“A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.” ― Ronald Reagan “The future doesn’t belong to the faint …
"Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi, in severing ties with Damascus, aims to show solidarity with Western and fellow Arab states opposed to Syria’s regime and also boost his under-fire image at home, analysts said. Morsi, an Islamist from the Muslim Brotherhood, told supporters in a Cairo stadium for a 'Support for Syria' rally on Saturday that he was going to 'definitively' cut diplomatic relations with Syria. The Syrian government on Sunday slammed the decision, accusing Morsi of announcing the cut in ties to deflect attention from domestic crises. Morsi called on the international community to impose a 'no-fly zone' over Syria." Continue reading →
"Three top European defence firms called on Sunday on governments to launch a programme to manufacture drones that European countries are currently having to buy from Israel or the United States. France’s Dassault Aviation, European aerospace giant EADS and Italy’s Finmeccania argued such a joint programme would 'support the capability needs of European armed forces while optimising the difficult budgetary situation through pooling of research and development funding'. They said they were prepared to work together on the creation of a European drone which allows surveillance of vast areas over 24 hours." Continue reading →
"Germany’s foreign intelligence service plans a major expansion of Internet surveillance despite deep unease over revelations of US online spying. The BND planned a 100 million euro ($130 million) programme over the next five years to expand web monitoring with up to 100 new staff members on a 'technical reconnaissance' team. The report came ahead of a state visit to Berlin by Barack Obama during which the German government has pledged to take up the controversy over the US phone and Internet surveillance programmes. The BND currently kept tabs on about five percent of emails, Internet calls and online chats while German law allowed up to 20 percent." Continue reading →
"After 9/11, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This permitted federal agents to write their own search warrants, as if to mimic the British soldiers in the 1760s. It was amended to permit the feds to go to the FISA court and get a search warrant for the electronic records of any American who might communicate with a foreign person. In 30 years, from 1979 to 2009, the legal standard for searching and seizing private communications was lowered by Congress from probable cause of crime to probable cause of being an agent of a foreign power to probable cause of being a foreign person to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person." Continue reading →
"An 82-year-old barber who has been giving free haircuts to the homeless in exchange for hugs for 25 years was granted permission by the mayor Thursday to keep working in a city park, despite orders to leave from police and health officials. Anthony 'Joe the Barber' Cymerys has been a fixture every Wednesday for years at Bushnell Park, where he cuts hair and his friends hand out food to the needy. But shortly after Cymerys set up shop this week, he said, health officials and police confronted him and his friends and told them they had to leave because they didn’t have permits." Continue reading →
"Foreign politicians and officials who took part in 2009 G20 summit meetings had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic. The disclosure raises new questions about GCHQ and the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings." Continue reading →
"'If you don’t like this program, which we now know was accessed 300 times last year, then you’ve got to be against local law enforcement being able to access routinely business records of the telephone company in their local investigations as well,' Rove told Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday. 'You cannot turn on a cop drama on television where there is not somebody who’s pinging somebody’s cell phone or taking a look at the phone calls made from some landline or telephone booth to help solve some crime on television,' he added. 'And it is routinely done in a large scale at the local law enforcement level.'" Continue reading →
"Many senators elected to leave Washington early Thursday afternoon instead of attending a briefing with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and other officials. Many lawmakers were eager to take advantage of the short day and head back to their home states for Father’s Day weekend. Only 47 of 100 senators attended the 2:30 briefing, leaving dozens of chairs in the secure meeting room empty as Clapper, Alexander and other senior officials told lawmakers about classified programs to monitor millions of telephone calls and broad swaths of Internet activity." Continue reading →
"While he defended the surveillance, McDonough said 'the existence of these programs obviously have unnerved many people.' He said Obama 'welcomes a public debate on this question because he does say and he will say in the days ahead that we have to find the right balance, and we will not keep ourselves on a perpetual war footing.' Revelations of the NSA’s broad monitoring of phone and Internet data has drawn criticism that the Obama administration has extended, or even expanded, the security apparatus the George W. Bush administration built after the September 11, 2001, attacks." Continue reading →