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Paul Merrell

Edward Snowden Is On Twitter: @Snowden - 0 views

theintercept.com/...edward-snowden-twitter-snowden

surveillance state Snowden Twitter @snowden

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Edward Snowden isn’t just a hashtag anymore. The NSA whistleblower joined Twitter on Tuesday, using the @snowden Twitter handle. Snowden, who has lived in Russia since turning over a trove of top-secret documents to reporters more than two years ago, has remained in the public eye thanks to frequent appearances and interviews using video links and sometimes even robots. But joining the Twitterverse establishes him even more firmly as a major figure in the public discourse about surveillance and privacy that he jump-started in June 2013.
  • s of shortly after the launch of his new Twitter account, Snowden was only following one other account: @NSAGov. But @NSAGov was not — at least not officially — following him back. Here is his first Tweet: Can you hear me now? — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 29, 2015 UPDATE at 4:25 p.m. ET: Within four hours, Snowden had gained more than half a million followers, and tweeps around the world took notice: Today @Snowden joined Twitter, and here's the world's response. pic.twitter.com/d6HgVvdRsf — Twitter (@twitter) September 29, 2015
Paul Merrell

A Clinton Fan Manufactured Fake News That MSNBC Personalities Spread to Discredit WikiL... - 0 views

theintercept.com/...ad-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs

Auction 2016 Hillary fake-news-propaganda Wikileaks Podesta-emails

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets – a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that). Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming – with no basis whatsoever – that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie – and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth – was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.
  • The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets — a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that). Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming — with no basis whatsoever — that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie — and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth — was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.
  • That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked — and thus should be disregarded — was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, The Atlantic, and Newsweek. And, by design, this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake. The most damaging such claim came from MSNBC’s intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance. As I documented on October 11, he tweeted what he — for some bizarre reason — labeled an “Official Warning.” It decreed: “#PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.” That tweet was re-tweeted by more than 4,000 people. It was vested with added credibility by Clinton-supporting journalists like Reid and Frum (“expert to take seriously”).
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  • All of that, in turn, led to an article in something called the “Daily News Bin” with the headline: “MSNBC intelligence expert: WikiLeaks is releasing falsified emails not really from Hillary Clinton.” This classic fake news product — citing Nance and Reid among others — was shared more than 40,000 times on Facebook alone.
  • From the start, it was obvious that it was this accusation from Clinton supporters — not the WikiLeaks documents — that was a complete fraud, perpetrated on the public as deliberate disinformation. With regard to the claim about the Podesta emails, now we know exactly who created it in the first instance: a hard-core Clinton fanatic.
  • Sadly for Chacon, however, the people who ended up getting fooled by his Fake News items were the nation’s most prominent Clinton supporters, including supposed experts and journalists from MSNBC who used his obvious fakes to try to convince the world that the WikiLeaks archive had been compromised and thus should be ignored.
Paul Merrell

Did Israeli army deliberately kill its own captured soldier and destroy Gaza ceasefire?... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...tured-soldier-and-destroy-gaza

war & peace Israel Gaza Rafah-Massacre Hannibal-Directive war crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • On Saturday evening, the Israeli army stated that Hadar Goldin, the soldier it claimed Hamas had captured on Friday morning, is dead: on Twitter A special IDF committee has concluded that Lt. Hadar Goldin was killed in combat in Gaza on Friday. May his memory be a blessing.— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) August 2, 2014 It was on the pretext of searching for the missing soldier that Israel slaughtered at least 110 of people in the southern Gaza town of Rafah since Friday morning, destroying what was supposed to be a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire. But the toll is rising as more bodies are found. “Such was the savagery of Israel’s bombardment in Rafah, such was the quantity of dead bodies, that there was simply no other option but to use vegetable refrigerators as makeshift morgues,” journalist Mohammed Omer, who hails from Rafah, reports.
  • One wonders whether US President Barack Obama will now retract his hasty statement – no doubt based on misinformation from Israel – blaming Hamas for capturing the soldier and demanding that he be “unconditionally” released. Now that Israel has, like Hamas, concluded that Goldin is dead, the question remains whether someone in the Israeli army gave the order to shell Rafah to kill him and prevent Hamas taking a live prisoner.
  • Friday turned into yet another day of horror for Palestinians in Gaza, as Israel committed massacres and atrocities claiming the lives of at least 100 people. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Friday was meant to be the first day of a three-day “humanitarian ceasefire” announced on Thursday evening by the United Nations and the United States.
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  • Israel has long had a murky procedure called the Hannibal Directive that some interpret as an order to do whatever it takes to prevent a soldier’s capture, even if it means killing him in the process.
  • Here’s Israel’s version, as reported in Ynet: According to an announcement by the IDF [Israeli army], at 9:30 am Friday, terrorists opened fire at IDF forces in southern Gaza. Initial information from the scene indicated that there is a chance that an IDF soldiers [sic] was kidnapped [sic] during the incident. Israel claims that the soldiers were working to destroy a resistance tunnel and that such “defensive” activities were permitted by the ceasefire agreement. What Israel does not dispute is that its occupation forces were carrying out operations in the Gaza Strip.
  • But an interesting observation comes from this tweet: on Twitter Just returned from Southern gaza - got to border with Israel multiple artillery barrages whilst there an hour after supposed ceasefire— Rageh Omaar (@ragehomaar) August 1, 2014 If Omaar is right, this would mean that Israel was already heavily shelling in the Rafah area by around 9am, since the ceasefire was supposed to begin at 8am. And if the artillery barrages followed the killing and alleged capture of Israeli soldiers by Qassam it would also mean that the incident could have occurred before 9:30am.
  • Around 10am many more reports started to come in of mass casualties from “indiscriminate shelling” on George Street, east of Rafah. If the shelling indeed began between 9 and 10am, it would mean that Israel launched a massive and indiscriminate barrage at just about the time it says its soldier was captured. This makes no sense if Israeli forces wanted to ensure the captured soldier’s safety. After all, he could be killed along with his captors.
  • Qassam did not comment for the whole of Friday on Israel’s assertion that one of its soldiers was captured. Early on Saturday it issued a new military communiqué condemning the “ongoing horrifying massacre of civilians in Rafah” and reaffirming its earlier version and timeline of events. But it has these important additions: We lost contact with the group of fighters that were stationed at that location and we believe that all members of the unit were martyred and the soldier the enemy says went missing was killed in the Zionist shelling, assuming that the fighters did capture him during the confrontation. We in Qassam have no knowledge up to this moment about the missing soldier, nor his whereabouts nor the circumstances of his disappearance. It is reasonable to assume that Qassam has no motive to be deceptive about this; a captured Israeli soldier is a valuable asset. If they had him they would either boast about it or keep quiet and perhaps seek to trade information about him for concessions from Israel.
  • If the Israeli soldier was killed, it is possible that it was unintentional “friendly fire.” But again, forces that were intent on protecting and rescuing a missing soldier would be foolhardy to launch massive air raids or barrages of artillery fire in the area where he was captured. This leaves open the question of whether Israeli forces intended to kill the missing soldier. The Hannibal Directive The “Hannibal Directive” captured the Israeli imagination in the mid-1980s, when ongoing incursions and occupation in Lebanon, following the 1982 invasion, confronted the Israeli army with opportunities to experience capture. Popular understanding of this directive is phrased as “a dead soldier is better than a kidnapped [sic] one” – which was taken to mean that it would be better to kill a captured prisoner of war than have him remain alive.
  • There was much discussion on Twitter about this being the reason for the shelling of Rafah on Friday morning, including in reports from Ynet’s military reporter Attila Somfalvi, that the words “Hannibal! Hannibal!” were shouted over military communication systems.
  • Journalist Haim Har-Zahav reminisced that it took 50 minutes before the directive was put into practice on the Lebanon border, in 2006 and almost an hour in 1991, but that his own brigade took only a few minutes. Sports commentator Ouriel Daskal stated outright: “what I deduce from what’s happening in Rafah is that there’s an implementation of the Hannibal Directive. Let’s hope not.” Moreover, blogger Richard Silverstein reported a few days ago that another soldier was killed in Gaza under the directive. Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman confirmed in a radio interview, with respect to an earlier incident, that in Gaza the procedure “was tested in practice and apparently the soldiers acted in accordance with that directive.”
  • But these indications, combined with the fact that Israel bombed Rafah so viciously make it a reasonable hypothesis that someone giving orders on Friday morning wanted the soldier dead rather than captured. If that is the case, then it is Israel that destroyed the humanitarian ceasefire, in the process murdering dozens more innocent people and pushing the death toll from the ongoing massacre in Gaza to more than 1,600 people.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14
     
    Ali Abunimah pieces together rather compelling evidence that the Israel Defense Force's utter devastation of Rafah, Gaza by artillery fire was an attack intended to kill one of its own soldiers they believed had been captured, and broke a cease-fire agreement to do so then lied about it, pursuant to the IDF's unwritten Hannibal Directive, that it is better to kill one of their own than to allow him to be kept captive. A serious war crime slaughtering over 100 civilians even without that.    
Paul Merrell

Western Spy Agencies Secretly Rely on Hackers for Intel and Expertise - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...-nsa-gchq-rely-intel-expertise

surveillance state NSA-targets hackers

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S., U.K. and Canadian governments characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents. In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets… by collecting the hackers’ ‘take,’ we . . .  get access to the emails themselves,” reads one top secret 2010 National Security Agency document. These and other revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents—which come from the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters agency and NSA—shed new light on the various means used by intelligence agencies to exploit hackers’ successes and learn from their skills, while also raising questions about whether governments have overstated the threat posed by some hackers.
  • By looking out for hacking conducted “both by state-sponsored and freelance hackers” and riding on the coattails of hackers, Western intelligence agencies have gathered what they regard as valuable content: Recently, Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and Menwith Hill Station (MHS) discovered and began exploiting a target-rich data set being stolen by hackers. The hackers’ sophisticated email-stealing intrusion set is known as INTOLERANT. Of the traffic observed, nearly half contains category hits because the attackers are targeting email accounts of interest to the Intelligence Community. Although a relatively new data source, [Target Offices of Primary Interest] have already written multiple reports based on INTOLERANT collect. The hackers targeted a wide range of diplomatic corps, human rights and democracy activists and even journalists: INTOLERANT traffic is very organized. Each event is labeled to identify and categorize victims. Cyber attacks commonly apply descriptors to each victim – it helps herd victims and track which attacks succeed and which fail. Victim categories make INTOLERANT interesting: A = Indian Diplomatic & Indian Navy B = Central Asian diplomatic C = Chinese Human Rights Defenders D = Tibetan Pro-Democracy Personalities E = Uighur Activists F = European Special Rep to Afghanistan and Indian photo-journalism G = Tibetan Government in Exile
  • In those cases, the NSA and its partner agencies in the United Kingdom and Canada were unable to determine the identity of the hackers who collected the data, but suspect a state sponsor “based on the level of sophistication and the victim set.” In instances where hacking may compromise data from the U.S. and U.K. governments, or their allies, notification was given to the “relevant parties.” In a separate document, GCHQ officials discuss plans to use open source discussions among hackers to improve their own knowledge. “Analysts are potentially missing out on valuable open source information relating to cyber defence because of an inability to easily keep up to date with specific blogs and Twitter sources,” according to one document. GCHQ created a program called LOVELY HORSE to monitor and index public discussion by hackers on Twitter and other social media. The Twitter accounts designated for collection in the 2012 document:
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  • These accounts represent a cross section of the hacker community and security scene. In addition to monitoring multiple accounts affiliated with Anonymous, GCHQ monitored the tweets of Kevin Mitnick, who was sent to prison in 1999 for various computer and fraud related offenses. The U.S. Government once characterized Mitnick as one of the world’s most villainous hackers, but he has since turned security consultant and exploit broker. Among others, GCHQ monitored the tweets of reverse-engineer and Google employee, Thomas Dullien. Fellow Googler Tavis Ormandy, from Google’s vulnerability research team Project Zero, is featured on the list, along with other well known offensive security researchers, including Metasploit’s HD Moore and James Lee (aka Egypt) together with Dino Dai Zovi and Alexander Sotirov, who at the time both worked for New York-based offensive security company, Trail of Bits (Dai Zovi has since taken up a position at payment company, Square). The list also includes notable anti-forensics and operational security expert “The Grugq.” GCHQ monitored the tweets of former NSA agents Dave Aitel and Charlie Miller, and former Air Force intelligence officer Richard Bejtlich as well as French exploit vendor, VUPEN (who sold a one year subscription for its binary analysis and exploits service to the NSA in 2012).
  • Documents published with this article: LOVELY HORSE – GCHQ Wiki Overview INTOLERANT – Who Else Is Targeting Your Target? Collecting Data Stolen by Hackers – SIDtoday  HAPPY TRIGGER/LOVELY HORSE/Zool/TWO FACE – Open Source for Cyber Defence/Progress NATO Civilian Intelligence Council – Cyber Panel – US Talking Points
  • The U.S., U.K. and Canadian governments characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents. In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets… by collecting the hackers’ ‘take,’ we . . .  get access to the emails themselves,” reads one top secret 2010 National Security Agency document. These and other revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents—which come from the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters agency and NSA—shed new light on the various means used by intelligence agencies to exploit hackers’ successes and learn from their skills, while also raising questions about whether governments have overstated the threat posed by some hackers.
Paul Merrell

60 Minutes Hearts the NSA -- Daily Intelligencer - 0 views

nymag.com/...60-minutes-hearts-the-nsa.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-publicity CBS 60-Minutes presstitutes Alexander

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Last night’s episode of 60 Minutes on CBS included what basically amounted to an uncritical commercial for the embattled National Security Agency, led by a journalist who used to be a government colleague. While the show — which has faced recent problems of its own, from the Benghazi debacle to the Amazon drone PR stunt — celebrated its own “unprecedented access to NSA headquarters,” it’s clear the meeting was on the NSA’s terms. In fact, NSA Director General Keith Alexander “made the call to invite us in,” a 60 Minutes producer admitted. They pretty much let him say his piece, nodding along excitedly. “Full disclosure, I once worked in the office of the director of National Intelligence where I saw firsthand how secretly the NSA operates,” said the reporter John Miller at the start of the segment.
  • While no critics of the NSA programs were given a chance to make the case against the potentially extralegal spying, which has resulted in international outrage, CBS did assist in the discrediting of master leaker Edward Snowden. Take, for example, this galling exchange with the head of the Snowden task force within the NSA, following Miller’s dismissive description of Snowden as a “twentysomething-year-old, high-school-dropout contractor”: John Miller: Did you sit in his chair?Rick Ledgett: I did not. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. […] At home, they discovered Snowden had some strange habits. Rick Ledgett: He would work on the computer with a hood that covered the computer screen and covered his head and shoulders, so that he could work and his girlfriend couldn't see what he was doing.John Miller: That's pretty strange, sitting at your computer kind of covered by a sheet over your head and the screen?Rick Ledgett: Agreed.
  • Media observers, some less personally involved in the Snowden leaks than others, could not believe what they were watching: 60 Minutes forgot to ask about how James Clapper & Keith Alexander routinely lied to Congress & FISA courts - just ran out of time.— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 16, 2013 Wow, the 60 Minutes piece about the NSA was just embarrassing. Kudos to the NSA communications staff. You guys should get a raise.— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) December 16, 2013
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  • "NSA Doing Great Job, NSA Says" - 60 Minutes— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) December 16, 2013 This 60 Minutes episode has been a pretty good infomercial for the NSA so far. Did anyone catch that 1-800 number so I can order?— Andy Greenberg (@a_greenberg) December 16, 2013 That time a 60 Minutes correspondent asked an NSA analyst to solve a Rubik's cube. #journalism pic.twitter.com/9fgJkLB1oK— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) December 16, 2013
  • CBS’s John Miller, though, knew what he was doing. “General Alexander agreed to talk to us because he believes the NSA has not told its story well,” he explained in a behind-the-scenes segment. “I think we asked the hardest questions we could ask,” he said. “We’ve heard plenty from the critics. We’ve heard a lot from Edward Snowden.” Still, “You also don’t want this to be a puff piece,” he added. We got one anyway.
  • The cherry on top is that Miller is currently in the running, reportedly, for a “top counterterrorism or intelligence role” in the NYPD when his old pal Bill Bratton takes over, something that was not disclosed by 60 Minutes.  He's certainly qualified. (Miller held a similar job as chief of counterterrorism under Bratton at the LAPD in addition to his work in national intelligence.) “He wants the badge, the gun and the adrenaline — to be in the center of the action,” a source told the New York Post of Miller, calling it “a 99.44 percent done deal.” And on top of describing Bill Bratton as “one of my best friends,” this was a great audition.  [CBS News] [HuffPost] [Poynter]
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 13
     
    I'm glad I didn't miss anything important that I haven't heard before too many times. Filmed before a federal judge and Obama's blue ribbon committee report on DoD intelligence community digital spying both in effect branded Alexander as a liar again. 
Paul Merrell

World's Largest Barrier Reef to Disappear in 5 Years | News | teleSUR English - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...-in-5-Years-20160519-0001.html

ocean-environment Great-Barrier-Reef

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • .ng-hide:not(.ng-hide-animate){display:none !important}.shr-debug{font-weight:bolder;cursor:pointer;color:#008000}.shareaholic-canvas{clear:both}.shareaholic-ui button,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button{border:0;box-shadow:none;text-shadow:none;font-size:12px;padding:6px 10px !important;border-radius:3px;background:transparent;display:inline-block;margin:2px;border:1px solid transparent;line-height:16px;color:#555;cursor:pointer;height:initial;text-transform:initial;}.shareaholic-ui button:hover,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button:hover{color:#000;font-weight:inherit}.shareaholic-ui button.button-primary,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button.button-primary{background-color:#52a8e8;background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(top,#52a8e8,#377ad0);border:1px solid #3f81ae;border-color:#3f81ae #2e68a1 #1f5496;box-shadow:inset 0 1px 0 0 #72baeb,0 1px 2px 0 #c3c3c3;color:#fff;font-weight:bold;text-shadow:0 -1px 1px #3275bb;-webkit-appearance:none}.shareaholic-ui button.ui-disabled,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button.ui-disabled{background-color:#ccc;background-image:none;border-color:#bbb;box-shadow:none;color:#999;cursor:default;opacity:.5;text-shadow:none}.shareaholic-ui button.icon-only,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button.icon-only{padding:0;}.shareaholic-ui button.icon-only.icon-16,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button.icon-only.icon-16{padding:4px;}.shareaholic-ui button.icon-only.icon-16 i,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button.icon-only.icon-16 i{height:16px;width:16px}.shareaholic-ui button.icon-only.icon-24,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button.icon-only.icon-24{padding:0;}.shareaholic-ui button.icon-only.icon-24 i,.shareaholic-ui .shareaholic-ui-button.icon-only.icon-24 i{height:24px;width:24px}.s
  • According to the report published in the journal Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, saving the reef will take a huge amount of work and money. Poor water quality was seen as the major threat as well as global warming which is causing significant coral bleaching. Chief researcher of the report, John Brodie, told the Guardian, “The current spending is totally inadequate ... You either do it properly or you give up on the reef. It’s that bad.”
Paul Merrell

Hillary Clinton Has The Most Bogus Twitter Followers - 0 views

www.vocativ.com/...ollowers-than-other-candidates

Auction-2016 Hillary fake-tweet-followers

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • When it comes to fake Twitter followers, Hillary Clinton is winning the presidential race by a landslide. Clinton has more fake followers and a higher ratio of bogus Twitter fans than any of the other main 2016 presidential contenders, a Vocativ analysis shows. On the other end of the scale, the candidates with the lowest percentage of fake Twitter followers are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Contrary to what one might guess from his reputation for extravagant self-promotion, Trump’s 2.6 million Twitter followers are 90 percent real people. Only 311,388 were deemed fake by the analysis using the tool TwitterAudit. Bernie Sanders was tied for the highest ratio of authentic followers—90 percent of his 300,000-plus followers are real people. Then comes Gov. Jeb Bush with 89% of his followers registering as real. On the bottom of the Twitter list is Clinton, with a whopping 35 percent of her 2.3 million Twitter followers coming up as fake.
  • TwitterAudit, a social media analysis tool, says on its website that it judges a Twitter account’s authenticity based on its number of tweets, the date of its last tweet and the ratio of its followers to friends. The fake Twitter accounts can be bots, which are accounts run by automated software programming. They can also be accounts created by real people but with an agenda of spreading political advertisements. But under both scenarios, they are certainly not a genuine measure of candidate popularity.
Paul Merrell

4Chan Claims To Have Fabricated Anti-Trump Report As A Hoax | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...ricated-anti-trump-report-hoax

Trump-administration CIA DNI golden-shower-hoax must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • In a story that is getting more surreal by the minute, a post on 4Chan now claims that the infamous "golden showers" scene in the unverified 35-page dossier, allegedly compiled by a British intelligence officer, was a hoax and fabricated by a member of the chatboard as "fanfiction", then sent to Rick Wilson, who proceeded to send it to the CIA, which then put it in their official classified intelligence report on the election. Here is 4Chan's explanation of how the story came to light: >/pol/acks mailed fanfiction to anti-trump pundit Rick Wilson about trump making people piss on a bed obama slept in >he thought it was real and gave it to the CIA >the central intelligence agency of the united states of america put this in their official classified intelligence report on russian involvement in the election >donald trump and obama have both read this pol/acks fanfiction >the cia has concluded that the russian plans to blackmail trump with this story we made up just let that sink in what we have become.
  • nd a summary posted on pastebin: On january 10, Buzzfeed posted a story under the byline of Ken Bensinger, Mark Schoofs and Miriam elder titled “these reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia” and posted a link to a document alleging, among other things, that russia has been cultivating trump for 5+ years, that trump has been in constant contact with the kremlin for information on his opponents, and perhaps most inflammatory, that there are many recorded instances of blackmail of trump in sexual misconduct. A prominent claim is that trump rented the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in moscow, where he knew that the Obamas had slept in; he them hired a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden shower' (pissplay) on the bed and in the room. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-dee...https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984/Trump-Intelligence-Al...   Noted #nevertrump voice Rick Wilson later commented on twitter, stating that the report “gave a new meaning to Wikileaks” (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818982395202379777) and that the report was the reason everybody was fighting so hard against the election of Trump. (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818983514335047680)   The remarkable thing? It's all fake. And not only fake; it's a prank perpetuated by 4chan, on Rick Wilson himself. A post on 4chan on october 26 stated “mfw managed to convince CTR and certain (((journalists))) on Twitter there'll be an October surprise on Trump this Friday” along with a picture of a smug face with a hash name. http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/94704894/#94705224   on november 1, a person without a picture but is assumed to be the same person posted “So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it. They still believe it. Guys, they're truly fucking desperate - there's no remaining Trump scandal that's credible.” https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/95568919/#95571329  
  • al media, a person with the same smug grin face, and the same hash title for the picture, stated “I didn't think they'd take it so far.” http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/106514445#p106520376   This story has taken on something of a life of it's own. Going through Rick Wilson's twitter, you can find many different stories from the time that he had shown the story to a wide number of anti-trump news sources, trying to find a news organization that would actually publish the story. During that time period, he referred to it often as 'the thing', and often playing coy with followers on the content with the story with anybody who was not also a #Nevertrumper. Unconfirmed sources has people as high up as John McCain giving the story to FBI Director James Comey to attempt to verify the story. Given that Rick Wilson runs in Establishment circles, it is not an impossible scenario that long-serving senators are falling for what amounts to a 4chan troll trump supporter creating an ironic October Surprise out of wholecloth to punk a GOPe pundit who derogatorily referred to them as single men who masturbate to anime. While this entire incident is laughable, and even more so if the 4Chan account is accurate, what makes it quite tragic, is that it is no longer possible to dismiss the "fake news" angle to an intelligence report. And if the CIA is compromised, what is left for "news outlets" like CNN and BuzzFeed, which were all too eager to run with the story without any attempt at verification?
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 17
     
    It's must read.
Paul Merrell

FINAL - Part II: Evidence Continues to Emerge #MH17 Is a False Flag Operation | No Limi... - 0 views

slavyangrad.wordpress.com/...mh17-is-a-false-flag-operation

war & peace Ukraine Malaysian-airliner U.S.-foreign-policy false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • #15 – Dissecting the Fake Intercept Disseminated by SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5E8kDo2n6g Note: Half of the Post Translated; The Remaining Half is Speculative Complete Original of the Post (in Russian) Can Be Found at Eugene-DF LiveJournal In the disseminated intercept, the place from which the missile was allegedly launched is clearly indicated: the checkpoint at the settlement of Chernukhino. Pay close attention at the Alleged Map of the MH17 Catastrophe.
  • And, so, we have the background. Let’s see how the picture unfolds: The launch is alleged to have been made from Chernukhino. The maximum distance of the launch is 16 kilometres. The aircraft fell between Snezhnoye and Torez. That’s 37 kilometres, which is 20 kilometres more than the maximum possible point at which the plain could have been hit. You know, even a plane with turned-off engines can’t glide like that. But the trouble is that the aircraft was not whole. According to the pattern of the spread of fuselage fragments and bodies, the plane was ruptured practically with the first shot. Here it must be mentioned that the high-explosive/fragmentation warhead of the rocket has a mass of approximately 50 kilograms (by the way, Ukrainians have an outdated modification, which is only 40 kilograms).
  • Overall, that’s not too little; however, it must be understood that it detonates not when it sticks into an airplane, but when it is still at a certain, and fairly significant distance. Moreover, the main strike factor is not the blast wave, but far more significantly – the stream of fragments. These fragments are previously prepared rods (and in the earlier versions – little cubes, if I recall correctly). And yes, for a jet fighter, that, in itself, is more than sufficient. However, here we are dealing with a huge airliner. Yes, one rocket will rip the casing, cause depressurization, and will kill a lot of passengers. But it will not break up the airliner into pieces. Given certain conditions, the pilots may even be able to land it. And, in fact, there have been precedents (to be provided in future posts). For example – the very same An-28, which is alleged to have been the first victim of a BUK system; even though it was done for, but the crew was able to successfully catapult out. Which, in some way, symbolizes. An An-28, by the way, is far smaller than a Boeing.
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  • In other words, the rocket caught up to the plane no closer than 25 kilometres away from Chernukhino. Which is absolutely impossible for a BUK system. By the way, we can’t overlook the fact that, at maximum distances, BUK can be used only provided there is support from an external radar installation for location and guiding purposes. In other words, even if a rockets flies far, BUK’s mobile radar does not cover its entire distance.
  • And that is what is so strange here: SBU literally offers evidence that proves that that the Militia had no part in the shooting down of the Boeing! The fact that they blame themselves in the recording is quite understandable. Unlike the fascists, they have a conscience, which takes its toll until you are sure it was not you who did it. Ok. But somebody did, in fact, shoot down the plane? Of course it was shot down. And here we have another question: what if this recording is a falsification through and through? Then it had to have been prepared somehow? And then disseminated? That’s when smoke starts to clear, and mirrors – to break. That’s the problem with tricks.
  • #14 – An Industry Outlet Confirms Carlos (@spainbuca) as ATC at Borispol Airport in Kiev Original: EturboNews (ETN Global Travel Industry News) – July 17, 2014 ETN received information from an air traffic controller in Kiev on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. This Kiev air traffic controller is a citizen of Spain and was working in the Ukraine. He was taken off duty as a civil air-traffic controller along with other foreigners immediately after a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine killing 295 passengers and crew on board. The air traffic controller suggested in a private evaluation and basing it on military sources in Kiev, that the Ukrainian military was behind this shoot down. Radar records were immediately confiscated after it became clear a passenger jet was shot down. Military air traffic controllers in internal communication acknowledged the military was involved, and some military chatter said they did not know where the order to shoot down the plane originated from.
  • Obviously it happened after a series of errors, since the very same plane was escorted by two Ukrainian fighter jets until 3 minutes before it disappeared from radar. Radar screen shots also show an unexplained change of course of the Malaysian Boeing. The change of course took the aircraft directly over the Eastern Ukraine conflict region.
  • #7 – Eyewitness States Two Planes Following MH17, One Of the Craft Shot Down Boeing Video: Father of Eyewitness Tells of the Crash of Boeing MH17 Over Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPcbFJSGk7E Transcript of the Video Narrator: Who shot it down? Today it was shot down, on [July] 17th. Narrator: Continuing. The village of Grabovo. How was it? What did you son tell you? Father of Eyewitness: Well, they were sitting there, on a hill. And, from behind the clouds … two airplanes were flying … one of the came out from behind the clouds.
  • #12 – Analysis from an Aerodynamics/Physics Standpoint – Ukrainian Army Responsible RESUME OF ANALYSIS: What all this means is that if a BUK rocket was launched from the territory controlled by the Militia, the Boeing would have fallen much further to the south-east – i.e. will into the Russian territory. Otherwise, there would have been not time to detect the aircraft, perform electronic capture and launch the rocket. If this was a BUK, and not a jet fighter, then it is most likely that the launch was made from the territory controlled by the Ukrainian army, and the rocket was sent “chasing after” the airplane.
  • #10 – Eyewitness Recounts a Fighter Jet and 3 Explosions When MH17 Was Shot Down Audio Recording Link: Cassad Net Transcript of the Eyewitness Phone CallI
  • I saw, personally, that there were 3 explosions. The first, the second and the third. So, after the first explosions I went up on the roof and saw that a plane was falling – it was already almost at the ground. There was an explosion, a black cloud, and two parachutists were descending – one was descending on his parachute on the wing. The second was flying down very fast – like a stone. And that is what I saw. However, at that very same moment, a jet fighter was departing in the direction of Debaltsevo. It was over Rassypnoye and was flying toward Debaltsevo. How I understood it.
  • #8 – Ukrainian Military Reports to Poroshenko That Rebels Have Not Captured any BUKs According to Vitaliy Yarema, in an interview to Ukrainskaya Pravda, military officials reported to President Poroshenko immediately after the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777, Flight MH17, that the rebels have not captured any BUK systems from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This is further confirmed in a statement by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, published on June 30, 2014. Further Information: “Militias do not have Ukrainian Buk missile system – Ukraine general prosecutor“ KIEV, July 18. /ITAR-TASS/. Militias in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics do not have Ukrainian air defense missile systems Buk and S-300 at their disposal, Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Vitaly Yarema told Ukrainian Pravda newspaper on Friday.
  • “After the passenger airliner was downed, the military reported to the president that terrorists do not have our air defense missile systems Buk and S-300,” the general prosecutor said. “These weapons were not seized,” he added. Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said on July 17 that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 airliner had been downed by an air defense missile system Buk.
  • According to other rumors, the black box for this crashed Malaysian Airlines flight was taken by Donetsk separatists. A spokesperson for the rebel group said this black box would be sent to the Interstate Aviation Committee headquartered in Moscow. The First Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, Andrew Purgin, stated that the flight recorders of the crashed aircraft will be transferred to Moscow for examination. Sources say the Rebel group leadership hopes this would confirm the Ukrainian military actually shot down this aircraft. This was reported by the news agency Interfax-Ukraine. ETN statement: The information in this article is independently confirmed and based on the statement of one airline controller and other tweets received.
  • Narrator: Military planes emerged? Father of Eyewitness: Well, he does not understand. Then, with one shot, they shot down the second. And that’s it. The second plane, he says – with one shot. There was one shot and that’s it. Narrator: And the one that was shot down was the civilian one? … Father of Eyewitness: And two … one fell down, he says, and the second too … I did not bring my phone here, so I can’t call him. [in the background] Ah, he saw a jet fighter … Of course … Narrator: The village of Grabovo, in the Shakhtersk district. One the approaches to Grabovo, it fell. Keep looking for remains. Everything is burning. Aluminum has melted. All the casing.
  • #4 – Possible Alternative Video of MH17, Right Wing on Fire (via Vaughan Fomularo) UPDATE: Dann Peroni (@roamer43) The video “#4 – Possible Alternative Video of MH17, Right Wing on Fire (via Vaughan Fomularo)” shows a clear blue sky, while in all other videos showing the crash site the sky is overcast! Video: Malaysian Airlines plane being shot down LIVE! (July 17 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKIlueJg4cA
  • #2 – Comparing the Form of the Wing in the Video with the Wings of Boeing @gbazov clearly the wings of the plane in the video are not the ones of a Malaysian Boeing 777 pic.twitter.com/oH9L4WjFqF — Crimea&East (@IndependentKrym) July 18, 2014
  • #1 – Video Purporting to be that of MH17 is Actually the Video of An-26 Shot Down Earlier #FLASH #IMPORTANT – THIS —> https://t.co/e0FiVFdAM2 IS NOT #MH17, it’s most likely the An-26 (sound, elevation, form of the wing). PLZ RT. — Gleb Bazov (@gbazov) July 18, 2014
Paul Merrell

WikiLeaks: Turkey Planned Su-24 Downing Six Weeks Before the Incident? - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...urkey-erdogan-su24-russia.html

war & peace Turkey Russia fighters premeditation

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan planned to shoot down a Russian warplane engaged in Moscow's anti-Daesh campaign in Syria six weeks prior to the Su-24 incident, a famous Turkish whistleblower apparently said on Twitter.Erdogan is worried about the outcome of the upcoming elections and is contemplating bringing down a Russian aircraft, the anonymous Twitter user, who goes by the name of Fuat Avni, posted on October 11. @wikileaks 12.10.2015! He says erdoğan is afraid of election and thinking about shooting down russian war plane. pic.twitter.com/AZKBgncyo0 — Diyap Yıldırım (@UyusukKursun) 5 декабря 2015 ​WikiLeaks retweeted an article that mentions Fuat Avni's exposé, asking, "Did Turkish 'deep throat' reveal Russian jet shootdown plan six weeks ago?"
  • On 10 Oct--six weeks before Russian jet shootdown, Turkish 'deep throat' tweeted future shootdown is #Erdogan plan https://t.co/0Q9PIGatj2 — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) 5 декабря 2015 ​Fuat Avni, who is often sharing accurate insider information exposing Erdogan and his government, is said to have claimed that Erdogan was the one to give order to shoot down the Russian bomber over Syria under the false pretext that the aircraft violated Turkish airspace.
Paul Merrell

After Criticism, Washington Post Disavows 'Russian Propaganda' Blacklist Of Indie Media - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...222991

fake-news-propaganda Wapo retreat

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • AUSTIN, Texas — Amid a wave of widespread criticism and legal threats, the Washington Post has added a lengthy editor’s note to an article which alleged that a host of independent media websites were spreading Russian propaganda. Washington Post added editor's note to top of "Russian propaganda" story after being called out for shoddy reportinghttps://t.co/dWKbZJGS9a pic.twitter.com/skGiZUX2Ls — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 7, 2016 The article, written by Craig Timberg and published on Nov. 24, relied largely on information compiled by PropOrNot, an anonymous group that claims to be comprised of media analysts and researchers. At the time the Post story was published, the group’s homepage featured a list of 200 websites, including MintPress News and many other well-established independent media outlets, which the organization alleges are either deliberately or inadvertently spreading Russian propaganda. Among other criticisms levied against the group, PropOrNot’s research depends on overly broad criteria. According to its own stated methodology, criticism of the ”US, Obama, Hillary Clinton, the EU, Angela Merkel, NATO, Ukraine, Jewish people, US allies, the ‘mainstream media,’ and democrats, the center-right or center-left, and moderates of all stripes,” would be grounds for inclusion on “The List.” The Post added an editor’s note to the article on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to distance the newspaper from the controversy. “The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests,” the note begins.
  • While Timberg’s article does refer to the work of multiple researchers, the bulk of the report relied on allegations made by PropOrNot. The Washington Post continued: “One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so.” Numerous websites, including MintPress, have objected to their inclusion on “The List.” On Tuesday, James Moody, the lawyer representing the publisher of the website Naked Capitalism, demanded a formal retraction and public apology on Tuesday. Moody wrote: “You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist. You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the “team” at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.” Backlash against both PropOrNot and the Post’s story hasn’t just come from media outlets included on “The List,” though.
  • “The group promoted by the Post … embodies the toxic essence of Joseph McCarthy, but without the courage to attach individual names to the blacklist,” wrote Ben Norton and Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept, which was not featured on the PropOrNot list, on Nov. 26. The Post’s editor’s note concludes: “Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.” However, MintPress and Naked Capitalism remain on “The List,” as do respected alternative and independent media sites Antiwar.com, Black Agenda Report, Truthout, and Truthdig. Overall, the Post’s new position seemed poorly received by many of the media analysts who have criticized the story. On Wednesday evening, Adam Johnson, a reporter who writes for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, tweeted that the Post editors who refuse to retract the story are “a bunch of cowards.” what a bunch of cowards. "This blacklist that served as the entire news basis of our piece is bullshit but we wont retract the story" https://t.co/V5ZSwSMgTg — Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 7, 2016 Timberg’s article appeared amid widespread outcry over the apparent threat of “fake news” against American democracy. Kevin Gosztola, managing editor of Shadowproof, told MintPress editor-in-chief Mnar Muhawesh that the rush to create “blacklists” of media outlets undermines the freedom of the press.
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  • “When you start to put people on lists you’re actually diminishing speech,” Gosztola said in an interview with Muhawesh for “Behind the Headline.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 16
     
    The Washington Post backpedals from its "fake news" story.
Paul Merrell

The "Cuban Twitter" Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...minating-government-propaganda

surveillance state propaganda psywar USAID State-Dept. Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • This week, the Associated Press exposed a secret program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development to create “a Twitter-like Cuban communications network” run through “secret shell companies” in order to create the false appearance of being a privately owned operation. Unbeknownst to the service’s Cuban users was the fact that “American contractors were gathering their private data in the hope that it might be used for political purposes”–specifically, to manipulate those users in order to foment dissent in Cuba and subvert its government. According to top-secret documents published today by The Intercept, this sort of operation is frequently discussed at western intelligence agencies, which have plotted ways to covertly use social media for ”propaganda,” “deception,” “mass messaging,” and “pushing stories.” These ideas–discussions of how to exploit the internet, specifically social media, to surreptitiously disseminate viewpoints friendly to western interests and spread false or damaging information about targets–appear repeatedly throughout the archive of materials provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ–and previously published by The Intercept as well as some by NBC News–detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to “discrediting” the agency’s enemies with false information spread online.
  • he documents in the archive show that the British are particularly aggressive and eager in this regard, and formally shared their methods with their U.S. counterparts. One previously undisclosed top-secret document–prepared by GCHQ for the 2010 annual “SIGDEV” gathering of the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance comprising the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.–explicitly discusses ways to exploit Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media as secret platforms for propaganda.
  • The document was presented by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The unit’s self-described purpose is “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world,” including “information ops (influence or disruption).” The British agency describes its JTRIG and Computer Network Exploitation operations as a “major part of business” at GCHQ, conducting “5% of Operations.” The annual SIGDEV conference, according to one NSA document published today by The Intercept, “enables unprecedented visibility of SIGINT Development activities from across the Extended Enterprise, Second Party and US Intelligence communities.” The 2009 Conference, held at Fort Meade, included “eighty-six representatives from the wider US Intelligence Community, covering agencies as diverse as CIA (a record 50 participants), the Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.” Defenders of surveillance agencies have often insinuated that such proposals are nothing more than pipe dreams and wishful thinking on the part of intelligence agents. But these documents are not merely proposals or hypothetical scenarios. As described by the NSA document published today, the purpose of SIGDEV presentations is “to synchronize discovery efforts, share breakthroughs, and swap knowledge on the art of analysis.”
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  • (The GCHQ document also describes a practice called “credential harvesting,” which NBC described as an effort to “select journalists who could be used to spread information” that the government wants distributed. According to the NBC report, GCHQ agents would employ “electronic snooping to identify non-British journalists who would then be manipulated to feed information to the target of a covert campaign.” Then, “the journalist’s job would provide access to the targeted individual, perhaps for an interview.” Anonymous sources that NBC didn’t characterize claimed at the time that GCHQ had not employed the technique.) Whether governments should be in the business of publicly disseminating political propaganda at all is itself a controversial question. Such activities are restricted by law in many countries, including the U.S. In 2008, The New York Times’ David Barstow won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a domestic effort coordinated by the Pentagon whereby retired U.S. generals posed as “independent analysts” employed by American television networks and cable news outlets as they secretly coordinated their messaging with the Pentagon.
  • The GCHQ document we are publishing today expressly contemplates exploiting social media venues such as Twitter, as well as other communications venues including email, to seed state propaganda–GHCQ’s word, not mine–across the internet:
  • For instance: One of the programs described by the newly released GCHQ document is dubbed “Royal Concierge,” under which the British agency intercepts email confirmations of hotel reservations to enable it to subject hotel guests to electronic monitoring. It also contemplates how to “influence the hotel choice” of travelers and to determine whether they stay at “SIGINT friendly” hotels. The document asks: “Can we influence the hotel choice? Can we cancel their visit?” Previously, der Spiegel and NBC News both independently confirmed that the “Royal Concierge” program has been implemented and extensively used. The German magazine reported that “for more than three years, GCHQ has had a system to automatically monitor hotel bookings of at least 350 upscale hotels around the world in order to target, search, and analyze reservations to detect diplomats and government officials.” NBC reported that “the intelligence agency uses the information to spy on human targets through ‘close access technical operations,’ which can include listening in on telephone calls and tapping hotel computers as well as sending intelligence officers to observe the targets in person at the hotels.”
  • Because American law bars the government from employing political propaganda domestically, that program was likely illegal, though no legal accountability was ever brought to bear (despite all sorts of calls for formal investigations). Barack Obama, a presidential candidate at the time, pronounced himself in a campaign press release “deeply disturbed” by the Pentagon program, which he said “sought to manipulate the public’s trust.” Propagandizing foreign populations has generally been more legally acceptable. But it is difficult to see how government propaganda can be segregated from domestic consumption in the digital age. If American intelligence agencies are adopting the GCHQ’s tactics of “crafting messaging campaigns to go ‘viral’,” the legal issue is clear: A “viral” online propaganda campaign, by definition, is almost certain to influence its own citizens as well as those of other countries.
  • But these documents, along with the AP’s exposure of the sham “Cuban Twitter” program, underscore how aggressively western governments are seeking to exploit the internet as a means to manipulate political activity and shape political discourse. Those programs, carried out in secrecy and with little accountability (it seems nobody in Congress knew of the “Cuban Twitter” program in any detail) threaten the integrity of the internet itself, as state-disseminated propaganda masquerades as free online speech and organizing. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 14
     
    Glenn Greenwald drops a choice few new documents. Well worth viewing. 
Paul Merrell

M of A - US Military In Iraq Circulates Fake Islamic State Document - Media Fall For it - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...ke-islamic-state-document.html

war & peace ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy propaganda black-propaganda NYTimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • It seems that the U.S. military is propagandizing against the Islamic State by distributing fake Islamic State documents. This, in effect, will make the Islamic State look better than it is. Iraqi Forces Fighting for Ramadi Make Their Way Toward City Center In a telephone briefing on Tuesday, [Col. Steven H. Warren, the United States military spokesman in Baghdad,] said that coalition forces had recovered Islamic State leaflets in the nearby city of Falluja urging its fighters — if they lose control of the city — to impersonate Iraqi security forces and commit atrocities. “Some acts that they’re instructed to do on this document include blowing up mosques, killing and torturing civilians and breaking into homes while dressed as I.S.F. fighters,” Colonel Warren said, referring to Iraqi security forces. “They do all this to discredit the I.S.F.” Colonel Warren called the instructions in the leaflets “the behavior of thugs, behavior of killers, the behavior of terrorists.” Colonel Warren also tweeted the "Islamic State leaflet" and its translation: COL Steve Warren Verified account @OIRSpox ISIL fighters ordered to dress as ISF and commit atrocities before fleeing Fallujah. [Photo of the document and its translation] 7:30 AM - 22 Dec 2015"
  • The document was immediately identified as fake by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a well known researcher who curates a large collection of all published Islamic State documents: Aymenn J Al-Tamimi @ajaltamimi Aymenn J Al-Tamimi Retweeted COL Steve Warren Dear Col. Steve Warren @OIRSpox, this purported 'Fallujah withdrawal' document is an obvious fake: 7:43 AM - 22 Dec 2015 Al Tamimi gives two main reasons why he believes the document is fake: the document allegedly from Fallujah is under an IS letter head from Ninawa province. Fallujah is in Anbar province, the document refers to the government militia with its real honorable name "Hashd Sha'abi" while the regular derogatory Islamic State term for the militia is "Hashd Rafidi". Another writer with deep experience in the region also believes that the document is fake: Anand Gopal @Anand_Gopal_ Anand Gopal Retweeted COL Steve Warren Here’s a US military spokesman circulating fake ISIS documents as propaganda 9:41 AM - 22 Dec 2015
  • An Iraq security analyst concurs: Alex M. @Alex_de_M COL Warren needs a chat with his G2 section. The leaflets are pretty obviously fakes... 9:45 AM - 22 Dec 2015 One would think that the behavior the Islamic State displays in its own propaganda videos is argument enough to condemn it. By using obviously fake IS documents to condemn the Islamic State the U.S. military creates the opposite effect. That the U.S. needs fake evidence to let the Islamic State look bad actually makes it look better than it is. This not only in the eyes of its followers.
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  • Update Dec 23, 3:45am The NYT, quoted above, has now changed its piece without issuing a correction note. The text now says: In a telephone briefing on Tuesday, Colonel Warren said that coalition forces had recovered what he said were Islamic State leaflets in the nearby city of Falluja urging its fighters — if they lose control of the city — to impersonate Iraqi security forces and commit atrocities.The authenticity of the leaflets could not be independently confirmed, and experts on the Islamic State were debating their validity after the coalition publicized them on Tuesday. The NYT first repeated the military propaganda of the fake leaflet without any doubt or checking of its authenticity. It now says that there is a "debate" about the genuineness of the document. There is no "debate". The experts all say that the document is fake. This is - if at all - a "debate" about the earth being flat. It is another low that the NYT can even not admit that it has again been taken in by military's propaganda.
Paul Merrell

Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid - 0 views

theintercept.com/...bout-hacking-u-s-electric-grid

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Russophobia fake-news WaPo electrical-grid-hack MSM-propaganda

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The Washington Post on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system through an electrical grid in Vermont. The Post headline conveyed the seriousness of the threat: The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta — what is now routinely referred to as “Russian hacking of our election” — by referencing the code name revealed on Wednesday by the Obama administration when it announced sanctions on Russian officials: “A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.” The Post article contained grave statements from Vermont officials of the type politicians love to issue after a terrorist attack to show they are tough and in control. The state’s Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin, said: Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality of life, economy, health, and safety. This episode should highlight the urgent need for our federal government to vigorously pursue and put an end to this sort of Russian meddling.
  • Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy issued a statement warning: “This is beyond hackers having electronic joy rides — this is now about trying to access utilities to potentially manipulate the grid and shut it down in the middle of winter. That is a direct threat to Vermont and we do not take it lightly.” The article went on and on in that vein, with all the standard tactics used by the U.S. media for such stories: quoting anonymous national security officials, reviewing past acts of Russian treachery, and drawing the scariest possible conclusions (“‘The question remains: Are they in other systems and what was the intent?’ a U.S. official said”).  The media reactions, as Alex Pfeiffer documents, were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations of Putin’s menacing evil: Our Russian "friend" Putin attacked the U.S. power grid. https://t.co/iAneRgbuhF — Brent Staples (@BrentNYT) December 31, 2016
  • The Post’s story also predictably and very rapidly infected other large media outlets. Reuters thus told its readers around the world: “A malware code associated with Russian hackers has reportedly been detected within the system of a Vermont electric utility.”   What’s the problem here? It did not happen. There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all its computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid. Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so Burlington Electric had to issue its own statement to the Burlington Free Press, which debunked the Post’s central claim (emphasis in original): “We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization’s grid systems.” So the key scary claim of the Post story — that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid — was false. All the alarmist tough-guy statements issued by political officials who believed the Post’s claim were based on fiction.
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  • UPDATE: Just as The Guardian had to do just two days ago regarding its claim about WikiLeaks and Putin, the Washington Post has now added an editor’s note to its story acknowledging that its key claim was false:
  • Is it not very clear that journalistic standards are being casually dispensed with when the subject is Russia?
Paul Merrell

Snowden Says He Knows How To Find Out Why The US Bombed Afghan Hospital - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...210218

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Afghanistan Kunduz Snowden

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Then again, none other than US persona non grata #1 (Edward Snowden) has provided a quick and easy solution: AC-130 warplanes record the gunner's video and audio. It's time to release the tapes to an #IndependentInvestigation. pic.twitter.com/jtFyVCJ7Uw — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 7, 2015
Paul Merrell

Revealed: How DOJ Gagged Google over Surveillance of WikiLeaks Volunteer - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...appelbaum-google-investigation

surveillance state DoJ Appelbaum-email Wikileaks

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration fought a legal battle against Google to secretly obtain the email records of a security researcher and journalist associated with WikiLeaks. Newly unsealed court documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Justice Department won an order forcing Google to turn over more than one year’s worth of data from the Gmail account of Jacob Appelbaum (pictured above), a developer for the Tor online anonymity project who has worked with WikiLeaks as a volunteer. The order also gagged Google, preventing it from notifying Appelbaum that his records had been provided to the government. The surveillance of Appelbaum’s Gmail account was tied to the Justice Department’s long-running criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, which began in 2010 following the transparency group’s publication of a large cache of U.S. government diplomatic cables. According to the unsealed documents, the Justice Department first sought details from Google about a Gmail account operated by Appelbaum in January 2011, triggering a three-month dispute between the government and the tech giant. Government investigators demanded metadata records from the account showing email addresses of those with whom Appelbaum had corresponded between the period of November 2009 and early 2011; they also wanted to obtain information showing the unique IP addresses of the computers he had used to log in to the account.
  • The Justice Department argued in the case that Appelbaum had “no reasonable expectation of privacy” over his email records under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Rather than seeking a search warrant that would require it to show probable cause that he had committed a crime, the government instead sought and received an order to obtain the data under a lesser standard, requiring only “reasonable grounds” to believe that the records were “relevant and material” to an ongoing criminal investigation. Google repeatedly attempted to challenge the demand, and wanted to immediately notify Appelbaum that his records were being sought so he could have an opportunity to launch his own legal defense. Attorneys for the tech giant argued in a series of court filings that the government’s case raised “serious First Amendment concerns.” They noted that Appelbaum’s records “may implicate journalistic and academic freedom” because they could “reveal confidential sources or information about WikiLeaks’ purported journalistic or academic activities.” However, the Justice Department asserted that “journalists have no special privilege to resist compelled disclosure of their records, absent evidence that the government is acting in bad faith,” and refused to concede Appelbaum was in fact a journalist. It claimed it had acted in “good faith throughout this criminal investigation, and there is no evidence that either the investigation or the order is intended to harass the … subscriber or anyone else.” Google’s attempts to fight the surveillance gag order angered the government, with the Justice Department stating that the company’s “resistance to providing the records” had “frustrated the government’s ability to efficiently conduct a lawful criminal investigation.”
  • The Justice Department wanted to keep the surveillance secret largely because of an earlier public backlash over its WikiLeaks investigation. In January 2011, Appelbaum and other WikiLeaks volunteers’ – including Icelandic parlimentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir – were notified by Twitter that the Justice Department had obtained data about their accounts. This disclosure generated widepread news coverage and controversy; the government says in the unsealed court records that it “failed to anticipate the degree of  damage that would be caused” by the Twitter disclosure and did not want to “exacerbate this problem” when it went after Appelbaum’s Gmail data. The court documents show the Justice Department said the disclosure of its Twitter data grab “seriously jeopardized the [WikiLeaks] investigation” because it resulted in efforts to “conceal evidence” and put public pressure on other companies to resist similar surveillance orders. It also claimed that officials named in the subpeona ordering Twitter to turn over information were “harassed” after a copy was published by Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald at Salon in 2011. (The only specific evidence of the alleged harassment cited by the government is an email that was sent to an employee of the U.S. Attorney’s office that purportedly said: “You guys are fucking nazis trying to controll [sic] the whole fucking world. Well guess what. WE DO NOT FORGIVE. WE DO NOT FORGET. EXPECT US.”)
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  • Google accused the government of hyperbole and argued that the backlash over the Twitter order did not justify secrecy related to the Gmail surveillance. “Rather than demonstrating how unsealing the order will harm its well-publicized investigation, the government lists a parade of horribles that have allegedly occurred since it unsealed the Twitter order, yet fails to establish how any of these developments could be further exacerbated by unsealing this order,” wrote Google’s attorneys. “The proverbial toothpaste is out of the tube, and continuing to seal a materially identical order will not change it.” But Google’s attempt to overturn the gag order was denied by magistrate judge Ivan D. Davis in February 2011. The company launched an appeal against that decision, but this too was rebuffed, in March 2011, by District Court judge Thomas Selby Ellis, III.
  • The government agreed to unseal some of the court records on Apr. 1 this year, and they were apparently turned over to Appelbaum on May 14 through a notification sent to his Gmail account. The files were released on condition that they would contain some redactions, which are bizarre and inconsistent, in some cases censoring the name of “WikiLeaks” from cited public news reports. Not all of the documents in the case – such as the original surveillance orders contested by Google – were released as part of the latest disclosure. Some contain “specific and sensitive details of the investigation” and “remain properly sealed while the grand jury investigation continues,” according to the court records from April this year. Appelbaum, an American citizen who is based in Berlin, called the case “a travesty that continues at a slow pace” and said he felt it was important to highlight “the absolute madness in these documents.”
  • He told The Intercept: “After five years, receiving such legal documents is neither a shock nor a needed confirmation. … Will we ever see the full documents about our respective cases? Will we even learn the names of those signing so-called legal orders against us in secret sealed documents? Certainly not in a timely manner and certainly not in a transparent, just manner.” The 32-year-old, who has recently collaborated with Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras to report revelations about National Security Agency surveillance for German news magazine Der Spiegel, said he plans to remain in Germany “in exile, rather than returning to the U.S. to experience more harassment of a less than legal kind.”
  • “My presence in Berlin ensures that the cost of physically harassing me or politically harassing me is much higher than when I last lived on U.S. soil,” Appelbaum said. “This allows me to work as a journalist freely from daily U.S. government interference. It also ensures that any further attempts to continue this will be forced into the open through [a Mutal Legal Assistance Treaty] and other international processes. The German goverment is less likely to allow the FBI to behave in Germany as they do on U.S. soil.” The Justice Department’s WikiLeaks investigaton is headed by prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia. Since 2010, the secretive probe has seen activists affiliated with WikiLeaks compelled to appear before a grand jury and the FBI attempting to infiltrate the group with an informant. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the government had obtained the contents of three core WikiLeaks staffers’ Gmail accounts as part of the investigation.
Paul Merrell

How Cold War-Hungry Neocons Stage Managed RT Anchor Liz Wahl's Resignation - Truthdig - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/...liz_wahls_resignation_20140319

war & peace neocons propaganda Russia U.S.

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • For her public act of protest against Russia Today’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory and supposedly advancing the agenda of Vladimir Putin in Washington, D.C., previously unknown news anchor Liz Wahl has suddenly become one of the most famous unemployed people in America. After her on-air resignation from the cable news channel, Wahl appeared on the three major American cable news outlets—CNN, Fox News, MSNBC—to denounce the heavy-handed editorial line she claims her bosses imposed on her and other staffers.
  • Behind the coverage of Wahl’s dramatic protest, a cadre of neoconservatives was celebrating a public relations coup. Desperate to revive the Cold War, head off further cuts to the defense budget and restore the legitimacy they lost in the ruins of Iraq, the tightknit group of neoconservative writers and stewards had opened up a new PR front through Wahl’s resignation. And they succeeded with no shortage of help from an ossified media establishment struggling to maintain credibility in an increasingly anarchic online news environment. With isolated skeptics branded as useful idiots for Putin, the scene has been kept clean of neoconservative fingerprints, obscuring their interest in Wahl’s resignation and the broader push to deepen tensions with Russia. Through interviews with six current RT employees—all Americans with no particular affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin or his policies—and an investigation into the political forces managing the spectacle, a story has emerged that stands in stark contrast to the one advanced by Wahl, her supporters and the mainstream American press.
  • It was a full 19 minutes before Wahl resigned. Inside the offices of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank in Washington D.C., a staffer logged on to the group’s Twitter account to announce the following: “#WordOnTheStreet says that something big might happen on RT in about 20-25 minutes.” Then, at 5:16, exactly 10 minutes before Wahl would quit on air, FPI tweeted: “#WordOnTheStreet says you’re really going to want to tune in to RT: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/ #SomethinBigMayBeGoingDown” Up until two minutes before Wahl’s resignation, FPI took to Twitter again to urge its followers to tune in to RT.  And finally, at 5:26 p.m., at the very moment Wahl quit, FPI’s Twitter account broke the news: “RT Anchor RESIGNS ON AIR. She ‘cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin.’ ” The tweets from FPI suggested a direct level of coordination between Wahl and the neoconservative think tank. Several calls to FPI for this story were not answered.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 14
     
    Very nice in-depth exposure of a neocon war-mongering publicity stunt.
Paul Merrell

NSA contracted French cyber-firm for hacking help - RT USA - 0 views

rt.com/...nsa-vupen-exploit-hack-978

surveillance state NSA NSA-methods exploit-purchases

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The latest revelation regarding the National Security Agency doesn't come courtesy of Edward Snowden. A Freedom of Information Act request has confirmed the NSA contracted a French company that makes its money by hacking into computers. It's no secret that the United States government relies on an arsenal of tactics to gather intelligence and wage operations against its adversaries, but a FOIA request filed by Muckrock's Heather Akers-Healy has confirmed that the list of Uncle Sam's business partners include Vupen, a French-based security company that specializes in selling secret codes used to crack into computers. Documents responsive to my request to #NSA for contracts with VUPEN, include 12/month exploit subscription https://t.co/x3qJbqSUpa — Heather Akers-Healy (@abbynormative) September 16, 2013 Muckrock published on Monday a copy of a contract between the NSA and Vupen in which the US government is shown to have ordered a one-year subscription to the firm's “binary analysis and exploits service” last September.
  • That service, according to the Vupen website, is sold only to government entities, law enforcement agencies and computer response teams in select countries, and provides clients with access to so-called zero-day exploits: newly-discovered security vulnerabilities that the products' manufacturers have yet to discover and, therefore, have had zero days to patch-up. “Major software vendors such as Microsoft and Adobe usually take 6 to 9 months to release a security patch for a critical vulnerability affecting their products, and this long delay between the discovery of a vulnerability and the release of a patch creates a window of exposure during which criminals can rediscover a previously reported but unpatched vulnerability, and target any organization running the vulnerable software,” Vupen says elsewhere on their website. Last year, Vupen researchers successfully cracked Google's Chrome browser, but declined to show developers how they did so — even for an impressive cash bounty. “We wouldn’t share this with Google for even $1 million,” Vupen CEO Chaouki Bekrar told Forbes' Andy Greenberg of the Chrome hack in 2012. “We don’t want to give them any knowledge that can help them in fixing this exploit or other similar exploits. We want to keep this for our customers.”
  • And why the NSA and other clients may benefit from being privy to these vulnerabilities, knowing how to exploit security holes in adversarial systems is a crucial component to any government's offensive cyber-operations. Last month, the Washington Post published excerpts from the previously secretive “black budget,” a closely guarded ledger listing the funding requests made by America's intelligence community provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. According to that document, a substantial goal of the US in fiscal year 2013 was to use a portion of $52.6 billion in secretive funding towards improving offensive cyber-operations.
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  • The portion of the contract obtained by Muckrock where the cost of the subscription is listed has been redacted, but a Vupen hacker who spoke to Greenberg last year said deals in the five-figures wasn't uncommon. "People seem surprised to discover that major government agencies are acquiring Vupen's vulnerability intelligence," Bekrar wrote in an email to Information Week's Matthew Schwartz after the NSA contract with his signature was published. "There is no news here, governments need to leverage the most detailed and advanced vulnerability research to protect their infrastructures and citizens against adversaries." Critics of Vupen and its competitors see government-waged cyber-operations in a different light, however. Christopher Soghoian of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project has spoken outright against companies that sell exploits and have equated the computer codes being sold for big money as a new sort of underground arms trade fueling an international, online battle. To Greenberg last year, Soghoian described Vupen as  a “modern-day merchant of death” selling “the bullets for cyberwar," and upon publishing of the NSA contract called the company a “cyber weapon merchant.” The NSA is a customer of French 0-day cyber weapon merchant VUPEN, FOIA docs reveal: (via @ramdac & @MuckRockNews) https://t.co/OPJ82miK3c — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) September 16, 2013
Paul Merrell

Remaining Snowden docs will be released to avert 'unspecified US war' - ‪Cryp... - 0 views

www.theregister.co.uk/..._release_to_avert_war_cryptome

surveillance state Snoden-docs bulk-release Cryptome

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • All the remaining Snowden documents will be released next month, according t‪o‬ whistle-blowing site ‪Cryptome, which said in a tweet that the release of the info by unnamed third parties would be necessary to head off an unnamed "war".‬‪Cryptome‬ said it would "aid and abet" the release of "57K to 1.7M" new documents that had been "withheld for national security-public debate [sic]". <a href="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x250%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33U7RchawQrMoAAHIac14AAAKH&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26unitname%3Dwww_top_mpu%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0" target="_blank"> <img src="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x250%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33U7RchawQrMoAAHIac14AAAKH&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26unitname%3Dwww_top_mpu%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0" alt=""></a> The site clarified that will not be publishing the documents itself.Transparency activists would welcome such a release but such a move would be heavily criticised by inteligence agencies and military officials, who argue that Snowden's dump of secret documents has set US and allied (especially British) intelligence efforts back by years.
  • As things stand, the flow of Snowden disclosures is controlled by those who have access to the Sn‪o‬wden archive, which might possibly include Snowden confidants such as Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. In some cases, even when these people release information to mainstream media organisations, it is then suppressed by these organisations after negotiation with the authorities. (In one such case, some key facts were later revealed by the Register.)"July is when war begins unless headed off by Snowden full release of crippling intel. After war begins not a chance of release," Cryptome tweeted on its official feed."Warmongerers are on a rampage. So, yes, citizens holding Snowden docs will do the right thing," it said.
  • "For more on Snowden docs release in July watch for Ellsberg, special guest and others at HOPE, July 18-20: http://www.hope.net/schedule.html," it added.HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is a well-regarded and long-running hacking conference organised by 2600 magazine. Previous speakers at the event have included Kevin Mitnick, Steve Wozniak and Jello Biafra.In other developments, ‪Cryptome‬ has started a Kickstarter fund to release its entire archive in the form of a USB stick archive. It wants t‪o‬ raise $100,000 to help it achieve its goal. More than $14,000 has already been raised.The funding drive follows a dispute between ‪Cryptome‬ and its host Network Solutions, which is owned by web.com. Access to the site was bl‪o‬cked f‪o‬ll‪o‬wing a malware infection last week. ‪Cryptome‬ f‪o‬under J‪o‬hn Y‪o‬ung criticised the host, claiming it had ‪o‬ver-reacted and had been sl‪o‬w t‪o‬ rest‪o‬re access t‪o‬ the site, which ‪Cryptome‬ criticised as a form of cens‪o‬rship.In resp‪o‬nse, ‪Cryptome‬ plans to more widely distribute its content across multiple sites as well as releasing the planned USB stick archive. ®
Paul Merrell

NSA Director Finally Admits Encryption Is Needed to Protect Public's Privacy - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...213028

surveillance state encryption NSA Comey

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • NSA Director Finally Admits Encryption Is Needed to Protect Public’s Privacy The new stance denotes a growing awareness within the government that Americans are not comfortable with the State’s grip on their data. By Carey Wedler | AntiMedia | January 22, 2016 Share this article! https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&to&su=NSA%20Director%20Finally%20Admits%20Encryption%20Is%20Needed%20to%20Protect%20Public%E2%80%99s%20Privacy&body=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mintpress
  • Rogers cited the recent Office of Personnel Management hack of over 20 million users as a reason to increase encryption rather than scale it back. “What you saw at OPM, you’re going to see a whole lot more of,” he said, referring to the massive hack that compromised the personal data about 20 million people who obtained background checks. Rogers’ comments, while forward-thinking, signify an about face in his stance on encryption. In February 2015, he said he “shares [FBI] Director [James] Comey’s concern” about cell phone companies’ decision to add encryption features to their products. Comey has been one loudest critics of encryption. However, Rogers’ comments on Thursday now directly conflict with Comey’s stated position. The FBI director has publicly chastised encryption, as well as the companies that provide it. In 2014, he claimed Apple’s then-new encryption feature could lead the world to “a very dark place.” At a Department of Justice hearing in November, Comey testified that “Increasingly, the shadow that is ‘going dark’ is falling across more and more of our work.” Though he claimed, “We support encryption,” he insisted “we have a problem that encryption is crashing into public safety and we have to figure out, as people who care about both, to resolve it. So, I think the conversation’s in a healthier place.”
  • At the same hearing, Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch declined to comment on whether they had proof the Paris attackers used encryption. Even so, Comey recently lobbied for tech companies to do away with end-to-end encryption. However, his crusade has fallen on unsympathetic ears, both from the private companies he seeks to control — and from the NSA. Prior to Rogers’ statements in support of encryption Thursday, former NSA chief Michael Hayden said, “I disagree with Jim Comey. I actually think end-to-end encryption is good for America.” Still another former NSA chair has criticized calls for backdoor access to information. In October, Mike McConnell told a panel at an encryption summit that the United States is “better served by stronger encryption, rather than baking in weaker encryption.” Former Department of Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff, has also spoken out against government being able to bypass encryption.
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  • Regardless of these individual defenses of encryption, the Intercept explained why these statements may be irrelevant: “Left unsaid is the fact that the FBI and NSA have the ability to circumvent encryption and get to the content too — by hacking. Hacking allows law enforcement to plant malicious code on someone’s computer in order to gain access to the photos, messages, and text before they were ever encrypted in the first place, and after they’ve been decrypted. The NSA has an entire team of advanced hackers, possibly as many as 600, camped out at Fort Meade.”
  • Rogers statements, of course, are not a full-fledged endorsement of privacy, nor can the NSA be expected to make it a priority. Even so, his new stance denotes a growing awareness within the government that Americans are not comfortable with the State’s grip on their data. “So spending time arguing about ‘hey, encryption is bad and we ought to do away with it’ … that’s a waste of time to me,” Rogers said Thursday. “So what we’ve got to ask ourselves is, with that foundation, what’s the best way for us to deal with it? And how do we meet those very legitimate concerns from multiple perspectives?”
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