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Paul Merrell

Big Pharma Accused Of Illegal Price-Fixing, What You're Not Being Told - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...223290

Big-Pharma antitrust price-fixing epiPen litigation corruption

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • A lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut alleges Heritage Pharmaceuticals, EpiPen-maker Mylan NV, and others conspired to manipulate U.S. drug prices. The suit was filed on behalf of the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and at least 12 others. Naming Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc. as the “ringleader” of the alleged conspiracy, the suit claims the prices of doxycycline hyclate, an antibiotic, and glyburide, a treatment drug for diabetics, were kept artificially high due to a scheme involving Mylan, Mayne Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Citron Pharma LLC. Federal prosecutors claim the price-fixing scheme was orchestrated by executives who have left Heritage. The suit is part of an ongoing, two-year long antitrust investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. According to the New York Attorney General’s Office, former Heritage executives Jeffrey Glazer and Jason Malek conspired with others to avoid competition by “[entering] into numerous illegal conspiracies in order to unreasonably restrain trade, artificially inflate and manipulate prices and reduce competition.” By resorting to price-fixing, companies involved may have believed they would secure their market shares without presenting a major risk to one another. This alleged scheme, the suit argues, has caused “significant, lasting and ultimately harmful rippling effect in the United States healthcare system.” The 20 states named as plaintiffs in the suit claim the companies were aware of the legal ramifications of their actions and took steps to hide their intent and actions as soon as the investigation was launched.
  • Recently, Mylan was chastised for inflating the price of the EpiPen, a device used to combat life-threatening allergic reactions. As Anti-Media reported in August, news organizations “had a field day” when reports showed the price of the autoinjector had gone from $57 each in 2007 to $600 for a double package in 2016. During a hearing before Congress over the EpiPen scandal, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch called the outraged reactions to the price hike “overblown.” Adding that the price of the autoinjectors wouldn’t change anytime soon, Bresch defended the company’s decision, claiming “[Mylan]’s profit on its $609 EpiPen two-packs is about $50 per pen.” When examining Mylan’s involvement in politics since Bresch was named the company’s executive, it becomes apparent that Mylan may have had the opportunity to approach regulators from a privileged position due to the fact Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is the CEO’s father. By 2010, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had changed federal guidelines associated with epinephrine prescriptions, allowing Mylan to change its EpiPen labels. By shifting packaging and selling twin-packs instead of single pens while marketing the devices to “anyone at risk,” Mylan widened the EpiPen market. In 2013, a congressional bill pressuring states to have stocks of EpiPens on hand was signed into law. It was conceived after a local seven-year-old died due to an allergic reaction to peanuts.
  • Mylan lobbied heavily for this bill and spent over $1 million that year alone in lobbying efforts. Due to this legislative success, up to 47 states now “require or encourage schools to stock the devices.” But as the company led the fight to introduce the EpiPen to a larger audience, it also led a legal battle to bring its competitors to their knees by influencing regulation that artificially raises costs of doing business for other companies. From our August report: “In 2009, Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, and Mylan sued Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. over a patent infringement. At the time, the Israeli company was accused of using Mylan’s design without permission. But in 2012, both parties reached an agreement, and Teva was allowed to seek approval from the FDA for its epinephrine injecting device. “According to Gizmodo, Teva has failed to obtain approval from the FDA to develop affordable generic versions of the EpiPen. The company says it won’t try to go through the same process again until 2017. “The only other device that was closer to competing with Mylan’s EpiPen was Auvi-Q, and it was also driven out of the market. In 2015, the company launched a recall campaign claiming the devices could be delivering faulty dosages.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • What this story shows us is that if companies conspire among themselves to keep competitors at bay, the federal government will accuse them of breaking antitrust laws. But when Congress approves increased regulation, effectively barring smaller companies from competing while creating monopolies, price-fixing is perfectly acceptable. Instead of a lawsuit against Heritage and Mylan, how about the People v. United States Congress? After all, if it weren’t for their relentless pursuit of special interest protections, companies wouldn’t have turned into the conglomerates they have become.
Paul Merrell

WikiLeaks to publish more Hillary Clinton emails - Julian Assange | Media | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-clinton-emails-julian-assange

Auction 2016 Hillary-emails Wikileaks

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said his organisation is preparing to publish more emails Hillary Clinton sent and received while US secretary of state. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is under FBI investigation to determine whether she broke federal law by using her private email in sending classified information. A new WikiLeaks release of Clinton emails is likely to fan a controversy that has bedevilled her campaign and provide further ammunition for Donald Trump, her Republican presidential rival, who has used the issue to attack her. Assange’s comments came in an interview on ITV’s Peston on Sunday. “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton … We have emails pending publication, that is correct,” Assange said.He did not specify when or how many emails would be published. WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive in March of 30,322 emails and email attachments sent to and from Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of state. The 50,547 pages of documents are from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014, and 7,570 of the documents were sent by Clinton, who served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Assange, a trenchant Clinton critic, said she was receiving constant personal updates on his situation.
  • Assange said it was highly unlikely that the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, would indict Clinton. “She’s not going to indict Hillary Clinton, that’s not possible. It’s not going to happen. But the FBI can push for concessions from a Clinton government,” he said.
  • His attacks on Clinton may be dismissed as highly partial, but the email controversy continues to dog her. An internal report last month found she had broken several government rules by using a private server rather than more secure official communication systems. The 78-page investigation by the inspector general of the state department singled out several previously unknown breaches while Clinton was secretary of state, including the use of mobile devices to conduct official business without checking whether they posed a security risk.
Paul Merrell

Activists Take Credit for Notorious FBI Raid That Spilled Secrets-Forty-two Years Ago |... - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...ed-secrets-forty-two-years-ago

surveillance state COINTELPRO FBI mainstream-media

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • It’s a mystery I covered from the start and now it has been solved. A big breaking story this morning features startling revelations about the infamous raid by antiwar activists on the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, (yes, that’s the name) in 1971, on the night of the Ali-Frazier “fight of the century,” who are finally exposing themselves in a new book and film. The book is by the Washington Post reporter who received some of the leak files back then, Betty Medsger. The activists, none of them household names then or now, cleared out all the files there that day and this led to the first big scoops on illegal FBI surveillance and the notorious COINTELPRO program, which we covered so widely at Crawdaddy that decade. One of the perps even waved to Edward Snowden on the Today show today and said, “Hi, from one whistleblower to another.” And The New York Times has now posted a thirteen-minute video.
  • Of course, by 1971, there had been rumors and personal reports about undercover FBI snooping, including use of electronic surveillance, for years but with little black-and-white official evidence. Hell, we even had a break-in at the Crawdaddy office that seemed suspicious and, as a longtime (if minor) antiwar activist, I always figured I might have drawn some official attention. But the Media raid proved incredibly valuable, even as it made many of us more paranoid. Indeed, as NBC reports: Among the stolen files: plans to enhance “paranoia” among “New Left” groups by instilling fears that “there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.” Another instructed agents in the Philadelphia area to monitor the “clientele” of “Afro-American type bookstores” and recruit informants among the “the Negro militant movement.” The raid and its results didn’t immediately stop COINTELPRO, then run by good old Deep Throat himself, Mark Felt.
  • the Media raid had finally produced some of the aims sought by the burglars. From NBC: “These documents were explosive,” said Medsger, who was the first reporter to write about them after receiving a batch of the files anonymously in the mail. Her book traces how the stolen files led to a landmark Senate investigation of intelligence and law enforcement agency abuses by the late Idaho Sen. Frank Church, and eventually to new Justice Department guidelines that barred the bureau from conducting investigations based on First Amendment protected political activity. After the burglary, said Medsger, “The FBI was never the same.” Glenn Greenwald weighs in on today’s revelations. He is, of course, supportive of the 1971 action.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 14
     
    The New York Times video is worth watching for its historical footage and the linked post by Glenn Greenwald adds valuable perspective about the failure of NYT and the LA Times to do anything with the documents. Only the Washington Post pushed the story. One might wonder if these days, any mainstream media might have covered the Snowden documents had The Guardian not told The Washington Post that the Guardian was going to run with the story regardless. 
Paul Merrell

Huge swath of GCHQ mass surveillance is illegal, says top lawyer | UK news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...surveillance-spying-law-lawyer

surveillance state GCHQ NSA drones law EHCR RIPA

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • GCHQ's mass surveillance spying programmes are probably illegal and have been signed off by ministers in breach of human rights and surveillance laws, according to a hard-hitting legal opinion that has been provided to MPs.The advice warns that Britain's principal surveillance law is too vague and is almost certainly being interpreted to allow the agency to conduct surveillance that flouts privacy safeguards set out in the European convention on human rights (ECHR).The inadequacies, it says, have created a situation where GCHQ staff are potentially able to rely "on the gaps in the current statutory framework to commit serious crime with impunity".
  • Last year, Hague told MPs: "It has been suggested GCHQ uses our partnership with the US to get around UK law, obtaining information that they cannot legally obtain in the UK. I wish to be absolutely clear that this accusation is baseless."However, the legal advice poses awkward new questions about the framework GCHQ operates within, the role of ministers and the legality of transferring bulk data to other spy agencies.The advice makes clear Ripa does not allow GCHQ to conduct mass surveillance on communications between people in the UK, even if the data has briefly left British shores because the call or email has travelled to an internet server overseas.
  • The legal advice has been sent to the 46 members of the all-party parliamentary group on drones, which is chaired by the Labour MP, Tom Watson.
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  • In a 32-page opinion, the leading public law barrister Jemima Stratford QC raises a series of concerns about the legality and proportionality of GCHQ's work, and the lack of safeguards for protecting privacy.
  • The opinion notes that the UK has not adopted the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defence" in the same way as the US to provide legal cover for drone strikes in countries where it is not involved in an international armed conflict."Accordingly, in our view, if GCHQ transferred data to the NSA in the knowledge that it would or might be used for targeting drone strikes, that transfer is probably unlawful," the advice states."The transferor would be an accessory to murder for the purposes of domestic law … We consider that, pursuant to the transfer, the agent is likely to become an accessory to murder."Watson said he would be submitting the legal opinion to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which is undertaking an inquiry into mass surveillance."MPs now have strong independent advice questioning the legality of major UK intelligence programmes," he said.
  • The advice concludes: "In short, the rules concerning communications data are too uncertain and do not provide sufficient clarity to be in accordance with the law … we consider the mass interception of communications via a transatlantic cable to be unlawful, and that these conclusions would apply even if some or all of the interception is taking place outside UK territorial waters."Leaving decisions about whether data can be shared with agencies abroad to the "unfettered discretion" of ministers is also a probable breach of the convention, the advice warns.
  • "First, the transfer of private data is a significant interference with an individual's article 8 rights. That interference will only be lawful when proportionate."Secondly, the ECHR has held on more than one occasion that surveillance, and the use of surveillance data, is an area in which governments must conduct themselves in a transparent and 'predictable' manner. The current framework is uncertain: it relies on the discretion of one individual."Thirdly, on a pragmatic level,there is a real possibility that the NSA might function as GCHQ's unofficial 'backup' service. If GCHQ is not entitled to hold onto data itself, it might transfer it to the NSA. In time, and if relevant, that data might be transferred back to GCHQ. Without strong guidelines and scrutiny, the two services might support each other to (in effect) circumvent the requirements of their domestic legislation."The opinion adds: "If GCHQ transfers communications data to other governments it does so without any statutory restrictions. Such transfers are a disproportionate interference with the article 8 rights of the individuals concerned. There are no restrictions, checks or restraints on the transfer of that data."
  • At its most extreme, the advice raises issues about the possible vulnerability of staff at GCHQ if it could be proved that intelligence used for US drone strikes against "non-combatants" had been passed on or supplied by the British before being used in a missile attack."An individual involved in passing that information is likely to be an accessory to murder. It is well arguable, on a variety of different bases, that the government is obliged to take reasonable steps to investigate that possibility," the advice says.
  • "If ministers are prepared to allow GCHQ staff to be potential accessories to murder, they must be very clear that they are responsible for allowing it. We have seen a step change in mass covert surveillance and intelligence gathering, underpinned on dubious legal grounds and with virtually no parliamentary oversight. "The leadership of all the main parties should stop turning a blind eye to a programme that has far-reaching consequences around the globe."
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 14
     
    The lawyer who wrote the opinion is a QC, or Queen's Counsel. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Counsel This opinion *will* result in changes in UK law and oversight of GCHQ. And because much of it is based on the European Convention on Human Rights, the opinion will stoke the anti-spying sentiment in the European Community, which is already at fever-pitch. The ECHR is Europe's implementation of several U.N. treaties on human rights, so the blowback may well extend beyond the EU and UK.  
Paul Merrell

Has the NSA Wiretapping Violated Attorney-Client Privilege? | The Nation - 0 views

www.thenation.com/...ated-attorney-client-privilege

surveillance state NSA-targets attorney-client-privilege must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The first time Adis Medunjanin tried to call Robert C. Gottlieb in mid-2009, Gottlieb was out of the office. Medunjanin was agitated. He had to speak to an attorney. Gottlieb’s assistant told him Gottlieb would be back soon. When Medunjanin spoke to the lawyer a little later, he was told he might need legal representation. He thought he might be under investigation. Over the next six months and in forty-two phone calls, Medunjanin sought legal advice from Gottlieb. When he was arrested in January 2010 on charges that he tried to bomb the New York subway, it was Gottlieb who defended him, receiving security clearance to review government documents pertinent to the case in the process. Gottlieb was preparing Medunjanin’s defense when a federal officer in charge of information distribution e-mailed him that there was new classified information he needed to review at the US Eastern District Court in Brooklyn. “I went over to the Brooklyn Federal courthouse, went up to the secured room, gained entry with the secret security codes, opened the file cabinet that is also secure and in the second drawer was a CD,” Gottlieb told me. On that CD were recordings of every single one of his forty-two phone calls with Medunjanin before he was taken into custody and indicted on January 7, 2010.
  • Such calls are normally sacrosanct under the principle of attorney-client privilege, the ability to speak confidentially with your lawyer. But a leak to The Guardian last summer of National Security Agency (NSA) procedures that are supposed to protect privileged calls showed that some attorney-client privileged calls are not subject to internal rules that detail the instances when a wiretap should be turned off. A later version of the procedures declassified by the NSA last August contains the same language. These “minimization” procedures, as they are known, are the rules and regulations for wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). They tell NSA agents when they can listen, and when they have to turn the tap off, when they can record and when they should not be recording. There are rules for which kinds of communications can be monitored—for example, domestic communications are off limits, although communications from agents of foreign powers and suspected terrorists don’t count as domestic—and there is a section that provides for the protection of attorney-client calls.
  • Section four of the declassified 2011 guidelines is the part of that document that governs wiretapping attorney-client calls. At first glance, it seems quite clear: when the agent realizes that he or she is monitoring an attorney-client communication, “monitoring of that communication will cease and the communication will be identified as an attorney-client communication in a log maintained for that purpose.” But given a second reading, section four doesn’t apply to all attorney-client calls. It provides only for the minimization (and protection) of the calls of “a person who is known to be under criminal indictment in the United States”—someone who has already been charged under US law. This is because indicted persons have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel. People who aren’t indicted don’t have this right, and so their calls are not minimized. When I asked an NSA press officer, Vanee’ M. Vines, how attorney-client privilege was protected, she referred me to the Department of Justice. I left several messages, but the DOJ never contacted me back.
Paul Merrell

N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ined-goals-for-more-power.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-ambitions

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Officials at the National Security Agency, intent on maintaining its dominance in intelligence collection, pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top-secret strategy document.
  • In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.’s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency’s eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to “aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.” Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as “the golden age of Sigint,” or signals intelligence. “The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on N.S.A.’s mission,” the document concluded. Using sweeping language, the paper also outlined some of the agency’s other ambitions. They included defeating the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from “anyone, anytime, anywhere.” The agency also said it would try to decrypt or bypass codes that keep communications secret by influencing “the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships,” human spies and intelligence partners in other countries. It also talked of the need to “revolutionize” analysis of its vast collections of data to “radically increase operational impact.”
  • The N.S.A. document, titled “Sigint Strategy 2012-2016,” does not make clear what legal or policy changes the agency might seek. The N.S.A.’s powers are determined variously by Congress, executive orders and the nation’s secret intelligence court, and its operations are governed by layers of regulations. While asserting that the agency’s “culture of compliance” would not be compromised, N.S.A. officials argued that they needed more flexibility, according to the paper. Senior intelligence officials, responding to questions about the document, said that the N.S.A. believed that legal impediments limited its ability to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects inside the United States. Despite an overhaul of national security law in 2008, the officials said, if a terrorism suspect who is under surveillance overseas enters the United States, the agency has to stop monitoring him until it obtains a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “N.S.A.’s Sigint strategy is designed to guide investments in future capabilities and close gaps in current capabilities,” the agency said in a statement. “In an ever-changing technology and telecommunications environment, N.S.A. tries to get in front of issues to better fulfill the foreign-intelligence requirements of the U.S. government.”
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  • Critics, including some congressional leaders, say that the role of N.S.A. surveillance in thwarting terrorist attacks — often cited by the agency to justify expanded powers — has been exaggerated. In response to the controversy about its activities after Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, agency officials claimed that the N.S.A.’s sweeping domestic surveillance programs had helped in 54 “terrorist-related activities.” But under growing scrutiny, congressional staff members and other critics say that the use of such figures by defenders of the agency has drastically overstated the value of the domestic surveillance programs in counterterrorism. Agency leaders believe that the N.S.A. has never enjoyed such a target-rich environment as it does now because of the global explosion of digital information — and they want to make certain that they can dominate “the Sigint battle space” in the future, the document said. To be “optimally effective,” the paper said, “legal, policy and process authorities must be as adaptive and dynamic as the technological and operational advances we seek to exploit.” Intent on unlocking the secrets of adversaries, the paper underscores the agency’s long-term goal of being able to collect virtually everything available in the digital world. To achieve that objective, the paper suggests that the N.S.A. plans to gain greater access, in a variety of ways, to the infrastructure of the world’s telecommunications networks.
  • Yet the paper also shows how the agency believes it can influence and shape trends in high-tech industries in other ways to suit its needs. One of the agency’s goals is to “continue to invest in the industrial base and drive the state of the art for high performance computing to maintain pre-eminent cryptanalytic capability for the nation.” The paper added that the N.S.A. must seek to “identify new access, collection and exploitation methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communications services.” And it wants to find ways to combine all of its technical tools to enhance its surveillance powers. The N.S.A. will seek to integrate its “capabilities to reach previously inaccessible targets in support of exploitation, cyberdefense and cyberoperations,” the paper stated. The agency also intends to improve its access to encrypted communications used by individuals, businesses and foreign governments, the strategy document said. The N.S.A. has already had some success in defeating encryption, The New York Times has reported, but the document makes it clear that countering “ubiquitous, strong, commercial network encryption” is a top priority. The agency plans to fight back against the rise of encryption through relationships with companies that develop encryption tools and through espionage operations. In other countries, the document said, the N.S.A. must also “counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available Sigint and Humint” — human intelligence, meaning spies.
  • Above all, the strategy paper suggests the N.S.A.’s vast view of its mission: nothing less than to “dramatically increase mastery of the global network.” Other N.S.A. documents offer hints of how the agency is trying to do just that. One program, code-named Treasure Map, provides what a secret N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation describes as “a near real-time, interactive map of the global Internet.” According to the undated PowerPoint presentation, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, Treasure Map gives the N.S.A. “a 300,000 foot view of the Internet.”  Relying on Internet routing data, commercial and Sigint information, Treasure Map is a sophisticated tool, one that the PowerPoint presentation describes as a “massive Internet mapping, analysis and exploration engine.” It collects Wi-Fi network and geolocation data, and between 30 million and 50 million unique Internet provider addresses — code that can reveal the location and owner of a computer, mobile device or router — are represented each day on Treasure Map, according to the document. It boasts that the program can map “any device, anywhere, all the time.”  The documents include addresses labeled as based in the “U.S.,” and because so much Internet traffic flows through the United States, it would be difficult to map much of the world without capturing such addresses.
  • The program takes advantage of the capabilities of other secret N.S.A. programs. To support Treasure Map, for example, the document states that another program, called Packaged Goods, tracks the “traceroutes” through which data flows around the Internet. Through Packaged Goods, the N.S.A. has gained access to “13 covered servers in unwitting data centers around the globe,” according to the PowerPoint. The document identifies a list of countries where the data centers are located, including Germany, Poland, Denmark, South Africa and Taiwan as well as Russia, China and Singapore.
Gary Edwards

Is Obama the Head of a Secret Cult? A 15-Point Test. | Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...-a-secret-cult-a-15-point-test

Obammunism Obama-Cult

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • But what really amazes me are those ideas that even a little reflection and study reveal as ridiculous, but that nonetheless gain a large and devoted following. For instance, that big government—in truth, little more than a motley collection of meddlesome bureaucrats advised by rent-seeking, ivory-tower academics—are in possession of the solutions to all of society's ills.
  • All of which got me to thinking about this odd trait of humans to form associations around bad ideas, and that, in turn, led me to think about the nature of cults. After all, can there be a more ridiculous idea than becoming a trained lapdog to some modern-day messiah? Yet, how does one go from being a go-along-to-get-along kind of person one day to lining up for a fatal dose of poison, thoughtfully flavored with grape Kool-Aid, the next? Or signing up to become a gunman willing to kill or be killed in a foreign adventure in support of a half-baked idea that's cast as somehow being in the "national interest," when even a cursory examination would tell you it's not?
  • Both of those examples are in diametric opposition to self-preservation, the most fundamental of all human instincts.
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  • Less dramatically but yet still with serious consequences, how is it that otherwise rational people come to accept the idea that widespread economic success can flow from the loins of a bureaucracy that produces nothing but regulatory chains on the aspirations of individuals looking to better their lives and those of their families? And when that success fails to materialize, readily accept the idea that the Fed can pump money out by the trillions with no negative effect? In any event, I started poking around the literature of various organizations specializing in the study of mind control and found what I think are some interesting lessons for us all in the studies of cults. After all, if psychological buttons can be pushed in a combination that leads to drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, you can sure as hell bet they can be pushed to get you to vote for a string of sociopathic poseurs… or to dedicate a large chunk of your life and charitable giving to causes that have little connection to reality. Or to decide to create a Facebook page titled, "I love it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President." In fact, based on the guidelines provided by the International Cult Studies Association (ICSA), you or someone you know may already be in a cult and not even be aware of it. Worse, the president himself might be the head of a cult! There are 15 separate traits the ICSA identifies as common among cults. Ticking through them should prove informative.
  • The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as "the Truth."
  • Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
  • Mind-altering practices are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).
  • The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel
  • The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members.
  • Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
  • The leader is not accountable to any authorities.
  • The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary.
  • The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.
  • Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.
  • The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
  • The group is preoccupied with making money.
  • Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.
  • The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
  • The most loyal members (the "true believers") feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.
  • How to Spot a Pathological Liar
  • In researching the nature of cults, I took a side street to investigate the mental condition called "pseudologia fantastica," or in lay terms, a mental condition where individuals become pathological liars. I did so because I wondered how politicians can spew forth their untruths with straight faces.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Nov 13
     
    "So is Obama really the leader of a cult? Based on the above checklist, I'd have to say he is-and it's a pretty big cult, at that. If you agree, it behooves us to define the overarching beliefs of the cult over which he presides. In my view, those beliefs were accurately summed up by Thomas Sowell in his classic, A Conflict of Visions, as revolving around the idea that we humans can and should be made ever-more perfect by government policy. With that idea at the core of the cult's belief, almost no action, no matter how extreme, is off the table when it comes to government action. Deception, artifice, bullying, war-making, spying, money-printing, regulation, forcing Ritz crackers on children, taking over large swaths of the economy, or propping up companies in favored industries are all justifiable parts and parcels of the whole. Unfortunately, because the cult offers financial handouts to join, the ranks of this particular cult have swelled in recent decades. So much so that it has reached the point where, like an uninfected human in a world full of zombies, those who don't belong increasingly have to maintain a low profile or risk having their faces eaten (or, perhaps less dramatically, being subjected to a forensic audit by the IRS). This is equally true, and maybe more so, with private corporations, which keep their mouths shut as the healthcare burden of non-workers is transferred to their balance sheets, or which trumpet the fact that they're "green" in order to avoid being targeted by cult members."
Paul Merrell

Cover Story: How NSA Spied on Merkel Cell Phone from Berlin Embassy - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...m-berlin-embassy-a-930205.html

surveillance state NSA Obama Merkel U.S. Germany U.S. foreign policy NSA-blowback must-read lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • According to SPIEGEL research, United States intelligence agencies have not only targeted Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone, but they have also used the American Embassy in Berlin as a listening station. The revelations now pose a serious threat to German-American relations.
  • Research by SPIEGEL reporters in Berlin and Washington, talks with intelligence officials and the evaluation of internal documents of the US' National Security Agency and other information, most of which comes from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lead to the conclusion that the US diplomatic mission in the German capital has not merely been promoting German-American friendship. On the contrary, it is a nest of espionage. From the roof of the embassy, a special unit of the CIA and NSA can apparently monitor a large part of cellphone communication in the government quarter. And there is evidence that agents based at Pariser Platz recently targeted the cellphone that Merkel uses the most. The NSA spying scandal has thus reached a new level, becoming a serious threat to the trans-Atlantic partnership. The mere suspicion that one of Merkel's cellphones was being monitored by the NSA has led in the past week to serious tensions between Berlin and Washington.
  • A "top secret" classified NSA document from the year 2010 shows that a unit known as the "Special Collection Service" (SCS) is operational in Berlin, among other locations. It is an elite corps run in concert by the US intelligence agencies NSA and CIA. The secret list reveals that its agents are active worldwide in around 80 locations, 19 of which are in Europe -- cities such as Paris, Madrid, Rome, Prague and Geneva. The SCS maintains two bases in Germany, one in Berlin and another in Frankfurt. That alone is unusual. But in addition, both German bases are equipped at the highest level and staffed with active personnel. The SCS teams predominantly work undercover in shielded areas of the American Embassy and Consulate, where they are officially accredited as diplomats and as such enjoy special privileges. Under diplomatic protection, they are able to look and listen unhindered. They just can't get caught.
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  • This would correspond to internal NSA documents seen by SPIEGEL. They show, for example, an SCS office in another US embassy -- a small windowless room full of cables with a work station of "signal processing racks" containing dozens of plug-in units for "signal analysis." On Friday, author and NSA expert James Bamford also visited SPIEGEL's Berlin bureau, which is located on Pariser Platz diagonally opposite the US Embassy. "To me, it looks like NSA eavesdropping equipment is hidden behind there," he said. "The covering seems to be made of the same material that the agency uses to shield larger systems." The Berlin-based security expert Andy Müller Maguhn was also consulted. "The location is ideal for intercepting mobile communications in Berlin's government district," he says, "be it technical surveillance of communication between cellphones and wireless cell towers or radio links that connect radio towers to the network."
  • Campbell refers to window-like indentations on the roof of the US Embassy. They are not glazed but rather veneered with "dielectric" material and are painted to blend into the surrounding masonry. This material is permeable even by weak radio signals. The interception technology is located behind these radio-transparent screens, says Campbell. The offices of SCS agents would most likely be located in the same windowless attic.
  • Wiretapping from an embassy is illegal in nearly every country. But that is precisely the task of the SCS, as is evidenced by another secret document. According to the document, the SCS operates its own sophisticated listening devices with which they can intercept virtually every popular method of communication: cellular signals, wireless networks and satellite communication. The necessary equipment is usually installed on the upper floors of the embassy buildings or on rooftops where the technology is covered with screens or Potemkin-like structures that protect it from prying eyes. That is apparently the case in Berlin, as well. SPIEGEL asked British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell to appraise the setup at the embassy. In 1976, Campbell uncovered the existence of the British intelligence service GCHQ. In his so-called "Echelon Report" in 1999, he described for the European Parliament the existence of the global surveillance network of the same name.
  • Apparently, SCS agents use the same technology all over the world. They can intercept cellphone signals while simultaneously locating people of interest. One antenna system used by the SCS is known by the affable code name "Einstein." When contacted by SPIEGEL, the NSA declined to comment on the matter. The SCS are careful to hide their technology, especially the large antennas on the roofs of embassies and consulates. If the equipment is discovered, explains a "top secret" set of classified internal guidelines, it "would cause serious harm to relations between the United States and a foreign government." According to the documents, SCS units can also intercept microwave and millimeter-wave signals. Some programs, such as one entitled "Birdwatcher," deal primarily with encrypted communications in foreign countries and the search for potential access points. Birdwatcher is controlled directly from SCS headquarters in Maryland.
  • With the growing importance of the Internet, the work of the SCS has changed. Some 80 branches offer "thousands of opportunities on the net" for web-based operations, according to an internal presentation. The organization is now able not only to intercept cellphone calls and satellite communication, but also to proceed against criminals or hackers. From some embassies, the Americans have planted sensors in communications equipment of the respective host countries that are triggered by selected terms.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 13
     
    A must-read article offering an in-depth, 3-page view of how badly the Snowden disclosures have poisoned trust between the U.S. and its NATO allies that are not favored members of the Five Eyes club. Details of NSA's surveillance operations in Germany and strong circumstantial evidence that Obama knew -- as recently as June 2013 -- of spy operations being conducted against hundreds of world leaders but denied it.  
Paul Merrell

Volcker Rule: How It Work, and Why It May Still Fail | New Republic - 0 views

www.newrepublic.com/...work-and-why-it-may-still-fail

banksters Volcker-rule commercial-banks Glass-Steagall

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • s a starting point, we think the Proposed Rule is simply too tepid.” That was how Senators Jeff Merkley and Carl Levin opened their February 2012 comment letter to federal banking regulators about the “Volcker rule,” designed to prevent large banks from making risky proprietary trades for their own profit, the kinds of trades that nearly took down the financial system in 2008. The senators, who authored the rule in Congress, were displeased about a number of loopholes added to the proposal, which they said did not “fulfill the law’s promise.” They demanded that regulators “draw brighter lines, remove unnecessary complexities, and enable cost-effective, consistent enforcement.”Twenty months later, five regulators will today finalize the Volcker rule, and Merkley, for one, is pleased with the result. “I believe the loopholes inherent in that [2012] draft have been significantly reduced or eliminated,” he said in an interview on the eve of the final votes. “I have a much more positive feeling about what will be voted on.” 
  • The tougher rule is a pleasant surprise, given how reliably Wall Street lobbyists have gutted such efforts in the past. For once, the hard work of members of Congress, advocates, and the public actually produced something that could work. But if you view financial reform like a football game, today’s votes kick off the third quarter of a contest destined for 34 consecutive overtimes. Today’s vote mostly triggers an extended period of data collection and guideline-setting, giving mega-banks many future opportunities to water down the rules. And even if implementation wraps up strongly—as it certainly could—regulatory spine will be needed to prevent another financial crisis. As Merkley noted, in matters like this, “you need eternal vigilance.” And, in Washington and on Wall Street, vigilance has often been anything but.
Paul Merrell

Puff the Magic Dragnet | Popehat - 0 views

www.popehat.com/...puff-the-magic-dragnet

surveillance state NSA insiders 60-minutes

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Talking around the edges of what's classified is all the rage these days. See, for example, the commercial for the NSA that ran on 60 minutes tonight. In that vein, a former employee of Tailored Access Ops explains (within Info Assurance guidelines) what he did at the NSA and why he's ok with it.
Paul Merrell

Revealed: Senate report contains new details on CIA black sites | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...senate-cia-torture.html

war & peace torture Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report black-sites CIA-lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • A Senate Intelligence Committee report provides the first official confirmation that the CIA secretly operated a black site prison out of Guantánamo Bay, two U.S. officials who have read portions of the report have told Al Jazeera. The officials — who spoke on condition of anonymity because the 6,600-page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program remains classified — said top-secret agency documents reveal that at least 10 high-value targets were secretly held and interrogated at Guantánamo’s Camp Echo at various times from late 2003 to 2004. They were then flown to Rabat, Morocco, before being officially sent to the U.S. military’s detention facility at Guantánamo in September 2006. In September 2006, President George W. Bush formally announced that 14 CIA captives had been transferred to Guantánamo and would be prosecuted before military tribunals. He then acknowledged for the first time that the CIA had been operating a secret network of prisons overseas to detain and interrogate high-value targets.
  • The Senate report, according to Al Jazeera’s sources, says that the CIA detained some high-value suspects on Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island controlled by the United Kingdom and leased to the United States. The classified CIA documents say the black site arrangement at Diego Garcia was made with the “full cooperation” of the British government. That would confirm long-standing claims by human rights investigators and journalists, whose allegations — based on flight logs and unnamed government sources — have routinely been denied by the CIA. The CIA and State Department declined Al Jazeera’s requests for comment. The Intelligence Committee last week voted 11 to 3 to declassify the report’s 480-page executive summary and 20 conclusions and findings, which incorporate responses from Republican members of the committee and from the CIA. The executive summary will undergo a declassification review, led by the CIA, with input from the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. officials said. The panel’s chairwoman, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said in a statement last Thursday that the full 6,600-page report, with 37,000 footnotes, “will be held for declassification at a later time.”
  • Leaked details of the committee’s report have caused waves in countries like Poland, where the CIA is known to have operated a black site prison — which Polish officials continue to deny having known about. The U.S. officials who spoke to Al Jazeera said that the Senate report reveals 20 prisoners were secretly detained in Poland from 2002 to 2005. They added that Polish officials recently sought assurances from diplomats and visiting U.S. officials that the Senate report would conceal details about Poland’s role in allowing the CIA black site to be operated on Polish soil. Al Jazeera’s sources said U.S. officials reassured their Polish counterparts last year that it was almost certain that the declassified version of the report would not identify the countries that cooperated with the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.
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  • According to the Senate report, Al Jazeera’s sources said, a majority of the more than 100 detainees held in CIA custody were detained in secret prisons in Afghanistan and Morocco, where they were subject to torture methods not sanctioned by the Justice Department. Those methods are recalled by the report in vivid narratives lifted from daily logs of the detention and interrogation of about 34 high-value prisoners. The report allegedly notes that about 85 detainees deemed low-value passed through the black sites and were later dumped at Guantánamo or handed off to foreign intelligence services. More than 10 of those handed over to foreign intelligence agencies “to face terrorism charges” are now “unaccounted for” and presumed dead, the U.S. officials said. The Senate report says more than two dozen of these men designated low-value had, in fact, been wrongfully detained and rendered to other countries on the basis of intelligence obtained from CIA captives under torture and from information shared with CIA officials by other governments, both of which turned out to be false. The report allegedly singles out a top CIA official for botching a handful of renditions and outlines agency efforts to cover up the mistakes. The Senate report allegedly accuses “senior CIA officials” of lying during multiple closed-session briefings to members of Congress from 2003 to 2005 about the use of certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The report says an agency official lied to Congress in 2005 when he insisted the U.S. was adhering to international treaties barring cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners, the U.S. officials told Al Jazeera.
  • The report not only accuses certain CIA officials of deliberately misleading Congress; Al Jazeera’s sources say it also suggests that the agency sanctioned leaks to selected journalists about phantom plots supposedly disrupted as a result of information gained through the program in order to craft a narrative of success. The Senate report, like a 2009 Senate Armed Services Committee report (PDF), says Air Force psychologists under contract to the CIA reverse-engineered a decades-old resistance-training program taught to U.S. airmen known as survival evasion resistance escape (SERE). According to a SERE training document obtained by Al Jazeera titled “Coercive Exploitation Techniques,” Air Force personnel were taught that communist regimes used “deprivations” of “food, water, sleep and medical care” as well as “the use of threats” in order to weaken a captive’s mental and physical ability to resist interrogation. “Isolation” would be used, according to the SERE program, to deprive the “recipient of all social support” so that he develops a “dependency” on his interrogator. And “physical duress, violence and torture” are used to weaken “mental and physical ability to resist exploitation.” Ironically, perhaps, the SERE document (displayed below) notes that such techniques were used by the Soviet Union, China and North Korea to obtain false confessions.
  • Senate investigators allegedly obtained from the CIA a 2003 “business plan,” written by Air Force psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, that contained erroneous details about the positive aspects of the enhanced interrogation program and the veracity of the intelligence its extracted from detainees. The “business plan” states that Al-Qaeda captives were “resistant” to “standard” interrogation techniques, an argument the Senate report found lacked merit because torture techniques were used before they were even questioned. Neither Jessen, who lives in Spokane, Wash., nor Mitchell, who resides in Land o’ Lakes, Fla., responded to phone calls or emails for comment. Both men are featured prominently in the Senate’s report, according to U.S. officials.
  • According to Al Jazeera’s sources, Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah was the only captive subjected to all 10 torture techniques identified in an August 2002 Justice Department memo. But the U.S. officials said the Senate report concludes that the methods applied to Abu Zubaydah went above and beyond the guidelines outlined in that memo and were used before the memo establishing their legality was written. The Senate report allegedly adopts part of a narrative from former FBI special agent Ali Soufan, who first interrogated Abu Zubaydah at the black site and wrote in his book “The Black Banners” that Mitchell was conducting an “experiment” on Abu Zubaydah. For example, the August 2002 Justice Department legal memo authorized sleep deprivation for Abu Zubaydah for 11 consecutive days, but Mitchell kept him awake far longer, the U.S. officials said, citing classified CIA cables. Abu Zubaydah was stripped naked, strapped into a chair and doused with cold water to keep him awake. He was then interrogated and asked what he knew, at which point, his attorney told Al Jazeera, Abu Zubaydah was “psychotic” and would have admitted to anything.
  • Additionally, the report allegedly says that Abu Zubaydah was stuffed into a pet crate (the type used to transport dogs on airplanes) over the course of two weeks and routinely passed out, was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of his cell and subjected to an endless loop of loud music. One former interrogator briefed about Abu Zubaydah’s interrogations from May to July 2002 told Al Jazeera that the music used to batter the detainee’s senses was by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Abu Zubaydah’s attorney, Brent Mickum, hopes the Senate report’s executive summary will vindicate what he has been saying for years. “My client was tortured brutally well before any legal memo was issued,” Mickum said. He expects the report to “show that my client was a nonmember of Al-Qaeda, contrary to all of the earlier reports by the Bush administration. I am also confident that the report will show that, after he was deemed to be compliant while he was held in Thailand, that he continued to be tortured on explicit orders from the Bush administration.” The Senate report, according to Al Jazeera’s sources, says that CIA interrogators were under an enormous pressure from top agency officials, themselves under pressure from the White House, to use “enhanced” interrogation techniques to obtain information from detainees connecting Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
  • One interrogator who worked for the CIA and the U.S. military during Bush’s tenure and participated in the interrogations of two high-value CIA prisoners told Al Jazeera — speaking on condition of anonymity because he is still employed by the U.S. government — that the “enhanced” interrogation program was “nothing more than the Stanford Prison Experiment writ large.” (The 1971 Stanford University study shocked the public by demonstrating how easily people placed in authority over more vulnerable others resorted to cruelty.) “Interrogators were being pressured — You have to get info from these people,’” the interrogator told Al Jazeera. “There was no consideration that the person we were interrogating may not know. That was always seen as a resistance technique. ‘They [the detainees] must be lying!’ There was pressure on us from above to produce what they wanted. Not a single person I worked with knew how to conduct an interrogation or [had] ever conducted an interrogation.”
Paul Merrell

The Government Can No Longer Track Your Cell Phone Without a Warrant | Motherboard - 0 views

motherboard.vice.com/...r-cell-phone-without-a-warrant

surveillance state location-data 4th Amendment litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The government and police regularly use location data pulled off of cell phone towers to put criminals at the scenes of crimes—often without a warrant. Well, an appeals court ruled today that the practice is unconstitutional, in one of the strongest judicial defenses of technology privacy rights we've seen in a while.  The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the government illegally obtained and used Quartavious Davis's cell phone location data to help convict him in a string of armed robberies in Miami and unequivocally stated that cell phone location information is protected by the Fourth Amendment. "In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy," the court ruled in an opinion written by Judge David Sentelle. "The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation."
  • In Davis's case, police used his cell phone's call history against him to put him at the scene of several armed robberies. They obtained a court order—which does not require the government to show probable cause—not a warrant, to do so. From now on, that'll be illegal. The decision applies only in the Eleventh Circuit, but sets a strong precedent for future cases.
  • Indeed, the decision alone is a huge privacy win, but Sentelle's strong language supporting cell phone users' privacy rights is perhaps the most important part of the opinion. Sentelle pushed back against several of the federal government's arguments, including one that suggested that, because cell phone location data based on a caller's closest cell tower isn't precise, it should be readily collectable.  "The United States further argues that cell site location information is less protected than GPS data because it is less precise. We are not sure why this should be significant. We do not doubt that there may be a difference in precision, but that is not to say that the difference in precision has constitutional significance," Sentelle wrote. "That information obtained by an invasion of privacy may not be entirely precise does not change the calculus as to whether obtaining it was in fact an invasion of privacy." The court also cited the infamous US v. Jones Supreme Court decision that held that attaching a GPS to a suspect's car is a "search" under the Fourth Amendment. Sentelle suggested a cell phone user has an even greater expectation of location privacy with his or her cell phone use than a driver does with his or her car. A car, Sentelle wrote, isn't always with a person, while a cell phone, these days, usually is.
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  • "One’s cell phone, unlike an automobile, can accompany its owner anywhere. Thus, the exposure of the cell site location information can convert what would otherwise be a private event into a public one," he wrote. "In that sense, cell site data is more like communications data than it is like GPS information. That is, it is private in nature rather than being public data that warrants privacy protection only when its collection creates a sufficient mosaic to expose that which would otherwise be private." Finally, the government argued that, because Davis made outgoing calls, he "voluntarily" gave up his location data. Sentelle rejected that, too, citing a prior decision by a Third Circuit Court. "The Third Circuit went on to observe that 'a cell phone customer has not ‘voluntarily’ shared his location information with a cellular provider in any meaningful way.' That circuit further noted that 'it is unlikely that cell phone customers are aware that their cell phone providers collect and store historical location information,'” Sentelle wrote.
  • "Therefore, as the Third Circuit concluded, 'when a cell phone user makes a call, the only information that is voluntarily and knowingly conveyed to the phone company is the number that is dialed, and there is no indication to the user that making that call will also locate the caller,'" he continued.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 14
     
    Another victory for civil libertarians against the surveillance state. Note that this is another decision drawing guidance from the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Jones, shortly before the Edward Snowden leaks came to light, that called for re-examination of the Third Party Doctrine, an older doctrine that data given to or generated by third parties is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.   
Paul Merrell

ExposeFacts - For Whistleblowers, Journalism and Democracy - 0 views

exposefacts.org

transparency whistle-blowers resources Wikileaks Tail

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Launched by the Institute for Public Accuracy in June 2014, ExposeFacts.org represents a new approach for encouraging whistleblowers to disclose information that citizens need to make truly informed decisions in a democracy. From the outset, our message is clear: “Whistleblowers Welcome at ExposeFacts.org.” ExposeFacts aims to shed light on concealed activities that are relevant to human rights, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war. At a time when key provisions of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are under assault, we are standing up for a free press, privacy, transparency and due process as we seek to reveal official information—whether governmental or corporate—that the public has a right to know. While no software can provide an ironclad guarantee of confidentiality, ExposeFacts—assisted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and its “SecureDrop” whistleblower submission system—is utilizing the latest technology on behalf of anonymity for anyone submitting materials via the ExposeFacts.org website. As journalists we are committed to the goal of protecting the identity of every source who wishes to remain anonymous.
  • The seasoned editorial board of ExposeFacts will be assessing all the submitted material and, when deemed appropriate, will arrange for journalistic release of information. In exercising its judgment, the editorial board is able to call on the expertise of the ExposeFacts advisory board, which includes more than 40 journalists, whistleblowers, former U.S. government officials and others with wide-ranging expertise. We are proud that Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was the first person to become a member of the ExposeFacts advisory board. The icon below links to a SecureDrop implementation for ExposeFacts overseen by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and is only accessible using the Tor browser. As the Freedom of the Press Foundation notes, no one can guarantee 100 percent security, but this provides a “significantly more secure environment for sources to get information than exists through normal digital channels, but there are always risks.” ExposeFacts follows all guidelines as recommended by Freedom of the Press Foundation, and whistleblowers should too; the SecureDrop onion URL should only be accessed with the Tor browser — and, for added security, be running the Tails operating system. Whistleblowers should not log-in to SecureDrop from a home or office Internet connection, but rather from public wifi, preferably one you do not frequent. Whistleblowers should keep to a minimum interacting with whistleblowing-related websites unless they are using such secure software.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 07 Jun 14
       
      Thanks Paul! Great article and I agree with you about switching. Rather than a USB, I would rather look into a SSD and try to isolate performance to an ISP bandwidth issue. FYI, I read your Diigo posts daily at this Web site: https://groups.diigo.com/group/socialism-and-the-end-of-the-american-dream/content/user/marbux Seems to be the best visual presentation of your research. I do however think Diigo could improve their hosting of this research by enabling more extensive comments. Notice that your comments are often clipped :( Still, I really do appreciate your sharing both your research and your commentary. Priceless stuff! Many thanks! ~ge~
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Jun 14
     
    A new resource site for whistle-blowers. somewhat in the tradition of Wikileaks, but designed for encrypted communications between whistleblowers and journalists.  This one has an impressive board of advisors that includes several names I know and tend to trust, among them former whistle-blowers Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Ann Wright. Leaked records can only be dropped from a web browser running the Tor anonymizer software and uses the SecureDrop system originally developed by Aaron Schwartz. They strongly recommend using the Tails secure operating system that can be installed to a thumb drive and leaves no tracks on the host machine. https://tails.boum.org/index.en.html Curious, I downloaded Tails and installed it to a virtual machine. It's a heavily customized version of Debian. It has a very nice Gnome desktop and blocks any attempt to connect to an external network by means other than installed software that demands encrypted communications. For example, web sites can only be viewed via the Tor anonymizing proxy network. It does take longer for web pages to load because they are moving over a chain of proxies, but even so it's faster than pages loaded in the dial-up modem days, even for web pages that are loaded with graphics, javascript, and other cruft. E.g., about 2 seconds for New York Times pages. All cookies are treated by default as session cookies so disappear when you close the page or the browser. I love my Linux Mint desktop, but I am thinking hard about switching that box to Tails. I've been looking for methods to send a lot more encrypted stuff down the pipe for NSA to store. Tails looks to make that not only easy, but unavoidable. From what I've gathered so far, if you want to install more software on Tails, it takes about an hour to create a customized version and then update your Tails installation from a new ISO file. Tails has a wonderful odor of having been designed for secure computing. Current
Paul Merrell

5 Big Banks Expected to Plead Guilty to Felony Charges, but Punishments May Be Tempered... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nishments-may-be-tempered.html

banksters litigation UBS Barclays JPMorgan Chase Citigroup Royal-Bank-of-Scotland guilty-pleas SEC-waivers

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 May 15 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department is preparing to announce that Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland will collectively pay several billion dollars and plead guilty to criminal antitrust violations for rigging the price of foreign currencies, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Most if not all of the pleas are expected to come from the banks’ holding companies, the people said — a first for Wall Street giants that until now have had only subsidiaries or their biggest banking units plead guilty.
  • The Justice Department is also preparing to resolve accusations of foreign currency misconduct at UBS. As part of that deal, prosecutors are taking the rare step of tearing up a 2012 nonprosecution agreement with the bank over the manipulation of benchmark interest rates, the people said, citing the bank’s foreign currency misconduct as a violation of the earlier agreement. UBS A.G., the banking unit that signed the 2012 nonprosecution agreement, is expected to plead guilty to the earlier charges and pay a fine that could be as high as $500 million rather than go to trial, the people said.
  • Holding companies, while appearing to be the most important entities at the banks, are in less jeopardy of suffering the consequences of guilty pleas. Some banks worried that a guilty plea by their biggest banking units, which hold licenses that enable them to operate branches and make loans, would be riskier, two of the people briefed on the matter said. The fear, they said, centered on whether state or federal regulators might revoke those licenses in response to the pleas. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Behind the scenes in Washington, the banks’ lawyers are also seeking assurances from federal regulators — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Labor Department — that the banks will not be barred from certain business practices after the guilty pleas, the people said. While the S.E.C.’s five commissioners have not yet voted on the requests for waivers, which would allow the banks to conduct business as usual despite being felons, the people briefed on the matter expected a majority of commissioners to grant them.In reality, those accommodations render the plea deals, at least in part, an exercise in stagecraft. And while banks might prefer a deferred-prosecution agreement that suspends charges in exchange for fines and other concessions — or a nonprosecution deal like the one that UBS is on the verge of losing — the reputational blow of being a felon does not spell disaster.
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  • The foreign exchange investigation, which centers on accusations that traders colluded to fix the price of major currencies, will test the Justice Department’s strategy for securing guilty pleas on Wall Street.
  • In the case of UBS, the bank will lose its nonprosecution agreement over interest rate manipulation, the people briefed on the matter said, a consequence of its misconduct in the foreign exchange case. It is unclear why that penalty will fall on UBS, but not on other banks suspected of manipulating both interest rates and currency prices.
  • the bank is expected to avoid pleading guilty in the foreign exchange case, the people said, though it will probably pay a fine. While UBS was unlikely to plead guilty to antitrust violations because it was the first to cooperate in the foreign exchange investigation, the bank was facing the possibility of pleading guilty to fraud charges related to the currency manipulation. The exact punishment is not yet final, the people added.The Justice Department negotiations coincide with the banks’ separate efforts to persuade the S.E.C. to issue waivers from automatic bans that occur when a company pleads guilty. If the waivers are not granted, a decision that the Justice Department does not control, the banks could face significant consequences.For example, some banks may be seeking waivers to a ban on overseeing mutual funds, one of the people said. They are also requesting waivers to ensure they do not lose their special status as “well-known seasoned issuers,” which allows them to fast-track securities offerings. For some of the banks, there is also a concern that they will lose their “safe harbor” status for making forward-looking statements in securities documents.
  • In turn, the S.E.C. asked the Justice Department to hold off on announcing the currency cases until the banks’ requests had been reviewed, one of the people said. As of Wednesday, it seemed probable that a majority of the S.E.C.’s commissioners would approve most of the waivers, which can be granted for a cause like the public good. Still, the agency’s two Democratic commissioners — Kara M. Stein and Luis A. Aguilar, who have denounced the S.E.C.’s use of waivers — might be more likely to balk.
  • Corporate prosecutions are a delicate matter, peppered with political and legal land mines. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and other liberal politicians have criticized prosecutors for treating Wall Street with kid gloves. Banks and their lawyers, however, complain about huge penalties and guilty pleas. Continue reading the main story Recent Comments AvangionQ 14 hours ago These are the sorts of crimes that take down nations, jail sentences should be mandatory. Lance Haley 14 hours ago I find this whole legal exercise not only irrational, but insulting. I am a criminal defense attorney. Punishing the shareholders and the... loomypop 14 hours ago There is much more than Irony in the reality of how America treats criminal action and punishment when the entire determination and outcome... See All Comments And lingering in the background is the case of Arthur Andersen, an accounting giant that imploded after being convicted in 2002 of criminal charges related to its work for Enron. After the firm’s collapse, and the later reversal of its conviction, prosecutors began to shift from indictments and guilty pleas to deferred-prosecution agreements. And in 2008, the Justice Department updated guidelines for prosecuting corporations, which have long included a requirement that prosecutors weigh collateral consequences like harm to shareholders and innocent employees.
  • “The collateral consequences consideration is designed to address the risk that a particular criminal charge might inflict disproportionate harm to shareholders, pension holders and employees who are not even alleged to be culpable or to have profited potentially from wrongdoing,” said Mark Filip, the Justice Department official who wrote the 2008 memo. “Arthur Andersen was ultimately never convicted of anything, but the mere act of indicting it destroyed one of the cornerstones of the Midwest’s economy.”
  • Paul Merrell on 16 May 15
     
    In related news, the Dept. of Justice announced that it would begin using its "collateral consequences" analysis to decisions whether to charge human beings with crimes, taking into account the hardships imposed on innocent family members and other dependents if a person were sentenced to prison.  No? Sounds like corporations have more rights than human beings, yes?
Paul Merrell

Petraeus Gets Leniency for Leaking - And Risen's CIA Source Should Too, His Lawyers Say... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ce-jeffrey-sterling-should-too

Dark-State Sterling litigation sentencing Petraeus

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Lawyers for Jeffrey Sterling, convicted earlier this year of leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen, urged today that Sterling “not receive a different form of justice” than David Petraeus, the former general and CIA director who has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for leaking classified information to his biographer. While Petraeus will not go to jail — yesterday a judge sentenced him to two years probation and a $100,000 fine — prosecutors have asked for a “severe” sentence against Sterling within federal guidelines of 19 to 24 years in prison. In January, a jury convicted Sterling, a former CIA agent, on nine counts related to leaking information to Risen, a Times reporter who in 2006 wrote a book that revealed the agency had mishandled a program to disrupt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Sterling’s lawyers, Edward MacMahon Jr. and Barry Pollack, filed their sentencing memorandum today, arguing that their client “should be treated no more harshly than any other person who has been charged and convicted of ‘leaking’ to the press.” In addition to Petraeus, they cited the cases of John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who was sentenced to 30 months in prison, and Stephen Kim, who received a 13-month sentence. Unlike Petraeus, Kiriakou and Kim, who reached plea agreements, Sterling took his case to a jury. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 11.
  • “He should be treated similarly to others convicted for the same crimes and not singled out for a long prison sentence because he elected to exercise his right to trial,” the lawyers stated. “[T]he court cannot turn a blind eye to the positions the government has taken in similar cases.” The Petraeus and Sterling cases have highlighted another disparity in the government’s handling of leak cases: powerful officials like Petraeus are treated leniently while mid-level ones like Kiriakou, Kim and Sterling go to jail. In the Petraeus case, the government claims no harm was caused by his leak, because none of the information he leaked to Paula Broadwell, his biographer and onetime lover, was published, whereas the information published by Risen had caused “substantial damage” to national security. However, this characterization was called “overwrought hyperbole” by a former CIA official in a letter of support for Sterling released today by his lawyers. David J. Manners, a former station chief in Prague and Amman as well as chief of the agency’s Iran task force, described as “not credible” the prosecution’s claim that Risen’s book severely hurt the CIA’s ability to recruit spies. Manners, who first met Sterling when both worked at the agency, noted that the government itself has often disclosed the role of intelligence operatives.
  • “While such disclosures are never helpful, they happen all the time (and sometimes the United States quietly endorses the disclosure — read some of Bob Woodward’s books, or look at Agency collaboration on the film about the bin Laden raid),” Manners wrote. Sterling’s lawyers called attention to what they regard as another inequity in the treatment of Petraeus and their client. Petraeus admitted in his plea agreement that the classified information he leaked included highly sensitive names of covert operatives, war plans for U.S. forces, as well as details about his discussions with senior officials, including President Obama. Petraeus also admitted to lying to FBI agents about what he had done. Sterling, his lawyers noted, “revealed the names of no covert personnel and never lied about his actions to the FBI.” The prosecution appears to be trying to do more than put Sterling behind bars for two decades; it appears to be trying to rewrite history and put an end to leaks of information that embarrass the government.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Apr 15
     
    I read the two sentencing memorandums. Sterling's lawyer makes an excellent case that the government is attempting to punish Sterling for being a whistleblower and for his decision to go to trial rather than accept a deal. And the trial is already infamous for the government's failure to bring forward any direct proof of guilt. The light sentence meted to Gen. Petraeus is directly at issue in the sentencing. It will be interesting to see what Judge Berkema decides. 
Paul Merrell

US-backed rebels handed over equipment to al Qaeda in Syria | The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...pment-to-al-qaeda-in-syria.php

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Al-Nusrah Division30

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • US-backed rebels in the so-called “New Syrian Forces” (NSF) have turned over at least some of their equipment and ammunition to a “suspected” intermediary for Al Nusrah Front, US Central Command (CENTCOM) conceded in a statement released late yesterday. The coalition-provided supplies were given by the rebels to Al Nusrah, an official branch of al Qaeda, in exchange for “safe passage within their operating area.” The “NSF unit contacted Coalition representatives and informed us that on Sept. 21-22 they gave six pick-up trucks and a portion of their ammunition to a suspected Al Nusrah Front intermediary, which equates to roughly 25 percent of their issued equipment,” CENTCOM spokesperson Col. Patrick Ryder said. “If accurate, the report of NSF members providing equipment to Al Nusrah Front is very concerning and a violation of Syria train and equip program guidelines.” While Ryder left open the possibility that the report is not accurate, he did not offer any explanation for why the NSF unit would lie about giving the equipment to Al Nusrah. The admission further jeopardizes the unit’s ability to receive American arms in the future. Rebels belonging to Division 30, a group supported by the US, suffered losses immediately upon entering the Syrian fray earlier this year.
  • More than 50 members of Division 30 were sent into Syria in July. But Al Nusrah quickly thwarted their plans, even though the US-backed rebels intended to fight the Islamic State, Al Nusrah’s bitter rival. A number of Division 30 fighters were captured or killed within days of embarking on their mission. Al Nusrah released a statement at the time saying that Division 30 is part of an American scheme that is opposed to the interests of the Syrian people. Al Qaeda’s branch accused the group of trying to form “the nucleus” of a “national army” and blasted the attempt to bolster the “moderate opposition.” Al Nusrah also attacked Division 30’s headquarters in Azaz, a city north of Aleppo. The US responded with airstrikes, killing a number of jihadists, but the damage to the limited US effort was done. US officials said earlier this month that only four or five rebels were left in the fight. Dozens of additional US-supported rebels have entered the war in recent weeks, according to US military officials. Not only has al Qaeda thwarted America’s first efforts under the overt $500 million train and equip program, which is managed by the US military, it has also taken out rebels who received unofficial support from the US intelligence community.
Paul Merrell

2012: The Year of the Cooperative by Jessica Reeder - YES! Magazine - 0 views

www.yesmagazine.org/...12-the-year-of-the-cooperative

world-sans-banksters cooperatives statistics economy

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The United Nations has named 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, and indeed, co-ops seem poised to become a dominant business model around the world. Today, nearly one billion people worldwide are cooperative member-owners. That’s one in five adults over 15
  • Most co-ops also follow the Seven Cooperative Principles, a unique set of guidelines that help maintain their member-driven nature.
  • In fact, the United States is full of co-ops — around 30,000 of them with nearly 900,000 members. Thirty percent of Americans belong to cooperatively-owned credit unions, the largest of which serves 3.4 million Department of Defense employees and has $45 billion in assets. In 2004, the ten largest co-ops in America earned over $12 billion in revenues
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • In America, 93 million credit union member-owners control $920 billion in assets.
  • “Cooperatives, in their various forms, promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people, including women, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples, are becoming a major factor of economic and social development and contribute to the eradication of poverty.” - UN Resolution 64/136, 2010
  • The trend is well-established: The cooperative model is expected to be the world’s fastest-growing business model by 2025.
  • Paul Merrell on 04 Nov 13
     
    Are worker-owned co-ops replacing unions as the method to ensure that workers share in business profits and productivity gains? The thought had occurred to me until now. But we buy most of our groceries from Winco, a worker-owned grocery chain because their prices are lowest, even lower than Walmart. And many of the forestry-related companies in our area are worker-owned co-ops. They have big competitive advantages for several reasons, not the least of which is that their bottom-up leadership is far smaller and less expensive than the leadership of a top-down stock corporation with comparable sales. No competition between the workers and upper managers/external stockholders for profit sharing. Far less turnover in workers; as owners the workers are more committed to the co-op and to staying with it. Are co-ops part of a shadow economy emerging from the ashes of the U.S. bankster-driven economy? And is there enough flexibility in U.S. law for a bottom-up shadow government to begin taking shape, based on contract law perhaps? No one could be forced to sign the contract, of course, but I see room for at least an alternate dispute resolution process to resolve disputes between contract parties. One based on mediation rather than arbitration, as the U.S. judicial system behaves. (The U.S. judicial system is beyond salvage, in my studied opinion.)  Food for thought. 
Paul Merrell

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

www.guardian.co.uk/...ourt-oversight-process-secrecy

surveillance state NSA lies FISA FISA Court Obama procedures must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Since we began began publishing stories about the NSA's massive domestic spying apparatus, various NSA defenders – beginning with President Obama - have sought to assure the public that this is all done under robust judicial oversight. "When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls," he proclaimed on June 7 when responding to our story about the bulk collection of telephone records, adding that the program is "fully overseen" by "the Fisa court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them". Obama told Charlie Rose last night:"What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls … by law and by rule, and unless they … go to a court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it's always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause."The GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, told CNN that the NSA "is not listening to Americans' phone calls. If it did, it is illegal. It is breaking the law." Talking points issued by the House GOP in defense of the NSA claimed that surveillance law only "allows the Government to acquire foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S.-persons (foreign, non-Americans) located outside the United States."
  • The decisions about who has their emails and telephone calls intercepted by the NSA is made by the NSA itself, not by the Fisa court, except where the NSA itself concludes the person is a US citizen and/or the communication is exclusively domestic. But even in such cases, the NSA often ends up intercepting those communications of Americans without individualized warrants, and all of this is left to the discretion of the NSA analysts with no real judicial oversight.
  • The NSA's media defenders have similarly stressed that the NSA's eavesdropping and internet snooping requires warrants when it involves Americans. The Washington Post's Charles Lane told his readers: "the government needs a court-issued warrant, based on probable cause, to listen in on phone calls." The Post's David Ignatius told Post readers that NSA internet surveillance "is overseen by judges who sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court" and is "lawful and controlled". Tom Friedman told New York Times readers that before NSA analysts can invade the content of calls and emails, they "have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress."This has become the most common theme for those defending NSA surveillance. But these claim are highly misleading, and in some cases outright false.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • What is vital to recognize is that the NSA is collecting and storing staggering sums of communications every day. Back in 2010, the Washington Post reported that "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." Documents published by the Guardian last week detail that, in March 2013, the NSA collected three billions of pieces of intelligence just from US communications networks alone.In sum, the NSA is vacuuming up enormous amounts of communications involving ordinary Americans and people around the world who are guilty of nothing. There are some legal constraints governing their power to examine the content of those communications, but there are no technical limits on the ability either of the agency or its analysts to do so. The fact that there is so little external oversight is what makes this sweeping, suspicion-less surveillance system so dangerous. It's also what makes the assurances from government officials and their media allies so dubious.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jun 13
     
    Glenn Greenwald strikes again with hard proof from NSA documents, dissecting procedures used throughout the intelligence establishment from the NSA to the President to Congress, casting severe doubt on what we have been told by those defending the NSA surveillance program. I have highlighted only a few points from this lengthy article. As to Greenwald's discussion of the FISA Court's weaknesses, he omitted one that I believe is incredibly, the lack of an adversarial system with a lawyer opposing what the government asks the Court to authorize. True, search warrants are normally issued in the U.S. with only the government represented in the process. But there is a crucial difference: once someone is charged with a crime, the warrant must be disclosed to the defendant who can ask the court to suppress all evidence unlawfully obtained not only through the warrant but also the fruits of any unlawfully obtained evidence, meaning subsequently discovered evidence that would not have been found absent the unlawfully obtained evidence. The same result can happen if the warrant is found to be invalid for any of a variety of reasons, or the officers exceeded the scope of the search authorized.  So in the normal search warrant process, the participation of an adversary attorney is only delayed; it is not virtually eliminated as it is in the FISA Court. Thus far, only those ordered to disclose records to the NSA have been granted standing to oppose disclosure, not those who have been surveilled. The entire U.S. judicial system is built around the principle of an adversarial process. Judges are expected to be neutral arbiters between two or more sides to a dispute. We do not have an inquisitorial system, as is used for example in some European nations, where the judge is also the investigator. The FISA court is presently composed of 11 federal district court judges who also preside over normal cases in their individual districts. Steeped in the adversarial system and th
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: Germany, Brazil Turn to U.N. to Restrain American Spies | Grumpy Opinions - 0 views

grumpyelder.com/...u-n-to-restrain-american-spies

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback U.N. Brazil Germany

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Brazil and Germany today joined forces to press for the adoption of a U.N. General Resolution that promotes the right of privacy on the internet, marking the first major international effort to restrain the National Security Agency’s intrusions into the online communications of foreigners, according to diplomatic sources familiar with the push. The effort follows a German claim that the American spy agency may have tapped the private telephone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and dozens of other world leaders. It also comes about one month after Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff denounced NSA espionage against her country as “a breach of international law” in a General Assembly speech and proposed that the U.N. establish legal guidelines to prevent “cyberspace from being used as a weapon of war.” Brazilian and German diplomats met in New York today with a small group of Latin American and European governments to consider a draft resolution that calls for expanding privacy rights contained in the International Covenant Civil and Political Rights to the online world.
Paul Merrell

General Data Protection Regulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...ral_Data_Protection_Regulation

digital-privacy EU European Commission E.U. law law

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The European Commission plans to unify data protection within the European Union (EU) with a single law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The current EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC does not consider important aspects like globalization and technological developments like social networks and cloud computing sufficiently and new guidelines for data protection and privacy were required. Therefore a proposal for the regulation has been released on 25 January 2012. The adoption is aimed for in 2014 and the regulation is planned to take effect in 2016 after a transition period of 2 years.
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