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How The FBI Actually Does Much Of The NSA's Spying, But Is Keeping That Quiet | Techdirt - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...ng-is-keeping-that-quiet.shtml surveillance state FBI NSA ACLU
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • For all the focus on the NSA of late, a few folks have been trying to remind everyone that the FBI is heavily involved in all of this and, in many ways, has an equally bad if not worse record in abusing the rights of Americans. Many of the programs discussed were to retrieve information by the FBI or the NSA, and it turns out that the FBI often does much of the dirty work for the NSA, including interfacing with various companies to get access to data. We'd mentioned recently how the FBI was pushing tech companies to install "port readers" at both telco and tech companies (though, many tech firms were resisting), and also that the FBI had been ramping up their use of malware. Shane Harris, over at Foreign Policy has a nice profile on the FBI's Data Intercept Technology Unit, or DITU, who handles most of this work. It repeats the story of the port readers, but adds how the DITU is often the unit that works with tech companies and then passes info along to the NSA -- so some companies don't even realize they're dealing with the NSA, believing it's just via the FBI (not that this would make things any better). It also notes that the DITU tends to be made up of a lot of ex-telco guys who know very specifically how the telco networks work, something that at least some people at the telcos may be uncomfortable with the government knowing (though, again, the telcos seem much more willing to open up to the government than the tech companies).
  • It's an interesting profile all around, but at the end it gets even more interesting, as an ex-law enforcement source that Harris talks to highlights that without investigating what the DITU is up to, Congress' exploration of what's going on will be very incomplete. The former law enforcement official said Holder and Mueller should have offered testimony and explained how the FBI works with the NSA. He was concerned by reports that the NSA had not been adhering to its own minimization procedures, which the Justice Department and the FBI review and vouch for when submitting requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. "Where they hadn't done what was represented to the court, that's unforgivable. That's where I got sick to my stomach," the former law enforcement official said. "The government's position is, we go to the court, apply the law -- it's all approved. That makes for a good story until you find out what was approved wasn't actually what was done." That makes it sound like even more bad behavior is going to be revealed eventually...
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Nov 13
     
    Yes, indeedy. 
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Ed Markey letters from cellphone companies: How often AT&T, T-mobile give the governmen... - 0 views

www.slate.com/..._often_at_t_t_mobile_give.html surveillance state Cell-phone-tracking law-enforcement
shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Cellphones are the spies in our pockets, gathering information about whom we befriend, what we say, where we go, and what we read. That’s why Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., recently asked the nation’s major cellphone companies to disclose how frequently they receive requests from law enforcement for customer call records—including the content of communications, numbers dialed, websites visited, and location data. Sometimes police have a warrant, sometimes they don’t. Seven companies provided information in response to the inqury. The letters Markey received, which were covered today in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and New York Times, show that the quantity of requests for these records is staggering. T-Mobile and AT&T together received nearly 600,000 requests for customer information in 2012. AT&T has to employ more than 100 full-time workers to process them. And police demand for our call records is growing rapidly, with requests to Verizon doubling in the last five years.
  • he companies keep records of where you have traveled in the past and can track you in real time—so law enforcement can do it, too. In some ways having a police officer track you in real time electronically is even worse, because you never know when it’s happening. Historical records can be even more sensitive than real-time tracking, stretching back for months or even years, and reveal your daily routine and every deviation from it.
  • Unfortunately, according to the companies’ letters, some of them appear to be handing over the content of our digital communications without a warrant. AT&T discloses stored texts or voicemails that are older than 180 days old with a subpoena—no court supervision or probable cause required. In one bright spot, T-Mobile requires a warrant for texts and voicemails. The letters also show that in its search for evidence about a handful of guilty people, law enforcement often obtains the data of hundreds or thousands of innocent people. For example, through a technique known as “tower dumps,” law enforcement agents can see all of the cellphones using a particular tower in a given time range. There were approximately 9,000 tower dumps reported in 2012 (with not all companies reporting). What happens to that data? Could it be used for future investigations? No one really knows, because there are no clear policies in place, and the people whose data is turned over are never notified.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Dec 13
     
    Note that this is about requests from *law enforcement," not from the federal spy agencies. 
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Testosterone Pit - Home - The Other Reason Why IBM Throws A Billion At Linux ... - 0 views

www.testosteronepit.com/...billion-at-linux-with-nsa.html surveillance state NSA Linux Linux-backdoor Solaris FreeBSD Darwin
shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • IBM announced today that it would throw another billion at Linux, the open-source operating system, to run its Power System servers. The first time it had thrown a billion at Linux was in 2001, when Linux was a crazy, untested, even ludicrous proposition for the corporate world. So the moolah back then didn’t go to Linux itself, which was free, but to related technologies across hardware, software, and service, including things like sales and advertising – and into IBM’s partnership with Red Hat which was developing its enterprise operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “It helped start a flurry of innovation that has never slowed,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. IBM claims that the investment would “help clients capitalize on big data and cloud computing with modern systems built to handle the new wave of applications coming to the data center in the post-PC era.” Some of the moolah will be plowed into the Power Systems Linux Center in Montpellier, France, which opened today. IBM’s first Power Systems Linux Center opened in Beijing in May. IBM may be trying to make hay of the ongoing revelations that have shown that the NSA and other intelligence organizations in the US and elsewhere have roped in American tech companies of all stripes with huge contracts to perfect a seamless spy network. They even include physical aspects of surveillance, such as license plate scanners and cameras, which are everywhere [read.... Surveillance Society: If You Drive, You Get Tracked].
  • Then another boon for IBM. Experts at the German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BIS) determined that Windows 8 is dangerous for data security. It allows Microsoft to control the computer remotely through a “special surveillance chip,” the wonderfully named Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and a backdoor in the software – with keys likely accessible to the NSA and possibly other third parties, such as the Chinese. Risks: “Loss of control over the operating system and the hardware” [read.... LEAKED: German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 – Links The NSA.
  • It would be an enormous competitive advantage for an IBM salesperson to walk into a government or corporate IT department and sell Big Data servers that don’t run on Windows, but on Linux. With the Windows 8 debacle now in public view, IBM salespeople don’t even have to mention it. In the hope of stemming the pernicious revenue decline their employer has been suffering from, they can politely and professionally hype the security benefits of IBM’s systems and mention in passing the comforting fact that some of it would be developed in the Power Systems Linux Centers in Montpellier and Beijing. Alas, Linux too is tarnished. The backdoors are there, though the code can be inspected, unlike Windows code. And then there is Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), which was integrated into the Linux kernel in 2003. It provides a mechanism for supporting “access control” (a backdoor) and “security policies.” Who developed SELinux? Um, the NSA – which helpfully discloses some details on its own website (emphasis mine): The results of several previous research projects in this area have yielded a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture called Flask. A reference implementation of this architecture was first integrated into a security-enhanced Linux® prototype system in order to demonstrate the value of flexible mandatory access controls and how such controls could be added to an operating system. The architecture has been subsequently mainstreamed into Linux and ported to several other systems, including the Solaris™ operating system, the FreeBSD® operating system, and the Darwin kernel, spawning a wide range of related work.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Among a slew of American companies who contributed to the NSA’s “mainstreaming” efforts: Red Hat. And IBM? Like just about all of our American tech heroes, it looks at the NSA and other agencies in the Intelligence Community as “the Customer” with deep pockets, ever increasing budgets, and a thirst for technology and data. Which brings us back to Windows 8 and TPM. A decade ago, a group was established to develop and promote Trusted Computing that governs how operating systems and the “special surveillance chip” TPM work together. And it too has been cooperating with the NSA. The founding members of this Trusted Computing Group, as it’s called facetiously: AMD, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, and Wave Systems. Oh, I almost forgot ... and IBM. And so IBM might not escape, despite its protestations and slick sales presentations, the suspicion by foreign companies and governments alike that its Linux servers too have been compromised – like the cloud products of other American tech companies. And now, they’re going to pay a steep price for their cooperation with the NSA. Read...  NSA Pricked The “Cloud” Bubble For US Tech Companies
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Study: Surveillance will cost US tech sector more than $35B by 2016 | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...s-tech-sector-over-35b-by-2016 surveillance state NSA-blowback U.S.-tech-cos
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • A new study says that the U.S. tech industry is likely to lose more than $35 billion from foreign customers by 2016 because of concerns over government surveillance.“In short, foreign customers are shunning U.S. companies,” the authors of a new study from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation write.ADVERTISEMENT“The U.S. government’s failure to reform many of the NSA’s surveillance programs has damaged the competitiveness of the U.S. tech sector and cost it a portion of the global market share,” they said.The think tank’s report found that the cost to the tech sector associated with ongoing concerns over surveillance programs run out of the U.S. was likely to “far exceed” $35 billion by 2016, an earlier estimate set by the group.
  • The group said that lawmakers must enact additional reforms to surveillance policy if they wish to help the tech sector regain the trust of foreign customers. That includes opposing “backdoors,” which allow law enforcement to access otherwise encrypted data, and signing off on trade agreements, including the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, that “ban digital protectionism.”The study’s authors found that the revelations about broad U.S. surveillance programs acted as a justification for foreign policymakers to enact protectionist policies aimed at aiding their own domestic technology sectors.Foreign companies have also used the information about U.S. surveillance programs to their advantage.“Some European companies have begun to highlight where their digital services are hosted as an alternative to U.S. companies,” the authors write.
  • American companies, they found, have lost contracts to foreign competitors over fears about mass surveillance.Earlier this month, President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, a bill that reformed the three Patriot Act provisions that authorized the bulk, warrantless collection of Americans’ phone records. The bill was widely supported by technology companies, including giants like Apple and Google.
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BP Settlement in Gulf Oil Spill Is Raised to $20.8 Billion - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...is-raised-to-20-8-billion.html environment BP litigation settlement
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department on Monday announced a final settlement with the oil giant BP of $20.8 billion for its role in the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, raising the total from the initial $18.7 billion settlement announced in July.At either amount, it is the largest environmental settlement — and the largest civil settlement with any single entity — in the nation’s history.The United States attorney general, Loretta Lynch, called the filing of the final settlement “a major step forward in our effort to deliver justice to the gulf region in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy — the largest environmental disaster our nation has ever endured.”Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, estimated that the final settlement represented a payment of $1,725 for each barrel of oil spilled in the disaster. The maximum amount that a judge could have assessed in the case was $4,300 a barrel.
  • The settlement resolves a 2010 lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against BP. It includes civil claims under the Clean Water Act, for which BP has agreed to pay a $5.5 billion penalty, the largest civil penalty in the history of environmental law. Also, it includes natural resources damages claims under the Oil Pollution Act, for which BP has agreed to pay $7.1 billion, on top of the $1 billion it previously committed to pay for early restoration work. Continue reading the main story Related in Opinion Editorial: BP Deal Will Lead to a Cleaner GulfJULY 8, 2015 In addition, the settlement includes economic damages claims, for which BP has agreed to pay $4.9 billion to the five gulf states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — and up to $1 billion to local governments. Louisiana, the hardest hit of the states, will receive $5 billion of the $8.8 billion allocated for restoration.Ms. Lynch said the increase in the total settlement represented a “refining of the numbers” over the initial settlement. “Over time, we refine numbers as the settlement is finalized,” she said.
  • Geoff Morrell, BP senior vice president for United States communications, said in a statement that the revised overall figure did not change the settlement announced in July, but included amounts previously spent or disclosed by the company. The settlement, he said, “resolves the largest litigation liabilities remaining from the tragic accident,” and provides the company “certainty with respect to its financial obligations.”Under the draft restoration plan, $8.8 billion would be allocated to restore the gulf ecosystem.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • A panel responsible for assessing the damages to the gulf ecosystems found effects on the region’s wildlife, including fish, oysters, plankton, birds and sea mammals; habitat, including marshes and beaches; and recreational activities.The proposed $8.8 billion in restoration would be invested across the five gulf states over 15 years, in a range of projects intended to restore those resources.“This restoration plan ensures that the funds will be distributed in ways that make sense,” Ms. McCarthy said.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Oct 15
     
    Let's see. $20.8 billion total settlement. $8.8 billion going to environmental restoration. The Feds pocket $12 billion. And it's all pennies on the dollar in terms of ongoing damage.  The Feds, knowing that they can profit from environmental havoc committed by corporations, only paused deep ocean drilling permits for a few months, hoping for more damage to be caused by other companies.  The real scandal was and is that BP had a long and extremely well-documented history of causing environmental disasters in their pursuit of oil profits. Were there truly any environmental justice, the result would have been corporate capital punishment and virtually all of its executives in prison for the remainder of their lives, preferably at hard labor cleaning up the mess they created. But throw enough zeros after the settlement number and the human beings whose penny-pinching on safety caused the disaster walk free, free to do it all over again. They must have joined the same Too Big to Jail Golf Club that the banksters use.  
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US's Saudi Oil Deal from Win-Win to Mega-Loose | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...eal-from-win-win-to-mega-loose must-read banksters big oil Saudis Russia shale-oil U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Who would’ve thought it would come to this? Certainly not the Obama Administration, and their brilliant geo-political think-tank neo-conservative strategists. John Kerry’s brilliant “win-win” proposal of last September during his September 11 Jeddah meeting with ailing Saudi King Abdullah was simple: Do a rerun of the highly successful State Department-Saudi deal in 1986 when Washington persuaded the Saudis to flood the world market at a time of over-supply in order to collapse oil prices worldwide, a kind of “oil shock in reverse.” In 1986 was successful in helping to break the back of a faltering Soviet Union highly dependent on dollar oil export revenues for maintaining its grip on power. So, though it was not made public, Kerry and Abdullah agreed on September 11, 2014 that the Saudis would use their oil muscle to bring Putin’s Russia to their knees today.
  • It seemed brilliant at the time no doubt. On the following day, 12 September 2014, the US Treasury’s aptly-named Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, headed by Treasury Under-Secretary David S. Cohen, announced new sanctions against Russia’s energy giants Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftgas and Rosneft. It forbid US oil companies to participate with the Russian companies in joint ventures for oil or gas offshore or in the Arctic. Then, just as the ruble was rapidly falling and Russian major corporations were scrambling for dollars for their year-end settlements, a collapse of world oil prices would end Putin’s reign. That was clearly the thinking of the hollowed-out souls who pass for statesmen in Washington today. Victoria Nuland was jubilant, praising the precision new financial warfare weapon at David Cohen’s Treasury financial terrorism unit. In July, 2014 West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for US domestic oil pricing, traded at $101 a barrel. The shale oil bonanza was booming, making the US into a major oil player for the first time since the 1970’s. When WTI hit $46 at the beginning of January this year, suddenly things looked different. Washington realized they had shot themselves in the foot.
  • They realized that the over-indebted US shale oil industry was about to collapse under the falling oil price. Behind the scenes Washington and Wall Street colluded to artificially stabilize what then was an impending chain-reaction bankruptcy collapse in the US shale oil industry. As a result oil prices began a slow rise, hitting $53 in February. The Wall Street and Washington propaganda mills began talking about the end of falling oil prices. By May prices had crept up to $62 and almost everyone was convinced oil recovery was in process. How wrong they were.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Since that September 11 Kerry-Abdullah meeting (curious date to pick, given the climate of suspicion that the Bush family is covering up involvement of the Saudis in or around the events of September 11, 2001), the Saudis have a new ageing King, Absolute Monarch and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman, replacing the since deceased old ageing King, Abdullah. However, the Oil Minister remains unchanged—79-year-old Ali al-Naimi. It was al-Naimi who reportedly saw the golden opportunity in the Kerry proposal to use the chance to at the same time kill off the growing market challenge from the rising output of the unconventional USA shale oil industry. Al-Naimi has said repeatedly that he is determined to eliminate the US shale oil “disturbance” to Saudi domination of world oil markets. Not only are the Saudis unhappy with the US shale oil intrusion on their oily Kingdom. They are more than upset with the recent deal the Obama Administration made with Iran that will likely lead in several months to lifting Iran economic sanctions. In fact the Saudis are beside themselves with rage against Washington, so much so that they have openly admitted an alliance with arch foe, Israel, to combat what they see as the Iran growing dominance in the region—in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq.
  • This has all added up to an iron Saudi determination, aided by close Gulf Arab allies, to further crash oil prices until the expected wave of shale oil company bankruptcies—that was halted in January by Washington and Wall Street manipulations—finishes off the US shale oil competition. That day may come soon, but with unintended consequences for the entire global financial system at a time such consequences can ill be afforded. According to a recent report by Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, a major player in crude oil markets, OPEC oil producers have been aggressively increasing oil supply on the already glutted world market with no hint of a letup. In its report Morgan Stanley noted with visible alarm, “OPEC has added 1.5 million barrels/day to global supply in the last four months alone…the oil market is currently 800,000 barrels/day oversupplied. This suggests that the current oversupply in the oil market is fully due to OPEC’s production increase since February alone.” The Wall Street bank report adds the disconcerting note, “We anticipated that OPEC would not cut, but we didn’t foresee such a sharp increase.” In short, Washington has completely lost its strategic leverage over Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom that had been considered a Washington vassal ever since FDR’s deal to bring US oil majors in on an exclusive basis in 1945.
  • That breakdown in US-Saudi communication adds a new dimension to the recent June 18 high-level visit to St. Petersburg by Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister and son of King Salman, to meet President Vladimir Putin. The meeting was carefully prepared by both sides as the two discussed up to $10 billion of trade deals including Russian construction of peaceful nuclear power reactors in the Kingdom and supplying of advanced Russian military equipment and Saudi investment in Russia in agriculture, medicine, logistics, retail and real estate. Saudi Arabia today is the world’s largest oil producer and Russia a close second. A Saudi-Russian alliance on whatever level was hardly in the strategy book of the Washington State Department planners.…Oh shit! Now that OPEC oil glut the Saudis have created has cracked the shaky US effort to push oil prices back up. The price fall is being further fueled by fears that the Iran deal will add even more to the glut, and that the world’s second largest oil importer, China, may cut back imports or at least not increase them as their economy slows down. The oil market time bomb detonated in the last week of June. The US price of WTI oil went from $60 a barrel then, a level at which at least many shale oil producers can stay afloat a bit longer, to $49 on July 29, a drop of more than 18% in four weeks, tendency down. Morgan Stanley sounded loud alarm bells, stating that if the trend of recent weeks continues, “this downturn would be more severe than that in 1986. As there was no sharp downturn in the 15 years before that, the current downturn could be the worst of the last 45+ years. If this were to be the case, there would be nothing in our experience that would be a guide to the next phases of this cycle…In fact, there may be nothing in analyzable history.”
  • October is the next key point for bank decisions to roll-over US shale company loans or to keep extending credit on the (until now) hope that prices will slowly recover. If as strongly hinted, the Federal Reserve hikes US interest rates in September for the first time in the eight years since the global financial crisis erupted in the US real estate market in 2007, the highly-indebted US shale oil producers face disaster of a new scale. Until the past few weeks the volume of US shale oil production has remained at the maximum as shale producers desperately try to maximize cash flow, ironically, laying the seeds of the oil glut globally that will be their demise. The reason US shale oil companies have been able to continue in business since last November and not declare bankruptcy is the ongoing Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy that leads banks and other investors to look for higher interest rates in the so-called “High Yield” bond market. Back in the 1980’s when they were first created by Michael Millken and his fraudsters at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Wall Street appropriately called them “junk bonds” because when times got bad, like now for Shale companies, they turned into junk. A recent UBS bank report states, “the overall High-Yield market has doubled in size; sectors that witnessed more buoyant issuance in recent years, like energy and metals mining, have seen debt outstanding triple or quadruple.”
  • Assuming that the most recent downturn in WTI oil prices continues week after week into October, there well could be a panic run to sell billions of dollars of those High-Yield, high-risk junk bonds. As one investment analyst notes, “when the retail crowd finally does head for the exits en masse, fund managers will be forced to come face to face with illiquid secondary corporate credit markets where a lack of market depth…has the potential to spark a fire sale.” The problem is that this time, unlike in 2008, the Federal Reserve has no room to act. Interest rates are already near zero and the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of bank bad debt to prevent a chain-reaction US bank panic. One option that is not being discussed at all in Washington would be for Congress to repeal the disastrous 1913 Federal Reserve Act that gave control of our nation’s money to a gang of private bankers, and to create a public National Bank, owned completely by the United States Government, that could issue credit and sell Federal debt without the intermediaries of corrupt Wall Street bankers as the Constitution intended. At the same time they could completely nationalize the six or seven “Too Big To Fail” banks behind the entire financial mess that is destroying the foundations of the United States and by extension of the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, of most of the world.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15
     
    I give a lot of credibility to this article's author when it comes to matters involving the oil market. Remember when reading that the only thing propping up the U.S. dollar is the Saudi (later extended to all OPEC nations) insistence that they be paid for their oil and natural gas in U.S. dollars, which creates artificial demand for the dollar globally. If the Gulf Coast States begin accepting payment in rubles or yuan, it is curtains for the U.S. dollar in global markets.  
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The Greatest Heist In History - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/...-the-greatest-heist-in-history financial-crisis obama-socialism whitney-tilson conservatorship banksters
shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Mar 09
     
    The new Obama administration needs to understand that greatest heist in history is underway - at least $1 trillion is being transferred from taxpayers to debt holders of failed financial institutions - and take steps to stop it before taxpayers suffer further unnecessary losses. Whitney Tilson explains the financial crisis and makes his recommendation. Rather than sticking it to the taxpayers, these insolvent banks should be put into conservatorship: "..... So what's a better solution? I'm not arguing that BofA (or Citi or WaMu or Fannie or Freddie or AIG or Bear) should have been allowed to go bankrupt - we all saw the chaos that ensued when Lehman went bankrupt. Rather, if a company blows up (and can't find a buyer), the following things should happen: 1) The government seizes it and puts it into conservatorship (as Fannie, Freddie, IndyMac and AIG effectively were, to one degree or another); 2) Equity is wiped out (again, as with Fannie, Freddie, IndyMac and AIG); 3) However, unlike Fannie, Freddie, IndyMac and AIG (and certainly Citi and BofA), everything in the capital structure except maybe the senior debt is at risk and absorbs losses as they are realized; the government would only provide a backstop above a certain level. This is what happened in the RTC bailout; 4) Over time, in conservatorship, while the businesses continue to operate (no mass layoffs, distressed sales, etc.), the government disposes of the companies in a variety of ways (just as the RTC did via runoff, selling the entire company or piece-by-piece, etc.), depending on the circumstances (as it's doing with AIG and IndyMac, for example - these are good examples, except that the debt holders were protected). ......"
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The American Spectator : What Didn't Get Said at the Obammunism Health Care Summit - 0 views

spectator.org/...what-didnt-get-said-at-the-sum obammunism health-care health-benefits
shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Feb 10
     
    Excellent discussion about the difference between Health Care and Health Benefits, and who is covered by which. excerpt:  Except of course, for the fundamental difference, which remains the same -- Republicans want to reform and improve health care without destroying its free-enterprise base, while Democrats would be very happy to see the entire thing absorbed into a government-controlled system, as half of it has been already through the extension of Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs. What became most outstanding is that President Obama and his teammates still do not have any real understanding of how the current system works..... Only 6 percent of the population actually buys their own insurance. (And for this, we are painting the insurance companies as the villains of this melodrama?) Fourteen percent of the population is on Medicare, 14 percent on Medicaid. The other 66 percent do not have insurance but health benefits¸, which is not the same thing. Nine percent gets its benefits from government employment, 4 percent from the military and the remaining 43 percent get their benefits from private employment. The last 15 percent (there is some overlap) has no coverage at all. President Obama kept talking about how it is these "large pools" in big companies that make insurance cheap, but that is not true. Large pools are only part of the equation. Equally important is that these employees are getting their benefits tax-free. This is a huge advantage not available to the uninsured population. Because the government is not getting its cut, employers are also eager to convey benefits to their employees instead of wage increases because they have more value. This is why, for many people, health benefits constitute the major reason for employment. Wages transfer easily from job to job but benefits do not. Yet another advantage of company-run health benefits programs is that they are exempt from state regulations. ....... 
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Federal gestapo illegally raid Gibson Guitar factories, arbitrarily confiscate millions... - 0 views

www.naturalnews.com/_Gibson_Guitar_armed_raid.html Gibson-Guitar DOJ-Gestapo
shared by Gary Edwards on 31 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • For the second time in two years, armed federal agents have illegally raided the manufacturing facilities of Gibson Guitars Corp., this time confiscating more than a million dollars worth of imported wood and ebony -- and they did so without proper notice or warning, without any valid reason, and without lawful charges of any kind.
  • Gibson, one of the world's premier guitar manufacturers, and a company that has continually tried to honestly and readily abide by domestic and international laws concerning its material sourcing while continuing to provide quality products to its customers, has for some reason landed in the cross fire of the federal gestapo
  • Though Gibson has not violated any laws, and has gone above and beyond mandated requirements for sourcing sustainable wood and other materials for its instruments, the heavy hand of a bloated and out-of-control government has decided to unlawfully target the company for extinction.According to a recent press statement made by Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson's Chairman and CEO, armed marshals stormed the company's Nashville, Tenn., and Memphis, Tenn., manufacturing facilities on August 24, and proceeded to evacuate the buildings, shut down production, order all employees to go home, and steal more than a million dollars worth of rosewood and ebony that had been legally imported from India
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • US officials have actually refused to tell Gibson what it allegedly did wrong, and why the raid was conducted. The company was never notified of any potential violations prior to the raid, and no official charges were ever filed. By all appearances, the government simply decided one day to unlawfully storm the company's manufacturing units with loaded weapons, and is now attempting to destroy one of the last honest American manufacturers in existence
  • The fact that the US federal government is refusing to disclose why it raided Gibson, as well as its added failure to press any proper legal charges against the company, suggests that there is truly no legitimate reason at all. Every guitar manufacturer imports rosewood and ebony from India and various other countries -- and many do not even have the same high quality standards as Gibson -- and yet, for whatever reason, Gibson has become the government's chosen target, despite the fact that it has broken no laws and has never been convicted of any crimes.
  • In today's America, in other words, government officials do not even need a legitimate reason to target a company, seize its goods, and shut it down. In total desecration of the rule of law, the federal government simply targets whomever it wants to these days, without reason or cause, and sends in its taxpayer-funded minions to perform the execution
  • If you own a guitar, you too could be targeted by the Feds based on corrupted Lacey Law
  • those who own Gibson guitars, and potentially even guitars of other brands, may want to prepare themselves for potential targeting by the federal government as well. The vague wording of the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Lacey Act of 2008, which is the law that was somehow used to warrant the Gibson raids, places all guitar owners and resellers in the cross fire of potential federal scrutiny."According to [The Lacey Act], if you bought a guitar from us and you resell it, you are criminally liable," stated Juszkiewicz.
  • So there you have it. The US has literally devolved into an unbridled police state where the federal government freely raids companies, arrests innocent individuals, and performs other acts of domestic terrorism for absolutely no reason at all. The enemies of freedom that now run our government presume guilt rather than innocence, and they deny the constitutional protocols of due process that they are tasked with upholding in the process.
  • Gary Edwards on 31 Aug 11
     
    (NaturalNews) Due process under the law and assumed innocence before being proven guilty are two concepts that are apparently no longer applicable in the United States of America, at least as far as the federal government is concerned. Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033454_Gibson_Guitar_armed_raid.html#ixzz1Wd8Nf600
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Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.'s Bulk Data Collection - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...eek-nsa-curb-on-call-data.html surveillance state NSA call-metadata NSA-reform Obama legislation
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency’s once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that — if approved by Congress — would end the aspect that has most alarmed privacy advocates since its existence was leaked last year, according to senior administration officials.Under the proposal, they said, the N.S.A. would end its systematic collection of data about Americans’ calling habits. The bulk records would stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for any longer than they normally would. And the N.S.A. could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order. In a speech in January, President Obama said he wanted to get the N.S.A. out of the business of collecting call records in bulk while preserving the program’s abilities. He acknowledged, however, that there was no easy way to do so, and had instructed Justice Department and intelligence officials to come up with a plan by March 28 — Friday — when the current court order authorizing the program expires.
  • As part of the proposal, the administration has decided to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to renew the program as it exists for at least one more 90-day cycle, senior administration officials said. But under the plan the administration has developed and now advocates, the officials said, it would later undergo major changes. The new type of surveillance court orders envisioned by the administration would require phone companies to swiftly provide records in a technologically compatible data format, including making available, on a continuing basis, data about any new calls placed or received after the order is received, the officials said. They would also allow the government to swiftly seek related records for callers up to two phone calls, or “hops,” removed from the number that has come under suspicion, even if those callers are customers of other companies.
  • The N.S.A. now retains the phone data for five years. But the administration considered and rejected imposing a mandate on phone companies that they hold on to their customers’ calling records for a period longer than the 18 months that federal regulations already generally require — a burden that the companies had resisted shouldering and that was seen as a major obstacle to keeping the data in their hands. A senior administration official said that intelligence agencies had concluded that the operational impact of that change would be small because older data is less important.The N.S.A. uses the once-secret call records program — sometimes known as the 215 program, after Section 215 of the Patriot Act — to analyze links between callers in an effort to identify hidden terrorist associates, if they exist. It was part of the secret surveillance program that President George W. Bush unilaterally put in place after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, outside of any legal framework or court oversight.
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  • Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the administration’s proposal a “sensible outcome, given that the 215 program likely exceeded current legal authority and has not proved to be effective.” While he said that he would like to see more overhauls to other surveillance authorities, he said the proposal was “significant” and addressed the major concerns with the N.S.A.’s bulk records program. Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union said, “We have many questions about the details, but we agree with the administration that the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of call records should end.” He added, “As we’ve argued since the program was disclosed, the government can track suspected terrorists without placing millions of people under permanent surveillance.”
  • In recent days, attention in Congress has shifted to legislation developed by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee. That bill, according to people familiar with a draft proposal, would have the court issue an overarching order authorizing the program, but allow the N.S.A. to issue subpoenas for specific phone records without prior judicial approval.
  • The Obama administration proposal, by contrast, would retain a judicial role in determining whether the standard of suspicion was met for a particular phone number before the N.S.A. could obtain associated records.The administration’s proposal would also include a provision clarifying whether Section 215 of the Patriot Act, due to expire next year unless Congress reauthorizes it, may in the future be legitimately interpreted as allowing bulk data collection of telephone data.The proposal would not, however, affect other forms of bulk collection under the same provision. The C.I.A., for example, has obtained orders for bulk collection of records about international money transfers handled by companies like Western Union.
  • The government has been unable to point to any thwarted terrorist attacks that would have been carried out if the program had not existed, but has argued that it is a useful tool.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Mar 14
     
    "The N.S.A. uses the once-secret call records program ... to analyze links between callers in an effort to identify hidden terrorist associates, if they exist." Correction: "The N.S.A. *claims* to use the ..." 
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Profiting from Your Thirst as Global Elite Rush to Control Water Worldwide :: The Marke... - 0 views

www.marketoracle.co.uk/article38167.html banksters water water-rush privatization
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 May 14 - No Cached
  • A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” --- the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires --- are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Familiar mega-banks and investing powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water. Wealthy tycoons such as T. Boone Pickens, former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan and other Filipino billionaires, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world. The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective:
  • Billionaire T. Boone Pickens owned more water rights than any other individuals in America, with rights over enough of the Ogallala Aquifer to drain approximately 200,000 acre-feet (or 65 billion gallons of water) a year. But ordinary citizen Gary Harrington cannot collect rainwater runoff on 170 acres of his private land. It’s a strange New World Order in which multibillionaires and elitist banks can own aquifers and lakes, but ordinary citizens cannot even collect rainwater and snow runoff in their own backyards and private lands.
  • In 2008, Goldman Sachs called water “the petroleum for the next century” and those investors who know how to play the infrastructure boom will reap huge rewards, during its annual “Top Five Risks” conference. Water is a U.S.$425 billion industry, and a calamitous water shortage could be a more serious threat to humanity in the 21st century than food and energy shortages, according to Goldman Sachs’s conference panel. Goldman Sachs has convened numerous conferences and also published lengthy, insightful analyses of water and other critical sectors (food, energy). Goldman Sachs is positioning itself to gobble up water utilities, water engineering companies, and water resources worldwide. Since 2006, Goldman Sachs has become one of the largest infrastructure investment fund managers and has amassed a $10 billion capital for infrastructure, including water.
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  • Citigroup’s top economist Willem Buitler said in 2011 that the water market will soon be hotter the oil market (for example, see this and this): “Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.” In its recent 2012 Water Investment Conference, Citigroup has identified top 10 trends in the water sector, as follows:
  • Specifically, a lucrative opportunity in water is in hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), as it generates massive demand for water and water services. Each oil well developed requires 3 to 5 million gallons of water, and 80% of this water cannot be reused because it’s three to 10 times saltier than seawater. Citigroup recommends water-rights owners sell water to fracking companies instead of to farmers because water for fracking can be sold for as much as $3,000 per acre-foot instead of only $50 per acre/foot to farmers.
  • One of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase has aggressively pursued water and infrastructure worldwide. In October 2007, it beat out rivals Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to buy U.K.’s water utility Southern Water with partners Swiss-based UBS and Australia’s Challenger Infrastructure Fund. This banking empire is controlled by the Rockefeller family; the family patriarch David Rockefeller is a member of the elite and secretive Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, and Trilateral Commission.
  • Barclays PLC is a U.K.-based major global financial services provider operating in all over the world with roots in London since 1690; it operates through its subsidiary Barclays Bank PLC and its investment bank called Barclays Capital. Barclays Bank’s unit Barclays Global Investors manages an exchange-traded fund (ETF) called iShares S&P Global Water, which is listed on the London Stock Exchanges and can be purchased like any ordinary share through a broker. Touting the iShares S&P Global Water as offering “a broad based exposure to shares of the world’s largest water companies, including water utilities and water equipment stocks” of water companies around the world, this fund as of March 31, 2007 was valued at U.S.$33.8 million.
  • Deutsche Bank is one of the major players in the water sector worldwide. Its Deutsche Bank Advisors have identified water as a part of the climate investment strategies. In its presentation, “Global Warming: Implications for Investors,” they have identified the four following major areas for water investment: § Distribution and management: (1) Supply and recycling, (2) water distribution and sewage, (3) water management and engineering. § Water purification: (1) Sewage purification, (2) disinfection, (3) desalination, (4) monitoring. § Water efficiency (demand): (1) Home installation, (2) gray-water recycling, (3) water meters. § Water and nutrition: (1) Irrigation, (2) bottled water.
  • Moreover, Deutsche Bank has channeled €6 billion (U.S.$8.55 billion) into climate change funds, which will target companies with products that cut greenhouse gases or help people adapt to a warmer world, in sectors from agriculture to power and construction (Reuters, October 18, 2007). In addition to SCM, Deutsche Bank also has the RREEF Infrastructure, part of RREEF Alternative Investments, headquartered in New York with main hubs in Sydney, Singapore, and London. RREEF Infrastructure has more than €6.7 billion in assets under management. One of its main targets is utilities, including electricity networks, water-treatment or distribution operations, and natural-gas networks. In October 2007, RREEF partnered with Goldman Sachs, GE, Prudential, and Babcok & Brown Ltd. to bid unsuccessfully for U.K.’s water utility Southern Water. § Crediting the boom in European infrastructure investment, the RREEF fund by August 2007 had raised €2 billion (U.S.$2.8 billion); Europe’s infrastructure market is valued at between U.S.$4 trillion to U.S.$6 trillion (DowJones Financial News Online, August 7, 2007). § Bulgaria --- Deutsche Bank Bulgaria is planning to participate in large infrastructure projects, including public-private partnership projects in water and sewage worth up to €1 billion (Sofia Echo Media, February 26, 2008). § Middle East --- Along with Ithmaar Bank B.S.C. (an private-equity investment bank in Bahrain), Deutsche Bank co-managed a U.S.$2 billion Shari'a-compliant Infrastructure and Growth Capital Fund and plans to target U.S.$630 billion in regional infrastructure.
  • In my 2008 article, I overlooked the astonishingly large land purchases (298,840 acres, to be exact) by the Bush family in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, while on a trip to Paraguay for the United Nation’s children’s group UNICEF, Jenna Bush (daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H.W. Bush) reportedly bought 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay). This land is said to be near the 200,000 acres purchased by her grandfather, George H.W. Bush, in 2005. The lands purchased by the Bush family sit over not only South America’s largest aquifer --- but the world’s as well --- Acuifero Guaraní, which runs beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This aquifer is larger than Texas and California combined. Online political magazine Counterpunch quoted Argentinean pacifist Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the winner of 1981 Nobel Peace Prize, who “warned that the real war will be fought not for oil, but for water, and recalled that Acuifero Guaraní is one of the largest underground water reserves in South America….”
  • Paul Merrell on 23 May 14
     
     Like the land rush for Arctic lands soon to be bared of ice by global warming, banksters are also moving to capitalize on looming water shortages, aided by IMF privatization loan conditions the the dwindling of potable water supplies globally via pollution, deforestation, and aquifer depletion. All trace to the common problem over human overpopulation of the planet.  
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Is the Justice Department Protecting An Anti-Iran Smear Campaign? « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/ng-an-anti-iran-smear-campaign war & peace Iran state-secrets Restis litigation
shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • A new wrinkle in an already bizarre lawsuit is shaping up to potentially embarrass the Obama administration. If allegations made in a recent court filing are true, then the US Department of Justice, with an unprecedented assertion of the state secrets privilege, might be shielding from any accountability a group actively engaged in spreading false information. The lawsuit revolves around United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), an anti-Iran, pro-sanctions outfit that takes a hard line against Iran and lodges name-and-shame campaigns against companies it says are doing business with the country. The group is made up of former officials from the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as a host of academics, former diplomats and former intelligence officials from foreign countries, including Israel.
  • Last week, things got even weirder: in a motion filed on Wednesday, Restis’s lawyers suggested that UANI had leaked information to the Jerusalem Post that resulted in a piece accusing Restis of doing more illegal business in Iran. The Post later retracted the article, citing “new information” that indicated the purportedly illegal shipping had been “legitimate and permitted,” and scrubbed the article from its website. “Defendants appear to have provided The Jerusalem Post with false information purporting to show an American company’s legal and humanitarian cargo of soya beans to Iran aboard Plaintiffs’ vessel violated sanctions against Iran,” said a footnote in the filing from Restis’s lawyers. “Although it printed Defendants’ false allegations against Plaintiffs, The Jerusalem Post recognized the falsity of the allegations and issued a retraction and apology.”
  • If true, the alleged UANI leak of false information to the Jerusalem Post would contradict UANI’s lawyers’ assertion in an October hearing that “UANI has made no statements whatsoever about Victor Restis or his companies, about any subject, doing business with Iran or any subject since February of 2014.” The Jerusalem Post article also said that the information it revealed would be “raised… in an upcoming hearing in a US federal court.” UANI’s lawyers brought up the purported revelations the following day in the October 8 hearing. It has not been proven that UANI leaked information to the Post.
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  • In a separate filing last Wednesday, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups spelled out how unusual the Justice Department intervention was. The groups submitted a friend of the court briefing—itself an unusual move, since amicus briefs are usually filed when cases reach the appellate stage—agreeing with Restis’s team. “Never before has the government sought dismissal of a suit between private parties on state secrets grounds without providing the parties and the public any information about the government’s interest in the case,” the lawyers from the groups wrote. “It is hard to see why, unlike in every other state secrets case in history, meaningful public disclosure to the parties is not possible in this case.”
  • The October 7 Jerusalem Post article in question, headlined “Evidence obtained by JPost shows alleged ongoing violation of Iran sanctions” and written by legal correspondent Yonah Jeremy Bob, went through several iterations online before being retracted. (Bob did not respond to requests for comment.) The original version of the article purported to present evidence that Restis’s companies were continuing to violate Iran sanctions by pointing to information that a ship owned by Restis docked in Iran on September 27. (The article was amended without notice before being captured by a web archive on October 8.) Lowell, the lawyer for Restis, denied the charges to the Post at the time. “In September 2014, a major US-based food company made a legal shipment of soya beans from Argentina to Iran aboard the Helvetia One, a vessel owned by the Restis family,” Lowell told the paper. “The provision of food cargo to Iran is entirely legal and encouraged under the humanitarian carve-outs to international sanctions regimes.”
  • The original version of the article purported to present evidence that Restis’s companies were continuing to violate Iran sanctions by pointing to information that a ship owned by Restis docked in Iran on September 27. (The article was amended without notice before being captured by a web archive on October 8.) Lowell, the lawyer for Restis, denied the charges to the Post at the time. “In September 2014, a major US-based food company made a legal shipment of soya beans from Argentina to Iran aboard the Helvetia One, a vessel owned by the Restis family,” Lowell told the paper. “The provision of food cargo to Iran is entirely legal and encouraged under the humanitarian carve-outs to international sanctions regimes.”
  • On October 22, the Post came around to Lowell’s perspective, scrubbing the story and issuing a “clarification and correction” that expressed regret for publishing the story. The Post said its assertions of illegal business were “contradicted by new information provided to us and therefore no allegations of misconduct should be concluded from the above article.”
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Nov 14
     
    The strange Restis case just keeps getting more strange.
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Power company prepares to cut supply to PA - Israel News, Ynetnews - 0 views

www.ynetnews.com/...0,7340,L-4611713,00.html war & peace Israel Palestine electricity PA
shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The Israel Electric Corporation CEO Eli Glickman warned Israel's security chiefs in a letter sent Sunday that the company would have to limit electricity to territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority and the Jerusalem District Energy company (JEDCO) – which buys electricity from Israel and sells it to various cities in the West Bank – because of a debt totalling NIS 1,700,843,315.
  • The letter noted that as of December 31, debt owed by the Palestinian Authority and the Jerusalem District Electricity Company amounted to more than NIS 1.7 billion, of which NIS 1,054,914,845 were from the JDECO, and NIS 645,928,470 from the PA.  
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15
     
    In the wake of Israel's retaliation against the Palestinian Authority by witholding taxes it collects on behalf of the PA, the government owned Israel  Electric Company will now turn off the PA's electricity for non-payment. Note carefully that the vast majority of the debt owed is not owed by the PA, but by the heavily Israeli-colonized East Jerusalem Electric District. 
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Leaked docs show spyware used to snoop on US computers | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...-used-to-snoop-on-us-computers surveillance state Gamma-Group FinFisher zero-day-exploits Vupen-Security MSOffice MSIE Acrobat
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Software created by the controversial UK-based Gamma Group International was used to spy on computers that appear to be located in the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia, Iran, and Bahrain, according to a leaked trove of documents analyzed by ProPublica. It's not clear whether the surveillance was conducted by governments or private entities. Customer e-mail addresses in the collection appeared to belong to a German surveillance company, an independent consultant in Dubai, the Bosnian and Hungarian Intelligence services, a Dutch law enforcement officer, and the Qatari government.
  • The leaked files—which were posted online by hackers—are the latest in a series of revelations about how state actors including repressive regimes have used Gamma's software to spy on dissidents, journalists, and activist groups. The documents, leaked last Saturday, could not be readily verified, but experts told ProPublica they believed them to be genuine. "I think it's highly unlikely that it's a fake," said Morgan Marquis-Bore, a security researcher who while at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto had analyzed Gamma Group's software and who authored an article about the leak on Thursday. The documents confirm many details that have already been reported about Gamma, such as that its tools were used to spy on Bahraini activists. Some documents in the trove contain metadata tied to e-mail addresses of several Gamma employees. Bill Marczak, another Gamma Group expert at the Citizen Lab, said that several dates in the documents correspond to publicly known events—such as the day that a particular Bahraini activist was hacked.
  • The leaked files contain more than 40 gigabytes of confidential technical material, including software code, internal memos, strategy reports, and user guides on how to use Gamma Group software suite called FinFisher. FinFisher enables customers to monitor secure Web traffic, Skype calls, webcams, and personal files. It is installed as malware on targets' computers and cell phones. A price list included in the trove lists a license of the software at almost $4 million. The documents reveal that Gamma uses technology from a French company called Vupen Security that sells so-called computer "exploits." Exploits include techniques called "zero days" for "popular software like Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and many more." Zero days are exploits that have not yet been detected by the software maker and therefore are not blocked.
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  • Many of Gamma's product brochures have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal and Wikileaks, but the latest trove shows how the products are getting more sophisticated. In one document, engineers at Gamma tested a product called FinSpy, which inserts malware onto a user's machine, and found that it could not be blocked by most antivirus software. Documents also reveal that Gamma had been working to bypass encryption tools including a mobile phone encryption app, Silent Circle, and were able to bypass the protection given by hard-drive encryption products TrueCrypt and Microsoft's Bitlocker.
  • The documents also describe a "country-wide" surveillance product called FinFly ISP which promises customers the ability to intercept Internet traffic and masquerade as ordinary websites in order to install malware on a target's computer. The most recent date-stamp found in the documents is August 2, coincidung with the first tweet by a parody Twitter account, @GammaGroupPR, which first announced the hack and may be run by the hacker or hackers responsible for the leak. On Reddit, a user called PhineasFisher claimed responsibility for the leak. "Two years ago their software was found being widely used by governments in the middle east, especially Bahrain, to hack and spy on the computers and phones of journalists and dissidents," the user wrote. The name on the @GammaGroupPR Twitter account is also "Phineas Fisher." GammaGroup, the surveillance company whose documents were released, is no stranger to the spotlight. The security firm F-Secure first reported the purchase of FinFisher software by the Egyptian State Security agency in 2011. In 2012, Bloomberg News and The Citizen Lab showed how the company's malware was used to target activists in Bahrain. In 2013, the software company Mozilla sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company after a report by The Citizen Lab showed that a spyware-infected version of the Firefox browser manufactured by Gamma was being used to spy on Malaysian activists.
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Murky Special Ops Have Become Corporate Bonanza, Says Report - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...special-ops-corporate-bonanza war & peace U.S. DoD Special-Forces contractors
shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The U.S. government is paying private contractors billions of dollars to support secretive military units with drones, surveillance technology, and “psychological operations,” according to new research. A detailed report, published last week by the London-based Remote Control Project, shines a light on the murky activities of the U.S. Special Operations Command by analyzing publicly available procurement contracts dated between 2009 and 2013. USSOCOM encompasses four commands – from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps – and plays a key role in orchestrating clandestine U.S. military missions overseas.
  • Researcher Crofton Black, who also works as an investigator for human rights group Reprieve, was able to dig through the troves of data and identify the beneficiaries of almost $13 billion worth of spending by USSOCOM over the five-year period. He found that more than 3,000 companies had provided services that included aiding remotely piloted drone operations in Afghanistan and the Philippines, helping to conduct surveillance of targets, interrogating prisoners, and launching apparent propaganda campaigns. “This report is distinctive in that it mines data from the generally classified world of U.S. special operations,” says Caroline Donnellan, manager of the Remote Control Project, a progressive thinktank focused on developments in military technology. “It reveals the extent to which remote control activity is expanding in all its facets, with corporations becoming more and more integrated into very sensitive elements of warfare. The report’s findings are of concern given the challenges remote warfare poses for effective investigation, transparency, accountability and oversight.”
  • According to the report, USSOCOM tendered a $1.5 billion contract that required support with “Psychological Operations related to intelligence and information operations.” Prospective contractors were told they would have to provide “military and civilian persuasive communications planning, produce commercial quality products for unlimited foreign public broadcast, and develop lines of persuasion, themes, and designs for multi-media products.” The contract suggested that aim of these “persuasion” operations was to “engage local populations and counter nefarious influences” in parts of Europe and Africa.
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  • A separate document related to the same contract noted that one purpose of the effort was to conduct “market research” of al-Qaida and its affiliates in Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Northern Nigeria, and Somalia. Four American companies eventually won the $1.5 billion contract: Tennessee-based Jacobs Technology and Virginia-based Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI-WGI, and SRA International. Notably, while some 3,000 contractors provided service in some capacity to USSOCOM, just eight of the contractors earned more than 50 percent of the $13 billion total identified in Black’s report. Those were: Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, Boeing, Harris Corporation, Jacobs Engineering Group, MA Federal, Raytheon, and ITT Corporation.
  • One of the largest single transactions ($77 million) was paid to a subsidiary of Alaska’s Shee Atika – a company that the report says provided “interrogation services” as well as translation assistance.
  • Last year, the then-commander of USSOCOM, Adm. William McRaven, told the House Armed Services Committee that U.S. special operations forces were engaged in “annual deployments to more than 100 countries.” But very little is known about the scope and purpose of those operations, given the extreme secrecy that often shrouds them. The report from the Remote Control Project, however, is a reminder of how public data can sometimes be used to obtain information about even the most shadowy government activities – in this case, offering a valuable glimpse into the burgeoning nature of the U.S. military’s special operations and, in particular, the supporting role played by private contractors. “The Special Operations Command is outsourcing many of its most sensitive information activities,” says Black. “Remote warfare is increasingly being shaped by the private sector.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Sep 14
     
    Contracting out "interrogation services?" Sheesh!
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The U.S. Government's Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...-benefit-american-corporations surveillance-state DNI economic-espionage technology Clapper lies
shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China’s infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA spokesperson emailed The Washington Post to say (emphasis in original): “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.” After that categorical statement to the Post, the NSA was caught spying on plainly financial targets such as the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras; economic summits; international credit card and banking systems; the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft, and Intel; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In response, the U.S. modified its denial to acknowledge that it does engage in economic spying, but unlike China, the spying is never done to benefit American corporations.
  • In a graphic describing an “illustrative example,” the report heralds “technology acquisition by all means.” Some of the planning relates to foreign superiority in surveillance technology, but other parts are explicitly concerned with using cyber-espionage to bolster the competitive advantage of U.S. corporations. The report thus envisions a scenario in which companies from India and Russia work together to develop technological innovation, and the U.S. intelligence community then “conducts cyber operations” against “research facilities” in those countries, acquires their proprietary data, and then “assesses whether and how its findings would be useful to U.S. industry” (click on image to enlarge):
  • One of the principal threats raised in the report is a scenario “in which the United States’ technological and innovative edge slips”— in particular, “that the technological capacity of foreign multinational corporations could outstrip that of U.S. corporations.” Such a development, the report says “could put the United States at a growing—and potentially permanent—disadvantage in crucial areas such as energy, nanotechnology, medicine, and information technology.” How could U.S. intelligence agencies solve that problem? The report recommends “a multi-pronged, systematic effort to gather open source and proprietary information through overt means, clandestine penetration (through physical and cyber means), and counterintelligence” (emphasis added). In particular, the DNI’s report envisions “cyber operations” to penetrate “covert centers of innovation” such as R&D facilities.
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  • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for instance, responded to the Petrobras revelations by claiming: “It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters…. What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of—or give intelligence we collect to—U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.” But a secret 2009 report issued by Clapper’s own office explicitly contemplates doing exactly that. The document, the 2009 Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review—provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—is a fascinating window into the mindset of America’s spies as they identify future threats to the U.S. and lay out the actions the U.S. intelligence community should take in response. It anticipates a series of potential scenarios the U.S. may face in 2025, from a “China/Russia/India/Iran centered bloc [that] challenges U.S. supremacy” to a world in which “identity-based groups supplant nation-states,” and games out how the U.S. intelligence community should operate in those alternative futures—the idea being to assess “the most challenging issues [the U.S.] could face beyond the standard planning cycle.”
  • he report describes itself as “an essential long-term piece, looking out between 10 and 20 years” designed to enable ”the IC [to] best posture itself to meet the range of challenges it may face.” Whatever else is true, one thing is unmistakable: the report blithely acknowledges that stealing secrets to help American corporations secure competitive advantage is an acceptable future role for U.S. intelligence agencies. In May, the U.S. Justice Department indicted five Chinese government employees on charges that they spied on U.S. companies. At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder said the spying took place “for no reason other than to advantage state-owned companies and other interests in China,” and “this is a tactic that the U.S. government categorically denounces.” But the following day, The New York Times detailed numerous episodes of American economic spying that seemed quite similar. Harvard Law School professor and former Bush Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith wrote that the accusations in the indictment sound “a lot like the kind of cyber-snooping on firms that the United States does.” But U.S. officials continued to insist that using surveillance capabilities to bestow economic advantage for the benefit of a country’s corporations is wrong, immoral, and illegal.
  • Yet this 2009 report advocates doing exactly that in the event that ”that the technological capacity of foreign multinational corporations outstrip[s] that of U.S. corporations.” Using covert cyber operations to pilfer “proprietary information” and then determining how it ”would be useful to U.S. industry” is precisely what the U.S. government has been vehemently insisting it does not do, even though for years it has officially prepared to do precisely that.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Sep 14
     
    DNI James Clapper caught telling another whopper. 
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Secret US cybersecurity report: encryption vital to protect private data | US news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ect-data-cameron-paris-attacks surveillance-state NSA GCHQ encryption hypocrisy
shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • A secret US cybersecurity report warned that government and private computers were being left vulnerable to online attacks from Russia, China and criminal gangs because encryption technologies were not being implemented fast enough. The advice, in a newly uncovered five-year forecast written in 2009, contrasts with the pledge made by David Cameron this week to crack down on encryption use by technology companies.
  • In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, the prime minister said there should be no “safe spaces for terrorists to communicate” or that British authorites could not access. Cameron, who landed in the US on Thursday night, is expected to urge Barack Obama to apply more pressure to tech giants, such as Apple, Google and Facebook, which have been expanding encrypted messaging for their millions of users since the revelations of mass NSA surveillance by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
  • Cameron said the companies “need to work with us. They need also to demonstrate, which they do, that they have a social responsibility to fight the battle against terrorism. We shouldn’t allow safe spaces for terrorists to communicate. That’s a huge challenge but that’s certainly the right principle”. But the document from the US National Intelligence Council, which reports directly to the US director of national intelligence, made clear that encryption was the “best defence” for computer users to protect private data. Part of the cache given to the Guardian by Snowden was published in 2009 and gives a five-year forecast on the “global cyber threat to the US information infrastructure”. It covers communications, commercial and financial networks, and government and critical infrastructure systems. It was shared with GCHQ and made available to the agency’s staff through its intranet.
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  • An unclassified table accompanying the report states that encryption is the “[b]est defense to protect data”, especially if made particularly strong through “multi-factor authentication” – similar to two-step verification used by Google and others for email – or biometrics. These measures remain all but impossible to crack, even for GCHQ and the NSA. The report warned: “Almost all current and potential adversaries – nations, criminal groups, terrorists, and individual hackers – now have the capability to exploit, and in some cases attack, unclassified access-controlled US and allied information systems.” It further noted that the “scale of detected compromises indicates organisations should assume that any controlled but unclassified networks of intelligence, operational or commercial value directly accessible from the internet are already potentially compromised by foreign adversaries”.
  • The report had some cause for optimism, especially in the light of Google and other US tech giants having in the months prior greatly increased their use of encryption efforts. “We assess with high confidence that security best practices applied to target networks would prevent the vast majority of intrusions,” it concluded. Official UK government security advice still recommends encryption among a range of other tools for effective network and information defence. However, end-to-end encryption – which means only the two people communicating with each other, and not the company carrying the message, can decode it – is problematic for intelligence agencies as it makes even warranted collection much more difficult.
  • The previous week, a day after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, the MI5 chief, Andrew Parker, called for new powers and warned that new technologies were making it harder to track extremists. In November, the head of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, said US social media giants had become the “networks of choice” for terrorists. Chris Soghoian, principal senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said attempts by the British government to force US companies to weaken encryption faced many hurdles.
  • The Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica have previously reported the intelligence agencies’ broad efforts to undermine encryption and exploit rather than reveal vulnerabilities. This prompted Obama’s NSA review panel to warn that the agency’s conflicting missions caused problems, and so recommend that its cyber-security responsibilities be removed to prevent future issues.
  • The memo requested a renewal of the legal warrant allowing GCHQ to “modify” commercial software in violation of licensing agreements. The document cites examples of software the agency had hacked, including commonly used software to run web forums, and website administration tools. Such software are widely used by companies and individuals around the world. The document also said the agency had developed “capability against Cisco routers”, which would “allow us to re-route selected traffic across international links towards GCHQ’s passive collection systems”. GCHQ had also been working to “exploit” the anti-virus software Kaspersky, the document said. The report contained no information on the nature of the vulnerabilities found by the agency.
  • Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association, a lobby group that represents Facebook, Google, Reddit, Twitter, Yahoo and other tech companies, said: “Just as governments have a duty to protect to the public from threats, internet services have a duty to our users to ensure the security and privacy of their data. That’s why internet services have been increasing encryption security.”
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FBI Flouts Obama Directive to Limit Gag Orders on National Security Letters - The Inter... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...ders-national-security-letters surveillance state FBI NSLs litigation 1st Amendment civil-liberties
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Despite the post-Snowden spotlight on mass surveillance, the intelligence community’s easiest end-run around the Fourth Amendment since 2001 has been something called a National Security Letter. FBI agents can demand that an Internet service provider, telephone company or financial institution turn over its records on any number of people — without any judicial review whatsoever — simply by writing a letter that says the information is needed for national security purposes. The FBI at one point was cranking out over 50,000 such letters a year; by the latest count, it still issues about 60 a day. The letters look like this:
  • Recipients are legally required to comply — but it doesn’t stop there. They also aren’t allowed to mention the order to anyone, least of all the person whose data is being searched. Ever. That’s because National Security Letters almost always come with eternal gag orders. Here’s that part:
  • That means the NSL process utterly disregards the First Amendment as well. More than a year ago, President Obama announced that he was ordering the Justice Department to terminate gag orders “within a fixed time unless the government demonstrates a real need for further secrecy.” And on Feb. 3, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced a handful of baby steps resulting from its “comprehensive effort to examine and enhance [its] privacy and civil liberty protections” one of the most concrete was — finally — to cap the gag orders: In response to the President’s new direction, the FBI will now presumptively terminate National Security Letter nondisclosure orders at the earlier of three years after the opening of a fully predicated investigation or the investigation’s close. Continued nondisclosures orders beyond this period are permitted only if a Special Agent in Charge or a Deputy Assistant Director determines that the statutory standards for nondisclosure continue to be satisfied and that the case agent has justified, in writing, why continued nondisclosure is appropriate.
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  • Despite the use of the word “now” in that first sentence, however, the FBI has yet to do any such thing. It has not announced any such change, nor explained how it will implement it, or when. Media inquiries were greeted with stalling and, finally, a no comment — ostensibly on advice of legal counsel. “There is pending litigation that deals with a lot of the same questions you’re asking, out of the Ninth Circuit,” FBI spokesman Chris Allen told me. “So for now, we’ll just have to decline to comment.” FBI lawyers are working on a court filing for that case, and “it will address” the new policy, he said. He would not say when to expect it.
  • There is indeed a significant case currently before the federal appeals court in San Francisco. Oral arguments were in October. A decision could come any time. But in that case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is representing two unnamed communications companies that received NSLs, is calling for the entire NSL statute to be thrown out as unconstitutional — not for a tweak to the gag. And it has a March 2013 district court ruling in its favor. “The gag is a prior restraint under the First Amendment, and prior restraints have to meet an extremely high burden,” said Andrew Crocker, a legal fellow at EFF. That means going to court and meeting the burden of proof — not just signing a letter. Or as the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez put it, “To have such a low bar for denying persons or companies the right to speak about government orders they have been served with is anathema. And it is not very good for accountability.”
  • In a separate case, a wide range of media companies (including First Look Media, the non-profit digital media venture that produces The Intercept) are supporting a lawsuit filed by Twitter, demanding the right to say specifically how many NSLs it has received. But simply releasing companies from a gag doesn’t assure the kind of accountability that privacy advocates are saying is required by the Constitution. “What the public has to remember is a NSL is asking for your information, but it’s not asking it from you,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice. “The vast majority of these things go to the very large telecommunications and financial companies who have a large stake in maintaining a good relationship with the government because they’re heavily regulated entities.”
  • So, German said, “the number of NSLs that would be exposed as a result of the release of the gag order is probably very few. The person whose records are being obtained is the one who should receive some notification.” A time limit on gags going forward also raises the question of whether past gag orders will now be withdrawn. “Obviously there are at this point literally hundreds of thousands of National Security Letters that are more than three years old,” said Sanchez. Individual review is therefore unlikely, but there ought to be some recourse, he said. And the further back you go, “it becomes increasingly implausible that a significant percentage of those are going to entail some dire national security risk.” The NSL program has a troubled history. The absolute secrecy of the program and resulting lack of accountability led to systemic abuse as documented by repeated inspector-general investigations, including improperly authorized NSLs, factual misstatements in the NSLs, improper requests under NSL statutes, requests for information based on First Amendment protected activity, “after-the-fact” blanket NSLs to “cover” illegal requests, and hundreds of NSLs for “community of interest” or “calling circle” information without any determination that the telephone numbers were relevant to authorized national security investigations.
  • Obama’s own hand-selected “Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies” recommended in December 2013 that NSLs should only be issued after judicial review — just like warrants — and that any gag should end within 180 days barring judicial re-approval. But FBI director James Comey objected to the idea, calling NSLs “a very important tool that is essential to the work we do.” His argument evidently prevailed with Obama.
  • NSLs have managed to stay largely under the American public’s radar. But, Crocker says, “pretty much every time I bring it up and give the thumbnail, people are shocked. Then you go into how many are issued every year, and they go crazy.” Want to send me your old NSL and see if we can set a new precedent? Here’s how to reach me. And here’s how to leak to me.
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What Sanctions? The Russian Economy Is Growing Again - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/t-about-russias-economy-321934 Russia economic-warfare
shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Six months ago, the price of oil—the lifeblood of the Russian economy—began to crater, and U.S.-led sanctions, implemented in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, were biting. Russia’s currency, the ruble, buckled, and capital flight began to accelerate as rich but nervous Russians moved more and more money out of the country. It seemed plausible then to wonder: Could Vladimir Putin be losing his grip? Might economic pressure be enough to rein him in, or even lead to his downfall?Today, the answer is becoming clear—and it’s not the one the West was hoping for. Not only is Putin still standing, but the Russian economy, against most expectations, is recovering. Its stock market is one of the best performing globally this year; the ruble, after losing nearly half its value against the dollar over the course of a year, is rebounding; interest rates have come down from their post-sanctions peak; the government is taking in more revenue than its own forecast expected; and foreign exchange reserves have risen nearly $10 billion from their post-crisis low.
  • The lower price of oil still hurts. Citicorp economists estimate that every $10 decline in the price of Brent crude shaves 2 percent from Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP). Further declines—not out of the question, given that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest and lowest-cost producer, is still pumping record amounts of crude—will crimp growth even more. But those same Citicorp economists forecast that GDP, after contracting for the past 18 months, could now begin to grow at up to 3.5 percent per year, even without a recovery in crude prices.
  • Though better run than many Russian firms, Severstal is not an outlier. According to data from Bloomberg, some 78 percent of Russian companies on the MICEX index showed greater revenue growth in the most recent quarter than their global peers did. And Russian companies on the whole are now more profitable than their peers on the MSCI Emerging Markets index.What’s bailing out Moscow? For the second time in two decades, Russia is showing that while a sharp drop in its currency’s value does bring financial pain—it raises prices for imports and makes any foreign debt Russia or its companies have taken on that much more expensive in ruble terms—it also eventually produces textbook economic benefits. Since a devaluation raises import prices, it also paves the way for what economists call “import substitution,” a clunky way to say that consumers switch to buying less pricey products produced at home instead of imported goods.
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  • For companies such as Severstal, which exports nearly 20 percent of its output, the benefits of devaluation are obvious: All of the costs that go into producing steel in Russia—iron ore, manganese, nickel, labor, electricity—are priced in rubles. That means the companies’ costs relative to their international competitors’ have plummeted. At the same time, any steel they sell abroad is priced in either U.S. dollars or euros—both of which have risen in value against the ruble. When the companies bring those sales dollars home, they are worth far more in rubles than they were a year ago.The same phenomenon applies in a big way to Russia’s vast energy sector. Moscow exports huge amounts of oil and gas, and brings in dollars for it. That’s why Rosneft, a huge oil producer with close ties to Putin’s Kremlin, reported a revenue increase of 18 percent last year, compared with an increase of less than 1 percent for its international competitors, according to Bloomberg data. This is a big part of the reason why Russia’s tax revenue has not fallen off a cliff, mitigating somewhat the pain of last year’s crisis. Russia’s oil output is still near record highs—one of the reasons, along with continued full-tilt Saudi output, that prices remain so weak.
  • The world shouldn’t have been surprised by what has happened. More or less the same thing happened in 1998, when the Asian financial crisis spread to Russia and Moscow both defaulted on its international debt and devalued the ruble. There was an immediate negative economic shock, followed by an import substitution-led recovery that was sharper than most international economists at the time believed would occur. “This argues for an economic recovery now similar in nature, if not necessarily in magnitude, to the one after 1998,” says Ivan Tchakarov, an economist at Citicorp.
  • When oil prices crumbled last year, there was a fair bit of hope in Western capitals that the pain would do what sanctions hadn’t yet: force a Russian climbdown in Ukraine, and perhaps prompt Putin to turn back inward and tend to his troubles at home.Maybe that was wishful thinking. Whatever the case, it’s now a moot point. The Russian economy is showing enough resilience that it appears unlikely to check Putin’s behavior abroad. Public opinion surveys at home provide little evidence that the people have turned on him. For Washington and its allies, the time for wishful thinking is over. Vladimir Putin is not going anywhere. 
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Orange's pullout from Israel gives lift to boycott movement - 0 views

www.mail.com/...-lift-to-boycott-movement.html war & peace Israel Palestine BDS Orange
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • French telecom giant Orange SA's declaration that it wants to cut business ties with Israel has given a boost to the burgeoning anti-Israel boycott movement while also drawing a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. The Orange company logo is seen covered with an Israeli flag at the "Partner Orange" Communications company's offices in the city of Rosh Haain, Israel, Thursday, June 4, 2015. An Israeli Cabinet minister has called on the French president to fire the chief executive of French telecom giant Orange. Culture Minister Miri Regev issued her appeal on Thursday, a day after Orange's CEO announced in Cairo that he would like to sever his company's ties to Israel as soon as possible.
  • The move bodes poorly for Israel at a time of growing international anger over its West Bank settlements and could potentially put almost any Israeli company in the crosshairs of the boycott campaign. It also has illustrated just how deeply intertwined Israeli settlements are with the rest of the country. Netanyahu responded angrily on Thursday, calling on "the French government to publicly repudiate the miserable statement and miserable action by a company that is under its partial ownership." The remarks came a day after Orange's chief executive Stephane Richard said he would end his company's relationship with Partner Communications Ltd. "tomorrow" if he could, but that he was bound by a contract for the time being. He cited the company's sensitivity to Arab countries. Partner licenses the Orange brand name in Israel. Richard's announcement caused uproar in Israel. "The absurd drama in which the democracy that observes human rights — the state of Israel — and which defends itself from barrages of missiles and terrorist tunnels, and then absorbs automatic condemnations and attempted boycotts, this absurd drama will not be forgiven," Netanyahu also said. Pro-Palestinian activists in France have been pushing for Orange to end the relationship over Partner's activities in Israeli settlements. The settlements, built on land the Palestinians want for a future state, are seen as illegitimate by the international community.
  • With Richard's comments, Orange appeared to becoming the largest and best-known company to yield to pressure from a global movement calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Israeli officials say the so-called BDS movement is not out to promote peace, but instead aims to "delegitimize" the country's very existence as a Jewish state. They point to the grassroots BDS movement's support for millions of Palestinian refugees to return to ancestors' homes in what is now Israel. Israel rejects the "right of return," saying it would end the country's character as a Jewish and democratic state. In a statement issued in Paris, Orange said it sought to clarify that it wants to pull out of Israel for business reasons, not political ones. The company said it doesn't want to maintain a presence in countries where Orange itself is not a phone provider, and that the move is "in conformity with its brand policy." Orange said it "has no reason to take part ... in a debate of a political nature." Other Israeli officials also denounced Richard's comments. Culture Minister Miri Regev called on the French government to "show zero tolerance for anti-Semitism." She also urged Jewish customers of Orange in France and around the world to drop their service and switch carriers.
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  • Orange, one of the world's largest telecom companies, provides mobile phone services in about 30 countries. It says it has about 200 million customers worldwide, and declared revenue last year of 39 billion euros ($44 billion). The French government holds a roughly 13.5 percent stake in Orange. The BDS movement has been showing increasing signs of traction. Several high profile artists have canceled performances in Israel and the movement has also become increasingly popular on U.S. college campuses.
  • U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro told Israel's Army Radio on Thursday that Washington would continue to oppose "inappropriate one-sided criticism against Israel." But he said this job would be harder to do because peace negotiations are not taking place. "Talks were always the most effective tool to beat these efforts," he said. "So if we don't have any talks now, and most of the world doesn't think they will take place anytime soon, how can we fight boycott, sanctions and delegitimization, and how can we keep two state solution realistic?"
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