military industrial complex

Murder Mystery? Michael Hastings and a CyberSecurity Firm Called Endgame

"Reports are beginning to surface about a connection between the reporter Michael Hastings and a mysterious cybersecurity firm known as Endgame. Hastings has been linked to Barrett Brown, who the government alleges is the leader of the hacker group Anonymous. Does the mysterious Endgame have any role in the ending of Hastings' game? But, keep in mind that there is no direct public evidence that Hastings was even murdered. That may be, though, only because evidence is being destroyed. Hastings' body was cremated, even though this was not the desire of the family." Continue reading →

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Chilling Development: NSA Takes on Amash Amendment

"The Huffington Post reports today that NSA director General Keith Alexander called an emergency Top Secret/SCI-level meeting on Capitol Hill to urge Members to vote against Rep. Justin Amash's (R-MI) amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill which would end blanket collection authority under the Patriot Act and stop the NSA and other agencies 'from using Section 215 of the Patriot Act to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215.'" Continue reading →

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NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails

"The NSA is a 'supercomputing powerhouse' with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' email? 'There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately,' NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week. The system is 'a little antiquated and archaic,' she added." Continue reading →

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German Intelligence Worked Closely with NSA on Data Surveillance

"Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly said she knew nothing about American surveillance activities in Germany. But documents show that German intelligence cooperates closely with the NSA and even uses spy software provided by the US. The shift to a more offensive German security policy began in 2007. Since then, there have been 'regular US-German analytic exchanges and closer cooperation in tracking both German and non-German extremist targets.' The German foreign intelligence agency went even further in its effort to please the Americans, 'working to influence the German government to relax interpretation of the privacy laws'." Continue reading →

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Leaked Pakistani report confirms high civilian death toll in CIA drone strikes

"A secret document obtained by the Bureau reveals for the first time the Pakistan government’s internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties. At least 147 of the dead are clearly stated to be civilian victims, 94 of those are said to be children. The numbers recorded are much higher than those provided by the US administration, which continues to insist that no more than 50 to 60 ‘non-combatants’ have been killed by the CIA across the entire nine years of Pakistan bombings. New CIA director John Brennan has described claims to the contrary as ‘intentional misrepresentations‘." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingLeaked Pakistani report confirms high civilian death toll in CIA drone strikes

How will Obama defend secret NSA program in court? Letter offers clue.

"The letter continues, 'the Government is prohibited ... from indiscriminately sifting through the data. The data-base may only be queried for intelligence purposes by NSA analysts where there is a reasonable, articulable suspicion (RAS), based on specific facts.' If the government wants to take a closer look, any data gleaned must be associated with people or phone numbers already identified and approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2012, the letter revealed, the court approved fewer than 300 'query terms' that would allow intelligence analysts to pursue a phone call further." Continue reading →

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Afghan customs fines hike cost of U.S. military pullout

"A customs dispute between the Afghan and US governments has disrupted the withdrawal of American military equipment, dramatically inflating the cost of the drawdown, defense officials said. With Afghan authorities insisting the United States owes millions of dollars in customs fines and trucks carrying hardware being blocked at border crossings, the Americans have started flying out most equipment by air at great cost. The Afghan government is insisting that US forces pay $1,000 for each shipping container leaving the country that lacks what it calls a valid customs form. And authorities now claim the Americans owe $70 million in fines." Continue reading →

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How a Pacifist Accidentally Infused the FBI with Cash

"First, never underestimate the incompetence of the bureaucracy. Second, a fugitive bomber can always be 'found' whenever security agencies feel shortchanged by their current budgets. The first might give you a measure of relief in the face of another IRS witch hunt and Edward Snowden’s revelations: The NSA might not be able to do too much with all those emails and text messages you sent. The second puts a damper on that: For one thing, that security we keep being promised — if we’ll just cough up a little more liberty in exchange — never quite seems to materialize. Unfortunately, there are no refunds." Continue reading →

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You may already be a winner in NSA’s “three-degrees” surveillance sweepstakes!

"So far, we know that there have been about 20,000 requests for FISA warrants to surveil domestic targets since 2001, but if those warrants covered three hops from the suspects at the center of the requests—depending on how tightly or loosely the NSA defines a relationship—three hops could encompass as much as 50 percent of the Internet-using population of the world. Sure, I’m not calling terrorists, and NSA analysts are not intercepting my calls or rifling through my Gmail account. (Well—probably not.) But the chance that they are is significantly higher than the probability I would have put on that scenario two months ago, and that’s disconcerting." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingYou may already be a winner in NSA’s “three-degrees” surveillance sweepstakes!

How to Be a Rogue Superpower: A Manual for the Twenty-First Century

"Highlighted in all this has been a curious fact of our twenty-first-century world. In the Cold War years, asylum was always potentially available. If you opposed one of the two superpowers or its allies, the other was usually ready to open its arms to you, as the U.S. famously did for what were once called 'Soviet dissidents' in great numbers. The Soviets did the same for Americans, Brits, and others, often secret communists, sometimes actual spies, who opposed the leading capitalist power and its global order. Today, if you are a twenty-first-century 'dissident' and need asylum/protection from the only superpower left, there is essentially none to be had." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingHow to Be a Rogue Superpower: A Manual for the Twenty-First Century