military industrial complex

Army plans switch to ‘green’ bullets containing copper

"The Army has been looking to 'green' small caliber ammo for some time now. In 2010, the Army switched to the greener 5.56 mm M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round. 'The EPR replaces the lead slug with a copper slug,' said Lt. Col. Phil Clark, product manager for small caliber ammunition in the Program Executive Officer Ammunition. 'This makes the projectile environmentally-friendly, while still giving soldiers the performance capabilities they need on the battlefield. So far we have eliminated 1,994 metric tons of lead from 5.56 ammunition production.'" Continue reading →

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Six ways Congress may reform NSA snooping

"The narrow 205-217 vote showed that there is significant support in Congress to reform NSA surveillance programs. Here are six other legislative proposals on the table. 1) Raise the standard for what records are considered 'relevant'; 2) Require NSA analysts to obtain court approval before searching metadata; 3) Declassify Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions; 4) Change the way Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges are appointed; 5) Appoint a public advocate to argue before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; 6) End phone metadata collection on constitutional grounds." Continue reading →

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House leaders defend voting against bill to rein in NSA spying

"Republican and Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives defended their support for a spy program that sweeps up vast amounts of electronic communications after it survived a surprisingly close vote a day earlier. Although Speaker John Boehner said he was glad the House had the debate, he was unapologetic about his vote, echoing the contention of the Obama administration and intelligence chiefs that the NSA program was essential for national security. Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, who voted against the amendment, said Democrats voted on both sides of the resolution, but 'stand together' in their concerns about the program." Continue reading →

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Military estimates 500 sexual assaults per week

"Recent congressional hearings featured generals promising change and outlining programs created to fix the issues, but those in this military community say that's not enough to solve the problem. For the past 20 years, the military has confronted periodic sexual harassment and assault scandals, and reports show the problems have gotten worse. Ten years ago, 12% of the Air Force Academy's female graduating class said they had been sexually assaulted, and 70% said they had been sexually harassed. Last year, the Pentagon estimated that about 500 men and women were assaulted each week." Continue reading →

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Who Owns Congress? The NSA or the FED?

"What did it tell Congress? It did not have to tell Congress anything. Congress knows who has the phone data of every member of Congress. But what about 'We, the people?' Them, too. Then who owns Congress? The NSA spies on the FED. It can blackmail any FED official at any time -- just as it can blackmail any member of Congress. Yes, the FED can cut off the government's money. Maybe Congress will then cut off the NSA's funding. But it never has in the past. So, the Federal Reserve is not the owner of Congress. It merely holds a long-term sublease through a lease arrangement from the NSA." Continue reading →

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Unusual Cremation Not Limited to Michael Hastings

"Something of the same sort of cremation occurred in a mysterious shoot down of a helicopter in Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 30 Americans, including Seal Team 6 members that took part in the raid on Osama Bin Laden's residence. The Pentagon told the families that all the bodies were cremated due to the fact that they were badly burned in the crash. However, pictures have emerged that show some deceased SEALs without bad burns. The Pentagon also claims that, despite recovering all the bodies of those killed, the helicopter’s black box was washed away in a flash flood." Continue reading →

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Digital Carjackers Show Off New Attacks, Funded By $80,000 Pentagon Grant

"This fact, that a car is not a simple machine of glass and steel but a hackable network of computers, is what Miller and Valasek have spent the last year trying to demonstrate. Miller, a 40-year-old security engineer at Twitter, and Valasek, the 31-year-old director of security intelligence at the Seattle consultancy IOActive, received an $80,000-plus grant last fall from the mad-scientist research arm of the Pentagon known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to root out security vulnerabilities in automobiles." Continue reading →

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The Creepy, Long-Standing Practice of Undersea Cable Tapping

"More than 550,000 miles of flexible undersea cables about the size of garden watering hoses carry all the world's emails, searches, and tweets. Together, they shoot the equivalent of several hundred Libraries of Congress worth of information back and forth every day. In 2005, the Associated Press reported that a submarine called the USS Jimmy Carter had been repurposed to carry crews of technicians to the bottom of the sea so they could tap fiber optic lines. The easiest place to get into the cables is at the regeneration points -- spots where their signals are amplified and pushed forward on their long, circuitous journeys." Continue reading →

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NSA Taps Directly Into Undersea Fiber-optic Data Cables

"Of course, by tapping directly into the beams of light transferring this data around the globe — apparently with the cooperation of the world’s chief technology companies — the federal government bypasses all legal and constitutional restraints on its already immense power. Remarkably, there does not seem to be a corresponding flight by Americans from the devices or services being monitored by the federal government. As one brick after another is stacked on the ever-growing walls of the 21st-century Panopticon, it appears that nothing will dissuade Americans from growing increasingly reliant on the very tools being used in the construction." Continue reading →

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House protects surveillance program before passing military spending bill

"After fierce debate over the limits of domestic spying, the House on Wednesday voted to protect the federal government's ability to collect phone records and other data related to U.S. citizens who aren't suspected of terrorism. The Obama administration lobbied against Amash's amendment, and members of congressional intelligence committees defended the NSA's actions. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said it was 'a false narrative that the federal government is taking in the content of American phone calls and emails.' She said there was more information about U.S. citizens in a phone book than in the NSA database." Continue reading →

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