False Sense Of Security

The Government Is Lying to Us About Cybersecurity

"The idea that 'strong security' is compatible with a government backdoor is a lie. Any security expert can tell you that a backdoor leaves your product vulnerable, even if you trust the government agency with the key. Previous backdoors advocated by the US government have been blown wide open by security experts. There is near-universal agreement among security experts that government backdoors and security are not compatible – a reality that the DOJ continues to ignore."

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LA cops plant drugs on black suspect – unaware their body cams were on

"The body cam of a fellow officer showed one officer picking up the small packet from the ground and placing it in the suspect’s wallet — before making a show of discovering it multiple times for the camera. According Shields’ attorney, Steve Levine, officer Lee seemed stunned when he was shown the video while on the witness stand, saying the officer, 'Looked dumbstruck to me. Period. He had really no answer.' According to an expert discussing how the body cams work, the officer may not have realized that the camera was running 30 seconds before he believed he activated it."

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John Whitehead: The Anatomy of a National Nervous Breakdown

"This breakdown—triggered by polarizing circus politics, media-fed mass hysteria, militarization and militainment (the selling of war and violence as entertainment), a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness in the face of growing corruption, the government’s alienation from its populace, and an economy that has much of the population struggling to get by—is manifesting itself in madness, mayhem and an utter disregard for the very principles and liberties that have kept us out of the clutches of totalitarianism for so long."

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Napolitano: What if Government Steals Liberty and Fails to Deliver Safety?

"What if this bulk surveillance is about power and control and not about safety? What if the use of intelligence data for political purposes and not for safety is a profound danger to democracy? What if government can't keep us safe? What if we falsely think that it does keep us safe? What if that delusion makes us less safe? What if government's bulk acquisition of private data makes us less free? What if government works not for us but for itself? What do we do about it?"

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Almost any Intel Skylake or later system can be owned via USB attack

"The likes of the EFF have long argued that having a “black box” that can control networking and hardware, even when the computer is switched off, represents a major security and privacy risk. Turns out they were right. Security firm Positive Technologies reports being able to execute unsigned code on computers running the IME through USB. The fully fleshed-out details of the attack are yet to be known, but from what we know, it’s bad."

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WikiLeaks: CIA wrote code ‘to impersonate’ Kaspersky Lab anti-virus

"The CIA multi-platform hacking suite ‘Hive’ was able to impersonate existing entities to conceal suspicious traffic from the user being spied on, the source code of the malicious program indicates, WikiLeaks said on Thursday. The extraction of information would therefore be misattributed to an impersonated company, and at least three examples in the code show that Hive is able to impersonate Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, WikiLeaks stated."

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Duty, Honor, Atrocity: George W. Bush Receives West Point Character Award

"In George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, if you are an ordinary citizen found guilty of capital murder, the mandatory sentence is either life in prison or the death penalty. If, however, you are a former president of the United States responsible for initiating two illegal wars of aggression, which killed 7,000 U.S. servicemen and at least 210,000 civilians, displaced more than 10 million people from their homes, condoned torture, initiated a global drone assassination campaign, and imprisoned people for years without substantive evidence or trial in Guantanamo Bay, the punishment evidently is to be given the Thayer Award at West Point."

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U.S. African Military Activity Is a “Recruiting Tool” for Terror Groups

" U.S. efforts, primarily focused on training allies and proxies, are flawed, often ineffective, and can have destabilizing effects on countries that military operations are meant to strengthen, according to experts. Cast as benign training operations, they can lead to unforeseen consequences and dangerous blowback."

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US nuclear arsenal upgrade to exceed $1 trillion

"That planned modernization would increase the total costs of maintaining the current number of nuclear weapons and delivery system by 50 percent over normal operating costs, according to the CBO. The trillion-dollar question on everybody’s mind is: How exactly will the US government foot the bill for such a massive program?"

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French Gov’t Has Paid Out Nearly $600,000 To ISIS Fighters In Syria

"Jihadis have claimed unemployment benefits and family allowance for years while living in Syria. Over the past five years, some 500,000 euros ($583,200) have gone directly from the French taxpayers to the terror group, according to the report. Other European countries have uncovered similar problems. Close to every person who left Sweden to fight for terror groups in the Middle East received welfare, according to a government report."

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