● 03.12.14
●● Today’s General News: Extraordinary Power and Extraordinary Surveillance
Posted in News Roundup at 5:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Aggression
Did the CIA Chief Just Dare Obama to Fire Him?The normally cool and calm director of the CIA, John Brennan, may have flinched Tuesday. After a scathing speech from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the committee that oversees his agency, Brennan largely defended the CIA from charges that it illegally spied on Senate staffers poring through documents related to the agency’s black site program.CIA hacked Senate PCs to delete torture reports. And Senator Feinstein is outragedIsrael says it regrets killing of Palestinian judge from JordanIsrael uses drones to gather intelligence on militant activity in Gaza, a territory governed by the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas and where other armed groups also operate.
Drones
North Africa: Maghreb Jihadists Killed in Mali AirstrikeFrance recently acquired the two American-made drones. They are based in Niamey, Niger.The bleak comedy of Barack Obama: MallickWhen politicians perform, as Obama did with comedian Zach Galifianakis this week, the joke’s on us.[...]Jeremy Scahill has reported that Obama holds what are known as “Terror Tuesdays,” in which he says yes or no to “nominated” targets on a drone kill list. Few Americans know that because they didn’t buy Scahill’s book, Dirty Wars, or see his subsequent documentary. But many Americans will indeed see Obama sitting down with a comic actor and joking with him about drone killing, not comprehending Obama’s sheer gall. National Security: Going “Up” or “Down?”Of course, both of these documents pre-date the latest explosion of new knowledge about aggressive NSA spying. They don’t reflect new information about the NSA’s forthcoming code-breaking supercomputer that can breach every “secure” https ever created.(2) The two documents I’ve cited above also preceded the current level of critique, both at home and abroad, of U.S. war-proxy drone attacks. New information is now available about not-so-reliable, way too general, and far too remote NSA drone targeting info that does kill the innocent. (3) Students asked to help build drone sculptureConstruction will begin March 16 on a life-size replica of a military drone, an art project on campus that aims to display lives lost in attacks by unmanned aerial vehicles.
Privacy
Snowden told me the NSA set fire to the web. Silicon Valley needs to put it outHow to move beyond our SXSW talk: revenge of the nerds, one everyday security tool at a time NSA nominee backs protection for companies in any cyber lawPresident Barack Obama’s nominee to head the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command said on Tuesday liability protection for corporations that share information with intelligence agencies is crucial in any new U.S. cybersecurity legislation.Next NSA Chief Urges Transparency … Then Says NothingNSA director nominee defends bulk data collectionVice Admiral Michael Rogers, nominated by President Barack Obama to head the agency at the center of a public firestorm over surveillance, told lawmakers the NSA needs to be able to access the vast amounts of metadata to thwart terror attacks.BitTorrent Is Tapping into NSA Fears to Shake Its Criminal ImageWho Wants To Unplug The NSA? Not Arizona’s State AgenciesArizona is one of thirteen states where legislators have proposed a bill that would prohibit states from providing assistance to a federal agency, like the NSA, that collects electronic data or metadata without a warrant. Originally drafted by nonpartisan legal activists, the bill, which is often referred to as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, has proven popular across the political spectrum thanks to growing unease about the government’s ability to track virtually everything a person does online.Forget NSA, India’s Centre for Development of Telematics is one of top 3 worst online spiesThree of the government bodies designated by Reporters Without Borders as ‘Enemies of the Internet’ are located in democracies that have traditionally claimed to respect fundamental freedoms, a report by the Reporters Without Borders said. NSA nominee: Snowden not necessarily a traitorVice Admiral Michael Rogers told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that Snowden caused significant damage by releasing information about the NSA’s surveillance programs, but when asked by Sen. Joe Machin, a West Virginia Democrat, whether he viewed Snowden as a traitor, Rogers said, “I don’t know that I would use the word ‘traitor.’ But I certainly do not consider him to be a hero.” CIA steals the limelight from the NSA – and finds itself in full-blown crisisSnowden accuses Senate intelligence chair of hypocrisy over CIA disclosuresThe CIA: the double life of Dianne FeinsteinThe exasperation with the Democratic senator from California is that she hasn’t also directed her outrage at the NSASenator Feinstein Takes CIA Spying Accusation to Senate Floor What’s Feinstein So Upset About? CIA Just Spied On Senate Intelligence Committee ‘Metadata’Earlier today, we wrote about Senator Dianne Feinstein’s justified anger over the CIA “spying” on the Senate Intelligence Committee staffers as they went about putting together a massive (and apparently incredibly damning) report condemning the CIA’s torture program. Having now watched the whole video of her speech, as well as read the transcript, there’s a lot more here to discuss. You can watch the speech yourself if you’d like, or read the full transcript, which we’ve embedded below…Computer Network Exploitation vs. Computer Network AttackBack when we first started getting reports of the Chinese breaking into U.S. computer networks for espionage purposes, we described it in some very strong language. We called the Chinese actions cyber-attacks. We sometimes even invoked the word cyberwar, and declared that a cyber-attack was an act of war.When Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA has been doing exactly the same thing as the Chinese to computer networks around the world, we used much more moderate language to describe U.S. actions: words like espionage, or intelligence gathering, or spying. We stressed that it’s a peacetime activity, and that everyone does it.
Ukraine
World Bank to lend Ukraine $3bnThe World Bank is ready to grant almost bankrupt Ukraine a loan of up to $3 billion this year to support reforms and infrastructure projects.The Washington-based organization already has several projects in Ukraine aimed at reducing poverty.Ukraine: How to Hide a Nazi ArmyStill, the impression the Daily Beast would like to get across to readers is that the concept of Neo-Nazis leading the so-called “revolution” in Kiev, is absurd. In fact, the truth that Kiev’s Independence Square was full of Nazis, was right under the nose of the entire world – with a handful of Western journalists even admitting as much.
Venezuela
What is Going on in Venezuela?The majority of the media in today’s Venezuela are private. Many of the private TV stations were actively involved in 2002 coup attempt. Today, the majority of Venezuelans still watch TV stations owned by private corporations. The majority of these stations and most of the main newspapers, although a little bit more diverse politically than in 2002, are anti-government and anti-Chavista. They have not been taken off the air, prevented from printing and the social media has not been shut down. Social media like Facebook and Twitter have been particularly active and inaccurate in portraying Venezuela as a repressive police state with total suppression of the media.The mainstream U.S. media (e.g., CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, NBC, etc.) have a very strong anti-Chávez bias and a continued hostility to the building of 21st century socialism in Venezuela. For example, pictures that supposedly showed violent police brutality and repression in Venezuela were actually old photos from police repression in Bulgaria, Egypt and Chile. The New York Times, while generally hostile to the Venezuelan revolution with very biased reporting, has been slightly more balanced recently, even admitting that in the poorer areas of Caracas, there are no signs of protest,
Lockerbie
Lockerbie The UK authorities have known for over 20 years that Megrahi was innocent. The key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper named Tony Gauci, was paid a total of US $7 million for his evidence by the CIA, and was able to adopt a life of luxury that continues to this day. The initial $2 million payment has become public knowledge but that was only the first instalment. This was not an over-eagerness to convict the man the CIA believed responsible; this was a deliberate perversion of justice to move the spotlight from Iran and Syria to clear the way diplomatically for war in Iraq.
Police
How An Undercover Cop Infiltrated A California High School And Targeted A Loner With Autism
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