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Snowden downloaded NSA secrets while working for Dell, sources say

“Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden began downloading documents describing the U.S. government’s electronic spying programs while he was working for Dell Inc in April 2012, almost a year earlier than previously reported, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter. David Frink, a spokesman for Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, declined to comment on any aspect of Snowden’s employment with the company, saying Dell’s ‘customer’ – presumably the NSA – had asked Dell not to talk publicly about him.” Continue reading →

Iranian Electoral Candidate Disqualified for Being Too Attractive

“27-year-old Nina Siahkali Moradi received 10,000 votes during the city’s most recent election, placing her 14th out of the 163 candidates, which landed her the title of ‘alternate member of council.’ However when one of those ranked above her was elected as mayor, Moradi was instead disqualified. A senior office in Qazvin has been quoted as saying, ‘We don’t want a catwalk model on the council.’ Moradi, a graduate student in architecture ran what many consider a successfully forward-leaning and high-profile election campaign, leading many to cite her disqualification as another blatant example of Iran’s sexist policy.” Continue reading →

Iraq Kurds reach out to Baghdad to fight surging al Qaeda

“The Shi’ite-led Iraqi government and Kurdish authorities are now looking at examples like the Shirqat attack and considering the once unthinkable – launching joint security operations and sharing intelligence – to combat the common enemy of al Qaeda. Such cooperation has been extremely rare since U.S. troops left at the end of 2011, while the central government and the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region in the north have been locked in an increasingly hostile dispute over land and oil. That the two sides are publicly contemplating working together underlines how worried they are about the insurgency and the threat of Iraq slipping back into all-out sectarian war.” Continue reading →

Audit finds NSA violated ‘thousands’ of its own privacy rules

“The National Security Agency (NSA) has breached privacy rules or acted outside its authority several thousand times since being granted sweeping new powers five years ago, the Washington Post reported. The breaches had been revealed after analysis of an internal audit and other top secret documents, the details of which were made available to the Post by US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. It cited an instance in 2008 when a ‘large number’ of calls from Washington were monitored after a programming error mixed up the area code for the US capital — 202 — with the international dialing code for Egypt — 20.” Continue reading →

Obama’s surveillance revisions omit limits on warrantless email searches

“In pledging to make changes that could curtail the federal government’s ability to spy on Americans, President Barack Obama failed to address calls by lawmakers and experts to overhaul a law that allows the National Security Agency to search vast databases of individual Americans’ emails without court warrants. Instead, Obama called on Congress to change the USA Patriot Act, which increased the government’s ability to gather intelligence after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the secret court that oversees NSA surveillance programs. Obama said he still backed the surveillance programs but was trying to strike a balance.” Continue reading →

Bill Bonner: The Virgin Central Banker

“The air-traffic controller can help make sure people get where they were going safely. If he does his job well, things will turn out as expected. But if he does a ‘brilliant’ job, travellers end up where they didn’t expect to go; he has not really added to the sum of human happiness. Out-of-the-box air traffic controlling will not make the world a better place. It can only make a mess of things. Likewise, the best a central banker can do is the normal thing. Creative central banking — and experimental central bank policies — should be avoided. They don’t make the world a better place; they only take people where they didn’t want to go.” Continue reading →

Bernanke’s Bubble: A Counterfeit Boom Based on Counterfeit Money

“A lot of people on Wall Street think this stock market is a bubble. And a lot of people don’t. A lot of people think this market will fall sharply if the FED stops inflating. And a lot of people don’t. I think the people who blame the FED are right. I also think the FOMC thinks so, too. That is why it has no intention of tapering. Nothing it has said in print since last December indicates otherwise.” Continue reading →

Feds Crack Encrypted Drives, Arrest Child Porn Suspect

“The arrest came months after the authorities told a federal judge they were unable to decrypt the drives and needed the defendant to disclose his passwords — pitting the constitutional right against compelled self-incrimination against the government’s need to access data. In June, the authorities urged the court to demand that Feldman fork over his passcodes, saying the suspect could ‘forget his passwords.’ The authorities did not say what type of encryption Feldman used. But the case illustrates that encryption isn’t foolproof and that the authorities are making headway cracking encryption.” Continue reading →