Showing posts with label National Security Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Security Administration. Show all posts

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Will GOP Congressmen call for hearings to investigate Attorney General Eric Holder ?

False information from the Department of Justice tricked the U.S. Supreme Court into dismissing a case that challenged the N.S.A.'s unconstitutional surveillance program.

Eric Holder photo ERIC-HOLDER_zps2c9d6f4f.jpg

If the House of Representatives, under Republican Party control, didn't have such a bad reputation, they should hold hearings into how corrupt the Justice Department has become under Attorney General Eric Holder. Mr. Holder's already been found in contempt on another matter, for failing to turn over documents sought by a committee investigation. If the House had its stuff together, the lies to the Supreme Court would be a natural way to force Mr. Holder to resign from the Department of Justice and to hold the Department of Justice to account. But the House Republicans are part of the problem, too.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Has Facebook exceeded peak goodwill ?

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're Facebook."

Facebook has come under fire in a new posting on The New York Times. In a panic to shore up public confidence following its never-ending changes to news feeds, its perpetual weakening of privacy controls for its users, questions over the way Facebook distributes traffic to page "likes," and its alleged close association with the National Security Administration, Facebook has been on a buying spree -- first engulfing Whatsapp and now Oculus VR -- desperately trying to acquire new individual users to make up for the users scrambling to abandon the once mighty social media network.

But in Facebook's strategy to buy individual users, it has neglected the legion of small businesses that had turned to Facebook as part of their online marketing strategy. Case in point : Eat24.

According to The New York Times, small and growing businesses like Eat24 blame Facebook for upending the way it allows businesses to interact with individual users. "Facebook has changed its algorithms over the last couple of years to highlight more posts by individuals and bury posts from brands — unless, of course, a brand wants to pay for ads to promote its posts."

With Facebook's goodwill deteriorating with individual users and businesses that formerly enjoyed their Facebook experience, all this reminds us of comedian Lily Tomlin's hilarious satirical skits of a fictional telephone operator, Ernestine, who became famous for her trademark line : "We don't care; we don't have to. We're the phone company."

Let's see how long before the next brilliant college student invents a new social media platform that will create a wild Internet sensation amongst college students, leaving Facebook to join the land line telephone company and MySpace as obsolete telecommunication business models.

This Week in Carolyn Ryan Journalism Realness

Is Carolyn Ryan engaged in a smear campaign against President Barack Obama, or is she only reporting the truth ? Public Editor's "AnonyWatch Review" weighs in.

Before we delve into the latest chapter of Carolyn Ryan's media bias, let's begin by first examining the obsession with "polish" by readers of mainstream journalism. By polish, we mean the fetish with exacting spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation on big-name news Web sites.

Earlier today on Facebook, a social media network friend of mine shared a status update in which she made the observation that typographical errors in mainstream media Web sites were distracting, and they degraded her perception of the quality of news being published on said Web sites. This led to a back-and-forth discussion of this topic. At the end, I raised some concerns about how an obsession with typos may distract from the fact that very few journalists (either mainstream or alternative bloggers) very rarely tell the whole truth, that the real quality of journalism may transcend typos and should be judged, instead, on the larger quality of reporting the truth. For example, Anemona Hartocollis, the metropolitan healthcare reporter at The New York Times, gets her copy published in a form that is generally free of copy errors, but her journalism is biased as all get out. Ms. Hartocollis's reporting is emblematic of the corporate agenda in mainstream journalism. Whenever Ms. Hartocollis reports about another community hospital closing in New York City, her reporting only represents the corporate speak of profits-and-losses, and she makes no attempt to humanize the healthcare cuts' impact on real people's lives. Because corporate public relations spin is devoid of any moral obligation, Ms. Hartocollis reduces all her healthcare reporting to be about dollars and cents, siding with Gov. Andrew Cuomo's and his budget axman, Stephen Berger's, desire to make scorched earth cuts to healthcare. As far as Ms. Hartocollis's reporting is concerned, she's never attempted to ever report about the human right to healthcare. Just because Ms. Hartocollis's copy is clean of typos, it doesn't mean it's anymore truthful than a Medicaid Redesign Team press release.

Another example I noted in the back-and-forth on Facebook today was that of a blogger, with whom I'm on the outs. She butchers the presentation of information on her blog like nobody's business. Sometimes, her stream of consciousness blog postings contain incomplete sentences, but more often than not she gets it right when it comes to exposing government and real estate corruption. Her reporting delves deeper than the reporting of some reporters published in The New York Times, for example. Another blogger I know makes big-time typos, too, and sometimes his text "disappears" because of slip-shod copying-and-pasting, but from his blog his readers can learn how to see the corrupt political chess pieces move on big social issues. I acknowledge that it is important to present information, especially journalism, in a way that is accessible to readers, but mainstream journalism, even factoring into account all the waves of "corporate layoffs," still have access to resources like copy editors, interns, other editors, and webmasters that can proof writing after it's been submitted. But, as have been noted time and again, mainstream journalism has come to reflect a corporate agenda that distorts the ability of mainstream journalists to report the whole truth.

Over time, astute readers of political reporting learn that to discover the truth, once must read multiple sources of the same story in order to "average," "balance," and/or "correct" the news. If readers were to solely judge writing on cosmetics, that criteria will short change readers on the truth. Obvious mistakes should be corrected, but some bloggers don't even have editors. So, I'll always defend bloggers before mainstream reporters. But even then, I don't look at polish as being the only criteria for realness.

Carolyn Ryan's use of anonymous sources to report about President Obama's political backlash in the final midterm Congressional elections

Two weeks ago, Washington bureau chief Carolyn Ryan oversaw a report published in The New York Times about Democrats's fears about "their midterm election fortunes amid President Obama’s sinking approval ratings." The article contained a passage with a shady anonymous attribution :

“One Democratic lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Obama was becoming ‘poisonous’ to the party’s candidates. At the same time, Democrats are pressing senior aides to Mr. Obama for help from the political network.”

Public editor Margaret Sullivan chastised Ms. Ryan for the use of an anonymous quote, an issue of recent concern to the public editor and the readers of The New York Times. In her defense, Ms. Ryan pieced together a weak defense in which she denied engaging in an hominem attack on the president. It's difficult to believe that Ms. Ryan, as editor, or Jonathan Martin and Ashley Parker, as the reporters of the subject article, would go out of their way to wrongly roll up responsibility for the flagging fortunes of the national Democratic Party on the president. But the larger political reality that Ms. Ryan and Ms. Sullivan ignored is how the Obama administration silences dissent through political machinations, maneuvering that every high-level elected official uses to control his or her own political narrative. Ms. Ryan was famous for espousing the political narrative propagated by former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn when Ms. Ryan used to serve as the metropolitan editor for the newspaper. But now, Ms. Ryan has perhaps learned to challenge power holders, and, by relying on the sentiments of an anonymous source, Ms. Ryan may actually be expanding the political reporting in The New York Times rather than just repeating the official party line of the politicians she's tasked to cover.

No doubt that Ms. Ryan's anonymous sources for the subject article really exist, because many Democrats are plainly fed up by President Obama's corruption scandals involving the National Security Administration, the Monsanto Protection Act, and other political controversies. The public editor was critical of Ms. Ryan's use of an anonymous source, but if Ms. Sullivan would like to further examine why Democrats are afraid to speak out against President Obama, perhaps the editors of The New York Times should examine President Obama's political persecution of liberal advocates and institutions he locks up in the veal pen ? In her further defense, after Ms. Ryan endured so much criticism about her biased reporting that benefitted Ms. Quinn, Ms. Ryan may finally be learning the truth about how journalism really works when one is fully reporting uncomfortable truths about the corrupt political machinations of an elected official. Some sources may not want to go on the record for fear of political retribution. Like a typo hear or their, sometimes journalism realness doesn't always come neatly packaged and wrapped. After President Obama's veal pen gets examined, maybe editors can turn their attention to Ms. Hartocollis's media bias ?

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Obama Administration Is “Greatest Enemy" of Freedom of the Press

NYTimes Reporter : Obama White House Is ‘‘Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom’’ Today

From Poynter :

New York Times reporter James Risen, who is fighting an order that he testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer accused of leaking information to him, opened the conference earlier by saying the Obama administration is “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.” The administration wants to “narrow the field of national security reporting,” Risen said, to “create a path for accepted reporting.” Anyone journalist who exceeds those parameters, Risen said, “will be punished.”

It's not known, though, if staff reporters at The New York Times are able to give voice to the serious constitutional violations by the Obama administration, then why won't the newspaper's political editor allow reporters to fully report the truth as news ?

Saturday, March 22, 2014

FAA, clueless to help, grateful it was neither an American flight that disappeared, nor that the disappearance took place near America

Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Torments Aviation Regulators More Than We're Being Told

Whenever a natural disaster, armed conflict, or a political crisis sparks anywhere around the world, the agencies of the United States federal government normally roll up rather swiftly, to lend their experience, to take charge, or to provide passive assistance. In the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, U.S. aviation officials can only stand down, because they appear to be as clueless as Malaysian aviation officials as to the lack of credible, concrete information about what happened aboard Flight MH370.

"The American investigators believe that the Malaysian government was reluctant to share information with them because they fear exposing their weak radar and satellite systems," The New York Times reported, noting that American aviation officials don't want any blowback directed their way, adding, in keeping with its Timesian tradition of parsing its analysis, "With few leads to go on, countries cooperating in the search have sometimes sniped at one another."

There's a bias in the media, or else just plain old lazy reporting, that nobody is asking why Boeing, the manufacturer of the missing aircraft, cannot explain or is not being asked to explain why the tracking systems failed on a plane believed to have continued its flight for several hours after last contact.

Flight MH370 disappeared two weeks ago while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, but the large coalition of nations working on the search for the missing jet have been stymied in every way possible, because for days they were operating on assumptions that had no factual basis and were, consequently, conducting searches anywhere the latest fad theory would point. In this situation, the United States, an undisputed leader in aviation technology and surveillance, has declined to assert leadership, because it, too, is ignorant of what happened to Flight MH370. What would be the difference if the communication equipment aboard the jet of an American airline had been deactivated, or if the disappearance of a jet had taken place in one of the oceans thousands of miles off of the U.S. coastline instead of the Australian coastline ? Probably not much, and that's precisely why the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing are keeping a low profile right now, and that's exactly why the media can only speculate about what might have happened.

As it stands, what should be more worrisome is that the equipment aboard an American-manufactured Boeing 777 failed. What do American aviation regulators have to say about the integrity, safety, and reliability of tracking equipment aboard the jets manufactured by Boeing ? Nothing. Why all the silence ?

As often as Malaysian aviation officials have been criticized for failing to be transparent about their lack of information, so, too, should the F.A.A. be pressed to admit that it lacks the same information. When will the media ask how the F.A.A. would handle the search for Flight MH370 if American aviation officials had been in charge of this investigation ? When will focus shift from the scrutiny of Malaysia Airlines to Boeing ?

As the investigation turns to identifying criminal responsibility for the missing flight, will the U.S. government focus on the spectacular intelligence failure that appears to allow airplanes to remain vulnerable to criminality over a decade since the Sept. 11 attacks and susceptible to going missing almost five years since the 2009 accident that befell Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean ?

For the U.S. government, which is caught up in a controversy over the indiscriminate dragnet surveillance by the National Security Administration, the blind spots in aviation safety patterns recent blind spots in foreign policy risks, such as the Russian takeover of Crimea. These blind spots are proof that real threats are not being assessed while the N.S.A. is wholly consumed with the distraction of dragnet surveillance -- a dangerous situation about which civil libertarians and journalists had warned would happen as a result of the Obama administrations's faulty obsession with collecting Internet data.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

WATCH : WSJ Video Explains Possible Sabotage To Malaysia Airlines MH370, Conceivably Highjacked, CBS Reports

Malaysia Air MH370: Possible Sabotage to Communications System, Explained

After the jet's transponder was disabled, the communications systems on Flight 370 were cut off by "deliberate action," said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. U.S. officials are investigating whether a third system, on the plane's lower deck, was also compromised, The Wall Street Journal's Jason Bellini explains in this YouTube video.

Flight 370 disappeared one week ago while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China.

As the investigation turns to identifying criminal responsibility for the missing flight, will the U.S. government focus on the spectacular intelligence failure that appears to allow airplanes to remain vulnerable to criminality over a decade since the Sept. 11 attacks and susceptible to going missing almost five years since the 2009 accident that befell Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean ?

For the U.S. government, which is caught up in a controversy over the indiscriminate dragnet surveillance by the National Security Administration, the blind spots in aviation safety patterns recent blind spots in foreign policy risks, such as the Russian takeover of Crimea. These blind spots are proof that real threats are not being assessed while the N.S.A. is wholly consumed with the distraction of dragnet surveillance -- a dangerous situation about which civil libertarians and journalists had warned would happen as a result of the Obama administrations's faulty obsession with collecting Internet data.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Senator Feinstein Outraged by CIA Spying on Senate, But She Defends NSA Spying on Citizens

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is shocked -- SHOCKED!! -- that the government has been discovered to be illegally spying and subverting the U.S. Constitution !

This, from the same madame chairwoman, who so righteously defends N.S.A. spying powers :

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said that the Central Intelligence Agency had violated federal law and undermined Congress’s constitutional right to oversee the actions of the executive branch. The dispute stems from the agency's illegal search of computers used by the Senate intelligence committee to investigate C.I.A. interrogation procedures at its secret Bush-era prison system. “I am not taking it lightly,” she said.

And in a forceful editorial, the likes of which we have not read in ages coming from normally staid Editorial Board of The New York Times, the editors excoriated President Obama over the C.I.A. torture and detention programs. The Editorial Board demanded that the Obama administration release a Senate report and a C.I.A. internal review of the torture and detention practices, and the editors further demanded that President Obama reverse an earlier decision to forego an investigation into the C.I.A.'s interrogation procedures, calling for an end to the "lingering fog about the C.I.A. detentions."

Some of the comments to The New York Times's article and editorial plainly indicate that Sen. Feinstein has recourse to the rogue actions of the C.I.A :

"Congress has the power of the purse. Demand the ouster of anyone, and I mean anyone, involved in this illegal action and the appointment of an ombudsman accountable only to Congress and with full security clearance to monitor the agency's actions, or defund it and transfer its responsibilities to one of the other intelligence agencies, which also needs a Congressional ombudsman. Checks and balances must not be circumvented or short-circuited; they are our Constitution's key safeguard against tyranny," wrote Mark from Boston, MA, in response to the article.

"Senator Feinstein has been providing a professional courtesy to the CIA and the administration by withholding the committee's report since December 2012. If she wants to demonstrate that Congress really does have independent oversight authority, she could simply release the report as is. Of course, that would set off a firestorm and occupy the White House and parts of Congress for a few months, to the detriment of other pressing matters. Nonetheless, if she feels wronged by the CIA, she has a potent tool at her disposal," wrote Ken L from Atlanta, GA, in response to the editorial.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

NSA Spy Programs : French President Got Paid Off, German Chancellor's Worries Continue

Just days after French President François Hollande declared that France had "restored" its trust with the Obama White House after the growing N.S.A. spying scandal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a proposal to create a Europe-only Internet apparatus that would circumvent the N.S.A. backdoor taps, almost universal decryption, and data collection.

During his state visit to the United States, French President François Hollande declared that the U.S. and France had restored mutual respect between the countries, because both nations are committed to respecting the right to privacy. President Hollande's remarks appeared to contradict the N.S.A. relentless spying program on French citizens in apparent violation of Article 9 and 1382 of the French Civil Code and Articles 226-1 and following of the French Penal Code. It's unclear what side deals President Barack Obama might have made with France to induce the French president to announce a reconciliation with the U.S. government. When the data collection of the N.S.A. spy program was first reported to include the private information of millions of French, German, and Spanish citizens, amongst others, popular outrage erupted in Europe to the growing corruption of the Internet by the N.S.A.

Meanwhile, German Chanchellor Angela Merkel made an announcement after the conclusion of President Hollande's state visit to the U.S. that she would propose to France the creation of a new Web network to ensure secure communications in Europe.

No word, yet, on how the Obama administration will respond to Chancellor Merkel's proposal.

Conspicuously absent from President Hollande's agenda during his state visit was any addressing of the latest General Motors TV commercial, which engages in French-bashing.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

François Hollande Only Has Himself To Blame For Not Having A Private Life

What Private Life ? François Hollande, the N.S.A., and Article 13.

The magazine, Closer, reported last week that the French president, François Hollande, in having an affair with the access, Julie Gayet. The fallout provoked by the revelations have been instantly scandalous for two reasons.

First, the French president is normally accorded a large zone of privacy. In the past, other presidents have had lovers, and even fathered children out of wedlock, but the press never reported these truths.

Second, François Hollande reacted in anger. He demanded that the press respect his personal zone of privacy. But the president is a hypocrite, because the French national government just enacted a controversial new law, Article 13, that allows the Ministry of Economy and Finances to spy on French citizens. When the French president says that he has a private life, I want to know, "What private life ?" The president only has himself to blame for not having a private life. Here's how : He's done nothing to stop the N.S.A. spy program or the passage of Article 13.

Ordinairily, France has privacy laws that should be respected, but the United States violates these laws as a consequence of its N.S.A. spy program, and France itself collaborates with the N.S.A., in violation of its own laws.

If the president wants that his private life be respected anew, then he should be fighting on behalf of everybody to have a private life. If the president does nothing on others' behalf, how soon before the good French people should expect that the Ministry of Economy and Finances, given their new spy powers, will disclose "selfies" of the president ?

Friday, November 29, 2013

NSA Hacking Computer Networks To Spread Viruses, Malware

The-NSA-Probably-Has-Installed-a-Virus-On-Your-Computer-and-Everyone-Else-s photo The-NSA-Probably-Has-Installed-a-Virus-On-Your-Computer-and-Everyone-Elses_zps3ad7a6a3.jpg

The NSA Probably Has Installed a Virus on Your Computer — and Everyone Else's

From : PolicyMic

The news: According to yet another National Security Agency (NSA) slide hidden among the treasure trove of documents leaked by Edward #Snowden, the NSA has infected upwards of 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malware in an attempt to riddle the internet with hidden access points accessibly by U.S. agents.

A presentation from 2012 examined by Dutch news outlet NRC explained the backdoor method in which the NSA collects information worldwide. It uses "Computer Network Exploitation" (CNE), or in other words, massive malware attacks, to secretly infiltrate tens of thousands of networks. According to the NRC, one such scheme was unmasked in Belgium in September. Foreign intelligence agents in the British intelligence service (GCHQ) were revealed to have gained access to telecom provider Belgacom by tricking its employees into visiting a fake Linkedin page.

Translated from Dutch by CNET :

"The American intelligence service -- NSA -- infected more than 50,000 computer networks worldwide with malicious software designed to steal sensitive information.

"Documents provided by former NSA employee Edward #Snowden and seen by this newspaper, prove this.

"(...) The NSA declined to comment and referred to the US Government. A government spokesperson states that any disclosure of classified material is harmful to our national security."

The background: The NSA's hacking missions are handled by a special division with over 1,000 hackers named the TAO (Tailored Access Operations). The Washington Post estimated based on secret budget reports that by 2008, the unit had successfully infiltrated over 20,000 networks. By mid-2012 that number had grown to 50,000 and presumably has continued to expand to this day.

According to the Post profile, the TAO is a "highly secret but incredibly important NSA program that collects intelligence about foreign targets by hacking into their computers, stealing data, and monitoring communications." It's also supposedly integral to the development of complex programs that could destroy or damage foreign computer systems following an order from the commander-in-chief.

These kind of cyber attacks don't just bring down computer systems — much like Jurassic Park, they can have catastrophic real-world effects by ordering hardware components and infrastructure controlled by the network to malfunction or operate against programming constraints. Stuxnet, a virus which infected Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, was designed to attack uranium enrichment centrifuges and cause serious damage to the equipment over time (even though it was capable of causing catastrophic damage at any one point).

The Post found that for all the supposed secrecy, some NSA employees were relatively cavalier on their Linkedin profiles:

"For instance, Brendan Conlon, whose page lists him as a former Deputy Chief of Integrated Cyber Operations for the NSA and former Chief of TAO in Hawaii, says that he led "a large group of joint service NSA civilians and contractors in executing Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) operations against target networks." Barbara Hunt, who is listed as a former Director of Capabilities at TAO in Fort Meade, similarly claims she was 'responsible for end-to-end development and capability delivery to build a versatile computer network exploitation effort.'

"Dean Schyvincht, who claims to currently be a TAO Senior Computer Network Operator in Texas, might reveal the most about the scope of TAO activities. He says the 14 personnel under his management have completed 'over 54,000 Global Network Exploitation (GNE) operations in support of national intelligence agency requirements.' Just imagine how productive the team in Fort Meade, rumored to have about 600 people, must be."

What does this all mean for you? Well, it means that NSA surveillance of the world-wide internet is even more sophisticated and widespread than the average observer might have concluded. For better or for worse, it looks like the NSA has infiltrated large numbers of telecom services, ISPs, financial institutions, and others worldwide that would allow it to gain access to large amounts of data for bulk collection.

The NSA isn't alone in hacking the world; in early 2013, security company Mandiant exposed a Chinese group called Advanced Persistent Threat 1 which they claimed had ben responsible for hundreds of attacks against Western targets and requiring a support staff of hundreds.

And some experts warn that mass NSA infiltration of other networks comes with a price. The Electronic Frontier Foundation writes that by secretly introducing vulnerabilities into the world's internet infrastructure, the NSA risks allowing anyone who discovers those vulnerabilities to obtain immense power to bypass the security restrictions which keep the internet safe and reliable."

Tom McKay
26 November 2013

Image:
NSA Slide :
Driver1 : Worldwide SIGINT/Defense Cryptologic Platform - jpg

Sunday, October 27, 2013

U.S.A. Has Been Spying On Angela Merkel Since 2002


La N.S.A. Espionnait Les Français by connaissable

Did Barack Obama Know About N.S.A. Wiretaps on Angela Merkel's Cellphone ?

"Le quotidien Bild am Sonntag cite ce dimanche des sources des services de renseignement américains selon lesquelles le chef de la NSA, Keith Alexander, avait informé Barak Obama d'une opération d'écoute des communications de la chancelière allemande dès 2010," meaning that President Obama knew of the spying on Angela Merkel since 2010.

"Le Spiegel indiquait samedi soir, au vu de documents de la NSA, que la chancelière figurait sur une liste d'écoutes depuis 2002, et l'était encore quelques semaines avant la visite du président américain à Berlin, en juin dernier," meaning that Merkel was still on the list of spy targets just a few weeks before President Obama's visit to Berlin last June.

However, the article ends in confusion, because it was reported that, " Selon Der Spiegel, le président américain lui aurait dit que s'il l'avait su, il y aurait immédiatement mis fin," meaning that Obama said that he would have ended the spying on Merkel if he had known about it, creating a contradiction between what Der Spiegel and Bild am Sonntag are reporting. If President Obama said he would have ended the spying on Merkel if he had known about it, then why are there indications that he was informed of it in 2010, but Merkel continued to appear on the spy list until this year ?

Source : Scandale de la NSA : Angela Merkel était écoutée depuis 2002 (Le Parisien)

Sunday, May 5, 2013

American National Security Officials Worry Over Threats Related To Global Climate Change

From The Guardian : White House warned on imminent Arctic ice death spiral.

Will the Arctic Sea be completely free of ice during the summer months by 2015 ? New NASA satellite imagery from March 2013 reveals massive cracks in ice connecting Beaufort Gyre region to Alaska.