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Posted in News Roundup at 11:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Mass Surveillance
The Greatest Social Network of All TimeIn breaking the cycle, the implications of a true decentralized social network are profound. Los Angeles Cops Argue All Cars in LA Are Under InvestigationYou Can’t Opt Out: 10 NSA Myths DebunkedThe debate Edward Snowden envisioned when he revealed the extent of National Security Agency (NSA) spying on Americans has taken a bad turn. Instead of a careful examination of what the NSA does, the legality of its actions, what risks it takes for what gains, and how effective the agency has been in its stated mission of protecting Americans, we increasingly have government officials or retired versions of the same demanding — quite literally — Snowden’s head and engaging in the usual fear-mongering over 9/11. They have been aided by a chorus of pundits, columnists, and present as well as former officials offering bumper-sticker slogans like “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,” all the while claiming our freedom is in direct conflict with our security. ‘Arrogant’ Snowden putting lives at risk, says NSA’s deputy spybossLedgett said the NSA’s core problem was that it was lousy at PR, rather than that it was invading innocent people’s privacy. The bigwig said that the former US President James Madison, one of the key writers of the US Constitution, “would be proud” that the checks and balances he helped install still worked in today’s digital age.NSA strikes back at Snowden for putting ‘people’s lives at risk’NSA ‘hunted sysadmins’ to find CAT PHOTOS, high-level passwordsStaff at the United States’ National Security Agency reportedly “hunted” system administrators because they felt doing so would yield passwords that enabled easier surveillance.So says The Intercept, which claims this document came its way thanks to one E. Snowden, late of Moscow.NSA targets sysadmin personal accounts to exploit networksThe latest revelation from the cache of Snowden documents shows that the NSA targets sysadmins to gain access to the infrastructure that they are responsible for.How and Why the NSA’s Been Hacking Sys Admins WorldwideA new report from The Intercept reveals that the NSA has been hunting and hacking system administrators the world over in order to gain access to the networks they control.US tech giants knew of NSA data collection, agency’s top lawyer insistsNSA general counsel Rajesh De says big tech companies like Yahoo and Google provided ‘full assistance’ in legally mandated collection of dataNSA ‘Can Record Every Call In Foreign Countries’The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording every phone call made in a foreign country, according to new leaks by Edward Snowden.Rand Paul denounces NSA surveillance in fiery speech to Berkeley crowdObama to Meet Tech CEOs Concerned By NSA SnoopingDon’t Fall For Misleading Story Being Spread By NSA Suggesting Tech Companies Lied About PRISMI’m seeing a bunch of folks passing around a story by Spencer Ackerman at The Guardian, claiming that tech companies lied about their “denials” of PRISM. The story is incredibly misleading. Ackerman is one of the best reporters out there on the intelligence community, and I can’t recall ever seeing a story that I think he got wrong, but this is one. But the storyline is so juicy, lots of folks, including the usual suspects are quick to pile on without bothering to actually look at the details, insisting that this is somehow evidence of the tech companies lying. NSA: Snowden does disservice to whistleblowers (Update) The deputy head of the NSA spying agency accused fugitive intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on Thursday of displaying “amazing arrogance” in revealing US eavesdropping techniques. German legislators vote to investigate NSA, ‘Five Eyes’ surveillanceThe German Bundestag announced it will investigate surveillance conducted by the US National Security Agency and its foreign partners, as well as whether any German officials knew of the spying that targeted the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.German parliament to inquire into NSA Germany’s Bundestag is taking a close look at Western spying activities in Germany. Spectacular results are not expected from the parliamentary inquiry, as witnesses are likely to stonewall. NSA targets email IDs, not keywords: OfficialsOrange Gives All Of Its Data To France’s NSAOrange has been cooperating allegedly illegally for years with France’s main intelligence agency (the DGSE). According to a newly found report by Edward Snowden and an investigation by Le Monde, the DGSE was given access to all of Orange’s data (not just metadata).Facebook Firmly Denies That It Was ‘Fully Aware’ Of NSA SurveillanceFacebook Disputes NSA Claims That They Were Aware Of Data CollectionActivists Aim to Cut Off the Water to Dry Up NSA SurveillanceThankfully, there are some Americans willing to stand up and do something to slow the National Security Agency’s (NSA) construction of the surveillance state.In Utah, for example, a group of activists is working to cut off the supply of water to the NSA’s massive Utah Data Center located near Bluffdale.
Drones
Obama’s Team Shuns U.N. Human Rights Council Drone TalksThe United States apparently wants nothing to do with a United Nations Human Rights Council discussion on whether the country’s drone strikes may violate international human rights law.Telecoms contractor could be called to account for drone deathsThe revelation comes from a high-level review of a complaint that the £23m BT communications line supported drone missions that had accidentally killed between 426 and 1005 civilians in the last decade in the course of strikes on suspected insurgents, according to estimates of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.What Can “Forensic Architects” Tell Us About Drone Strikes and Genocide?A woman dressed in a black hijab is highlighted by the glare from a computer screen as she works with forensic architects in digitally recreating her home, the scene of a drone strike in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, Pakistan where five men, one of them her brother-in-law, were directly hit and killed on Oct. 4, 2010. This is the spot where she had laid out a rug in the courtyard, she explains, and where her guests sat one evening when the missile dove into their circle, leaving a blackened dent in the ground and scattering flesh that later, she and her husband had to pick up from off of the ground so they could bury their dead. Morbidly, the reconstruction of a drone strike is similar – the gathering of flecks of information when nothing else is available: through satellite imagery and video, the length of a building’s shadow, the pattern of shrapnel marks on a wall, and the angle of a photo, can help forensic architects determine where a missile struck and determine how it led to civilian deaths.PolitiFact Muddies Truth on Drone Strikes CommentWith drone strikes, not only is collateral damage recognized as a possible likelihood; it has become an accepted part of our foreign policy. Not only is America firing on citizens of sovereign nations, but they do so knowing that innocent people who had the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time are going to die. The old saying about the path of good intentions comes to mind.Domestic Drones Are InevitableAs the weekly – sometimes daily – news stories never tire of telling us, domestic drones are coming. And as ABC News reported on March 17, they are arriving faster than the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can suss out the rules over their use. Though it’s technically illegal, and the FAA may issue fines if they catch you, ABC reports that commercial use of drones is starting to happen whether or not the government approves – as long as it doesn’t notice.Locations of drone attacks changing to Afghanistan and Yemen US’ use of armed drones complies with international law – State Dep’t lawyerThe Pakistani draft, which was obtained by Foreign Policy, urges states to “ensure transparency” in record-keeping on drone strikes and to “conduct prompt, independent and impartial investigations whenever there are indications of any violations to human rights caused by their use.” It also calls for the convening of “an interactive panel discussion” on the use of drones.Power Isn’t FunnyFor all of the nonchalant assurances that he is neither a “dictator” nor an “emperor,” Barack Obama is certainly trigger-happy with the power jokes.Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope – it’s a drone stealing your identityCamus in the Time of DronesLucien rises from bed in the early morning. He dresses quietly, careful not to awaken his wife and infant son. He walks briskly across the city of Algiers in the pre-dawn light to a square that is already thick with people, their gaze fixed on a wooden platform and rising from it the stark outline of a guillotine.[...]Camus’ essay on the barbarity of the death penalty was written in 1956, against the backdrop of the executions of hundreds of dissidents during the Soviet crackdown in Hungary, as well as the execution of Algerian revolutionaries condemned to death by French tribunals. He notes that by 1940 all executions in France and England were shielded from the public. If capital punishment was meant to deter crime, why hold the killings in secret? Why not make them a public spectacle?
Venezuela
Kerry’s Lonely Crusade Against VenezuelaImages forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. With a wide variety of sources and people on the ground to talk to, I thought I was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But even I was not prepared for what I saw in Caracas: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.
Secrecy
Cohen’s SAC hires CIA-backed Palantir to strengthen surveillanceSAC Capital Advisors, the hedge-fund firm that agreed to pay a record fine to settle insider-trading charges, moved to boost surveillance by hiring Palantir Technologies, a Central Intelligence Agency-backed software maker. We need Congress to fix the FOIAThe Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a critical law for making sure the public has a fighting chance to get copies of records the government might not want it to see. For more than 40 years, people have used the FOIA to uncover evidence of government waste, fraud, abuse and illegality. More benignly, FOIA has been used to better understand the development and effects – positive and negative—of the federal government’s policies. Udall: Release report on CIASen. Mark Udall called on the White House again Thursday to declassify a report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program during the war on terror.U.S. Senate leader orders probe of alleged CIA computer hackingDetails of Illegal Torture That the CIA Doesn’t Want You to Know AboutSenate staffers say the agency tortured prisoners in ways that went beyond what the Bush-era DOJ approved, according to an Al-Jazeera America report. Nancy Pelosi: When Legislators Take on the CIA, ‘They Come After You’House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s remarks in support of fellow legislator Dianne Feinstein, who is embroiled in a dispute with the CIA, ought to be the sort of thing that alarms everyone. After all, another powerful member of Congress claims that the spy agency she is charged with overseeing illegitimately resists checks on its autonomy.Justice Dept. Is Cautious on Joining C.I.A. Fight Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee believe that laws may have been broken in their bitter dispute over top secret documents relating to the C.I.A.’s detention program and who has the right to read them.The CIA Spying Scandal, Watergate and the Decay of American DemocracyIn the nine days since Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had spied on Senate Intelligence Committee staffers investigating CIA torture programs, the issue has been all but dropped by the political establishment and the media.
Ukraine
Deconstructing PutinPutin was strongest in his accusations of western hypocrisy. His ironic welcoming of the West having suddenly discovered the concept of international law was very well done. His analysis of the might is right approach the West had previously adopted, and their contempt of the UN over Iraq and Afghanistan, was spot on. Putin also was absolutely right in describing the Kosovo situation as “highly analogous” to the situation in Crimea. That is indeed true, and attempts by the West – including the Guardian – to argue the cases are different are pathetic exercises in special pleading.The problem is that Putin blithely ignored the enormous logical inconsistency in his argument. He stated that the Crimean and Kosovo cases were highly analogous, but then used that to justify Russia’s action in Crimea, despite the fact that Russia has always maintained the NATO Kosovo intervention was illegal(and still refuses to recognize Kosovo). In fact of course Russia was right over Kosovo, and thus is wrong over Crimea.[...]The attempt to downplay Russia’s diplomatic isolation was also a bit strange. He thanked China, though China had very pointedly failed to support Russian in the Security Council. When you are forced to thank people for abstaining, you are not in a strong position diplomatically. He also thanked India, which is peculiar, because the Indian PM yesterday put out a press release saying Putin had called him, but the had urged Putin to engage diplomatically with the interim government in Kiev, which certainly would not be welcome to Putin. I concluded that Putin was merely trying to tell his domestic audience Russia has support, even when it does not.Crisis in Ukraine: Russia Extends its Control over the Black Sea and Strategic WaterwaysCrimean Tatars Asked to Vacate Land, Regional Official SaysUkraine’s breakaway region of Crimea will ask Tatars to vacate part of the land where they now live in exchange for new territory elsewhere in the region, a top Crimean government official has said.
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