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New revelations  in Venezuela have linked U.S. private security firm Blackwater, now known as Academi, to the aircraft that was to be used as part of Thursday's thwarted "Blue Coup" attempt. The four-stage plan included economic war, an international media offensive against the Venezuelan government, political destabilization fomenting ungovernability, and finally the use of a Super Tucano aircraft to strike "tactical targets" in the capital, such as the Presidential Palace, teleSur, and military intelligence The coup was planned for the one-year anniversary of violent opposition protests known as the Guarimba and was to come one day after a public statement by leading opposition leaders calling for a "transition". 

According to U.S. aviation records, the EMB-314B1 or "Super Tucano" aircraft in question was acquired  from Brazilian manufacturer Embraer by the firm Blackwater Worldwide in 2008 allegedly for the purpose of pilot training. Registered under the serial number N314TG, the aircraft is, moreover, the only one of its kind sold by the Brazilian firm to a private company.  The Super Tucano is a light, highly agile Brazilian aircraft designed principally for pilot training and counterinsurgency operations. The aircraft has an operational range that extends from the U.S. to any point in Colombia, and has been widely used in Colombian counterinsurgency operations, including in the 2008 assassination of FARC second-in-command Raul Reyes in violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty.  While Venezuela does have its own fleet of 12 Super Tucanos, all aircraft are currently grounded and undergoing major repairs, stated President Nicolas Maduro, whilst offering further evidence regarding the foreign origin of the aircraft. 

Blackwater has a checkered human rights record. Several of its contractors have been indicted in U.S. courts for their role in the 2007 massacre of Iraqi civilians, and Jeremy Scahill, national security correspondent for the Nation, has documented the firm's role in the CIA's global assassination program.

It took a jury just over 11 hours to find Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty of 30 counts in connection with the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Federal prosecutors argued Tsarnaev, 21, deliberately “shredded the bodies” of his victims and waged violent jihad to “punish Americans.”Assistant US Attorney Aloke Chakravarty portrayed Tsarnaev as a heartless terrorist who, along with his  brother Tamerlan, carried out the April 2013 attacks that killed three and injured 264 others.But while evidence of Tsarnaev’s culpability—including an admission of guilt from his own defense team—virtually guaranteed a guilty verdict, that wasn’t enough to stop prosecutors from twisting important facts to suit their own agenda.Referencing “bomb-making” paraphernalia seized from Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s apartment, Chakravarty told the court that, “there is evidence, at least in part, that the bombs were built at 410 Norfolk Street.”

What the jury didn’t know is that in May 2014, prosecutors said they had no evidence the bombs were constructed at Norfolk Street, and in October 2014, a year-and-a-half after the bombings, the FBI said it still had no idea where the bombs were built, or who actually built them.

The head of the IRS told lawmakers on Tuesday that his agency’s use of secretive phone-tracking technology was restricted to specific criminal cases, a day after new questions were raised about its surveillance powers.Before the Senate Finance Committee, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said that use of the StingRay devices, or “IMSI-catchers,”  is limited to the agency's criminal investigations division to track down money laundering, terrorism and financing of organized crime.ADVERTISEMENT“It’s only used in criminal investigations. It can only be used with a court order. It can only be used based on probable cause of criminal activity,” Koskinen told the Senate panel.“It is not used in civil matters at all,” he added. “It’s not used by other employees of the IRS.”The IRS’s previously unknown use of the technology was revealed on Monday by the Guardian. The newspaper reported that the agency spent more than $70,000 in 2012 to upgrade and train employees on the technology, which are also used by a dozen other federal agencies.The briefcase-sized StingRay device mimics cellphone towers in order to collect identifying data sent through waves emitted from people’s phones, including their location.  

New Zealand is preparing a UN Security Council resolution calling on Israel to freeze construction and home demolitions in the West Bank, as well as urging the Palestinians to desist from taking steps against Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as part of a series of confidence-building steps ahead of a hoped-for resumption of peace...

A long time 12 days ago, I wrote a post sharply criticizing the Second Circuit for deciding not to decide the Fourth Amendment question in ACLU v. Clapper, which arises from the continuation of the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records until the end of the six-month transitional period created by the USA Freedom Act (a period that expires on November 29). In that post, I called the Court of Appeals “feckless” for concluding that, in light of the program’s imminent expiration, resolution of the underlying Fourth Amendment claim would be “fruitless.” As a result, readers may well assume that I think highly of the opinion issued yesterday by DC District Judge Richard Leon, which did reach the Fourth Amendment question, and which, along lines similar to his December 2013 ruling (which the DC Circuit subsequently vacated for lack of standing), held that the program violates the Fourth Amendment, and enjoined its continuing operation as applied to two plaintiffs. As the old saying goes, “nope.” Instead, for reasons I elaborate upon below the fold, I fear that things have ended up precisely backwards — with the Second Circuit refusing to issue a ruling that could have had significant consequences, and with Judge Leon entering an injunction that will have precisely no impact (other than to waste a lot government lawyers’ and law clerks’ time) — and that could well lead future judges to stay their hand in a similar circumstance when they ought not to.

Until just last week, the U.S. government kept up the charade that its use of a stockpile of security vulnerabilities for hacking was a closely held secret.1 In fact, in response to EFF’s FOIA suit to get access to the official U.S. policy on zero days, the government redacted every single reference to “offensive” use of vulnerabilities. To add insult to injury, the government’s claim was that even admitting to offensive use would cause damage to national security. Now, in the face of EFF’s brief marshaling overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the charade is over. In response to EFF’s motion for summary judgment, the government has disclosed a new version of the Vulnerabilities Equities Process, minus many of the worst redactions. First and foremost, it now admits that the “discovery of vulnerabilities in commercial information technology may present competing ‘equities’ for the [government’s] offensive and defensive mission.” That might seem painfully obvious—a flaw or backdoor in a Juniper router is dangerous for anyone running a network, whether that network is in the U.S. or Iran. But the government’s failure to adequately weigh these “competing equities” was so severe that in 2013 a group of experts appointed by President Obama recommended that the policy favor disclosure “in almost all instances for widely used code.” [.pdf].

The newly disclosed version of the Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP) also officially confirms what everyone already knew: the use of zero days isn’t confined to the spies. Rather, the policy states that the “law enforcement community may want to use information pertaining to a vulnerability for similar offensive or defensive purposes but for the ultimate end of law enforcement.” Similarly it explains that “counterintelligence equities can be defensive, offensive, and/or law enforcement-related” and may “also have prosecutorial responsibilities.” Given that the government is currently prosecuting users for committing crimes over Tor hidden services, and that it identified these individuals using vulnerabilities called a “Network Investigative Technique”, this too doesn’t exactly come as a shocker. Just a few weeks ago, the government swore that even acknowledging the mere fact that it uses vulnerabilities offensively “could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.” That’s a standard move in FOIA cases involving classified information, even though the government unnecessarily classifies documents at an astounding rate. In this case, the government relented only after nearly a year and a half of litigation by EFF. The government would be well advised to stop relying on such weak secrecy claims—it only risks undermining its own credibility.

The new version of the VEP also reveals significantly more information about the general process the government follows when a vulnerability is identified. In a nutshell, an agency that discovers a zero day is responsible for invoking the VEP, which then provides for centralized coordination and weighing of equities among all affected agencies. Along with a declaration from an official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, this new information provides more background on the reasons why the government decided to develop an overarching zero day policy in the first place: it “recognized that not all organizations see the entire picture of vulnerabilities, and each organization may have its own equities and concerns regarding the prioritization of patches and fixes, as well as its own distinct mission obligations.” We now know the VEP was finalized in February 2010, but the government apparently failed to implement it in any substantial way, prompting the presidential review group’s recommendation to prioritize disclosure over offensive hacking. We’re glad to have forced a little more transparency on this important issue, but the government is still foolishly holding on to a few last redactions, including refusing to name which agencies participate in the VEP. That’s just not supportable, and we’ll be in court next month to argue that the names of these agencies must be disclosed. 

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that State Department officials and top aides to Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about whether they intentionally thwarted federal open records laws by using or allowing the use of a private email server throughout Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. The decision by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington came in a lawsuit over public records brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, regarding its May 2013 request for information about the employment arrangement of Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide.

Sullivan set an April 12 deadline for parties to litigate a detailed investigative plan--subject to court approval--that would reach well beyond the limited and carefully worded explanations of the use of the private server that department and Clinton officials have given. Sullivan also suggested from the bench that he might at some point order the department to subpoena Clinton and Abedin to return all emails related to Clinton’s private account, not just records their camps previously deemed work-related and returned.

In granting Judicial Watch’s request, Sullivan said that months of piecemeal revelations about Clinton and the State Department’s handling of the email controversy created “at least a ‘reasonable suspicion’ ” that public access to official government records under the federal Freedom of Information Act was undermined. Sullivan noted that there was no dispute that senior State Department officials were aware of the email set-up from time Clinton took office, citing a January 2009 email exchange including Undersecretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, Clinton chief of staff Cheryl D. Mills and Abedin about establishing a “stand-alone network” email system. Sullivan said the State Department’s inspector general last month faulted the department and Clinton’s office for overseeing processes that repeatedly allowed “inaccurate and incomplete” FOIA responses, including a May 2013 reply that found “no records” concerning email accounts Clinton used, even though dozens of senior officials had corresponded with her private account.

The Syrian Arab Army and the YPG troops of the Syrian Kurds are making good progress in the Azaz pocket. The pocket formed after the Syrian army cut through the "rebel" corridor between Aleppo city and the Turkish border. The aim now is to push all foreign proxy forces who are still in that pocket (green) back north into Turkey and to get full control of the border.

The Syrian-Russian command decided to let the YPG (yellow) have the fun of cleaning the pocket only to taunt the Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan has a serious domestic policy problems when the Kurdish forces gain control in parts of Syria that the wannabe Sultan Erdogan regarded as sacred neo-Ottoman ground. His court jester, the Prime Minister Davutoglu, announced that his country would not allow the town of Azaz to fall to Kurdish fighters. He will have to eat a flock of craws over that. The Turks are firing artillery from Turkish ground in the north onto Kurdish position in the pocket. Turkish special forces are likely near the front line to control that fire. But artillery alone can not make the difference. The Kurds have air support from the Russian airforce which Turkey no longer dares to attack. The Russians will not attack the Turkish artillery as such an attack could widen the war. The Kurdish troops will have to suffer through that barrage as they push out the Turkish and CIA paid proxies. Some reinforcement for the CIA proxies arrived from Idleb. These passed from Idleb into Turkey and from Turkey into the pocket. The destruction of these forces in the Azaz pocket will make the further fights  of the Syrian army in Idleb and elsewhere a lot easier.

Who are the professionals that are helping the YPG to take the Azaz pocket? My first thought was of course Russian Spetsnaz. But I asked around and none of my usual sources would confirm this. The sources acknowledged that the YPG in west Syria has special force support but there was some quite unexpected silence over who these forces were. It is clear to me that these are not Syrian special forces. The YPG does not want to be seen as a adjunct to the Syrian government. No one would confirm to me that these are Russian forces even as that would be of no great surprise to anyone. This leads me to speculate that some U.S. special forces are directing the YPG in the Azaz pocket. This in coordination with the Syrian army and the Russians. Is that a crazy thought? Consider: The Syrian YPG Kurds are supported by the U.S. military. They received weapons and ammunition from the U.S. military and, at least in the east, have some U.S. military special forces embedded with them. These Pentagon supported YPG troops currently fight foreign proxy forces in the Azaz pocket which are supported, equipped and paid by the CIA, the Saudis, the Turks and other Arab U.S. "allies". The CIA is running the show. The Turkish NATO member is shelling the Pentagon supported YPG to protect the CIA supported "moderate rebels". The current CIA director was once the CIA Chief of Station in Riyadh and has intimate connection to the Saudi rulers (and their pockets?). It was the military's Defense Intelligence Agency that warned in 2012 of the emergence of a "Salafist Principality" - the Islamic State - in Syria and Iraq. It warned against continuing the CIA support for the "rebels". It was the Pentagon that sabotaged the White House intent to create another "moderate rebel" force to attack the Islamic State:

(Reuters) - Apple Inc <AAPL.O> on Thursday struck back in court against a U.S. government request to unlock an encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, arguing such a move would violate its free speech rights and require the company to devote significant resources to comply.

Read the brief:

Anyone who submits a mandatory declassification review request to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking release of classified records “shall be responsible for paying all fees” resulting from the request, according to a new ODNI regulation. And those fees are considerable. A search for a requested document costs from $20-$72 per hour. Document review runs $40-$72 per hour. And photocopying costs fifty cents per page, the new ODNI regulation said. It was published in the Federal Register on Friday, with a request for public comments. The mandatory declassification review (MDR) process was established by executive order 13526 to permit requests for declassification of information that no longer meets the standards for national security classification. The executive order’s implementing directive states that fees may be charged for responding to MDR requests for classified records. But the proposed ODNI fees seem extravagant on their face. No commercial enterprise charges anything close to fifty cents to photocopy a single page. Neither do most of ODNI’s peer agencies.

The Department of Defense permits (though it does not require) DoD agencies to charge fees for search, review and reproduction (pursuant to DoD Manual 5230.30-M). But the DoD schedule of fees is well below the proposed ODNI rate. Instead of fifty cents per page, DoD charges thirteen cents. Instead of up to $72 per hour for search and review, DoD charges no more than $52.60 per hour. ODNI wants $10 for a CD, but DoD asks only $1.25. (See DoD 7000.14-R, Volume 11A, Chapter 4, Appendix 2, Schedule of Fees and Rates, at page 4-13). And while ODNI would make requesters liable for “all fees,” DoD says that “Fees will not be charged if the total amount to process your request is $30.00 or less.” Similarly, at the Department of State, “Records shall be duplicated at a rate of $.15 per page.” In a 2011 rule, the Central Intelligence Agency did mandate a fifty cent per page photocopy fee for MDR requests, as well as a $15 minimum charge. But the CIA policy was suspended in response to public criticism and a legal challenge from the non-profit National Security Counselors. That challenge is still pending.

“There is nothing unusual about these [search and review] fees,” CIA told a court in 2014 in response to the legal challenge. “And the reproduction costs are similar to those employed by other agencies.” CIA noted that a National Archives regulation sets reproduction costs as high as 75 cents per page. (Last year it reached 80 cents, although a self-service copier is sometimes available for 25 cents per page.) Furthermore, CIA said in 2014, “neither set of costs reimburses the CIA for the full cost of providing the declassification review service to the requester.”

A group of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans are seeking $34.5 billion dollars in damages from wealthy individuals and companies they accuse of financing and profiting from Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and other abuses of their rights. The plaintiffs include Palestinians who have lost family members in Israeli attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their lawsuit is the latest effort to expose and curb the role of organizations that operate as tax-exempt US charities in fueling violence and settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land. It names as defendants US tycoons Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Irving Moskowitz and Oracle founder Lawrence Ellison.

Adelson is renowned for using his huge casino fortune to advance his pro-Israel political agenda and is a major financial backer of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Republican Party. Saban has donated millions of dollars to US Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Moskowitz is one of the main financiers of settler efforts to force Palestinians out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem. The lawsuit also names Israeli diamond magnate and settlement builder Lev Leviev and Christians United for Israel founder, the US Evangelical pastor John Hagee. Twelve US-based charities and a number of Israeli and US corporations are also named as defendants. The charities include Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, The Hebron Fund and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities.

The plaintiffs, represented by the law firm Martin McMahon and Associates, allege that the defendants are directly responsible for violence and for the expansion of settlements. The lawsuit, filed in a Washington, DC, federal court on Monday, alleges a wide range of crimes under US and international law, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, conspiracy, money laundering, racketeering, perjury and pillage. It alleges that charitable donations are sent to the Israeli army, a violation of US laws against funding a foreign military. Last December, some of the same plaintiffs using the same law firm sued the US Treasury for allowing billions of dollars of tax-exempt donations to flow to Israeli settlements. This lawsuit targets those who are supplying the money. Several are powerful billionaires who the lawsuit contends have defrauded the US tax authorities by funnelling huge sums of money meant for illegal purposes through tax-exempt organizations. According to the lawsuit, approximately $1 billion is sent through these organizations each year, with $104 million going to the Israeli army in 2014.

WHENEVER A TERRORIST ATTACK OCCURS, it never takes long for politicians to begin calling for more surveillance powers. The horrendous attacks in Paris last week, which left more than 120 people dead, are no exception to this rule. In recent days, officials in the United Kingdom and the United States have been among those arguing that more surveillance of Internet communications is necessary to prevent further atrocities. The case for expanded surveillance of communications, however, is complicated by an analysis of recent terrorist attacks. The Intercept has reviewed 10 high-profile jihadi attacks carried out in Western countries between 2013 and 2015 (see below), and in each case some or all of the perpetrators were already known to the authorities before they executed their plot. In other words, most of the terrorists involved were not ghost operatives who sprang from nowhere to commit their crimes; they were already viewed as a potential threat, yet were not subjected to sufficient scrutiny by authorities under existing counterterrorism powers. Some of those involved in last week’s Paris massacre, for instance, were already known to authorities; at least three of the men appear to have been flagged at different times as having been radicalized, but warning signs were ignored.

In the aftermath of a terrorist atrocity, government officials often seem to talk about surveillance as if it were some sort of panacea, a silver bullet. But what they always fail to explain is how, even with mass surveillance systems already in place in countries like France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, attacks still happen. In reality, it is only possible to watch some of the people some of the time, not all of the people all of the time. Even if you had every single person in the world under constant electronic surveillance, you would still need a human being to analyze the data and assess any threats in a timely fashion. And human resources are limited and fallible.

As vice president, Dick Cheney was a prime architect of the worldwide torture regime implemented by the U.S. government (which extended far beyond waterboarding), as well as the invasion and destruction of Iraq, which caused the deaths of at least 500,000 people and more likely over a million. As such, he is one of the planet’s most notorious war criminals. President Obama made the decision in early 2009 to block the Justice Department from criminally investigating and prosecuting Cheney and his fellow torturers, as well as to protect them from foreign investigations and even civil liability sought by torture victims. Obama did that notwithstanding a campaign decree that even top Bush officials are subject to the rule of law and, more importantly, notwithstanding a treaty signed in 1984 by Ronald Reagan requiring that all signatory states criminally prosecute their own torturers. Obama’s immunizing Bush-era torturers converted torture from a global taboo and decades-old crime into a reasonable, debatable policy question, which is why so many GOP candidates are now openly suggesting its use.

But now, the Obama administration has moved from legally protecting Bush-era war criminals to honoring and gushing over them in public. Yesterday, the House of Representatives unveiled a marble bust of former Vice President Cheney, which — until a person of conscience vandalizes or destroys it — will reside in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol. At the unveiling ceremony, Cheney was, in the playful words of NPR, “lightly roasted” — as though he’s some sort of grumpy though beloved avuncular stand-up comic. Along with George W. Bush, one of the speakers in attendance was Vice President Joe Biden, who spoke movingly of Cheney’s kind and generous soul

Yesterday, the U.S. government unambiguously signaled to the world that not only does it regard itself as entirely exempt from the laws of wars, the principal Nuremberg prohibition against aggressive invasions, and global prohibitions on torture (something that has been self-evident for many years), but believes that the official perpetrators should be honored and memorialized provided they engage in these crimes on behalf of the U.S. government. That’s a message that most of the U.S. media and thus large parts of the American population will not hear, but much of the world will hear it quite loudly and clearly. How could they not?

Turkey has told the Reuters news agency that Russia has stopped work on its nuclear power plants.  In reality, the Turks are exaggerating.  The Russians haven’t really stopped—they have really only slowed down. It is another piece in the intensifying conflict that has enveloped Russia and Turkey over the downing of a Russian AU-24 slow moving bomber by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet. The nuclear deal began in 2013. The Turks promised to pay $20 billion and the Russian nuclear company Rosatom promised to build four 1,200 megawatt nuclear electrical power plants in Turkey. The first plant was scheduled to be opened in 2019, but from the very outset things have not run on schedule.  One reason is that the project confronted international regulatory problems.

The Russians have done this before—only with Iran.  They slowed down on the original proposal, Iran took the Russians to the World Court, and sued them. They wanted their nuclear plants.

Now, because of their experience with Iran, Russia realizes that stopping entirely would prove costly. Huge disincentives and penalties are built into the contract.  And Turkey has already started shopping around for someone else to finish the nuclear job. Good luck. Here is the crux of the problem and why Turkey can never win in this conflict with Russia. Turkey is almost totally dependent on imported energy. They have been counting on these nuclear plants and should be conducting back-door diplomatic negotiations to resurrect the deal , but they do not appear to be doing that. Tensions between the Turks and Russians do not seem to be dissipating. So much so that Russia has also stopped importing Turkish fruits and vegetables. The reason they give is poor Turkish sanitation and hygiene, but the real reason is because the jet shot down the bomber. This isn’t  just a case of no more Turkish pistachio nuts or dates. Turkish fruits and vegetables account for 20 percentof Russia’s total fruit and vegetable consumption. This is a huge loss for the Turkish economy.  A $4 billion annual loss in fruit and vegetable revenue. Russia has said they will easily make up the loss by importing more from Iran and Israel.

A treason investigation has been launched against a Turkish MP who alleged in an exclusive interview with RT that Islamic State jihadists delivered deadly sarin gas to Syria through Turkey. Ankara’s Chief Prosecutor's Office opened the case against Istanbul MP Eren Erdem of Republican People's Party (CHP) after his interview about sarin was aired on RT on Monday. "Chemical weapon materials were brought to Turkey and put together in ISIS camps in Syria, which was known as the Iraqi Al-Qaeda at that time." 

Erdem noted that the chemicals used for the production of weapons did not originate from Turkey. “All basic materials are purchased from Europe. Western institutions should question themselves about these relations. Western sources know very well who carried out the sarin gas attack in Syria,” Erdem told RT.

As Turkish media reported Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office is planning to send a summary of proceedings to the Ministry of Justice on Thursday. Following that, the summary may be forwarded to the Turkish parliament, which could vote to strip Erdem of his parliamentary immunity.Once Turkish mass-media reported the criminal investigation had been opened against Erdem, the hashtags #ErenErdemYalnızDeğildir - #ErenErdemYouAreNotAlone began to circulate in Turkish social networks.On Tuesday, MP Erdem issued a written statement in his defense, saying he had become the target of a smear campaign because of his statements made in parliament.He claimed he had received death threats over social media following the publication of his interview with RT, revealing the Turkish paramilitary organization Ottoman Hearths had published his home address on Twitter to enable an attack on his house.“I am being targeted with death threats because I am patriotically opposed to something that tramples on my country's prestige,” said the MP.As for his accusations about Turkish businessmen being involved in supplying Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) with the poisonous gas sarin and other reactants needed for chemical warfare, Erdem maintained this statement was made based on the results of a Turkish court investigation in 2013.Erdem revealed that five Turkish citizens had been arrested by the Adana Chief Prosecutor's Office as a result of an investigation coded 2013/139. A Syrian national was prosecuted in Turkey for procuring chemical agents for Islamist groups in Syria. At the same time, Erdem noted all the persons arrested within the framework of the 2013/139 investigation were released a week later.

Members of the US Navy Seals brutally beat detainees in Afghanistan but escaped punishment after the abuse was reported, according to reports. US soldiers told their superiors they witnessed three Seals dropping heavy stones on detainees chests, kicking and stepping on their heads, firing weapons during an interrogation, and employing a variation of waterboarding. The Navy Seals are an elite special operations force perhaps best known for carrying out the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

When the men were released later that afternoon they were bloodied and hobbling. One, Muhammad Hashem, 24, was unable to walk. He died later the same day. Specialist Walker and three fellow soldiers decided to report the incident. “It just comes down to what’s wrong and what’s right,” he told the New York Times. “You can’t squint hard enough to make this gray.” A Navy lawyer recommended that the Seals be charged with assault, and potentially face a court martial. Instead, the charges were processed in a closed disciplinary process more commonly used for minor infractions, and the men were moved to different units but faced no further punishment.

The beatings by the Seals and members of an Afghan militia were so severe that one man died hours later and another has lasting injuries from the 2012 incident. The interrogations followed an explosion at an Afghan Local Police (ALP) checkpoint in the village of Kalach which killed a member of the ALP militia. The militiamen, who were trained by the Seals, rounded up approximately six suspects and brought them to a US base, beating them with rifles and antennae along the way. What happened next shocked Specialist David Walker, an Army medic, and other witnesses. Instead of ending the beatings and reprimanding the ALP members, they say the three Seals joined in and even intensified the abuse.

HE INTERCEPT HAS OBTAINED a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States. The catalogue includes details on the Stingray, a well-known brand of surveillance gear, as well as Boeing “dirt boxes” and dozens of more obscure devices that can be mounted on vehicles, drones, and piloted aircraft. Some are designed to be used at static locations, while others can be discreetly carried by an individual. They have names like Cyberhawk, Yellowstone, Blackfin, Maximus, Cyclone, and Spartacus. Within the catalogue, the NSA is listed as the vendor of one device, while another was developed for use by the CIA, and another was developed for a special forces requirement. Nearly a third of the entries focus on equipment that seems to have never been described in public before.

The Intercept obtained the catalogue from a source within the intelligence community concerned about the militarization of domestic law enforcement. (The original is here.) A few of the devices can house a “target list” of as many as 10,000 unique phone identifiers. Most can be used to geolocate people, but the documents indicate that some have more advanced capabilities, like eavesdropping on calls and spying on SMS messages. Two systems, apparently designed for use on captured phones, are touted as having the ability to extract media files, address books, and notes, and one can retrieve deleted text messages. Above all, the catalogue represents a trove of details on surveillance devices developed for military and intelligence purposes but increasingly used by law enforcement agencies to spy on people and convict them of crimes. The mass shooting earlier this month in San Bernardino, California, which President Barack Obama has called “an act of terrorism,” prompted calls for state and local police forces to beef up their counterterrorism capabilities, a process that has historically involved adapting military technologies to civilian use. Meanwhile, civil liberties advocates and others are increasingly alarmed about how cellphone surveillance devices are used domestically and have called for a more open and informed debate about the trade-off between security and privacy — despite a virtual blackout by the federal government on any information about the specific capabilities of the gear.

ANY OF THE DEVICES in the catalogue, including the Stingrays and dirt boxes, are cell-site simulators, which operate by mimicking the towers of major telecom companies like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When someone’s phone connects to the spoofed network, it transmits a unique identification code and, through the characteristics of its radio signals when they reach the receiver, information about the phone’s location. There are also indications that cell-site simulators may be able to monitor calls and text messages. In the catalogue, each device is listed with guidelines about how its use must be approved; the answer is usually via the “Ground Force Commander” or under one of two titles in the U.S. code governing military and intelligence operations, including covert action.

While Puerto Rican leaders look for ways to address the island’s $72 billion debt, some say the solution may be simple: Don’t pay it. A small group of Puerto Rican lawmakers is pushing the idea that significant portions of Puerto Rico’s debt may in fact be unconstitutional. Manuel Natal, one of the legislators behind the effort, claims that up to 75 percent of what the island owes could be voided in court. “If debt was issued in violation of the constitution that debt is illegal and subsequently should not be paid,” said Natal. “It should be put aside, because in legal terms, it’s like it never happened.” This strategy, called “debt nullification,” has been used elsewhere in the U.S. to address fiscal crises. But in Puerto Rico's case, it all but promises a legal showdown with Wall Street hedge funds that own a significant portion of the island’s debt — investors that the government is now trying to bargain with. While Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro García Padilla has acknowledged that debt found to be unconstitutional should not be repaid, his administration has tried nearly every other option so far.

After the White House quickly dismissed talk of a federal bailout, Puerto Rico’s government, and its congressional representative Luis Pierlusi, have pushed a bill to allow the U.S. territory access to bankruptcy proceedings. That bill has stalled in the Congress. Meanwhile, talks with a group of hedge funds were suspended. The gridlock over Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis has led many to wish the debt would simply disappear. Now, that might actually be possible.

Amid weeks of violence in Jerusalem, Israeli police and special forces raided an East Jerusalem hospital for a third day in a row on Thursday and fired tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets into the medical compound, injuring three patients. Israeli police first burst into Makassed hospital in the Mount of Olives neighborhood on Tuesday with a court order to confiscate the medical records of a 16-year old patient who was treated on October 13th for injuries from a gunshot wound. “They were not trying to confirm that he was shot—because they have him [the patient] in custody and so they know he was shot and they can confirm the bullet wound, but they wanted to see who was with him, who came in with him to the hospital,” said Dr. Rafiq Hussein, the director of Makassed hospital, who questioned why police undertook a militarized operation inside of his facility. “They were after not a dangerous person, or a wanted person, only a file,” he noted.

Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio del Pino indicated Saturday that the country’s state oil company PDVSA could open a lawsuit in US courts over new revelations of National Security Agency (NSA) spying on top company executives and internal communications.

The announcement comes after leaked documents released to TeleSUR last Wednesday by ex-NSA analyst Edward Snowden exposed that US intelligence officials posing as diplomats had hacked PDVSA’s internal network, monitoring the communications of at least 900 employees since 2010, including former company president Rafael Ramirez. “This is unacceptable and we are going to file a claim and seek redress for damages under US law,” stated Del Pino, who is also the current president of PDVSA. “We are evaluating legal actions, not moral ones. Delving into the personal information of our workers, our strategies, our plans, [and] our operations is a violation, that is unacceptable,” the oil minister added, speaking from the Third Summit of Gas-Exporting Nations in Tehran.

The comments follow an announcement by President Maduro last week calling for a meeting with the US charge d’affaires in Caracas to review bilateral ties in the wake of the scandal. Speaking on Thursday, US State Department spokesperson John Kirby did not deny the evidence contained in the leaked documents, though he did reject claims that US spy agencies engage in industrial espionage on behalf of US corporations.