by twisting arms and briberies, but they now have to be informed of the disaster they have created. (C. Stephen Redhead, Hinda Chaikind, Bernadette Fernandez, Jennifer Staman, July 3, 2012) The unfortunately named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010, passed by 111th Congress, touted the following: .... increased access to health insurance coverage (not necessarily access to health care) ..... expansion of federal private health insurance market requirements ..... creation of health insurance exchanges to provide individuals and small employers with access to insurance ..... expansion of Medicaid coverage
Paul Merrell

The Rutherford Institute :: Life in the Electronic Concentration Camp: The Many Ways Th... - 0 views

www.rutherford.org/...p_the_many_ways_that_youre_bei

surveillance state surveillance-methods

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • As noted by the Brookings Institution, “For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders — every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.” As the following will show, the electronic concentration camp, as I have dubbed the surveillance state, is perhaps the most insidious of the police state’s many tentacles, impacting almost every aspect of our lives and making it that much easier for the government to encroach on our most vital freedoms, ranging from free speech, assembly and the press to due process, privacy, and property, by eavesdropping on our communications, tracking our movements and spying on our activities.
  • To put it bluntly, we are living in an electronic concentration camp. Through a series of imperceptible steps, we have willingly allowed ourselves to become enmeshed in a system that knows the most intimate details of our lives, analyzes them, and treats us accordingly. Whether via fear of terrorism, narcissistic pleasure, or lazy materialism, we have slowly handed over our information to all sorts of entities, corporate and governmental, public and private, who are now using that information to cow and control us for their profit. As George Orwell warned, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” Thus, we have arrived in Orwell’s world. The question now is: will we take a stand and fight to remain free or will we go gently into the concentration camp?
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14
     
    Nice beginning inventory of the ways government records its citizenry's every move.  
Paul Merrell

U.S. Military and Intelligence Officials to Obama: "Assad NOT Responsible for Chemical ... - 1 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5348576

war & peace Syria false-flag must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap? Precedence: IMMEDIATE We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.” We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.
  • The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond …  the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today. Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you. We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.
  • That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.” This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war. According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured. We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons. In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.
  • Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria. At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.
  • We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13
     
    This report by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity is almost certainly the most credible report contradicting the White House's "intelligence summary" that included zero evidence supporting the claim that Syrian government forces had unleashed the August 21, 2013 chemical attack in Ghoutu, near Damascus and less than five miles away from the just-arrived UN investigative team.  Spread it far and wide. 
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Sep 13
     
    Wow!! The cover-up of this false flag operation designed to get us into another civil war is incredible. Yet the truth continues to leak out. The ruling elites must be so pissed right now. The Internet is changing the world balance of power - in real time no less. And we are witness. Awesome stuff Paul.
Paul Merrell

Leahy: NSA surveillance 'not making us safer' | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...rveillance-not-making-us-safer

surveillance state NSA NSA-reform Congress Leahy

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) warned about the government’s collection of massive quantities about data about American citizens on Wednesday.During a panel discussion titled “The Big Brother Problem" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Leahy said government officials “don’t make ourselves safer by wiretapping or investigating every single person.”“In the United States, which should be one of the freest countries to express yourself, we are collecting far too much information,” the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said. “It is not making us safer.”ADVERTISEMENTLeahy also compared the dangers posed by the National Security Agency’s (NSA) collection of information to abuses conducted by former longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover or the Nixon administration during the Watergate scandal.“Just because we can do it in the United States doesn’t mean we should,” he told the panel. “I don’t think it makes us safer any more than the horrible excesses of Watergate and J. Edgar Hoover and all made us safer. It made us less safe.”
Paul Merrell

WASHINGTON: Seeing threats, feds target instructors of polygraph-beating methods | Insi... - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...s-feds-target-instructors.html

transparency Obama whistle-blowers polygraph

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Federal agents have launched a criminal investigation of instructors who claim they can teach job applicants how to pass lie detector tests as part of the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on security violators and leakers. The criminal inquiry, which hasn’t been acknowledged publicly, is aimed at discouraging criminals and spies from infiltrating the U.S. government by using the polygraph-beating techniques, which are said to include controlled breathing, muscle tensing, tongue biting and mental arithmetic. So far, authorities have targeted at least two instructors, one of whom has pleaded guilty to federal charges, several people familiar with the investigation told McClatchy. Investigators confiscated business records from the two men, which included the names of as many as 5,000 people who’d sought polygraph-beating advice. U.S. agencies have determined that at least 20 of them applied for government and federal contracting jobs, and at least half of that group was hired, including by the National Security Agency.
  • By attempting to prosecute the instructors, federal officials are adopting a controversial legal stance that sharing such information should be treated as a crime and isn’t protected under the First Amendment in some circumstances.
  • “Nothing like this has been done before,” John Schwartz, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, said of the legal approach in a June speech to a professional polygraphers’ conference in Charlotte, N.C., that a McClatchy reporter attended. “Most certainly our nation’s security will be enhanced.”“There are a lot of bad people out there. . . . This will help us remove some of those pests from society,” he added.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The federal government polygraphs about 70,000 people a year for security clearances and jobs, but most courts won’t allow polygraph results to be submitted as evidence, citing the machines’ unreliability. Scientists question whether polygraphers can identify liars by interpreting measurements of blood pressure, sweat activity and respiration. Researchers say the polygraph-beating techniques can’t be detected with certainty, either. Citing the scientific skepticism, one attorney compared the prosecution of polygraph instructors to indicting someone for practicing voodoo.
  • But instructors may be prosecuted if they know that the people they’re teaching plan to lie about crimes during federal polygraphs, he said. In that scenario, prosecutors may pursue charges of false statements, wire fraud, obstructing an agency proceeding and “misprision of felony,” which is defined as having knowledge of serious criminal conduct and attempting to conceal it.
  • Schwartz, who was involved in the federal investigation, cited the risk of drug traffickers infiltrating his agency as justification for prosecutors going after instructors. However, he told the crowd of law enforcement officials from across the country that he wasn’t discussing a specific case but a “blueprint” of how state and local officials might pursue a prosecution. Urging them to join forces with his agency, he declared in a more than two-hour speech that “evil will always seek ways to hide the truth.” “When you identify insider threats and you eliminate insider threats, then that agency is more efficient and more effective,” Schwartz said. The Obama administration’s Insider Threat Program is intended to deter what the government condemns as betrayals by “trusted insiders” such as Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the agency’s secret communications data-collection programs. The administration launched the Insider Threat Program in 2011 after Army Pfc. Bradley Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified computer network and sent them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group.As part of the program, employees are being urged to report their co-workers for a wide range of “risky” behaviors, personality traits and attitudes, McClatchy reported in June. Broad definitions of insider threats also give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of conduct other than leaking classified information, McClatchy found.
  • Several people familiar with the investigation said Dixon and Williams had agreed to meet with undercover agents and teach them how to pass polygraph tests for a fee. The agents then posed as people connected to a drug trafficker and as a correctional officer who’d smuggled drugs into a jail and had received a sexual favor from an underage girl. Dixon wouldn’t say how much he was paid, but people familiar with countermeasures training said others generally charged $1,000 for a one-on-one session.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14
     
    There is no scientific proof that lies can be detected using a polygraph, which is why polygraph evidence is inadmissible in court, but law enforcement and national security types fervently believe otherwise. Prosecuting someone for teaching how to circumvent polygraph testing stacks one absurdity atop another.
Gary Edwards

Obama Losing It Over Über Patriot Edwards Snowden - 2 views

news.google.com/?ar=1375909353

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower Edward-Snowden Glen-Greenwald

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Aug 13
     
    This blog was bookmarked by Marbux a few days ago, and i finally had some time to catch up. It's really extraordinary. The information is an analysis of the ongoing battle between Obama and his illegal NSA spying activities and uber patriot, Edward Snowden; and his media connection Glen Greenwald of the UK Guardian. So far the patriots are winning. So often we hear the facts about an issue; the date, time and places stuff. But rarely do we find insightful analysis where the dots are connected. Naked Capitalism provides exactly that kind of insight. Awesome covergage! Covers Congressman Alan Grayson's unsuccessful attempts to hold a hearing on NSA activities. Grayson has scheduled Greenwald to appear and testify before Congress. excerpt: "Shortly after the vote, Alan Grayson invited members to a session scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, July 31, in which Greenwald would testify via video link. Richard Clarke, the chairman of the Counter-terrorism Security Group and a member of the National Security Group, was also scheduled to participate. Within 24 hours of Grayson announcing the meeting, which got the expected considerable interest from members, Clarke withdrew. He initially claimed to have developed a scheduling conflict, but it became clear he'd gotten the Elizabeth Warren treatment from the Administration, of being offered an undisclosed goodie (not of monetary value, but of participation in an insider process) and he was told that participating in this session would preclude his involvement in the other initiative. But that monkey wrench apparently wasn't sufficient. The prospect of having Greenwald and other whistleblowers develop a direct relationship with members of Congress, who had just barely been kept on the reservation, was too threatening to Obama. Jane Hamsher tells us the denouement: President Obama has historically considered the Hill some lower bardo of hell. One of the major complaints of congressional Democrats has always
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 13
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Aug 13
     
    Thanks Paul. Not sure how Google News does that. Especially since the link I followed was from your Diigo bookmark! It had nothing to do with Google News! Also, Diigo does not provide a way to edit the URL???? No editing options???? Must be a new crippleware feature.
Paul Merrell

Western Union shares fall on reported CIA news: Associated Press Business News - MSN Money - 0 views

money.msn.com/...article.aspx

surveillance state CIA money-transfers Western-Union

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • (AP) - Western Union slumped 5 percent in trading Friday following a report by the Wall Street Journal that the CIA is building a database of international money transfer data.The report, citing unnamed officials familiar with the program, says the program collects information from U.S. money-transfer companies including Western Union. It is carried out under the same provision of the Patriot Act that enables the National Security Agency to collect nearly all American phone records.The mass collection of financial data includes millions of Americans' financial and personal data.
  • The CIA is barred from targeting Americans in its intelligence collection. But as a foreign-intelligence agency, it can conduct domestic operations for foreign intelligence purposes. The CIA program is meant to fill what U.S. officials see as an important gap in their ability to track terrorist financing world-wide, officials told the newspaper.Western Union said last month it would be spending about 4 percent of its revenue in 2014 on compliance with rules under the Patriot Act, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control and other anti-money-laundering and terrorist-financing requirements.Company spokesman Dan Díaz said that Western Union collects consumer information to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and other laws. In doing so, the company also protect customers' privacy and works to prevent consumer fraud.Shares of The Western Union Co. fell 90 cents to $16.55 by late afternoon amid a broader market uptick.
Paul Merrell

Brazilian president Rousseff: US surveillance a 'breach of international law' | World n... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ent-un-speech-nsa-surveillance

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback Brazil Internet-Balkanization

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, has launched a blistering attack on US espionage at the UN general assembly, accusing the NSA of violating international law by its indiscriminate collection of personal information of Brazilian citizens and economic espionage targeted on the country's strategic industries.Rousseff's angry speech was a direct challenge to President Barack Obama, who was waiting in the wings to deliver his own address to the UN general assembly, and represented the most serious diplomatic fallout to date from the revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
  • Washington's efforts to smooth over Brazilian outrage over NSA espionage have so far been rebuffed by Rousseff, who has proposed that Brazil build its own internet infrastructure."Friendly governments and societies that seek to build a true strategic partnership, as in our case, cannot allow recurring illegal actions to take place as if they were normal. They are unacceptable," she said."The arguments that the illegal interception of information and data aims at protecting nations against terrorism cannot be sustained. Brazil, Mr President, knows how to protect itself. We reject, fight and do not harbour terrorist groups," Rousseff said."As many other Latin Americans, I fought against authoritarianism and censorship and I cannot but defend, in an uncompromising fashion, the right to privacy of individuals and the sovereignty of my country," the Brazilian president said. She was imprisoned and tortured for her role in a guerilla movement opposed to Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1970s."In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy. In the absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the relationship among nations."
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Sep 13
     
    We should never lose sight of the fact that every time the NSA intercepts a message from a foreign nation, it violates the civil and criminal laws of that nation. The NSA and its staff are serial criminals, not patriots. The Balkanization of the Internet into a non-net of local area networks to protect nations' citizen rights from NSA voyeurs is all too predictable. This will be their legacy unless we can stop them.
Paul Merrell

Conflicts of interest in the Syria debate | Public Accountability Initiative - 1 views

public-accountability.org/...f-interest-in-the-syria-debate

war & peace pro-war propaganda mainstream-media

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.” In each case, Hadley’s audience was not informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.
  • Though Hadley’s undisclosed conflict is particularly egregious, it is not unique. The following report documents the industry ties of Hadley, 21 other media commentators, and seven think tanks that participated in the media debate around Syria. Like Hadley, these individuals and organizations have strong ties to defense contractors and other defense- and foreign policy-focused firms with a vested interest in the Syria debate, but they were presented to their audiences with a veneer of expertise and independence, as former military officials, retired diplomats, and independent think tanks. The report offers a new look at an issue raised by David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series on the role military analysts played in promoting the Bush Administration’s narrative on Iraq. In addition to exposing coordination with the Pentagon, Barstow found that many cable news analysts had industry ties that were not disclosed on air. If the recent debate around Syria is any guide, media outlets have done very little to address the gaps in disclosure and abuses of the public trust that Barstow exposed. Some analysts have stayed the same, others are new, and the issues and range of opinion are different. But the media continues to present former military and government officials as venerated experts without informing the public of their industry ties – the personal financial interests that may be shaping their opinions of what is in the national interest.
  • This report details these ties, in addition to documenting the industry backing of think tanks that played a prominent role in the Syria debate. It reveals the extent to which the public discourse around Syria was corrupted by the pervasive influence of the defense industry, to the point where many of the so-called experts appearing on American television screens were actually representatives of companies that profit from heightened US military activity abroad. The threat of war with Syria may or may not have passed, but the threat that these conflicts of interest pose to our public discourse – and our democracy – is still very real.
Paul Merrell

NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...o-pinpoint-targets-for-hacking

surveillance state NSA NSA-targets tracking-cookies cookies

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance. The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations. For years, privacy advocates have raised concerns about the use of commercial tracking tools to identify and target consumers with advertisements. The online ad industry has said its practices are innocuous and benefit consumers by serving them ads that are more likely to be of interest to them. The revelation that the NSA is piggybacking on these commercial technologies could shift that debate, handing privacy advocates a new argument for reining in commercial surveillance.
  • According to the documents, the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, are using the small tracking files or "cookies" that advertising networks place on computers to identify people browsing the Internet. The intelligence agencies have found particular use for a part of a Google-specific tracking mechanism known as the “PREF” cookie. These cookies typically don't contain personal information, such as someone's name or e-mail address, but they do contain numeric codes that enable Web sites to uniquely identify a person's browser. In addition to tracking Web visits, this cookie allows NSA to single out an individual's communications among the sea of Internet data in order to send out software that can hack that person's computer. The slides say the cookies are used to "enable remote exploitation," although the specific attacks used by the NSA against targets are not addressed in these documents.
  • These specific slides do not indicate how the NSA obtains Google PREF cookies or whether the company cooperates in these programs, but other documents reviewed by the Post indicate that cookie information is among the data NSA can obtain with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order. If the NSA gets the data that way, the companies know and are legally compelled to assist.
Paul Merrell

White House defends 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/ter-stir-unrest-222510641.html

surveillance state propaganda psywar USAID State-Dept. Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration defended its creation of a Twitter-like Cuban communications network to undermine the communist government, declaring the secret program was "invested and debated" by Congress and wasn't a covert operation that required White House approval.
  • But two senior Democrats on congressional intelligence and judiciary committees said Thursday they had known nothing about the effort, which one of them described as "dumb, dumb, dumb." A showdown with that senator's panel is expected next week, and the Republican chairman of a House oversight subcommittee said that it, too, would look into the program.An Associated Press investigation found that the network was built with secret shell companies and financed through a foreign bank. The project, which lasted more than two years and drew tens of thousands of subscribers, sought to evade Cuba's stranglehold on the Internet with a primitive social media platform.First, the network was to build a Cuban audience, mostly young people. Then, the plan was to push them toward dissent.
  • Yet its users were neither aware it was created by a U.S. agency with ties to the State Department, nor that American contractors were gathering personal data about them, in the hope that the information might be used someday for political purposes.It is unclear whether the scheme was legal under U.S. law, which requires written authorization of covert action by the president as well as congressional notification. White House spokesman Jay Carney said he was not aware of individuals in the White House who had known about the program.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • USAID's top official, Rajiv Shah, is scheduled to testify on Tuesday before the Senate Appropriations State Department and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, on the agency's budget. The subcommittee's chairman, Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is the senator who called the project "dumb, dumb, dumb" during an appearance Thursday on MSNBC.The administration said early Thursday that it had disclosed the initiative to Congress — Carney said the program had been "debated in Congress" — but hours later the narrative had shifted to say that the administration had offered to discuss funding for it with the congressional committees that approve federal programs and budgets."We also offered to brief our appropriators and our authorizers," said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. She added that she was hearing on Capitol Hill that many people support these kinds of democracy promotion programs. And some lawmakers did speak up on that subject. But by late Thursday no members of Congress had acknowledged being aware of the Cuban Twitter program earlier than this week.
  • Harf described the program as "discreet" but said it was in no way classified or covert. Harf also said the project, dubbed ZunZuneo, did not rise to a level that required the secretary of state to be notified. Neither former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton nor John Kerry, the current occupant of the office, was aware of ZunZuneo, she said.In his prior position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry had asked congressional investigators to examine whether or not U.S. democracy promotion programs in Cuba were operated according to U.S. laws, among other issues. The resulting report, released by the Government Accountability Office in January 2013, does not examine whether or not the programs were covert. It does not say that any U.S. laws were broken.The GAO report does not specifically refer to ZunZuneo, but does note that USAID programs included "support for the development of independent social networking platforms."
  • "I know they said we were notified," Leahy told AP. "We were notified in the most oblique way, that nobody could understand it. I'm going to ask two basic questions: Why weren't we specifically told about this if you're asking us for money? And secondly, whose bright idea was this anyway?"The Republican chairman of a House oversight subcommittee said his panel will be looking into the project, too."That is not what USAID should be doing," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform National Security Subcommittee. "USAID is flying the American flag and should be recognized around the globe as an honest broker of doing good. If they start participating in covert, subversive activities, the credibility of the United States is diminished."
  • At minimum, details uncovered by the AP appear to muddy the USAID's longstanding claims that it does not conduct covert actions, and the details could undermine the agency's mission to deliver aid to the world's poor and vulnerable — an effort that requires the trust and cooperation of foreign governments.Leahy and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said they were unaware of ZunZuneo.
  • USAID and its contractors went to extensive lengths to conceal Washington's ties to the project, according to interviews and documents obtained by the AP. They set up front companies in Spain and the Cayman Islands to hide the money trail, and recruited CEOs without telling them they would be working on a U.S. taxpayer-funded project."There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement," according to a 2010 memo from Mobile Accord Inc., one of the project's creators. "This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the Mission."ZunZuneo was publicly launched shortly after the 2009 arrest in Cuba of American contractor Alan Gross. He was imprisoned after traveling repeatedly to the country on a separate, clandestine USAID mission to expand Internet access using sensitive technology that only governments use.The AP obtained more than 1,000 pages of documents about the ZunZuneo project's development. It independently verified the project's scope and details in the documents through publicly available databases, government sources and interviews with those involved.
  • The social media project began after Washington-based Creative Associates International obtained a half-million Cuban cellphone numbers. It was unclear to the AP how the numbers were obtained, although documents indicate they were done so illicitly from a key source inside the country's state-run provider. Project organizers used those numbers to start a subscriber base.ZunZuneo's organizers wanted the social network to grow slowly to avoid detection by the Cuban government. Eventually, documents and interviews reveal, they hoped the network would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize "smart mobs" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice — that could trigger political demonstrations, or "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."At a 2011 speech at George Washington University, Clinton said the U.S. helps people in "oppressive Internet environments get around filters." Noting Tunisia's role in the Arab Spring, she said people used technology to help "fuel a movement that led to revolutionary change."Suzanne Hall, then a State Department official working on Clinton's social media efforts, helped spearhead an attempt to get Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to take over the ZunZuneo project, documents indicate. Dorsey declined to comment.
  • The estimated $1.6 million spent on ZunZuneo was publicly earmarked for an unspecified project in Pakistan, public government data show, but those documents don't reveal where the funds were actually spent.ZunZuneo's organizers worked hard to create a network that looked like a legitimate business, including the creation of a companion website — and marketing campaign — so users could subscribe and send their own text messages to groups of their choice."Mock ad banners will give it the appearance of a commercial enterprise," one written proposal obtained by the AP said. Behind the scenes, ZunZuneo's computers were also storing and analyzing subscribers' messages and other demographic information, including gender, age, "receptiveness" and "political tendencies." USAID believed the demographics on dissent could help it target its other Cuba programs and "maximize our possibilities to extend our reach."
  • Executives set up a corporation in Spain and an operating company in the Cayman Islands — a well-known British offshore tax haven — to pay the company's bills so the "money trail will not trace back to America," a strategy memo said. Disclosure of that connection would have been a catastrophic blow, they concluded, because it would undermine the service's credibility with subscribers and get it shut down by the Cuban government.Similarly, subscribers' messages were funneled through two other countries — and never through American-based computer servers.Denver-based Mobile Accord considered at least a dozen candidates to head the European front company. One candidate, Francoise de Valera, told the AP she was told nothing about Cuba or U.S. involvement.
  • James Eberhard, Mobile Accord's CEO and a key player in the project's development, declined to comment. Creative Associates referred questions to USAID.For more than two years, ZunZuneo grew, reaching at least 40,000 subscribers. But documents reveal the team found evidence Cuban officials tried to trace the text messages and break into the ZunZuneo system. USAID told the AP that ZunZuneo stopped in September 2012 when a government grant ended.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14
     
    More coming related to this story.
Paul Merrell

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba: Guantánamo judge to CIA: Disclose 'black site... - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...amo-judge-to-cia-disclose.html

war & peace CIA torture litigation USS-Cole al-Nashiri Gitmo

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The military judge in the USS Cole bombing case has ordered the CIA to give defense lawyers details — names, dates and places — of its secret overseas detention and interrogation of the man accused of planning the bombing, two people who have read the still-secret order said Thursday.Army Col. James L. Pohl issued the five-page order Monday. It was sealed as document 120C on the war court website Thursday morning and, according to those who have read it, orders the agency to provide a chronology of the overseas odyssey of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 49, from his capture in Dubai in 2002 to his arrival at Guantánamo four years later.The order sets the stage for a showdown between the CIA and a military judge, if the agency refuses to turn over the information to the prosecution for the defense teams. The order comes while the CIA fights a bitter, public battle with the Senate on its black site torture investigation.
  • The judge’s order instructs prosecutors to provide nine categories of closely guarded classified CIA information to the lawyers — including the names of agents, interrogators and medical personnel who worked at the so-called black sites. The order covers “locations, personnel and communications,” interrogation notes and cables between the black sites and headquarters that sought and approved so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, the two sources said.It does not, however, order the government to turn over Office of Legal Counsel memos that both blessed and defined the so-called Torture Program that sent CIA captives to secret interrogations across the world after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — out of reach of International Committee of the Red Cross delegates.“It’s a nuclear bomb that may shut down the case,” said one person who read the order and is not a part of the Cole case.
Paul Merrell

European ISPs Can Stop Logging User Data, Court Rules | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/ata-retention-directive-140408

surveillance state EU litigation data-retention

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 May 14 - No Cached
  • The European Court of Justice has overturned Europe's data retention directive, arguing that it's disproportionate and a violation of people's privacy. The decision has far-reaching consequences for the collection of data from European internet users, including their IP-addresses.
  • In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Justice has declared Europe’s Data Retention directive to be a violation of Internet users’ privacy. Under the Directive Internet providers and other telecom companies were required to log and store vast amounts of information, including who their subscribers communicate with, and what IP-addresses they use. The local authorities could then use this information to fight serious crimes, but it was also been frequently used by third parties, in online piracy cases for example. Today the Court ruled that the data collection requirements are disproportionate. In a case started by Digital Rights Ireland the Court effectively annulled the directive, and it’s now up to the individual member states to change local laws accordingly.
  • “The Court is of the opinion that, by adopting the Data Retention Directive, the EU legislature has exceeded the limits imposed by compliance with the principle of proportionality,” the Court states. “By requiring the retention of those data and by allowing the competent national authorities to access those data, the directive interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data,” it adds. The judgement has far-reaching implications for large telecom companies, but also for smaller businesses including many VPN providers. With the new ruling these companies are no longer required to log extensive amount of user data as was required under the EU Directive.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The European Court of Justice judgement is a clear victory for privacy activists, but mostly for the public who will regain some of their online privacy. While the ruling specified that some data retention may be needed, broad and mandatory retention laws and NSA-style data dragnets are no longer the standard.
Paul Merrell

The 28 Pages and the War on Terror: Is Congress in a State of Willful Ignorance? | 28 P... - 0 views

28pages.org/...n-a-state-of-willful-ignorance

war & peace 9-11 28-pages ISIL Syria Iraq

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Today more than ever, Americans are struggling to unravel the Gordian knot of overt and covert alliances that comprise the Middle East’s geostrategic landscape. As they do, politicians and pundits constantly remind them that reaching the correct conclusions about the region is imperative if we are to thwart the menace of terrorism and prevent the next 9/11.
  • On January 8th of this year, by way of a “Dear Colleague” letter, Jones and Massachusetts Congressman Stephen Lynch urged every one of their fellow House representatives to read the 28 pages for themselves. Among those who heeded their call was Rep. Massie. At a March 11 press conference in which he joined Jones and Lynch in imploring peers to examine the redacted finding, Massie offered a striking description of his reaction to the revelations within the 28 pages, saying: “It was a really disturbing event for me to read those. I had to stop every two or three pages and rearrange my perception of history. And it’s that fundamental…it certainly changes your view of the Middle East.”
  • For everyday Americans, ignorance about what lies within the 28 pages is imposed; for apparently far too many in Congress, that ignorance is willful. You see—unlike the citizens they represent—when it comes to reading or not reading the 28 pages, legislators enjoy the luxury of a choice: After securing permission through their respective intelligence committee, representatives and senators can venture into a guarded, soundproof room at the Capitol and read the classified findings on foreign government assistance to the 9/11 hijackers in their entirety. Astonishingly—given what’s at stake for the country and for the lives of servicemembers and civilians alike—there are indications only a slim minority have bothered to do so. Rep. Walter Jones North Carolina’s Walter Jones is one congressman who did take the initiative to learn what lies in the 28 pages. Later, he said, “I was absolutely shocked by what I read. What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me.” He added, “The information is critical to our foreign policy moving forward and should thus be available to the American people.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • As if a thicket of misinformation, hit-and-miss journalism and competing propaganda didn’t make the challenge daunting enough, the American people face an even more formidable barrier in their attempts to reach informed and rational conclusions about U.S. policy in the Middle East: the classification of a 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers—classification that continues over the objections of the chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission and the former senator who co-chaired the inquiry that produced the 28 pages. Preventing a hypothetical “next 9/11″ starts with a clear understanding of what enabled the actual one—yet, even as the U.S. military prepares for the next chapter in the seemingly perpetual War on Terror, Americans continue to be denied critical knowledge about how the September 11 attacks were planned and funded. Reflecting on that disconnect, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie recently told Slate, “Until we know what enabled or caused 9/11, we shouldn’t be talking about starting a third war to prevent another 9/11.”
  • in what could well emerge as a national security scandal that engulfs much of Congress, there are indications that, when it comes to acquiring essential knowledge to shape policies that safeguard the country, a majority of legislators have thus far made a conscious decision to remain ignorant: As of this writing, 13 of the House’s 432 representatives have joined as cosponsors of a Jones-authored resolution urging the president to declassify the 28 pages. A source on the Hill who is familiar with the declassification effort is personally unaware of any representative who has read the 28 pages over the last several months who didn’t emerge from the experience as a supporter of declassification. When you overlay one of those observations on the other, the result points to a woefully low level of interest among the nation’s legislators in learning what “shocking,” “surprising” and “history-rearranging” facts are contained in the classified passage.
  • Those indications paint a bleak—albeit, tentative—portrait of Congressional diligence in overseeing national security policy. What’s needed now is a precise, name-by-name accounting of which representatives and senators have read the 28 pages and which have not. To that end, 28Pages.org urges constituents, journalists and transparency advocacy organizations to help bring accountability to this essential issue of national security job performance by contacting legislators and asking them two simple, yes-or-no questions: Have you read the 28 pages? If not, have you asked permission from your intelligence committee to do so? Shortly, 28Pages.org will announce its own contribution to this national exercise in Congressional accountability. However, a thorough accounting will only be achieved with the participation of citizens, journalists and transparency advocates. And with every House and 36 Senate seats up for election on Nov. 4, the faster the country collectively assembles a name-by-name roster of 28-pages readership on the Hill, the better position voters will be in to evaluate incumbents using this potent indicator of their attentiveness to matters of national security.
  • We provide a wealth of resources to help citizens do their part, and journalists are encouraged to contact us for insights on this issue.
« First ‹ Previous 301 - 320 of 415 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page