Senate – Jupiter Broadcasting

Chasing Nunes | Unfilter 231

chris — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 00:25:49 +0000

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Doxing ISIS | Unfilter 179

chris — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 23:01:46 +0000

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It’s a document extravaganza this week, with newly released Bin Laden files, ISIS informants & document treasure troves. We cover what surely must be a great week for the intelligence agencies.

Plus an update on the Apple vs DOJ case, the latest terrorism bogeyman, a 2016 race update, a high-note & even more!

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The post Doxing ISIS | Unfilter 179 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Unpatriotic Act | Unfilter 146

chris — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 22:11:00 +0000

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NSA Metadata collection provisions of the Patriot Act were suspended this weekend, followed by a nasty political battle. We examine where things stand now, the new powers granted to the NSA, who came down on which side & more!

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47 Freedom Hawks | Unfilter 136

chris — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 21:47:17 +0000

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Forty-seven Senate Republicans may have broken the law this week. We’ll look at the surprising move the made against the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton’s email scandal continues develop & we’ll look at the pressure she’s getting from top Democrats.

Plus a high note you won’t want to miss, an ISIS Update, cracking iPhones & much more!

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Special Delivery – YouTube

Tell Them to Pass the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act.
No Iran Nuclear Treaty Without Congressional Approval.

Hillary Clinton reveals she deleted 30,000 ‘personal’ emails

“Looking back, it would have been better if I’d simply used a second email account,” Clinton said during a press conference after her keynote address at the annual United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles meeting. “At the time, this didn’t seem like an issue.”

The press conference was Clinton’s attempt to calm a media firestorm stemming from a New York Times report that she did not use or even have a government email account while serving as President Obama‘s first Secretary of State and that her aides had not taken any measures to preserve four years’ worth of emails that were supposed to be archived for public review under federal record-keeping law.

Hillary Clinton Says ‘No’ to Independent Investigation of Her Family’s Home Email Server

But Clinton also refused to yield to calls for an independent investigator to examine the home server, which she said contains “personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all my responsibilities.

“And the server will remain private,” she said.

Prepare for Confidence-Shaking Cyber Attack: FBI’s Taddeo – YouTube

NY FBI Special Agent for Cyber, Special Operations Leo Taddeo discusses the increase in cyber security threats, how companies are combating cybercrime and the level of sophistication of data hacks.

US sending Humvees, radars, and drones to Ukraine’s front lines

The U.S. will provide more substantial arms and military equipment to Ukraine in the form of $75 million worth of armored Humvees, drones and counter-mortar radars. Much of it will help the Ukrainian military with situational awareness and targeting enemy artillery, but the list of goods does not include “lethal aid” that members of Congress and Ukraine supporters have asked President Barack Obama to authorize.

“This new assistance is part of our ongoing efforts to help sustain Ukraine’s defense and internal security operations and resist further aggression,” a senior administration official told reporters in an email. Missing from the announcement were Javelin portable anti-tank missiles requested by the Ukrainian military.

The announcement comes after months of pressure from Ukrainian officials and a recent push from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

“I think the administration has felt political pressure to do something…. This may well be a response to that political pressure,” Steven Pifer, Brookings senior fellow and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told Defense One. Pifer co-authored a report last month that is based on interviews with front line commanders in the Ukrainian military and argued that the U.S. should provide anti-tank and anti-battery weapons, but especially radars and unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, to detect enemy positions.

Putin reveals secrets of Russia’s Crimea takeover plot

Vladimir Putin has admitted for the first time that the plan to annex Crimea was ordered weeks before the referendum on self-determination.

Crimea was formally absorbed into Russia on 18 March, to international condemnation, after unidentified gunmen took over the peninsula.

Mr Putin said on TV he had ordered work on “returning Crimea” to begin at an all-night meeting on 22 February.

The meeting was called after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted.

Speaking last year, Mr Putin had said only that he took his final decision about Crimea after secret, undated opinion polls showed 80% of Crimeans favoured joining Russia.

The findings of these polls were borne out by the outcome of the referendum on 16 March, he told Russian state TV last April.

U.S.-backed Rebel Now ISIL’s Man in Libya

The leader of the al-Qaeda-linked rebel forces that brought down Moammar Gadhafi is now the Islamic State’s top man in Libya, according to various media reports, indicating a further unraveling of the Pyrrhic victory achieved by the U.S. and NATO air war on Libya in 2011.

Abdelhakim Belhadj, a Libyan known in the jihadi world as Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, is the former head of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group and the Tripoli Military Council.

High-Note:

Big changes made to marijuana bill | Local News – KTUU.com Anchorage

Senate bill 30 is supposed to change the law to reflect a voter initiative legalizing marijuana which took effect last month.

Senate OKs PTSD as qualifying condition for medical marijuana

The post 47 Freedom Hawks | Unfilter 136 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Volcanoes of Jihad | Unfilter 123

chris — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 22:28:53 +0000

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After weeks of speculation we have new audio from ISIS’ leader Al Baghdadi calling for attacks in Saudi Arabia & we make the case that it’s still all about the oil. Plus the latest in the Net Neutrality debate, and our follow up thoughts.

Then we take a critical look at the attempts to scare kids in schools & the twists and turns for legal cannabis.

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News

Cops Decide Running Surprise School Shooter Drill During Class At A Middle School Is A Great Idea | Techdirt

We’re going to have to go over this again: if your drills to prevent school tragedy actually leave school children traumatized, then don’t do those damned drills. What began with terrorism drills on school buses and then devolved into unannounced school-shooting drills is getting to be so full-on crazy that I sort of can’t believe that _anyone _thinks any of this is a good idea. The latest story involves police running an unannounced “active shooter drill” at a local middle school while classes were in session. As a part of this insane exercise, police officers went around bursting into classrooms filled with terrified students, weapons out, as they acted out their fun little thespian experience of horror. And, to add insult to injury, school officials notified parents of the drill long after unknowing students were informing their parents that an actual shooting was taking place at the school.

According to Fox affiliate WTVT, officials at Jewett Middle Academy e-mailed parents to inform them of the drill, after it took place. By that point, WTVT reports, cellphones were already filling up with texts from frightened students, who thought there was a real shooter in the school.

US Senate falls two votes short of shutting down NSA phone spying | Ars Technica

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in 2013. Rubio was first to speak against the USA Freedom Act in today’s debate, saying it could slow the government from disrupting an ISIL cell.

The US Senate voted against reining in the NSA’s spying powers tonight, shooting down a proposal that was supported not just by intelligence reform groups, but by the director of the NSA himself.

The USA Freedom Act needed 60 Senate votes to pass its key procedural vote, and it failed to get them. The bill got 58 yes votes and 42 no votes.

The bill would have stopped the government from engaging in bulk phone surveillance. Instead, Americans’ phone information would have remained with the phone companies and could only be searched by request, with specific selection terms.

It would have also provided for a privacy advocate at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves such surveillance. Reformers hoped that would provide for a less one-sided debate at that court.

Congress Is Irrelevant on Mass Surveillance. Here’s What Matters Instead. – The Intercept

The “debate” among the Senators that preceded the vote was darkly funny and deeply boring, in equal measure. The black humor was due to the way one GOP senator after the next—led by ranking intelligence committee member Saxby Chambliss of Georgia (pictured above)—stood up and literally screeched about 9/11 and ISIS over and over and over, and then sat down as though they had made a point. Their scary script had been unveiled earlier that morning by a _Wall Street Journal _op-ed by former Bush Attorney General Mike Mukasey and former CIA and NSA Director Mike Hayden warning that NSA reform would make the terrorists kill you; it appeared under this Onion-like headline:

There is a real question about whether the defeat of this bill is good, bad, or irrelevant. To begin with, it sought to change only one small sliver of NSA mass surveillance (domestic bulk collection of phone records under section 215 of the Patriot Act) while leaving completely unchanged the primary means of NSA mass surveillance, which takes place under section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, based on the lovely and quintessentially American theory that all that matters are the privacy rights of Americans (and not the 95 percent of the planet called “non-Americans”).

There were some mildly positive provisions in the USA Freedom Act: the placement of “public advocates” at the FISA court to contest the claims of the government; the prohibition on the NSA holding Americans’ phone records, requiring instead that they obtain FISA court approval before seeking specific records from the telecoms (which already hold those records for at least 18 months); and reducing the agency’s “contact chaining” analysis from three hops to two.

Net Neutrality

David Cameron Says People Aren’t Radicalized By Poverty Or Foreign Policy, But By Free Speech Online, So ISPs Agree To Censor Button | Techdirt

A few years ago, we mocked then Senator Joe Lieberman’s request that internet companies put “report this content as terrorist content” buttons on various types of online content. The plan went nowhere, because it’s a really bad idea, prone to massive abuse. Yet, over in the UK, some apparently think it’s such a grand idea that they’re actually moving forward with it. This isn’t a huge surprise — the current UK government has been going on for quite some time about banning “extremist” content, and just recently ramped up such efforts.

And now it appears that a bunch of big UK broadband access providers have agreed to play along:

The UK’s major Internet service providers — BT, Virgin, Sky and Talk Talk — have this week committed to host a public reporting button for terrorist material online, similar to the reporting button which allows the public to report child sexual exploitation.

They have also agreed to ensure that terrorist and extremist material is captured by their filters to prevent children and young people coming across radicalising material.

ISIS / ISIL / IS / CIA

ISIS: Baghdadi Is Alive and Saudi Arabia Is Our Next Target

After roughly a week of speculation over the fate of its leader, the Islamic State (ISIS) released what it says is a speech from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi today in which the head of the makeshift caliphate calls for attacks against Saudi Arabia, among other things.

“There will be no security, no rest for Al-Salul,” the ISIS leader purportedly says, referring to the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. “Draw your swords.”

In the 16-minute speech, which ISIS also translated into English and made available online, Baghdadi allegedly calls on his followers to first attack Shiites, then proceed to combat Saudi Arabia and the U.S., which has military bases on the Arabian Peninsula.

Can Saudi Arabia keep ISIS out? – CBS News

The U.S. military said Monday coalition forces conducted more than 30 airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) since Friday. That coalition includes Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are desperate to keep what’s happening in Iraq from happening in their country. CBS News was given an extraordinary look at what they’re doing.

We flew over the Arabian Desert to see the new, 600-mile long border fence that’s protecting Saudi Arabia from ISIS. On the other side is the chaos of Iraq, where ISIS is waging a brutal war.

The Saudis are using radar and infrared cameras to make sure it doesn’t spill across the frontier.

Saudi Funding of ISIS – The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Today, Saudi citizens continue to represent a significant funding source for Sunni groups operating in Syria. Arab Gulf donors as a whole — of which Saudis are believed to be the most charitable — have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Syria in recent years, including to ISIS and other groups. There is support for ISIS in Saudi Arabia, and the group directly targets Saudis with fundraising campaigns

Video: Who is Jihadi John? – in 60 seconds – Telegraph

“Jihadi John”, the masked Isil executioner and alleged British national,
known for his role in the beheadings of hostages by the Islamic State has
become one of the world’s most wanted men

Jihadi John – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Second French suspect in Isis beheading video – The Local

A second Frenchman who appeared among Islamic State jihadists in a grisly execution video has been identified as a 22-year-old man from an eastern suburb of Paris, a source close to the case said Wednesday.

President Francois Hollande earlier confirmed a second Frenchman was spotted in the video showing the beheading of Syrian prisoners, who the source said went by the name Abu Othman.

The two Frenchmen are seen in the brutal clip released by the IS group on Sunday which features the killing of 18 Syrian prisoners and a US aid worker.

High Note

First pot auction held in Washington state

History was made Saturday on a tiny farm outside Prosser. For the first time, marijuana was sold at an auction.

Those in the retail pot business say it’s a sign supply is slowly starting to meet demand.

Most of the U.S. could never do what Randy Williams and his Fireweed Farms pulled off – 500 pounds of pot were on sale.

Why Congress Probably Won’t Block Marijuana Legalization In Washington, D.C.

Initiative 71 cannot take effect until after D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson submits it to Congress for review, which he is expected to do when the new Congress is seated in January. “I will treat Initiative 71 in the same manner as I would any measure passed by the Council and transmit it to Congress without delay,” he said last week. Although Mayor-elect Bowser indicated that she would like to wait until the D.C. Council has approved legislation authorizing the licensing of commercial growers and retailers, the timing is up to Mendelson.

Once Mendelson submits the initiative, Congress has 30 legislative days to pass a resolution overriding it. If a resolution is not enacted by the end of that period, the initiative automatically becomes law. Getting a bill through both chambers in that amount of time will be a challenge, even with Republicans taking control of the Senate and expanding their majority in the House. And that’s assuming Republicans—who, as Rohrabacher noted, often talk about the virtues of federalism and local control—think nullifying a policy endorsed by 69 percent of D.C. voters should be one of their first acts in the new Congress.

“I think a resolution of disapproval is unlikely,” says Bill Piper, director of national affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance. “Overturning a ballot measure passed by 70 percent of the voters doesn’t really look good for the incoming Republican Congress. If the council transmits [the initiative] in January, I think that pretty much reduces or eliminates the chance that Congress will overturn it outright. It just doesn’t fit with what they’re talking about doing, which is rebranding themselves as not being obstructionists.”

The post Volcanoes of Jihad | Unfilter 123 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Obama Sells ISIS | Unfilter 113

chris — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 20:42:00 +0000

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In the live run up to Obama’s sales pitch to the nation to go back into Iraq, we analysis the recent developments of ISIS, and dispel common memes being pushed out by the media. Then cover Obama’s speech in real time with our commentary.

Plus new leaks from the CIA Torture report suggest the scope of waterboarding and other tactics by the CIA were much more brutal than the public has been lead to believe.

Then we end on a surprising high note, and in-depth discussion.

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— Show Notes —

CIA Torture Report

CIA ‘tortured al-Qaeda suspects close to the point of death by drowning them in water-filled baths’ – Telegraph

As the US Senate prepares to release a report documenting US
torture programme after 9/11, Telegraph reveals new details about the scope
of CIA excesses

“They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.”

The account of extreme CIA interrogation comes as the US Senate prepares to publish a declassified version of its so-called Torture Report – a 3,600-page report document based on a review of several million classified CIA documents.

Publication of the report is currently being held up by a dispute over how much of the 480-page public summary should remain classified, but it is expected to be published within weeks.

Snowden

Switzerland will host Edward Snowden, if he testifies against the NSA- The Inquirer

The Swiss attorney general has said that whistleblower Edward Snowden can reside there if he responds to state requests for testimony against the US National Security Agency (NSA).

A document provided to the Swiss Sunday newspaper Sonntagszeitung is titled, “What are the rules would apply to consider when Edward Snowden would [be] brought to Switzerland and then the United States would make a request for extradition“, and it relates that the rules would allow the movement and repel the requests.

Speaking to the newspaper, Snowden’s Swiss lawyer Marcel Bosonnet revealed that he is pleased with the results of the study, commenting that, “The legal requirements for safety are met.”

ISIS

CNN poll: Majority of Americans alarmed by ISIS – CNN.com

Seven in 10 Americans believe ISIS has the resources to launch an attack against the United States, just days before President Barack Obama plans to address the nation on the subject.

The poll released Monday shows that Americans favor:

— Additional airstrikes against ISIS (76% favor, 23% oppose)

— Military aid to forces fighting ISIS (62% favor, 37% oppose)

— Providing humanitarian aid to people fleeing ISIS (83% favor, 16% oppose)

U.S. targets ISIS fighters near Iraq’s second-largest dam

But a majority of Americans, 61%-38%, oppose placing U.S. soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Syria to combat the terrorist group.

Even as Americans support military action against ISIS, they still want Obama to seek authority from Congress before taking any action. More than 7 in 10 Americans think Obama should ask Congress for the ability to strike ISIS militarily. And 8 in 10 Americans support Congress approving military force against ISIS.

Straw Poll

Loading poll…

High Note:

Washington’s indoor pot grows could be big power suck – Local – MyNorthwest.com

“You’re installing 1,000 watt lights over about every two plants and running those 16 to 18 hours a day to grow the product over a 10, 12, 14 week cycle. It’s a pretty significant consumption of electricity.”

The council studied a number of growers across the state earlier this summer after they were granted licenses by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. It determined demand for electricity could grow between 60 and 160 average megawatts over the next few years.

“That’s significant,” Eckman says. “That’s about half of the size of a new combustion turbine gas generating plant.”

Pot producers add demand on Northwest power grid | Local & Regional | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News

Since Washington voters in 2012 approved an initiative to legalize recreational pot use by adults, the state Liquor Control Board has so far issued more than 200 licenses to marijuana growers out of about 2,500 who have applied.

Recreational pot eclipses medical pot in Colorado – National – MyNorthwest.com

Colorado is now selling more recreational pot than medical pot, a turning point for the newly legal industry.

Tax records released by the state Department of Revenue on Wednesday showed that the state sold $29.7 million worth of recreational marijuana in July, the most recent data available. That was slightly higher than the $28.9 million worth of medical marijuana sold in the same month.

Colorado has many more medical pot shops than recreational pot shops, which are open to all 21 and over. Colorado has some 500 medical shops, fewer than 200 open to all adults.

Since January, Colorado has reaped more than $37 million in taxes from marijuana. That figure includes taxes, licenses and fees from both medical and recreational pot.

The post Obama Sells ISIS | Unfilter 113 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Watchlist of Terror | Unfilter 109

chris — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:57:05 +0000

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The Intercept has published Obama’s secret terrorist tracking system, by the numbers. We dig in. The CIA and the Senate are still fighting over the torture report.

Then we’ll examine the new groundwork for the new Cold War, and the ridiculous reactions Colorado’s neighbor states are having to Cannabis legalization.

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— Show Notes —

— The Slow Death of Privacy —

Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

• The second-highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by the government is in Dearborn, Mich.—a city of 96,000 that has the largest percentage of Arab-American residents in the country.

• The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.

• The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract data to add to the watchlists.

State Dept. ‘Torture Talking Points’ Reveal White House PR Machine Ahead of Senate Report

A State Department document obtained by the Associated Press reveals part of the Obama administration’s attempt to ready its public relations response to an upcoming Senate report on the CIA’s torture program.

The document details some of the administration’s prepared talking points to be used once a White House-approved version of the report is released.

Reportedly sent by accident via email to the AP, the State Department memo describes the report as a demonstration of American democracy, rather than as an indictment of the CIA’s torture practices. The document states that “no American is proud” of the CIA’s tactics, but that “the story” of illegal, indefinite torture and imprisonment is part of a larger message, one in which “America’s democratic system worked just as it was designed to work in bringing an end to actions inconsistent with our democratic values.” That story, the document proclaims, is one in which Americans can take pride.

The document contains a few subtle errors in its dates and phrasing. At one point, it claims that the “interrogation methods were debated in our free media, challenged in our independent courts, and, just two years after their introduction, restricted by an act of our Congress sponsored by Senator John McCain and overwhelmingly backed by members of both of our political parties.”

As investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler notes, that “act of Congress” likely refers to the Detainee Treatment Act — but that legislation was passed in 2005, almost four years after the launch of the CIA’s Retention, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program, not two. In addition, the RDI program has rarely been “challenged in independent courts,” as both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama regularly prevented the details of the program from coming to light by invoking the “state secrets privilege,” a rule which allows governments to hold back evidence in a legal case by claiming that disclosing the information might endanger national security.

Report: Israel tapped John Kerry’s phone when he was brokering peace talks

Israeli intelligence intercepted phone calls of US Secretary of State John Kerry while he was trying to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority earlier this year, German news magazine _Der Spiegel _reported on Sunday.

The report was confirmed by several sources in the intelligence community, according to Der Spiegel.

Both Israel and Russia Shared Kerry’s Intercepted Phone Calls Tikun-Olam Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם

Yesterday’s report, originating in Der Spiegel that Israel intercepted the telecommunications of Secretary of State John Kerry when he was in flight to the Middle East has just become a much bigger story. The reporter noted that there were two countries who eavesdropped on Kerry. But he didn’t say which country it was.

My highly-placed Israeli source tells me that the identity of that country is Russia.

While Kerry’s position on the Israel-Palestine peace talks was Israel’s number one priority, Russia’s number one priority was to learn the U.S. plans and position regarding the Ukrainian separatist movement and Russia’s involvement with it. My source had this to say:

…It’s a “fruitful ongoing joint venture” initiated by Lieberman thanks to his Moscow connections. Israel provides Russia with recordings of intercepted calls Kerry makes flying over the Middle East, and Russia provides Israel with recordings of calls he makes flying over Central Asia, the Far East & the Pacific Ocean.

The source notes this “joint venture” became extremely important for Moscow since last February — because of the Ukrainian crisis.

In this way, the spying collaboration has been fruitful for both sides.

New leaker disclosing US secrets, government concludes

Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden’s leaks.

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— Cold War 2.0 —

Putin Urges Economic Retaliation for Sanctions Over Ukraine Conflict – NYTimes.com

Mr. Putin said that Russia should signal that it finds the economic sanctions offensive, but that it should do so without harming Russian consumers.

“The political tools of economic pressure are unacceptable and run counter to all norms and rules,” he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Unintended consequences: Sanctions on Russia hurt US dollar dominance — RT USA

The US dollar, the dominant global currency since 1944, may lose some of its luster due to the American-led sanctions against Russia over the turmoil in Ukraine. The greenback has been fading in favor since the global financial crisis in 2008.

The US-led sanctions against Russia may have backfired on the US
because it threatens to “hasten a move away from the dollar
that’s been stirring since the global financial crisis [in
2008],” Rachel Evans at Bloomberg wrote. In an unexpected turn of events, Hong Kong’s
central bank has bought more than $9.5 billion since the start of
July “to prevent its currency from rallying as the sanctions
stoked speculation of an influx of Russian cash,” she noted.

Germany Blocks the Delivery of Military Parts to Russia – NYTimes.com

A spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Berlin would be open to expanding the existing European Union sanctions to include already signed deals. “The European Council decided what it decided,” the spokesman, Georg Streiter, told reporters on Monday.

The decision to halt the deal, estimated by the Economics Ministry to be worth 123 million euros, or about $165 million, will also put the German government under increased pressure from the country’s powerful industrial sector, which has warned that economic sanctions against Russia will hamper growth and increase unemployment.

Vladimir Putin signs historic $20bn oil deal with Iran to bypass Western sanctions

Vladimir Putin has agreed a $20bn (£11.8bn) trade deal with Iran that will see
Russia sidestep Western sanctions on its energy sector.

Under the terms of a five-year accord, Russia will help Iran organise oil
sales as well as “cooperate in the oil-gas industry, construction of power
plants, grids, supply of machinery, consumer goods and agriculture
products”, according to a statement by the Energy Ministry in Moscow.

The move is a win-win for both nations after they were hit with Western sanctions aimed at limiting their energy sectors.

Russia, India to ink $40 bn gas deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to announce a massive natural gas deal during their summit later this year, Indian media reports said Monday.

Russian and Indian officials are negotiating a $40 billion gas pipeline project from Russia to India, oil ministry officials told Indian daily Hindustan Times.

Russia will also supply 46 million tonnes of oil to China each year in the next 25 years, according to recent deals signed by President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Even as the US and EU try to isolate Russia on the Ukraine issue, Beijing and other BRICS capitals have been cementing their business ties with Moscow.

— Weed Wackers —

Since marijuana legalization, highway fatalities in Colorado are at near-historic lows – The Washington Post

Since the new Colorado law took effect in January, the “drugged driver” panic has only intensified.I’ve already written about one dubious example, in which the Colorado Highway Patrol and some local and national media perpetuated a story that a driver was high on pot when he slammed into a couple of police cars parked on an interstate exit ramp. While the driver did have some pot in his system, his blood-alcohol level was off the charts and was far more likely the cause of the accident.

As you can see, roadway fatalities this year are down from last year, and down from the 13-year average. Of the seven months so far this year, five months saw a lower fatality figure this year than last.

What’s notable here is that the totals so far in 2014 are closer to the safest composite year since 2002 than to the average year since 2002. I should also add here that these are total fatalities.

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The post Watchlist of Terror | Unfilter 109 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

GCHQ, Spying on YOU! | Unfilter 106

chris — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 20:37:21 +0000

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New Snowden revelations show the extent of the GCHQ’s disruption of online services and communities, the Obama administration lets the CIA slide again, and the BRICS nations launch a major attack against the US Dollar.

Plus a good use of Drones, some post-legalization issues in Washington, your feedback, our follow up, and much much more!

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— Show Notes —

The Slow Death of Privacy

CIA vs Senate | Unfilter 89

After five years the Senate’s investigation into the Central Intelligence Agencies torture programs has bursted into the light when a massive fight between top Senate officials and the CIA went public in a big way.

Taking to the floor, traditionally an intelligence agency apologist, blasted the CIA we’ll break it all down.

Obama adm refuses to pursue criminal investigation of CIA spying on Senate staffers

On Thursday this week, a DOJ spokesperson confirmed to McClatchy
that the Justice Dept. won’t pursue any further its investigation
into whether Senate Intelligence Committee staffers took
classified documents from a secure facility, nor a related probe
concerning allegations that the CIA spied on those same
congressional workers.

“The department carefully reviewed the matters referred to us
and did not find sufficient evidence to warrant a criminal
investigation,” spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement
sent to the news agency.

Earlier this year in March, the CIA alleged that Senate staffers
working on a controversial, yet-to-be-published report concerning
the agency’s use of torture tactics after the September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks had improperly removed classified documents
from a protected site and brought them illegally to their Capitol
Hill offices. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), the chair of
the Senate Intelligence Committee working on that report, in turn
fired back and said that the CIA has been secretly monitoring the
computer use of lawmakers and staff members involved.

During an unannounced speech on the floor of Congress that month,
Feinstein said she had “grave concerns that the CIA’s search
may well have violated the separation of powers principles
embodied in the US Constitution.”

There is_”no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice
Department that Senate staff may have committed a
crime,”Feinstein said, adding that she viewed the CIA’s
request for an investigation as a“potential effort to
intimidate this staff.”_

GCHQ’s “Chinese menu” of tools spreads disinformation across Internet

What appears to be an internal Wiki page detailing the cyber-weaponry used by the British spy agency GCHQ was published today by Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept. The page, taken from the documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lists dozens of tools used by GCHQ to target individuals and their computing devices, spread disinformation posing as others, and “shape” opinion and information available online.

The page had been maintained by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) Covert Internet Technical Development team, but it fell out of use by the time Snowden copied it. Greenwald and NBC previously reported on JTRIG’s “dirty tricks” tactics for psychological operations and information warfare, and the new documents provide a hint at how those tactics were executed.

The effects tools fall into a few broad categories, including:

Denial of service and access:

JTRIG CITD has developed its own equivalent of CryptoLocker—Swamp Donkey, a tool “that will silently locate all predefined types of file [sic] and encrypt them on a target’s machine.”
Sunblock blocks a target from sending or receiving e-mail and viewing websites.
Stealth Moose will “disrupt [the] target’s Windows machine.” And for the ultimate in harassment, there’s ANGRY PIRATE, “a tool that will permanently disable a target’s account on their computer.”

**Information harassment tools: **

A tool appropriately called Badger allows GCHQ to overwhelm targets with spam e-mails “to support an Information Operations campaign.”
Concrete Donkey “is the ability to scatter an audio message to a large number of telephones, or repeatedly bomb a target number with the same message.”
Cannonball is a similar “bombing” tool for SMS messages, and Pitbull targets instant messaging accounts.
For those who prefer old-school communications, Serpent’s Tongue is a fax-bomb, designed for fax broadcasting to multiple phone numbers.
Imperial Barge can connect two target phones together in a call arbitrarily, for those times when GCHQ wants to force people to talk to each other.

Information disruption tools:

BUMPERCAR is a system that uses complaints to YouTube and other sites about “offensive content” to “disrupt and deny Internet-based terror videos and other material.”
Another tool, Silverlord, is used for “disruption of video-based websites hosting extremist content through concerted target discovery and content removal.”
Silverblade is used specifically to report terrorist content on the video site Dailymotion.

Misinformation and spoofing tools.

Underpass is used to “change outcome of online polls.”
Slipstream and Gateway can be used to manipulate traffic to a website, inflating its page views and raising its search rank to alter perception of its popularity.
Gestator can be used for “amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube).”
Clean Sweep allows GCHQ to “masquerade Facebook Wall Posts for individuals or entire countries.”
Burlesque, an SMS robot, can send SMS messages spoofed from a particular user.
Scrapheap Challenge does “perfect spoofing of e-mails from Blackberry targets.”
Another tool, called Clumsy Beekeeper, may have been used in GCHQ’s targeting of Anonymous. It is an “IRC effects” tool that was still under development the last time the page was updated.
Chinese Firecracker is intended to crack passwords to forums and other sites so that analysts can post under someone else’s name.

Emergency surveillance bill to be fast-tracked despite 49 MPs’ opposition | The Guardian

The bill requires internet and phone companies to store the communications data generated by phone calls, email, texts and internet use for 12 months and make it accessible to police and security services.

Prime Minister insists police and spy agencies must retain snooping powers
Telecoms firms must keep records of calls, texts and emails for 12 months
The laws are intended to protect powers for GCHQ, MI5 and MI6
Government insists it is not an extension of the Snoopers’ Charter
Extraordinary cross-party deal between Cameron, Clegg and Miliband
Critics condemn the ‘stitch-up’ which will see laws ‘railroaded through’

Wall Street Joins U.S. Intelligence Cronies To Form Fascist “Cyber War Council”

The man behind the push appears to be ex-NSA chief Keith Alexander, who as I reported on last month, is now: Pimping Advice to Wall Street Banks for $1 Million a Month. As I mentioned in that post, one of Mr. Alexander’s most high profile clients is Wall Street’s largest lobbying group the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). Unsurprisingly, SIFMA is behind the latest push to formally merge Wall Street with the government intelligence apparatus. Mr. Alexander isn’t wasting any time.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) Concerned Banks Becoming Part of a War Council

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who has publicly questioned how Alexander could serve as a consultant without revealing any classified information, said Tuesday that Congress “needs to keep an eye on” the industry’s proposed working group.

“Because of the murky nature of cybersecurity, I am concerned that a council like this might propose either physical attacks or cyberattacks by the US military on the perceived source of the threats,” Grayson said in a statement. “This could in effect make the banks part of what would begin to look like a war council.”

Bloomberg reports that:

Wall Street’s biggest trade group has proposed a government-industry cyber war council to stave off terrorist attacks that could trigger financial panic by temporarily wiping out account balances, according to an internal document.

The proposal by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, known as Sifma, calls for a committee of executives and deputy-level representatives from at least eight U.S. agencies including the Treasury Department, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, all led by a senior White House official.

More centralization. This is the exact opposite of what we want or need. The establishment is very worried about the trend toward decentralization, and making its move on many fronts.

The trade association also reveals in the document that Sifma has retained former NSA director Keith Alexander to “facilitate” the joint effort with the government. Alexander, in turn, has brought in Michael Chertoff, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, and his firm, Chertoff Group.

Banks Dreading Computer Hacks Call for Cyber War Council – Bloomberg

Why All the Snowden Docs Should Be Public: An Interview with Cryptome

Request to Involved Citizens for Accounting and Release of Snowden Docs: https://t.co/gAFKhiupfc

— Cryptome (@Cryptomeorg) July 15, 2014

Before Snowden and Wikileaks grabbed the headlines, there was Cryptome. Launched in 1996, the website, or “digital library,” as its owners John Young and Deborah Natsios describe it, is a tome of classified documents. Including everything from lists of MI6 agents to details on nuclear technology, the archive currently stands at over 71,600 files, spanning nearly two decades of disclosures.

Among those is all the available information on the Snowden files, and the duo behind the venture are adamant that the entirety of the leaked NSA documents should be dumped online, rather than strategically trickled out by journalists. Cryptome has even made vague hints that the Snowden documents may be released in full this month.

Brics countries create $100bn bank to ease western grip on global finances | Global development | theguardian.com

Brics leaders, from left: Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff, Chinese president Xi Jinping and South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma. Photograph: Mikhail Klimentyev / Ria Novosti / Kremlin Pool/EPA

The Brics group comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The bank, aimed at funding infrastructure projects in developing nations, will be based in Shanghai, and India will preside over its operations for the first five years, followed by Brazil and then Russia

The bank will begin with a subscribed capital of $50bn divided equally between its five founders, with an initial total of $10bn in cash put in over seven years and $40bn in guarantees. It is scheduled to start lending in 2016 and be open to membership by other countries, but the capital share of the Brics cannot drop below 55%.

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Drone Update:

Washington to use drone to monitor wildfires

Washington state says the Federal Aviation Administration has given it authorization to use an unmanned drone to monitor wildfires that pose an urgent threat.

Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark said Tuesday that the additional “real-time information” will make things safer for firefighters.

Weed Wackers:

Cannabis really can trigger paranoia | theguardian.com

We recruited 121 volunteers, all of whom had taken cannabis at least once before, and all of whom reported having experienced paranoid thoughts in the previous month (which is typical of half the population). None had been diagnosed with a mental illness. The volunteers were randomly chosen to receive an intravenous 1.5mg dose of either THC (the equivalent of a strong joint) or a placebo (saline). To track the effects of these substances, we used the most extensive form of assessment yet deployed to test paranoia, including a virtual-reality scenario, a real-life social situation, self-administered questionnaires, and expert interviewer assessments.

The results were clear: THC caused paranoid thoughts. Half of those given THC experienced paranoia, compared with 30% of the placebo group: that is, one in five had an increase in paranoia that was directly attributable to the THC. (Interestingly, the placebo produced extraordinary effects in certain individuals. They were convinced they were stoned, and acted accordingly. Because at the time we didn’t know who had been given the drug, we assumed they were high too.)

Pot unwelcome on federal land in Washington

Larry Chambers, a US Forest Service spokesperson says the agency is legally required to enforce federal laws on public lands they manage, even though Washington voters legalized recreational marijuana in November 2012.

This map of Washington shows what’s federal or tribal land. The highlighted green areas represent National Parks and National Forests, where the Forest Service stresses pot is illegal. You can’t possess it or smoke it or else face a fine.

Seattle City Attorney Apologizes for Taking Pot to Work – NBC News.com

Holmes, who helped sponsor Initiative 502, which made Washington the second state to legalize sales of small amounts of recreational marijuana, showed up at Seattle’s only legal pot store Tuesday to be one of the first Seattleites to make a purchase. But while the marijuana law has changed, “the workplace rule has not changed,” Holmes said in a statement Friday. After discussions with the city’s personnel department, he said, “I have volunteered to donate $3,000 to the Downtown Emergency Service Center. I apologize to my employees, all city employees and to the public.”

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CIA vs Senate | Unfilter 89

chris — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 21:18:30 +0000

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After five years the Senate’s investigation into the Central Intelligence Agencies torture programs has bursted into the light when a massive fight between top Senate officials and the CIA went public in a big way.

Taking to the floor, traditionally an intelligence agency apologist, blasted the CIA we’ll break it all down.

Plus Snowden makes his first public appearance, Greenwald reveals how the NSA spreads malware, your feedback, and much much more.

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— Show Notes —

NSA is Crazy

Snowden rocks SXSW: FULL SPEECH

Speaking remotely from Russia on Monday, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told attendees at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas that encryption is still a powerful deterrent against government surveillance.

Snowden calls on the geeks to save us from the NSA

The surprising thing was how much time Snowden spent on technical details like the mechanics of end-to-end encryption or the importance of solid encryption standards, rather than the political problems of NSA reform. “They are setting fire to the future of the internet,” he told the crowd, in what seemed designed to be the standout quote of the talk “And the people in the room now, you guys are the firefighters.”

“Giving Hypocrisy a Bad Name”: NSA-Backing Senate Intel Chair Blasts CIA for Spying on Torture Probe

How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware – The Intercept

The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.”

Featured photo – How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware

The covert infrastructure that supports the hacking efforts operates from the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from eavesdropping bases in the United Kingdom and Japan. GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, appears to have played an integral role in helping to develop the implants tactic.

In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware.

Documents analyzed by The Intercept show how the NSA has aggressively accelerated its hacking initiatives in the past decade by computerizing some processes previously handled by humans. The automated system – codenamed TURBINE – is designed to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.”

The agency’s solution was TURBINE. Developed as part of TAO unit, it is described in the leaked documents as an “intelligent command and control capability” that enables “industrial-scale exploitation.”

TURBINE was designed to make deploying malware much easier for the NSA’s hackers by reducing their role in overseeing its functions. The system would “relieve the user from needing to know/care about the details,” the NSA’s Technology Directorate notes in one secret document from 2009. “For example, a user should be able to ask for ‘all details about application X’ and not need to know how and where the application keeps files, registry entries, user application data, etc.”

In a top-secret presentation, dated August 2009, the NSA describes a pre-programmed part of the covert infrastructure called the “Expert System,” which is designed to operate “like the brain.” The system manages the applications and functions of the implants and “decides” what tools they need to best extract data from infected machines.

“When they deploy malware on systems,” Hypponen says, “they potentially create new vulnerabilities in these systems, making them more vulnerable for attacks by third parties.”

Mikko Hypponen, an expert in malware who serves as chief research officer at the Finnish security firm F-Secure said

The ramifications are starkly illustrated in one undated top-secret NSA document, which describes how the agency planned for TURBINE to “increase the current capability to deploy and manage hundreds of Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) and Computer Network Attack (CNA) implants to potentially millions of implants.” (CNE mines intelligence from computers and networks; CNA seeks to disrupt, damage or destroy them.)

Eventually, the secret files indicate, the NSA’s plans for TURBINE came to fruition. The system has been operational in some capacity since at least July 2010, and its role has become increasingly central to NSA hacking operations.

The TURBINE implants system does not operate in isolation.

It is linked to, and relies upon, a large network of clandestine surveillance “sensors” that the agency has installed at locations across the world.

The NSA’s headquarters in Maryland are part of this network, as are eavesdropping bases used by the agency in Misawa, Japan and Menwith Hill, England.

The sensors, codenamed TURMOIL, operate as a sort of high-tech surveillance dragnet, monitoring packets of data as they are sent across the Internet.

When TURBINE implants exfiltrate data from infected computer systems, the TURMOIL sensors automatically identify the data and return it to the NSA for analysis.

The NSA began rapidly escalating its hacking efforts a decade ago. In 2004, according to secret internal records, the agency was managing a small network of only 100 to 150 implants. But over the next six to eight years, as an elite unit called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) recruited new hackers and developed new malware tools, the number of implants soared to tens of thousands.

The agency sought $67.6 million in taxpayer funding for its Owning the Net program last year. Some of the money was earmarked for TURBINE, expanding the system to encompass “a wider variety” of networks and “enabling greater automation of computer network exploitation.”

In one secret post on an internal message board, an operative from the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate describes using malware attacks against systems administrators who work at foreign phone and Internet service providers. By hacking an administrator’s computer, the agency can gain covert access to communications that are processed by his company. “Sys admins are a means to an end,” the NSA operative writes.

The internal post – titled “I hunt sys admins” – makes clear that terrorists aren’t the only targets of such NSA attacks. Compromising a systems administrator, the operative notes, makes it easier to get to other targets of interest, including any “government official that happens to be using the network some admin takes care of.”

Two implants the NSA injects into network routers, HAMMERCHANT and HAMMERSTEIN, help the agency to intercept and perform “exploitation attacks” against data that is sent through a Virtual Private Network, a tool that uses encrypted “tunnels” to enhance the security and privacy of an Internet session.

The implants also track phone calls sent across the network via Skype and other Voice Over IP software, revealing the username of the person making the call. If the audio of the VOIP conversation is sent over the Internet using unencrypted “Real-time Transport Protocol” packets, the implants can covertly record the audio data and then return it to the NSA for analysis.

But not all of the NSA’s implants are used to gather intelligence, the secret files show. Sometimes, the agency’s aim is disruption rather than surveillance. QUANTUMSKY, a piece of NSA malware developed in 2004, is used to block targets from accessing certain websites. QUANTUMCOPPER, first tested in 2008, corrupts a target’s file downloads.

Other selectors the NSA uses can be gleaned from unique Google advertising cookies that track browsing habits, unique encryption key fingerprints that can be traced to a specific user, and computer IDs that are sent across the Internet when a Windows computer crashes or updates.

What’s more, the TURBINE system operates with the knowledge and support of other governments, some of which have participated in the malware attacks.

Classification markings on the Snowden documents indicate that NSA has shared many of its files on the use of implants with its counterparts in the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance – the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

:– William P
:– Robert T
:– Jonathan H
:– Oscar C
:– Martin S
:– Austin J
:– John G
:– Carl M

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CIA vs the Senate

Behind Clash Between C.I.A. and Congress, a Secret Report on Interrogations

What the C.I.A. did next opened a new and even more rancorous chapter in the struggle over how the history of the interrogation program will be written. Agency officials began scouring the digital logs of the computer network used by the Senate staff members to try to learn how and where they got the report. Their search not only raised constitutional questions about the propriety of an intelligence agency investigating its congressional overseers, but has also resulted in two parallel inquiries by the Justice Department — one into the C.I.A. and one into the committee.

A deal was struck between Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the intelligence committee’s Democratic chairwoman, to make millions of documents available to the committee at a C.I.A. facility near the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va. The documents covered roughly five years: from the inception of the program until September 2006, when all of the C.I.A.’s prisoners were transferred to the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

At the same time, Mr. Panetta ordered the C.I.A. to conduct its own review of the documents, a move designed to help the agency better understand the volumes of the material it had agreed to hand over to its congressional overseers.

Some people who have read the review memos said that parts of them were particularly scorching in their analysis of extreme interrogation methods like waterboarding, which the memos described as providing little intelligence of any value.

According to a recent court filing in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the C.I.A. created a “network share drive” segregated from the main agency network, a provision intended to allow the committee to work in private.

It is unclear how or when committee investigators obtained parts of the Panetta review. One official said that they had penetrated a firewall inside the C.I.A. computer system that had been set up to separate the committee’s work area from other agency digital files, but exactly what happened will not be known until the Justice Department completes its inquiry.

Senator Mark Udall of Colorado disclosed the existence of the review during an open hearing on Dec. 17.

C.I.A. officials had come to suspect that committee investigators working at the Virginia facility had seen at least a version of the internal review. Senior officials at the agency ordered a search of several years’ worth of digital audit logs that the C.I.A. uses to monitor its computer systems.

In January, the C.I.A. presented the results of its search to the intelligence committee in a tense meeting that ignited the most recent confrontation. The day after the meeting, Senator Feinstein wrote a letter to Mr. Brennan demanding answers for why the C.I.A. carried out the search, which she suggested had violated the constitutional separation of powers and undermined the committee’s oversight role.

Dianne Feinstein launches scathing attack on CIA over alleged cover-up

Intelligence committee chair accuses CIA of smear campaign
Feinstein alleges CIA broke law and violated constitution
CIA director John Brennan denies thwarting investigation
Dianne Feinstein statement – full text

Feinstein: CIA searched Intelligence Committee computers

Feinstein described the escalating conflict as a “defining moment” for Congress’s role in overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies and cited “grave concerns” that the CIA had “violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution.”

The CIA: the double life of Dianne Feinstein

The senator’s contradictory nature was on show for all to see on Tuesday, when she delivered an extraordinary speech from the Senate floor. It amounted to the biggest and most public rift between Congress and the spy community since the 9/11 attacks. Ms Feinstein, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, which has oversight of America’s myriad spy agencies, accused the CIA of breaking into the committee’s computers. It is an extremely serious charge: a breach of the constitution, the executive branch tampering with the elected branch. She described it as “a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence community”.

The day after Edward Snowden revealed himself as a whistleblower last June, she was among the first to brand him a traitor. In the face of revelation after revelation, she praised the professionalism of the NSA. She defended mass data collection as a necessity, arguing that the NSA had to have access to the whole “haystack” to find the one needle, the terrorist.

Panetta Review

The Panetta Review was a secret internal review conducted by Leon Panetta, then the Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, of enhanced interrogation techniques previously used by the CIA during the administration of George W. Bush. The review led to a series of memoranda that, as of March 2014, remained classified. According to The New York Times, the memoranda “cast a particularly harsh light” on the Bush-era interrogation program, and people who have read them have said parts of the memos are “particularly scorching” of techniques such as waterboarding, which the memos describe as providing little valuable intelligence

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

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Neutered Net Neutrality | Unfilter 81

chris — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 21:56:20 +0000

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A major blow was dealt to Net Neutrality when the court struck down the ruling preventing ISPs from abusing their monopolies and prioritizing some traffic over others. However, things might not be as bad as it sounds, we’ll dig in.

On Friday Obama is set to announce his reforms to the NSA, today the presidential review Panel testified to the Senate on their recommendations for reform and we’ve dug through the reports, watched the testimony, and will arm you with the facts before the spin goes into overdrive..

Then it’s your feedback, or follow up, and much much more.

On this week’s Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

NSA is CRAZY

NSA review panel casts doubt on bulk data collection claims | World news | theguardian.com

Similarly, Michael Morell, a former deputy CIA director, told the committee that so-called “metadata” about a phone conversation inherently entailed information about the substance of the communication. “There is quite a bit of content in metadata,” Morrell said. “There’s not a sharp distinction between metadata and content. It’s more of a continuum.”

Morrell added that the bulk collection of domestic phone data “has not played a significant role in preventing any terrorist attacks to this point,” further undercutting a major rationale offered by the NSA since the Guardian first revealed the bulk phone-data collection in June, thanks to leaks by Edward Snowden.

But, Morell added, “that is a different statement than saying the program has not been important.” Morrell said that bulk collection can provide a reassurance that there is no domestic nexus to foreign terrorist plots detected by other NSA efforts.

**“It is absolutely true that 215 has not by itself disrupted prevented terrorist attacks in the United States,** but that doesn’t mean it’s not important going forward, said Morell, using a shorthand for the bulk phone metadata collection. ”Many of us have never suffered a fire in our homes but many of us have homeowners insurance."

Three Leaks, Three Weeks, and What We’ve Learned About the US Government’s Other Spying Authority: Executive Order 12333 | Electronic Frontier Foundation

A _Washington Post _article reveals that the National Security Agency has been siphoning off data from the links between Yahoo and Google data centers, which include the fiber optic connections between company servers at various points around the world. While the user may have an encrypted connection to the website, the internal data flows were not encrypted and allowed the NSA to obtain millions of records each month, including both metadata and content like audio, video and text. This is not part of the PRISM collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act or the business records program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, but a separate program called MUSCULAR under what appears to be Executive Order 12333 (“12333”).

Executive Order 12333

On December 4, 1981 President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, an Executive Order intended to extend powers and responsibilities of US intelligence agencies and direct the leaders of U.S. federal agencies to co-operate fully with CIA requests for information.[1] This executive order was entitled United States Intelligence Activities.

It was amended by Executive Order 13355: Strengthened Management of the Intelligence Community, on August 27, 2004. On July 30, 2008, President Bush issued Executive Order 13470 [2] amending Executive Order 12333 to strengthen the role of the DNI

N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers – NYTimes.com

The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.

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Net Neutrality is Now a Zombie:

Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules | Ars Technica

While it could still be appealed to the Supreme Court, the order today would allow pay-for-prioritization deals that could let Verizon or other ISPs charge companies like Netflix for a faster path to consumers.

The court left part of the Open Internet Order intact, however, saying that the FCC still has “general authority” to regulate how broadband providers treat traffic.

How the FCC screwed up its chance to make ISP blocking illegal | Ars Technica

The FCC’s problem was that several years before its 2010 Open Internet Order, it classified ISPs as information services instead of telecommunications services, exempting them from common carrier rules. As Ars wrote in 2010, the common carriage part of US communications law is “the one that said public networks like the telephone must be open to all comers at the same rate and could not discriminate. Even though the old AT&T ran a private network, the company had to complete everyone’s calls; blocking critics from using the network was illegal.”

If the FCC said broadband providers were common carriers, it would be easier to dictate the terms under which they must pass traffic from content providers to home Internet users. Because the FCC didn’t go the common carriage route but still enacted anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules, the commission had to do some legal gymnastics to justify the Open Internet Order.

Most consider the Internet Age to be a moment of unprecedented freedom in communications and culture. But as Tim Wu shows, each major new medium, from telephone to cable, arrived on a similar wave of idealistic optimism only to become, eventually, the object of industrial consolidation profoundly affecting how Americans communicate. Every once-free and open technology was in time centralized and closed, a huge corporate power taking control of the master switch. Today, as a similar struggle looms over the Internet, increasingly the pipeline of all other media, the stakes have never been higher. To be decided: who gets heard, and what kind of country we live in. Part industrial exposé, part meditation on the nature of freedom of expression, part battle cry to save the Internet’s best features, The Master Switch brings to light a crucial drama rife with indelible characters and stories, heretofore played out over decades in the shadows of our national life.

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Tap That Journalist | Unfilter 51

chris — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:41:18 +0000

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The DOJ’s investigations into journalists has expanded, who is the target, and how far is the US government willing to go? We dig into the details.

Ripped apart from a massive tornado Moore Oklahoma, begins their recovery. The media on the other hand has gone into full exploitation mode, we’ll rip them up.

Then Russia outs another CIA operative, Tim Cook Testified in the senate, the flawed Media Shield Law, a BIG drone update, and much much more.

On this week’s Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

Oklahoma Twister

Dad drives through storm to get son as tornado hits – YouTube

Jeff Lechus talks about driving to pick up his son from school as a tornado hit the area.

Majority thinks global warming, clean energy should be priorities – latimes.com

70% of American adults say global warming should be a priority for the nation’s leaders, while 87% say leaders should make it a priority to develop sources of clean energy. Those support levels have dropped by 7% and 5% respectively since fall.

Tim Cook Testifies to Senate Committee

Apple’s Tim Cook: U.S. Tax Code Handicaps Companies – YouTube

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., said the iPhone maker doesn’t use “gimmicks” to avoid taxes. Cook, testifying before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in Washington, said the current U.S. tax code “handicaps” American companies. (This is an excerpt from the hearing. Source: Bloomberg)

Apple CEO makes no apology for company’s tax strategy – Yahoo! Finance

In Ireland, where low corporate taxes have been an economic development tool for many years, the government said it had not made a special tax deal with Apple. If Apple’s tax rate was too low, it was the fault of other countries, deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore told national broadcaster RTE on Tuesday.

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IRS Targets “Tea Party” Groups

IRS official refuses to answer questions at scandal hearing

“I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any congressional committee,” she said. “Because I am asserting my right not to testify, I know that some people will assume that I have done something wrong. I have not.”

DOJ Targeted Fox News as Well as AP

Fox News Reporter James Rosen Had DoJ Target – Business Insider

The Department of Justice heavily tracked Fox News reporter James Rosen during a 2009 leak probe, according to a report from Ann E. Marimow in the Washington Post.

Media Shield Law has Flaws

White House asks Schumer to introduce press shield law – POLITICO.com

The White House has asked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reintroduce a press shield law, White House officials said Wednesday.

The move comes after questions were raised about the seizure of Associated Press phone records by the Justice Department as part of a national security leak investigation.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that Obama welcomes the reintroduction of the shield bill.

Obama’s media shield law makes prosecuting journalists even easier

“As a Senator, Obama was a vocal supporter of a robust shield
law; he co-sponsored a bill in 2007 and campaigned on the issue in
2008,” Timm wrote. “But when the Senate moved to pass the
bill as soon as Obama came into office, his administration abruptly
changed course and opposed the bill, unless the Senate carved out
an exception for all national security reporters.”

For the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Timm wrote this week
that the latest version of the shield law wouldn’t do much more.
Under the Sept. 2009 request sent from the White House, the shield
law once supported by Pres. Obama would include an exception where
journalists could be subpoenaed if it means national security is at
risk.

“Now, it’s important to remember: virtually the only time the
government subpoenas reporters, it involves leak investigations
into stories by national security reporters. So it’s hard to see
how this bill will significantly help improve press freedom,”
wrote Timm. “Worse, there’s a strong argument that passing the
bill as it ended in 2010 will weaken rights reporters already have
and make it easier for the government to get sources from
reporters.”

“The difference is that instead of DOJ unilaterally making
that determination,” the Justice Department would "have to
convince a judge that this was the case," University of
Minnesota Law Professor Jane Kirtley explained to the Post.

Friend of the Boston Bomber Older Brother Killed by FBI

Man killed by FBI agent knew Tsarnaevs, official says – CNN.com

Ibragim Todashev, the man shot dead last night by an FBI agent in Orlando, Florida, had been acquainted with deceased Boston Marathon attacker Tamerlan Tsarnaev at a mixed martial arts center near Boston, according to a source briefed on the ongoing marathon bombing investigation. Todashev had Tsarnaev’s phone number in his cell phone, the source said.

Man with ties to Boston bombing suspect admits role in 2011 murders; shot during FBI questioning – U.S. News

Dead Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and another man — who was killed by the FBI on Wednesday — murdered three people in Massachusetts after a drug deal went wrong in 2011, law enforcement sources tell NBC News.

SPIED HARD

Russian Official Names CIA Station Chief In Moscow

Breaching protocol, a Russian official let a name slip during an interview with Interfax, the state news agency.

The FSB agent told the news agency that last year, another embassy secretary was expelled from Russia for recruiting attempts. That case wasn’t made public, the agent said, but the U.S. was warned.
“We hoped our American colleagues would hear us, given that we also presented to them precise information about CIA officers making recruitment attempts in Moscow and who exactly was doing that,” the FSB agent said.
*

Drone Update

Meet Cyro, The US Navy’s 170 Pound Underwater Jellyfish Drone – Girls Just Wanna Have Guns

Meet Cyro, the Virginia Tech College of Engineering underwater life-like jellyfish drone in development for US Navy surveillance.

Pentagon absorbs portion of CIA’s drone program – YouTube

The Obama administration is handing control of some of its counterterrorism operations that previously fell into the hands of the CIA over to the Pentagon. The controversial drone program used by the CIA to target suspected terrorists has attracted a fair share of criticism as of late, and moving some of its operations over to the Department of Defense will allow Congress to have some oversight. Drone strikes in Yemen will fall into the hands of the Armed Forces while those that occur in Pakistan will continue to be controlled by the CIA.

U.S. Acknowledges Killing 4 Americans in Drone Strikes – NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.

The letter also said that the United States had killed three other Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Mr. Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan.

“These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States,” Mr. Holder wrote.

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Killer Video Games | Unfilter 30

chris — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 23:07:42 +0000

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The media is moving quick to blame video games as the propellent to the violent event in Newtown, Connecticut. We’ll expose their tired approach, and ask the hard questions about gun control and mental health.

PLUS: We’ll pull into focus the stories that slipped between the cracks in the wake of the tragic shooting this week.

Then in ACT3: We’ll cover your feedback, and much more in this episode of, Unfilter.

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ACT ONE:

Drone Update:

Obama Adminstration asks the court to dismiss lawsuit over Americans killed by drones

ACT TWO:

ACT THREE: FEEDBACK

OFF the 27th. BACK Jan 3rd 2013.

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Senate – Jupiter Broadcasting

Chasing Nunes | Unfilter 231

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Doxing ISIS | Unfilter 179

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Episode Links

Unpatriotic Act | Unfilter 146

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47 Freedom Hawks | Unfilter 136

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Volcanoes of Jihad | Unfilter 123

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News

Net Neutrality

ISIS / ISIL / IS / CIA

High Note

Obama Sells ISIS | Unfilter 113

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CIA Torture Report

Snowden

ISIS

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Watchlist of Terror | Unfilter 109

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— The Slow Death of Privacy —

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— Cold War 2.0 —

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GCHQ, Spying on YOU! | Unfilter 106

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The Slow Death of Privacy

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Drone Update:

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CIA vs Senate | Unfilter 89

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NSA is Crazy

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CIA vs the Senate

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Neutered Net Neutrality | Unfilter 81

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If you’re a Supporter check your inbox!

Tap That Journalist | Unfilter 51