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Paul Merrell

The Conscience of a Benghazi Whistleblower | The American Conservative - 0 views

www.theamericanconservative.com/...ce-of-a-benghazi-whistleblower

war & peace Benghazi Hillary Auction 2016 spoliation

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Raymond Maxwell claims he witnessed top Hillary Clinton aides purge State Department files. Here's why you should believe him.
  • Ray Maxwell has a helluva story: Hillary Clinton’s most senior aides participated in a Benghazi cover-up. Maxwell says he knows because he was there. Proving or disproving his allegations will be an uncertain task. People will claim he is nothing more than a disgruntled employee with an agenda. I don’t think that’s true. Because I was once in his place. Raymond Maxwell was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, covering Libya. Soon after Ambassador Chris Stevens and others were killed in Benghazi, Maxwell participated in a secret Sunday session, he says, where Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan oversaw a document review with the aim to “pull out anything that might put anybody in the front office or the seventh floor in a bad light.” (“Seventh floor” is slang for the Secretary of State.)
  • As the House Select Committee on Benghazi held its first hearing Wednesday, the focus was on the Secretary of State’s role in securing American embassies and consulates abroad. Maxwell did not testify, and may or may not be eventually called to speak publicly to the Committee, but his allegations loom in the background. I’ve met Maxwell and talked with him, though he did not confide in me. When you join State, you serve whomever is in the White House, and like myself Maxwell worked from Reagan through Obama. “For any Foreign Service Officer, being at work is the essence of everything,” Maxwell told a reporter after he was ultimately pushed into an early retirement following State’s internal review of the Benghazi debacle. In 2013, Maxwell spoke to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Oversight Committee yet kept quiet about the bombshell information. Maxwell impresses as a State Department archetype, dedicated to the insular institution, apolitical to the point of frustration to an outsider, but shocked when he found his loyalty was not returned.
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  • He has revealed what he knows only two years after the fact. People will say he is out for revenge. But I don’t think that’s the case. As a State Department whistleblower who experienced how the Department treats such people, I know it’s not a position anyone wants to be in.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Sep 14
     
    This might prove troublesome for Hillary. Spoliation of evidence is usually fairly easy to prove because of references to shredded documents in other documents that were retained, breaks in the sequence of document numbering, etc. 
Paul Merrell

Ripped From Hillary's Emails: French Plot to Overthrow Gaddafi and Help Itself to Libya... - 0 views

fpif.org/-and-help-itself-to-libyas-oil

Auction 2016 Hillary Libya coup France

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The Congressional harrying of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over emails concerning the 2012 death of an American Ambassador and three staff members in Benghazi, Libya, has become a sort of running joke, with Republicans claiming “cover-up” and Democrats dismissing the whole matter as nothing more than election year politics. But there is indeed a story embedded in the emails, one that is deeply damning of American and French actions in the Libyan civil war, from secretly funding the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi, to the willingness to use journalism as a cover for covert action. The latest round of emails came to light June 22 in a fit of Republican pique over Clinton’s prevarications concerning whether she solicited intelligence from her advisor, journalist and former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal. If most newspaper readers rolled their eyes at this point and decided to check out the ball scores, one can hardly blame them. But that would be a big mistake.
  • The Congressional harrying of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over emails concerning the 2012 death of an American Ambassador and three staff members in Benghazi, Libya, has become a sort of running joke, with Republicans claiming “cover-up” and Democrats dismissing the whole matter as nothing more than election year politics. But there is indeed a story embedded in the emails, one that is deeply damning of American and French actions in the Libyan civil war, from secretly funding the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi, to the willingness to use journalism as a cover for covert action. The latest round of emails came to light June 22 in a fit of Republican pique over Clinton’s prevarications concerning whether she solicited intelligence from her advisor, journalist and former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal. If most newspaper readers rolled their eyes at this point and decided to check out the ball scores, one can hardly blame them. But that would be a big mistake. While the emails do raise questions about Hillary Clinton’s veracity, the real story is how French intelligence plotted to overthrow the Libyan leader in order to claim a hefty slice of Libya’s oil production and “favorable consideration” for French businesses.
  • Clinton was aware of everything the French were up to and apparently had little objection to the cold-blooded cynicism behind Paris’s policies in the region.
Paul Merrell

NSA Spying Inspires ProtonMail 'End-to-End' Encrypted Email Service | NDTV Gadgets - 0 views

gadgets.ndtv.com/...encrypted-email-service-526769

surveillance state secure-email ProtonMail

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 May 14 - No Cached
  • ne new email service promising "end-to-end" encryption launched on Friday, and others are being developed while major services such as Google Gmail and Yahoo Mail have stepped up security measures.A major catalyst for email encryption were revelations about widespread online surveillance in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor."A lot of people were upset with those revelations, and that coalesced into this effort," said Jason Stockman, a co-developer of ProtonMail, a new encrypted email service which launched Friday with collaboration of scientists from Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the European research lab CERN.Stockman said ProtonMail aims to be as user-friendly as the major commercial services, but with extra security, and with its servers located in Switzerland to make it more difficult for US law enforcement to access.
  • "Our vision is to make encryption and privacy mainstream by making it easy to use," Stockman told AFP. "There's no installation. Everything happens behind the scenes automatically."Even though email encryption using special codes or keys, a system known as PGP, has been around for two decades, "it was so complicated," and did not gain widespread adoption, Stockman said.After testing over the past few months, ProtonMail went public Friday using a "freemium" model a basic account will be free with some added features for a paid account.
  • By locating in Switzerland, ProtonMail hopes to avoid the legal woes of services like Lavabit widely believed to be used by Snowden which shut down rather than hand over data to the US government, and which now faces a contempt of court order.Even if a Swiss court ordered data to be turned over, Stockman said, "we would hand over piles of encrypted data. We don't have a key. We never see the password."
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  • As our users from China, Iran, Russia, and other countries around the world have shown us in the past months, ProtonMail is an important tool for freedom of speech and we are happy to finally be able to provide this to the whole world," the company said in a blog post.Google and Yahoo recently announced efforts to encrypt their email communications, but some specialists say the effort falls short."These big companies don't want to encrypt your stuff because they spy on you, too," said Bruce Schneier, a well-known cryptographer and author who is chief technology officer for CO3 Systems."Hopefully, the NSA debate is creating incentives for people to build more encryption."Stockman said that with services like Gmail, even if data is encrypted, "they have the key right next to it if you have the key and lock next to each other, so it's pretty much useless."
  • Lavabit founder Ladar Levison meanwhile hopes to launch a new service with other developers in a coalition known as the "Dark Mail Alliance."Levison told AFP he hopes to have a new encrypted email system in testing within a few months and widely available later this year."The goal is to make it ubiquitous, so people don't have to turn it on," he said.But he added that the technical hurdles are formidable, because the more user-friendly the system becomes, "the more susceptible it is to a sophisticated attacker with fake or spoofed key information."Levison said he hopes Dark Mail will become a new open standard that can be adopted by other email services.
  • on Callas, a cryptographer who developed the PGP standard and later co-founded the secure communications firm Silent Circle, cited challenges in making a system that is both secure and ubiquitous."If you are a bank you have to have an email system that complies with banking regulations," Callas told AFP, which could allow, for example, certain emails to be subject to regulatory or court review."Many of the services on the Internet started with zero security. We want to start with a system that is totally secure and let people dial it down."The new email system would complement Silent Circle's existing secure messaging system and encrypted mobile phone, which was launched earlier this year."If we start competing for customers on the basis of maximum privacy, that's good for everybody," Callas said.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 May 14
     
    They're already so swamped that you have to reserve your user name and wait for an invite. They say they have to add servers. Web site is at https://protonmail.ch/ "ProtonMail works on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It's as simple as visiting our site and logging in. There are no plugins or apps to install - simply use your favorite web browser." "ProtonMail works on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
Paul Merrell

Operation AURORAGOLD: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide - 0 views

firstlook.org/...nsa-auroragold-hack-cellphones

surveillance state NSA NSA-methods cell-network-penetration AURORAGOLD

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • In March 2011, two weeks before the Western intervention in Libya, a secret message was delivered to the National Security Agency. An intelligence unit within the U.S. military’s Africa Command needed help to hack into Libya’s cellphone networks and monitor text messages. For the NSA, the task was easy. The agency had already obtained technical information about the cellphone carriers’ internal systems by spying on documents sent among company employees, and these details would provide the perfect blueprint to help the military break into the networks. The NSA’s assistance in the Libya operation, however, was not an isolated case. It was part of a much larger surveillance program—global in its scope and ramifications—targeted not just at hostile countries.
  • According to documents contained in the archive of material provided to The Intercept by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on hundreds of companies and organizations internationally, including in countries closely allied to the United States, in an effort to find security weaknesses in cellphone technology that it can exploit for surveillance. The documents also reveal how the NSA plans to secretly introduce new flaws into communication systems so that they can be tapped into—a controversial tactic that security experts say could be exposing the general population to criminal hackers. Codenamed AURORAGOLD, the covert operation has monitored the content of messages sent and received by more than 1,200 email accounts associated with major cellphone network operators, intercepting confidential company planning papers that help the NSA hack into phone networks.
  • Karsten Nohl, a leading cellphone security expert and cryptographer who was consulted by The Intercept about details contained in the AURORAGOLD documents, said that the broad scope of information swept up in the operation appears aimed at ensuring virtually every cellphone network in the world is NSA accessible.
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  • “Collecting an inventory [like this] on world networks has big ramifications,” Nohl said, because it allows the NSA to track and circumvent upgrades in encryption technology used by cellphone companies to shield calls and texts from eavesdropping. Evidence that the agency has deliberately plotted to weaken the security of communication infrastructure, he added, was particularly alarming. “Even if you love the NSA and you say you have nothing to hide, you should be against a policy that introduces security vulnerabilities,” Nohl said, “because once NSA introduces a weakness, a vulnerability, it’s not only the NSA that can exploit it.”
  • The AURORAGOLD operation is carried out by specialist NSA surveillance units whose existence has not been publicly disclosed: the Wireless Portfolio Management Office, which defines and carries out the NSA’s strategy for exploiting wireless communications, and the Target Technology Trends Center, which monitors the development of new communication technology to ensure that the NSA isn’t blindsided by innovations that could evade its surveillance reach. The center’s logo is a picture of the Earth overshadowed by a large telescope; its motto is “Predict – Plan – Prevent.”
  • The NSA documents reveal that, as of May 2012, the agency had collected technical information on about 70 percent of cellphone networks worldwide—701 of an estimated 985—and was maintaining a list of 1,201 email “selectors” used to intercept internal company details from employees. (“Selector” is an agency term for a unique identifier like an email address or phone number.) From November 2011 to April 2012, between 363 and 1,354 selectors were “tasked” by the NSA for surveillance each month as part of AURORAGOLD, according to the documents. The secret operation appears to have been active since at least 2010.
  • By covertly monitoring GSMA working groups in a bid to identify and exploit security vulnerabilities, the NSA has placed itself into direct conflict with the mission of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, or NIST, the U.S. government agency responsible for recommending cybersecurity standards in the United States. NIST recently handed out a grant of more than $800,000 to GSMA so that the organization could research ways to address “security and privacy challenges” faced by users of mobile devices. The revelation that the trade group has been targeted for surveillance may reignite deep-seated tensions between NIST and NSA that came to the fore following earlier Snowden disclosures. Last year, NIST was forced to urge people not to use an encryption standard it had previously approved after it emerged NSA had apparently covertly worked to deliberately weaken it.
  • The NSA focuses on intercepting obscure but important technical documents circulated among the GSMA’s members known as “IR.21s.” Most cellphone network operators share IR.21 documents among each other as part of agreements that allow their customers to connect to foreign networks when they are “roaming” overseas on a vacation or a business trip. An IR.21, according to the NSA documents, contains information “necessary for targeting and exploitation.” The details in the IR.21s serve as a “warning mechanism” that flag new technology used by network operators, the NSA’s documents state. This allows the agency to identify security vulnerabilities in the latest communication systems that can be exploited, and helps efforts to introduce new vulnerabilities “where they do not yet exist.” The IR.21s also contain details about the encryption used by cellphone companies to protect the privacy of their customers’ communications as they are transmitted across networks. These details are highly sought after by the NSA, as they can aid its efforts to crack the encryption and eavesdrop on conversations.
  • One of the prime targets monitored under the AURORAGOLD program is the London-headquartered trade group, the GSM Association, or the GSMA, which represents the interests of more than 800 major cellphone, software, and internet companies from 220 countries. The GSMA’s members include U.S.-based companies such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Microsoft, Facebook, Intel, Cisco, and Oracle, as well as large international firms including Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, and Vodafone. The trade organization brings together its members for regular meetings at which new technologies and policies are discussed among various “working groups.” The Snowden files reveal that the NSA specifically targeted the GSMA’s working groups for surveillance.
  • Last year, the Washington Post reported that the NSA had already managed to break the most commonly used cellphone encryption algorithm in the world, known as A5/1. But the information collected under AURORAGOLD allows the agency to focus on circumventing newer and stronger versions of A5 cellphone encryption, such as A5/3. The documents note that the agency intercepts information from cellphone operators about “the type of A5 cipher algorithm version” they use, and monitors the development of new algorithms in order to find ways to bypass the encryption. In 2009, the British surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters conducted a similar effort to subvert phone encryption under a project called OPULENT PUP, using powerful computers to perform a “crypt attack” to penetrate the A5/3 algorithm, secret memos reveal. By 2011, GCHQ was collaborating with the NSA on another operation, called WOLFRAMITE, to attack A5/3 encryption. (GCHQ declined to comment for this story, other than to say that it operates within legal parameters.)
  • The extensive attempts to attack cellphone encryption have been replicated across the Five Eyes surveillance alliance. Australia’s top spy agency, for instance, infiltrated an Indonesian cellphone company and stole nearly 1.8 million encryption keys used to protect communications, the New York Times reported in February.
  • The NSA’s documents show that it focuses on collecting details about virtually all technical standards used by cellphone operators, and the agency’s efforts to stay ahead of the technology curve occasionally yield significant results. In early 2010, for instance, its operatives had already found ways to penetrate a variant of the newest “fourth generation” smartphone-era technology for surveillance, years before it became widely adopted by millions of people in dozens of countries. The NSA says that its efforts are targeted at terrorists, weapons proliferators, and other foreign targets, not “ordinary people.” But the methods used by the agency and its partners to gain access to cellphone communications risk significant blowback. According to Mikko Hypponen, a security expert at Finland-based F-Secure, criminal hackers and foreign government adversaries could be among the inadvertent beneficiaries of any security vulnerabilities or encryption weaknesses inserted by the NSA into communication systems using data collected by the AURORAGOLD project.
  • Vines, the NSA spokeswoman, told The Intercept that the agency was committed to ensuring an “open, interoperable, and secure global internet.” “NSA deeply values these principles and takes great care to honor them in the performance of its lawful foreign-intelligence mission,” Vines said.
  • Documents published with this article: AURORAGOLD – Project Overview AURORAGOLD Working Group IR.21 – A Technology Warning Mechanism AURORAGOLD – Target Technology Trends Center support to WPMO NSA First-Ever Collect of High-Interest 4G Cellular Signal AURORAGOLD Working Aid WOLFRAMITE Encryption Attack OPULENT PUP Encryption Attack NSA/GCHQ/CSEC Network Tradecraft Advancement Team
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Dec 14
     
    Notice that they've cracked even 4G.
Paul Merrell

FBI says search warrants not needed to use "stingrays" in public places | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...se-stringrays-in-public-places

surveillance state stingrays DoJ privacy 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the position that court warrants are not required when deploying cell-site simulators in public places. Nicknamed "stingrays," the devices are decoy cell towers that capture locations and identities of mobile phone users and can intercept calls and texts. The FBI made its position known during private briefings with staff members of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In response, the two lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson, maintaining they were "concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests" of Americans. According to the letter, which was released last week: For example, we understand that the FBI’s new policy requires FBI agents to obtain a search warrant whenever a cell-site simulator is used as part of a FBI investigation or operation, unless one of several exceptions apply, including (among others): (1) cases that pose an imminent danger to public safety, (2) cases that involve a fugitive, or (3) cases in which the technology is used in public places or other locations at which the FBI deems there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
  • The letter was prompted in part by a Wall Street Journal report in November that said the Justice Department was deploying small airplanes equipped with cell-site simulators that enabled "investigators to scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identifying information and general location." The bureau's position on Americans' privacy isn't surprising. The Obama Administration has repeatedly maintained that the public has no privacy in public places. It began making that argument as early as 2010, when it told a federal appeals court that the authorities should be allowed to affix GPS devices on vehicles and track a suspect's every move without court authorization. The Supreme Court, however, eventually ruled that warrants are required. What's more, the administration has argued that placing a webcam with pan-and-zoom capabilities on a utility pole to spy on a suspect at his or her residence was no different from a police officer's observation from the public right-of-way. A federal judge last month disagreed with the government's position, tossing evidence gathered by the webcam that was operated from afar.
  • In their letter, Leahy and Grassley complained that little is known about how stingrays, also known as ISMI catchers, are used by law enforcement agencies. The Harris Corp., a maker of the devices from Florida, includes non-disclosure clauses with buyers. Baltimore authorities cited a non-disclosure agreement to a judge in November as their grounds for refusing to say how they tracked a suspect's mobile phone. They eventually dropped charges rather than disclose their techniques. Further, sometimes the authorities simply lie to judges about their use or undertake other underhanded methods to prevent the public from knowing that the cell-site simulators are being used.
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  • Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said some states and judges are pushing back against stingrays. "In Tacoma, judges now require police (to) specifically note they plan to use an IMSI catcher and promise not to store data collected from people who are not investigation targets," he said. "The Florida and Massachusetts state supreme courts ruled warrants were necessary for real-time cell phone tracking. Nine states—Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin—passed laws specifically requiring police to use a warrant to track a cell phone in real time."
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15
     
    Is there any problem here that couldn't be cured by discharge and public flogging for any government official caught using information derived from a stingray?
Gary Edwards

Possible Constitutional Amendments in the event of an Article V Convention of States - ... - 0 views

teapartyorg.ning.com/...show

Oren-LOng Tea-Party-Patriots Constitutional-Amendments Article-V-Convention

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • NUMBER ONE: "Section One:   The Constitution of the United States shall be read and interpreted literally.   No words or phrases shall be changed or substituted and no part of the Constitution shall be used to expand or increase Federal Power or Authority beyond that EXPRESSLY granted and enumerated in the Constitution.   The language of the Constitution shall be interpreted according to the definition of words at the time of their inclusion in the Constitution. Section Two:    Congress shall have, by two thirds vote of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the power to override individual rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States and/or subordinate Federal Courts.   The President shall not have veto authority over Congressional overrides of Federal Court decisions."
  • NUMBER TWO: "Section One:    No person shall be elected to Congress more than once unless serving in Congress at the time of the ratification of this amendment, in which case members of Congress shall be eligible for re-election to their respective seats one time. Section Two:     In the event the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is repealed members of the Senate of the United States shall serve at the pleasure and discretion of the Legislature of their respective State. Section Three:  Neither Congress, the President, nor any Federal Court shall make any law, rule, regulation, or order that does not apply equally to themselves and all citizens of the United States.   Nor shall Congress, the President, or any Federal Court cause or allow any law, rule, regulation, or order to be made by any agent or agency of the Federal Government that does not apply equally to themselves and all citizens of the United States.
  • Section Four:    Neither Congress nor the President shall receive any publically-funded retirement or benefit beyond appropriate pay not available to all citizens of the United States. Section Five:    Section Four shall not apply to members of Congress or Presidents, serving or retired, at the time of the ratification of this amendment. Section Six:      The President shall be subject to popular recall by his/her constituency.   Within 90 days of the ratification of this amendment Congress shall pass legislation governing the recall of the President.   In the event Congress fails to pass the required legislation within the required 90 days, the President shall be considered to have been recalled and a new election held within 60 days. Section Seven: Members of Congress shall be subject to popular recall by their respective constituencies, unless the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is repealed, in which case only members of the House of Representatives shall be subject to popular recall.   Within 90 days of the ratification of this amendment each State shall pass legislation governing the recall of its Congressional Delegation.   In the event a State fails to pass the required legislation within the required 90 days, that State's Congressional Delegation shall be considered to have been recalled and new elections held within 60 days."
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  • NUMBER THREE: "Congress shall make and the President shall sign a Balanced Federal Budget every year and before the beginning of the ensuing fiscal year.   In the event Congress and the President fail to make said Balanced Federal Budget before the beginning of the ensuing fiscal year, the last Constitutionally passed and signed Federal Budget shall go into effect and shall be the Federal Budget for the entirety of the ensuing fiscal year.   Balanced shall be defined as expenditures not to exceed revenues except in time of war as declared by Congress.   Revenues shall be defined as monies received; not monies predicted, anticipated, or forecasted.   Unfunded liabilities, obligations, and/or mandates shall be included in the calculation of the Balanced Federal Budget."
  • NUMBER FOUR: "The Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States are hereby repealed.   All Federal agencies, programs, laws, rules, regulations, and/or orders created, passed, or handed down as a direct or indirect result of the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and/or Seventeenth Amendments are hereby stricken from Law, declared null and void, and have no force of effect."
  • NUMBER FIVE: "Section One:     Only persons born of two parents, both of whom are citizens of the United States at the time of the birth of the person, shall be citizens of the United States unless naturalized under the terms and conditions of the Constitution of the United States. Section Two:      Only United States Citizens shall enjoy or receive all rights, benefits, and privileges of United States Citizenship. Section Three:   Non-citizens shall not receive, directly or indirectly, Federal or Constitutional benefits, privileges, or protections."
  • NUMBER SIX:   "The several States are hereby empowered, individually or collectively, to enforce the Constitution of the United States and Federal Law, within their respective borders, regardless of Federal resistance or objections."
  • NUMBER SEVEN:   "Section One:   The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States shall be interpreted to mean the FUNDAMENTAL right of individual citizens and/or groups of citizens to keep and bear arms; in their homes and/or other properties, in public and private, and on their persons. Section Two:    Non-citizens and persons convicted of a violent felony by a jury of their peers do not have this right."
  • NUMBER EIGHT: "The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States shall not be interpreted to prohibit or restrict the peaceful, free exercise or expression of religion, in public or private, or in or on public property."
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Jan 15
     
    "Possible Constitutional Amendments in the event of an Article V Convention of States Posted by Oren Long on January 12, 2015 at 3:42am in Tea PartyView Discussions ARTICLE V CONVENTION OF STATES; ARE YOU WILLING TO CHANGE THE STATUS QUO IN D.C.?   One of our astute and true conservative members of this site has drafted suggested changes to the Constitution to be proposed in an Article V, Convention of States. I know many of you have seen his postings on here about this issue. Mr. Oren Long is very knowledgeable and well educated and has honorably served our country. He has put a tremendous amount of time and thought into ways to, in his words, "armor and reinforce" the Constitution and return it to its Original Intent, as envisioned by the Founders. Therefore, because I agree with every one of his suggested changes, I am publishing it for him, with his permission. I truly hope that we, as a group, as conservatives and as a people who believe that our country is heading toward disaster, because of the course we are on, I fully endorse his recommended suggestions. I believe that we must take any and every course of action we can to "stop the madness" It is quite long, so PLEASE take the time to read each and every one of them. I am sure that some or many, may have suggestions to this document and they are welcome and open to discussion. If you agree with this, please call your State elected officials and urge them to get on board with an Article V Convention of States. To review or obtain more information of this process, please visit one of these sites:    http://www.conventionofstates.com/           http://www.cosaction.com/              To Whom It May Concern, The following is neither sanctioned by nor proposed by the Article V Convention of States Project.   Rather, it is entirely my work as a volunteer for the Convention of States Project.   To give you an overview of the kinds of amendments that may or may not be consid
Paul Merrell

Republicans Warn Iran -- and Obama -- That Deal Won't Last - Bloomberg View - 0 views

www.bloombergview.com/...and-obama-that-deal-won-t-last

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iran negotiations Repubs senators

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran's leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama's administration won’t last after Obama leaves office. Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber's entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process. “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
  • Arms-control advocates and supporters of the negotiations argue that the next president and the next Congress will have a hard time changing or canceling any Iran deal -- -- which is reportedly near done -- especially if it is working reasonably well. Many inside the Republican caucus, however, hope that by pointing out the long-term fragility of a deal with no congressional approval -- something Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also noted -- the Iranian regime might be convinced to think twice. "Iran's ayatollahs need to know before agreeing to any nuclear deal that … any unilateral executive agreement is one they accept at their own peril,” Cotton told me. The issue has already become part of the 2016 GOP campaign. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush came out against the negotiations in a speech at the Chicago Council last month. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry released a video criticizing the negotiations and calling for Congressional oversight. “An arms control agreement that excludes our Congress, damages our security and endangers our allies has to be reconsidered by any future president,” Perry said. Republicans also have a new argument to make in asserting their role in the diplomatic process: Vice President Joe Biden similarly insisted -- in a letter to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell -- on congressional approval for the Moscow Treaty on strategic nuclear weapons with Russia in 2002, when he was head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
  • The new letter is the latest piece of an effort by Senators in both parties to ensure that Congress will have some say if and when a deal is signed. Senators Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, Tim Kaine and the embattled Bob Menendez have a bill pending that would mandate a Congressional review of the Iran deal, but Republicans and Democrats have been bickering over how to proceed in the face of a threatened presidential veto. Still, Senators from both parties are united in an insistence that, at some point, the administration will need their buy-in for any nuclear deal with Iran to succeed. There’s no sign yet that Obama believes this -- or, if he does, that he plans to engage Congress in any meaningful way.
Paul Merrell

9/11 lawyers trade barbs over CIA 'black site' translator turned Guantánamo d... - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...article9765239.html

war & peace 9-11 terrorists™ litigation CIA torture black-sites translator

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The Sept. 11 trial judge and prosecutors struggled Wednesday to find a way forward out of the startling discovery that a former CIA linguist tasked to translate for an alleged 9/11 plotter earlier worked at a secret CIA prison.Defense lawyers, who say their clients were tortured in the agency’s secret prison network, asked to take sworn testimony from the man. They also asked the judge to halt the intended two-week pretrial hearing, the first since August, to conduct an inquiry and perhaps new background checks on defense team staff in the complex, five-man death-penalty prosecution. About 130 people, both military and civilian, work at the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel.“This has so decimated any trust on this team,” said defense attorney Cheryl Bormann, her voice cracking, “we can't go forward.”
  • Army Col. James L. Pohl, the judge, said he’d hear from prosecutors Thursday on the request to question the former CIA linguist who had been working temporarily for the team representing accused terrorist Ramzi Bin al Shibh since August. A new translator, who just got his security clearance on Friday, was flown in Tuesday from Miami. Meantime, defense and prosecution attorneys traded accusations over how the contract linguist came to sit beside Bin al Shibh on Monday in a courtroom where four of the five accused 9/11 conspirators said they recognized him from their years of secret detention.
  • War court Arabic language linguists come from a pool of names provided by approved Pentagon contractors. They require special security clearances that allow them to work with secret intelligence. Bin al Shibh’s lead counsel, Jim Harrington, said after court that he and a co-counsel vetted the linguist in August, and he had no idea of the translator’s previous CIA work before the alleged terrorist disclosed it in court Monday.“The problem is I cannot trust him because he was working at the black site with the CIA, and we know him from there,” said Bin al Shibh, a Yemeni accused of functioning as a 9/11 plot deputy.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Bormann wants to investigate “every defense team member” past and present for undisclosed previous work, and told the judge the prosecution filing on the CIA linguist episode was an “out and out falsehood.” Nevin asked the judge to suspend proceedings “until we can get to the bottom of this issue.”The issue is the latest to beleaguer preparation for the trial of the five men accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, and, as defense lawyers see it, fodder for an eventual motion to dismiss the case for outrageous government conduct.It had already been sidelined by what defense lawyers called an FBI infiltration of their privilege by agents secretly questioning team members then having them sign non-disclosure agreements.
  • It was the FBI snooping episode that set up this week’s CIA linguist scandal. Little is known about what the FBI was investigating in secret approaches and questioning of defense teams. But as a result, Bin al Shibh’s earlier translator lost his security clearance and his job.They settled on a new permanent linguist, who didn’t arrive on this remote base until Tuesday.In between, the temporary translator who worked at a CIA black site had been filling in since August, off and on, according to Harrington — and had met Bin al Shibh earlier.
  • But Bin al Shibh only disclosed in court Monday that he recognized the linguist from a secret prison where Bin al Shibh had been held captive before his arrival at Guantánamo in 2006. Accused accomplices Ammar al Baluchi and Walid bin Attash recognized him, too, as did Mohammed. The three were apparently seeing the translator for the first time at Guantánamo in court Monday.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 15
     
    Dismissal for outrageous conduct is what needs to happen. And the officials who ordered the penetration of the defense team in the FBI and CIA need to be dismissed from government and prosecuted criminally. 
Gary Edwards

Google Custom Search - 0 views

www.google.com/cse

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Apr 15
     
    " Airline whistleblower Rebecca Roth states a truth about 911 this ... Feb 3, 2015 ... Airline whistleblower Rebecca Roth states a truth about 911 this web site stated years ago: Gordon Duff is celebrating a new book by Rebecca ... theunhivedmind.com/.../airline-whistleblower-rebecca-roth-states-a-truth- about-911-this-web-site-stated-years-ago/ Episode 216 - Katherine Albrecht and Rebekah Roth Guest Media ... Jan 23, 2015 ... She researched the 9/11/2001 terror attacks using her knowledge and ... I listened to the Rebecca Roth program until the very end when she ... caravantomidnight.com/episode-216-katherine-albrecht-rebekah-roth-guest- media/ Rebekah Roth exposes another piece of the 9/11 puzzle Mar 22, 2015 ... Short answer - the "hijacked 9/11 planes" landed at Westover Air ..... named mainer posted an excellent synopsis of what Rebecca Roth is ... projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?80910...9-11... "Back in 1981 Boeing had published the... - Exposing Israel's Agenda This means that the ONLY way 911 could have happened is via remote control. ... "A new book by Rebecca Roth (Airline Stewardess) clearly states that remote ... https://www.facebook.com/.../posts/513388788801217 Methodical Illusion: Amazon.co.uk: Rebekah Roth: 9780982757130 ... It caused her to look more deeply into the questions surrounding 9/11 that never .... In my own 10 years of research, I had not heard of Rebecca Roth, but I am ... www.amazon.co.uk/Methodical-Illusion-Rebekah.../0982757131 Methodical Illusion - A real eyeopener! Mar 24, 2015 ... Listen to an excellent interview with the author Rebecca Roth. You will never look ... Rebekah Roth: Methodical Illusion-Missing Pieces of 9-11 cincinnati.craigslist.org/pol/4947591230.html Contemporary History on Pinterest | never again, firefighters and rep… Explore Rebecca Roth's board "Contemporary History" on Pinterest, a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save ... 21 Awful Truths About 9/11 https://www.pin
Paul Merrell

Syrian Army Established Full Control Over Palmyra - UNESCO to Inspect World Heritage Si... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...to-inspect-world-heritage-site

war & peace Syria Russia Palmyra ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • The Syrian Arab Army and National Self Defense Troops, supported by the Syrian and Russian Air Forces established full control over the city of Palmyra and the ancient UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • The Syrian Arab Army on Sunday, announced that it had established full control over the city of Palmyra in Homs province, central Syria. The military wrested control over the city and the UNESCO World Heritage Site from the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL / Daesh). The Army also established control over the Palmyra Airport east of the city and the Palmyra orchards southwest of the city and south of the ancient ruins and the citadel. Sporadic fighting in isolated pockets continues as the military is seeking out fighters ISIL units that either were left behind when the main body of the insurgents fled the city, or others who stayed behind to slow down the advance of the army. Engineers are in the torturous process of sweeping the entire region for mines, improvised explosive devices, and other hazards that were left behind.
  • Palmyra is of significant strategic importance for the Syrian  military. The region between Palmyra and the “ISIL capital” Raqqa consists largely of open desert land, dotted by individual hills. The theater gives the advantage to the Syrian Army, for several reasons. The Syrian Arab Army has superior artillery power, especially after Syria received new Russian artillery pieces.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The Syrian and Russian Air Forces can operate more freely in open land where operations are not being complicated by the time-consuming task to distinguish between civilian and military targets, such as in urban environments. All of the above is also valid about the territory between Palmyra and the oil-rich and also strategically important city and province of Deir Ez-Zor. The lion-share of the stolen Syrian oil that fuels ISIL’s economy comes from Deir Ez-Zor. Ironically, the European Union has still not revised its decision from April 22, 2013, to list its ban on the import of Syrian oil from “rebel-held territories”.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Mar 16
     
    Syria and Russia tighten the noose around the neck of the NATO proxy Islamic State.
ashkif as

Asr Time Lahore - 0 views

www.portalmarkets.com/...44935.html

time

shared by ashkif as on 01 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • ashkif as on 01 Feb 19
     
    Prayer is the second most fundamental pillar of Islam that must be performed by each male and female Muslims five times each day. The individual who reliably implores Asar can be required to have a decent completion of their life i.e; that they bite the dust upon confidence as a Muslim. We ought to performing our Asar Prayer on our regular routine in a recommended time. Dawat-e-Islami.net is a best site for all Muslims that assistance them to get the privilege and credible Prayer time. This site...
Paul Merrell

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

www.eff.org/...baltimore-police-are-illegally

surveillance state stingrays test-case litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • 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:
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 16
     
    An important test case on the constitutionality of stingray mobile device surveillance.
Paul Merrell

These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/of-the-media-in-america-2012-6

MSM ownership-consolidation

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • This infographic created by Jason at Frugal Dad shows that almost all media comes from the same six sources. That's consolidated from 50 companies back in 1983.  NOTE: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn't own AOL, so Huffington Post isn't affiliated with them. But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates "the illusion of choice," Frugal Dad says. While some big sites, like Digg and Reddit aren't owned by any of the corporations, Time Warner owns news sites read by millions of Americans every year. Here's the graphic: 
  • This infographic created by Jason at Frugal Dad shows that almost all media comes from the same six sources. That's consolidated from 50 companies back in 1983.  NOTE: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn't own AOL, so Huffington Post isn't affiliated with them. But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates "the illusion of choice," Frugal Dad says. While some big sites, like Digg and Reddit aren't owned by any of the corporations, Time Warner owns news sites read by millions of Americans every year. Here's the graphic: 
Paul Merrell

Head of al Qaeda's Syrian branch threatens Russia in audio message | The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...ns-russia-in-audio-message.php

war & peace Syria al-Qaeda CIA

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The head of Al Nusrah Front, Abu Muhammad al Julani, has released an audio message addressing Russia’s role in the Syrian war. Julani depicts Russia as being “Eastern Crusaders,” calls for reprisal attacks inside Russia, says the jihadists should attack Shiite villages, and argues that groups fighting the Assad regime shouldn’t seek assistance from the West or countries throughout the region. He also offers bounties of several million Euros to anyone who kills Bashar al Assad or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Julani’s 21-minute audio message, which was released online yesterday, is entitled “The Russian Intervention – The Last Arrow.” It has been translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.
  • Julani urges the “mujahideen in the Caucasus to distract” Russia’s attention from the war in Syria whenever possible by killing Russians in their home country, including soldiers. “If the Russian soldier kills from the masses of [Syria], kill from their masses. And if they kill from our soldiers, kill from theirs,” Julani says, according to SITE. “One for one. We will not be the ones who begin.” The infighting between various factions must come to a stop, Julani argues, so that the jihadists can focus on “breaking” the “Eastern and Western Crusader campaigns.” And the jihadists should mobilize on “all the fronts” throughout Syria in response. “All must start a large battle on the most sensitive areas for the regime, and the battle must be escalated and the Nusayri [Shiite] villages in Latakia targeted.” Latakia is a coastal province that has long been a stronghold for the Assad family. “I call upon all the factions to gather the largest possible amount of shells and rockets and strike the Nusayri [Shiite] villages every day with hundreds of rockets, just as the cursed ones do in the cities and villages of the Sunnis,” Julani says, according to SITE. “Make them taste some of the torture of our people. If they leave the villages and cities of the Sunnis, we will leave them alone and will not attack, for he who treats others the same as he treats himself is not unjust.”
  • Here, Julani is likely discussing the Sunni jihadists’ strategy of attacking Shiite civilian areas in order to force the Assad regime to refrain from attacking predominately Sunni areas. Al Nusrah, Ahrar al Sham and other Sunni jihadist groups have employed this strategy throughout the year by, for example, attacking Shiite villages in northern Syria until Assad, Iranian forces, and Hezbollah lay off of areas in the south where Sunnis, including jihadists, are cornered. Jaysh al Fateh has effectively used this plan to free civilians and some fighters stationed in Zabadani, a small city close to the border with Lebanon. Julani warns other groups in Syria to avoid seeking assistance from “the Western states and the regional states,” saying it will only bring more “humiliation and shame.” Julani does not address this warning to any specific parties, but he could be referring to Al Nusrah’s ally, Ahrar al Sham, which receives assistance from Turkey and Qatar. Al Nusrah itself has likely received support from Gulf nations, Turkey and other actors at times. In fact, al Qaeda ideologues have explicitly condoned such arrangements, arguing that it can advance the jihadists’ cause. Al Qaeda has even said it is permissible on theological grounds to receive support from Iran, which is currently the Sunni jihadists’ foe in Syria and elsewhere. So, while Julani may openly decry this practice, it is one al Qaeda has repeatedly deemed to be acceptable.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 15
     
    It's good to stay aware of what the CIA's mercenary fores are doing. Sounds a lot like terrorism to me.
Paul Merrell

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

www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html

Auction 2016 Hillary-emails FBI NYPD Huma Weiner sex-crimes perjury Clinton-Foundation money-laundering obstruction

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Nov 16
     
    "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

Google, ACLU call to delay government hacking rule | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...-delay-government-hacking-rule

surveillance state Rule-41 oppostion Google ACLU

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • A coalition of 26 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Google, signed a letter Monday asking lawmakers to delay a measure that would expand the government’s hacking authority. The letter asks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellMitch McConnellTrump voices confidence on infrastructure plan GOP leaders to Obama: Leave Iran policy to Trump GOP debates going big on tax reform MORE (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Harry ReidHarry ReidNevada can’t trust Trump to protect public lands Sanders, Warren face tough decision on Trump Google, ACLU call to delay government hacking rule MORE (D-Nev.), plus House Speaker Paul RyanPaul RyanTrump voices confidence on infrastructure plan GOP leaders to Obama: Leave Iran policy to Trump GOP debates going big on tax reform MORE (R-Wis.), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to further review proposed changes to Rule 41 and delay its implementation until July 1, 2017. ADVERTISEMENTThe Department of Justice’s alterations to the rule would allow law enforcement to use a single warrant to hack multiple devices beyond the jurisdiction that the warrant was issued in. The FBI used such a tactic to apprehend users of the child pornography dark website, Playpen. It took control of the dark website for two weeks and after securing two warrants, installed malware on Playpen users computers to acquire their identities. But the signatories of the letter — which include advocacy groups, companies and trade associations — are raising questions about the effects of the change. 
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Nov 16
     
    ".. no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Fourth Amendment. The changes to Rule 41 ignore the particularity requirement by allowing the government to search computers that are not particularly identified in multiple locations not particularly identifed, in other words, a general warrant that is precisely the reason the particularity requirement was adopted to outlaw.
Paul Merrell

Dems discuss dropping Wasserman Schultz | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...uss-dropping-wasserman-schultz

Auction 2016 Wasserman-Schultz Dems Sanders Hillary

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • Democrats on Capitol Hill are discussing whether Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz should step down as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman before the party’s national convention in July.Democrats backing likely presidential nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonSanders: Clinton shouldn't pick VP from Wall Street McAfee on chances of Libertarian win: 'We're not that stupid' Libertarian candidate raps at party convention MORE worry Wasserman Schultz has become too divisive a figure to unify the party in 2016, which they say is crucial to defeating presumptive GOP nominee Donald TrumpDonald TrumpSanders: Primary isn't 'rigged,' just 'dumb' Trump University judge to unseal documents Dole: Gingrich should be Trump's running mate MORE in November.ADVERTISEMENTWasserman Schultz has had an increasingly acrimonious relationship with the party’s other presidential candidate, Bernie SandersBernie SandersSanders: Clinton shouldn't pick VP from Wall Street Sanders: Primary isn't 'rigged,' just 'dumb' Dick Van Dyke introduces Sanders at rally MORE, and his supporters, who argue she has tilted the scales in Clinton’s favor.“There have been a lot of meetings over the past 48 hours about what color plate do we deliver Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s head on,” said one pro-Clinton Democratic senator.
Paul Merrell

How Much Is Donald Trump Worth? An Examination Of The Evidence | ThinkProgress - 0 views

thinkprogress.org/...trump-net-worth

Auction 2016 Trump net-worth lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • How much money does Donald Trump actually have? Trump’s image as a savvy, deal-making, and, most importantly, fabulously wealthy businessman isn’t just about his personal brand. He’s made it a key selling point for his presidential campaign as he’s run to be the Republican Party’s nominee. “I’m really rich,” he assured voters as he launched his run for president. That message was intended to convey not only that he doesn’t “need anybody’s money” to fuel his campaign but also that he will help create wealth for everyone. “We’re going to make America wealthy again,” he’s promised his supporters. “I will give you everything.” He pledges to Make America Great Again, but also explained that “you have to be wealthy in order to be great, I’m sorry to say.” Yet the nominee has also refused to release his tax returns, which would tell the public exactly how much money he has. He’s maintained that he’s worth more than $10 billion. But he’s also become known for a slippery relationship with the truth, and there’s a pile of evidence to indicate that he may be worth a lot less than that. (Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign responded to a request for comment on this evidence or on whether he will be releasing his tax returns.)
  • It’s difficult to get a handle on the more than 500 businesses Trump owns, plus other potential investments and sources of wealth, without him disclosing them himself. Even then, much of the valuation rests on what import one gives to the Trump brand itself and how to adequately assess the worth of his various real estate holdings. Financial media outlets have estimated what they think the mogul is worth, but none have ever come close to backing Trump’s claim of $10 billion. When Bloomberg ran a tally this week of all of his major assets, including stock holdings and the value of properties like golf courses and luxury towers, it came up with $3 billion. Forbes, after interviews with 80 sources and a piece by piece look at Trump’s empire, concluded $4.5 billion. The Bloomberg analysis, however, relies at least in part on statements Trump himself made in financial disclosure forms, while Forbes has always had to rely on information given by the Trump Organization — and Forbes has admitted that Trump consistently pushes for a higher valuation. Fortune also caught him conflating revenue and income in his campaign filing reports and thereby significantly inflating how much income he says he has. In other places, Trump has submitted information on forms that would revise his wealth significantly downward. As Crain’s reported in March, Trump got a break in his latest property tax bill for Trump Tower in New York City that is only available to married couples who have an annual income of $500,000 or less.
  • The trend of publicly boasting about his money and then privately swearing that his assets are worth less goes pretty far back. In 1988, Trump a told Forbes that his personal residences were worth $50 million, but he said in sworn statements that they were in fact a net liability because the debt load was more than they were worth. In 1989, while Trump insisted that he was worth between $4 and $5 billion, Forbes obtained records he had submitted to a government body that his assets were only worth $1.5 billion. In 2005, a bank evaluated his net worth to be $788 million when underwriting a construction loan for some of his real estate projects — a time when Trump claimed his worth was more like $3.6 billion. lost the lawsuit.)
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Jul 16
     
    Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are starting to look awfully good. "If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates." -- Jay Leno.
Paul Merrell

Senate narrowly rejects new FBI surveillance | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...y-rejects-new-fbi-surveillance

surveillance state FBI web-search-metadata NSLs

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • The Senate narrowly rejected expanding the FBI's surveillance powers Wednesday in the wake of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.  Senators voted 58-38 on a procedural hurdle, with 60 votes needed to move forward. Majority Leader Mitch McConnellMitch McConnellOvernight Finance: Wall Street awaits Brexit result | Clinton touts biz support | New threat to Puerto Rico bill? | Dodd, Frank hit back The Trail 2016: Berning embers McConnell quashes Senate effort on guns MORE, who initially voted "yes," switched his vote, which allows him to potentially bring the measure back up. 
  • The Senate GOP proposal—being offered as an amendment to the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill—would allow the FBI to use "national security letters" to obtain people's internet browsing history and other information without a warrant during a terrorism or federal intelligence probe.  It would also permanently extend a Patriot Act provision — currently set to expire in 2019 — meant to monitor "lone wolf" extremists.  Senate Republicans said they would likely be able to get enough votes if McConnell schedules a redo.
  • Asked if he anticipates supporters will be able to get 60 votes, Sen. John CornynJohn CornynSenate to vote on two gun bills Senate Dems rip GOP on immigration ruling Post Orlando, hawks make a power play MORE (R-Texas) separately told reporters "that's certainly my expectation." McConnell urged support for the proposal earlier Wednesday, saying it would give the FBI to "connect the dots" in terrorist investigations.  "We can focus on defeating [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] or we can focus on partisan politics. Some of our colleagues many think this is all some game," he said. "I believe this is a serious moment that calls for serious solutions."  But Democrats—and some Republicans—raised concerns that the changes didn't go far enough to ensure Americans' privacy.  Sen. Ron WydenRon WydenPost Orlando, hawks make a power play Democrats seize spotlight with sit-in on guns Democrats stage sit-in on House floor to push for gun vote MORE (D-Ore.) blasted his colleagues for "hypocrisy" after a gunman killed 49 people and injured dozens more during the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. "Due process ought to apply as it relates to guns, but due process wouldn't apply as it relates to the internet activity of millions of Americans," he said ahead of Wednesday's vote. "Supporters of this amendment...have suggested that Americans need to choose between protecting our security and protecting our constitutional right to privacy." 
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  • The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also came out in opposition the Senate GOP proposal on Tuesday, warning it would urge lawmakers to vote against it. 
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Jun 16
     
    Too close for comfort and coming around the bernd again. 
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, It's About Blackmail, Not National Security | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...kmail%2C_not_national_security

surveillance state blackmail power-projection empire Obama BushII

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places.  Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington.  The answer is remarkably simple.  For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line -- like, in fact, the steal of the century.  Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.
  • What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long history of U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies. Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage -- akin to blackmail -- in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA’s global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable.
  • Once upon a time, such surveillance was both expensive and labor intensive. Today, however, unlike the U.S. Army’s shoe-leather surveillance during World War I or the FBI’s break-ins and phone bugs in the Cold War years, the NSA can monitor the entire world and its leaders with only 100-plus probes into the Internet’s fiber optic cables. This new technology is both omniscient and omnipresent beyond anything those lacking top-secret clearance could have imagined before the Edward Snowden revelations began.  Not only is it unimaginably pervasive, but NSA surveillance is also a particularly cost-effective strategy compared to just about any other form of global power projection. And better yet, it fulfills the greatest imperial dream of all: to be omniscient not just for a few islands, as in the Philippines a century ago, or a couple of countries, as in the Cold War era, but on a truly global scale. In a time of increasing imperial austerity and exceptional technological capability, everything about the NSA’s surveillance told Washington to just “go for it.”  This cut-rate mechanism for both projecting force and preserving U.S. global power surely looked like a no-brainer, a must-have bargain for any American president in the twenty-first century -- before new NSA documents started hitting front pages weekly, thanks to Snowden, and the whole world began returning the favor.
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  • As the gap has grown between Washington’s global reach and its shrinking mailed fist, as it struggles to maintain 40% of world armaments (the 2012 figure) with only 23% of global gross economic output, the U.S. will need to find new ways to exercise its power far more economically. As the Cold War took off, a heavy-metal U.S. military -- with 500 bases worldwide circa 1950 -- was sustainable because the country controlled some 50% of the global gross product. But as its share of world output falls -- to an estimated 17% by 2016 -- and its social welfare costs climb relentlessly from 4% of gross domestic product in 2010 to a projected 18% by 2050, cost-cutting becomes imperative if Washington is to survive as anything like the planet’s “sole superpower.” Compared to the $3 trillion cost of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the NSA’s 2012 budget of just $11 billion for worldwide surveillance and cyberwarfare looks like cost saving the Pentagon can ill-afford to forego. Yet this seeming “bargain” comes at what turns out to be an almost incalculable cost. The sheer scale of such surveillance leaves it open to countless points of penetration, whether by a handful of anti-war activists breaking into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, back in 1971 or Edward Snowden downloading NSA documents at a Hawaiian outpost in 2012.
  • In October 2001, not satisfied with the sweeping and extraordinary powers of the newly passed Patriot Act, President Bush ordered the National Security Agency to commence covert monitoring of private communications through the nation's telephone companies without the requisite FISA warrants. Somewhat later, the agency began sweeping the Internet for emails, financial data, and voice messaging on the tenuous theory that such “metadata” was “not constitutionally protected.” In effect, by penetrating the Internet for text and the parallel Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for voice, the NSA had gained access to much of the world’s telecommunications. By the end of Bush’s term in 2008, Congress had enacted laws that not only retrospectively legalized these illegal programs, but also prepared the way for NSA surveillance to grow unchecked. Rather than restrain the agency, President Obama oversaw the expansion of its operations in ways remarkable for both the sheer scale of the billions of messages collected globally and for the selective monitoring of world leaders.
  • By 2012, the centralization via digitization of all voice, video, textual, and financial communications into a worldwide network of fiber optic cables allowed the NSA to monitor the globe by penetrating just 190 data hubs -- an extraordinary economy of force for both political surveillance and cyberwarfare.
  • With a few hundred cable probes and computerized decryption, the NSA can now capture the kind of gritty details of private life that J. Edgar Hoover so treasured and provide the sort of comprehensive coverage of populations once epitomized by secret police like East Germany’s Stasi. And yet, such comparisons only go so far. After all, once FBI agents had tapped thousands of phones, stenographers had typed up countless transcripts, and clerks had stored this salacious paper harvest in floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, J. Edgar Hoover still only knew about the inner-workings of the elite in one city: Washington, D.C.  To gain the same intimate detail for an entire country, the Stasi had to employ one police informer for every six East Germans -- an unsustainable allocation of human resources. By contrast, the marriage of the NSA’s technology to the Internet’s data hubs now allows the agency’s 37,000 employees a similarly close coverage of the entire globe with just one operative for every 200,000 people on the planet
  • Through the expenditure of $250 million annually under its Sigint Enabling Project, the NSA has stealthily penetrated all encryption designed to protect privacy. “In the future, superpowers will be made or broken based on the strength of their cryptanalytic programs,” reads a 2007 NSA document. “It is the price of admission for the U.S. to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace.” By collecting knowledge -- routine, intimate, or scandalous -- about foreign leaders, imperial proconsuls from ancient Rome to modern America have gained both the intelligence and aura of authority necessary for dominion over alien societies. The importance, and challenge, of controlling these local elites cannot be overstated. During its pacification of the Philippines after 1898, for instance, the U.S. colonial regime subdued contentious Filipino leaders via pervasive policing that swept up both political intelligence and personal scandal. And that, of course, was just what J. Edgar Hoover was doing in Washington during the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Indeed, the mighty British Empire, like all empires, was a global tapestry woven out of political ties to local leaders or “subordinate elites” -- from Malay sultans and Indian maharajas to Gulf sheiks and West African tribal chiefs. As historian Ronald Robinson once observed, the British Empire spread around the globe for two centuries through the collaboration of these local leaders and then unraveled, in just two decades, when that collaboration turned to “non-cooperation.” After rapid decolonization during the 1960s transformed half-a-dozen European empires into 100 new nations, their national leaders soon found themselves the subordinate elites of a spreading American global imperium. Washington suddenly needed the sort of private information that could keep such figures in line. Surveillance of foreign leaders provides world powers -- Britain then, America now -- with critical information for the exercise of global hegemony. Such spying gave special penetrating power to the imperial gaze, to that sense of superiority necessary for dominion over others.  It also provided operational information on dissidents who might need to be countered with covert action or military force; political and economic intelligence so useful for getting the jump on allies in negotiations of all sorts; and, perhaps most important of all, scurrilous information about the derelictions of leaders useful in coercing their compliance.
  • In late 2013, the New York Times reported that, when it came to spying on global elites, there were “more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years,” reaching down to mid-level political actors in the international arena. Revelations from Edward Snowden’s cache of leaked documents indicate that the NSA has monitored leaders in some 35 nations worldwide -- including Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, Mexican presidents Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Indonesia’s president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.  Count in as well, among so many other operations, the monitoring of “French diplomatic interests” during the June 2010 U.N. vote on Iran sanctions and “widespread surveillance” of world leaders during the Group 20 summit meeting at Ottawa in June 2010. Apparently, only members of the historic “Five Eyes” signals-intelligence alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Great Britain) remain exempt -- at least theoretically -- from NSA surveillance. Such secret intelligence about allies can obviously give Washington a significant diplomatic advantage. During U.N. wrangling over the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003, for example, the NSA intercepted Secretary-General Kofi Anan’s conversations and monitored the “Middle Six” -- Third World nations on the Security Council -- offering what were, in essence, well-timed bribes to win votes. The NSA’s deputy chief for regional targets sent a memo to the agency’s Five Eyes allies asking “for insights as to how membership is reacting to on-going debate regarding Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions [..., and] the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals.”
  • Indicating Washington’s need for incriminating information in bilateral negotiations, the State Department pressed its Bahrain embassy in 2009 for details, damaging in an Islamic society, on the crown princes, asking: “Is there any derogatory information on either prince? Does either prince drink alcohol? Does either one use drugs?” Indeed, in October 2012, an NSA official identified as “DIRNSA,” or Director General Keith Alexander, proposed the following for countering Muslim radicals: “[Their] vulnerabilities, if exposed, would likely call into question a radicalizer’s devotion to the jihadist cause, leading to the degradation or loss of his authority.” The agency suggested that such vulnerabilities could include “viewing sexually explicit material online” or “using a portion of the donations they are receiving… to defray personal expenses.” The NSA document identified one potential target as a “respected academic” whose “vulnerabilities” are “online promiscuity.”
  • Just as the Internet has centralized communications, so it has moved most commercial sex into cyberspace. With an estimated 25 million salacious sites worldwide and a combined 10.6 billion page views per month in 2013 at the five top sex sites, online pornography has become a global business; by 2006, in fact, it generated $97 billion in revenue. With countless Internet viewers visiting porn sites and almost nobody admitting it, the NSA has easy access to the embarrassing habits of targets worldwide, whether Muslim militants or European leaders. According to James Bamford, author of two authoritative books on the agency, “The NSA's operation is eerily similar to the FBI's operations under J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s where the bureau used wiretapping to discover vulnerabilities, such as sexual activity, to ‘neutralize’ their targets.”
  • Indeed, whistleblower Edward Snowden has accused the NSA of actually conducting such surveillance.  In a December 2013 letter to the Brazilian people, he wrote, “They even keep track of who is having an affair or looking at pornography, in case they need to damage their target's reputation.” If Snowden is right, then one key goal of NSA surveillance of world leaders is not U.S. national security but political blackmail -- as it has been since 1898. Such digital surveillance has tremendous potential for scandal, as anyone who remembers New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s forced resignation in 2008 after routine phone taps revealed his use of escort services; or, to take another obvious example, the ouster of France’s budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac in 2013 following wire taps that exposed his secret Swiss bank account. As always, the source of political scandal remains sex or money, both of which the NSA can track with remarkable ease.
  • By starting a swelling river of NSA documents flowing into public view, Edward Snowden has given us a glimpse of the changing architecture of U.S. global power. At the broadest level, Obama’s digital “pivot” complements his overall defense strategy, announced in 2012, of reducing conventional forces while expanding into the new, cost-effective domains of space and cyberspace. While cutting back modestly on costly armaments and the size of the military, President Obama has invested billions in the building of a new architecture for global information control. If we add the $791 billion expended to build the Department of Homeland Security bureaucracy to the $500 billion spent on an increasingly para-militarized version of global intelligence in the dozen years since 9/11, then Washington has made a $1.2 trillion investment in a new apparatus of world power.
  • So formidable is this security bureaucracy that Obama’s recent executive review recommended the regularization, not reform, of current NSA practices, allowing the agency to continue collecting American phone calls and monitoring foreign leaders into the foreseeable future. Cyberspace offers Washington an austerity-linked arena for the exercise of global power, albeit at the cost of trust by its closest allies -- a contradiction that will bedevil America’s global leadership for years to come. To update Henry Stimson: in the age of the Internet, gentlemen don't just read each other’s mail, they watch each other’s porn. Even if we think we have nothing to hide, all of us, whether world leaders or ordinary citizens, have good reason to be concerned.
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