CIA: We searched ur computers, lol sry
Senate: WTF?

choad wrote:

https://cruelery.com/sidepic/keith.alexander.png

Words fail. Seriously retarded.

Seven patents awarded and more pending.  Don't forget to check for your ring and watches after shaking his hand...

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Last edited by Emmeran (2014-08-01 21:33:40)

The Obama administration censored significant portions of the findings of an investigation into the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists, forcing the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to delay their release "until further notice."

Anyone surprised?

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.

And the government tries to get its own version of the story out there.

The government, it turned out, had "spoiled the scoop," an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism. To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have received. Tuesday's AP story was much friendlier to the government's position [than the one in The Intercept], explaining the surge of individuals added to the watch list as an ongoing response to a foiled terror plot.

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Reporters make (a little) noise.

David Cay Johnston wrote:

The pursuit of James Risen reveals our government acting as a power unto itself, lying to escape accountability for massive domestic spying and failures in legitimate intelligence gathering. The liberties of the people cannot long endure unchecked government power. Risen and other investigative journalists are not enemies of the state, but watchdogs alerting the people to abuses of the powers we grant those in elected and appointed office.

He says that he actually intended the government to have a good idea about what exactly he stole. Before he made off with the documents, he tried to leave a trail of digital bread crumbs so investigators could determine which documents he copied and took and which he just "touched." That way, he hoped, the agency would see that his motive was whistle-blowing and not spying for a foreign government. It would also give the government time to prepare for leaks in the future, allowing it to change code words, revise operational plans, and take other steps to mitigate damage. . . .

Snowden speculates that the government fears that the documents contain material that's deeply damaging--secrets the [reporters holding them] have yet to find. "I think they think there's a smoking gun in there that would be the death of them all politically," Snowden says. "The fact that the government's investigation failed--that they don't know what was taken and that they keep throwing out these ridiculous huge numbers--implies to me that somewhere in their damage assessment they must have seen something that was like, 'Holy shit.' And they think it's still out there."

One day an intelligence officer told him that TAO--a division of NSA hackers--had attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in one of the core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which was in the midst of a prolonged civil war. This would have given the NSA access to email and other Internet traffic from much of the country. But something went wrong, and the router was bricked instead--rendered totally inoperable. The failure of this router caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection to the Internet--although the public didn't know that the US government was responsible.

The massive surveillance effort was bad enough, but Snowden was even more disturbed to discover a new, Strangelovian cyberwarfare program in the works, codenamed MonsterMind. The program, disclosed here for the first time, would automate the process of hunting for the beginnings of a foreign cyberattack. Software would constantly be on the lookout for traffic patterns indicating known or suspected attacks. When it detected an attack, MonsterMind would automatically block it from entering the country--a "kill" in cyber terminology.

Programs like this had existed for decades, but MonsterMind software would add a unique new capability: Instead of simply detecting and killing the malware at the point of entry, MonsterMind would automatically fire back, with no human involvement. That's a problem, Snowden says, because the initial attacks are often routed through computers in innocent third countries. "These attacks can be spoofed," he says. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?"

In addition to the possibility of accidentally starting a war, Snowden views MonsterMind as the ultimate threat to privacy because, in order for the system to work, the NSA first would have to secretly get access to virtually all private communications coming in from overseas to people in the US. "The argument is that the only way we can identify these malicious traffic flows and respond to them is if we're analyzing all traffic flows," he says. "And if we're analyzing all traffic flows, that means we have to be intercepting all traffic flows. That means violating the Fourth Amendment, seizing private communications without a warrant, without probable cause or even a suspicion of wrongdoing. For everyone, all the time."

Edit: added extra link.

Last edited by square (2014-08-14 09:57:06)

The executive branch, in secret and no oversight, establishes when and where the N.S.A. can gather and use Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and other communications.

John Napier Tye, a disillusioned State Department official, quit in April and filed a whistle-blower complaint arguing that the N.S.A.'s practices violate Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.

choad wrote:

Too little, too fucking late. We're done. I know I am.

Never say that.  As bad as we all think this may be, it can get terribly worse.  Until we corral and limit the power and intrusion of the federal (and in some cases the state) government into our lives, they will only grow bolder and more aggressive about controlling all aspects of society which could possibly threaten that centralized power. 

Those who have no progeny may want to write it all off and spend the rest of their lives not giving a fuck.  But we who have children and grandchildren that will be forced to live under the tyranny we allowed to develop cannot sit by and let it happen without a fight.

Anyone surprised that the guy trying to keep the Senate's report about CIA torture quiet is a lawyer representing the torturers?

As if we don't have enough of big brother watching over us, we now have this.  Bet you didn't hear this from your favorite news source.

The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.  The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”

And no surprise, the "truthy" arbiter is a progressive group which claims to be non-partisan.  I have no problem with a private organization developing this database, but the fucking federal government is funding it.

“Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority.

Oh, breitbart.  Not even gonna bother.  Are you going to start posting infowars links next?

XregnaR wrote:

Oh, breitbart.  Not even gonna bother.  Are you going to start posting infowars links next?

Just read the stories.  Or, just pretend the government is not funding an organization to collect information on political enemies and politically incorrect speech on the Internet.  They would never use it for evil would they?  Or, Google it and get the sanitized version from another source.  Facts are facts regardless of who reports them.

And bullshit by any other name would smell as sweet. By the Notsobrightbart standard of logic, Ronald Reagan paid Robert Mapplethorpe to publish gay porn.

As easy as 12333.

"This program was started at least back in 2001 and has expanded to between 80 and 100 tap points on the fiber optic lines in the lower 48 states," he said by e-mail. "Most of these fiber optic tap points are not on the East or West coast. This means that the primary target of this collection is domestic... Most collection of US domestic communications and data is done under EO 12333, section 2.3 paragraph C in the Upstream program. They claim, near as I can tell, that all domestic collection is incidental. That's, of course, the vast majority of data."

The President has inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States. Congress does not have the power to restrict the President's exercise of this authority.

Last edited by square (2014-08-29 03:30:06)

Seventeen mysterious fake cellphone towers, undetectable by normal handsets, were found attacking US cellphone traffic with “baseband” chips allowing them to communicate with their networks, eavesdrop and install spyware. No surprise, "a lot of these interceptors are right on top of U.S. military bases.”

Fuck you, Dianne.

Tensions between the CIA and its congressional overseers erupted anew this week when CIA Director John Brennan refused to tell lawmakers who authorized intrusions into computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a damning report on the spy agency’s interrogation program.

Tensions between the CIA and its congressional overseers erupted anew this week when CIA Director John Brennan refused to tell lawmakers who authorized intrusions into computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a damning report on the spy agency’s interrogation program.

So does anybody sane still think Edward Snowden is a traitor to his country?

hedgewizard wrote:

George Orr wrote:

So does anybody sane still think Edward Snowden is a traitor to his country?

Dick Cheney is a possibility.

Sane.  The keyword here is sane.

With all the conspiracy theories surrounding some high-profile deaths in recent years, how can you, theoretical whistleblower with highly sensitive documents, be assured that your information gets leaked if you're murdered in some government conspiracy? A new dark web service says it's got your back.

choad wrote:

With all the conspiracy theories surrounding some high-profile deaths in recent years, how can you, theoretical whistleblower with highly sensitive documents, be assured that your information gets leaked if you're murdered in some government conspiracy? A new dark web service says it's got your back.

Too bad it's probably a scam.  Sure would be better than trusting your attorney to do the same.

NSA documents released this month reveal Keith Alexander, who served as its director from August 2005 until March 2014, invested thousands in a handful of obscure tech firms during his NSA tenure.

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The deeper I dug, the more troubled I became. Not only did the classified file from the Justice Department accuse the NSA of systematically breaking the law by eavesdropping on American citizens, it concluded that it was impossible to prosecute those running the agency because of the enormous secrecy that enveloped it. Worse, the file made clear that the NSA itself was effectively beyond the law--allowed to bypass statutes passed by Congress and follow its own super-classified charter, what the agency called a "top-secret birth certificate" drawn up by the White House decades earlier.

Feels like 1981.

Seems to be an epidemic.

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