Mae Brussell: A Forgotten Superhero

For more than 25 years, Mae Brussell (1922-1988) was America’s preeminent researcher into the suppressed history of political assassinations, covert operations, mind control, secret societies, organized banking crime and international fascism.

Brussell had doubts about the official version of the JFK assassination from the moment she watched Jack Ruby assassinate Lee Harvey Oswald on live nation televisions. When Brussell’s daughter first saw Oswald in the hallway of the Dallas jail, it was obvious he’d been beaten and she felt sorry for him. She was wrapping up her teddy bear to send him when they saw Ruby shoot him.

Because it also bothered Brussell that the newspaper and TV coverage regarding Oswald’s background was full of discrepancies and contradictions. In 1964 she paid $86 to purchase the 26 volume Warren Commission report of the Kennedy assassination, which contained even more discrepancies and contradictions. As she stated in a 1974 interview with Playgirl Magazine, “Twenty-three adjectives were used to describe him in the Warren Report. They said he had no friends, no meaningful relationships, couldn’t hold a job, and so on. But the evidence all pointed in the opposite direction.”

So she began a seven-year project to cross index all the key witnesses and findings, filling dozens of notebooks with 28,000 pages of files on each witness and their specific link to Oswald. What she ultimately discovered was that the international terror network had gone underground and were continuing their fascist campaign to take over one country after another, including the US.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/01/22/mae-brussell-a-forgotten-superhero/

Via Blogdog

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Sheldon Silver, New York Assembly Leader, Is Arrested on Graft Charges

The speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, was arrested on federal corruption charges on Thursday and accused of using the power of his office for more than a decade to secure millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks and then covering up his schemes, according to court documents.

Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who has served as speaker for more than two decades, is accused of a range of corrupt dealings that capitalized on his official position. They include using his position to obtain corrupt payments misrepresented as referral fees from a law firm, funneling state research funds and other benefits to a doctor who in return referred asbestos claims to the law firm where the speaker worked, and secretly helping real estate developers win tax breaks.

In recent years, a steady parade of lawmakers in Albany have been charged with corruption, and the complaint against Mr. Silver outlines a capital culture rife with back-room dealing, where money and influence shape public policy for the benefit of private agendas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/nyregion/speaker-of-new-york-assembly-sheldon-silver-is-arrested-in-corruption-case.html

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LAPD Spies on Millions of Innocent Folks

LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff are monitoring the whereabouts of residents whether they have committed a crime or not. The biggest surveillance net is license plate reading technology that records your car’s plate number as you pass police cruisers equipped with a rooftop camera, or as you drive past street locations where such cameras are mounted. z_lapd_surveillance001
Information on the identity and movements of millions of Southern California residents is being collected and tracked.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California are suing LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department, demanding to see a sample week’s worth of that data in order to get some idea of what cops are storing in a vast and growing, regionally shared database.

Two dozen police agencies have gathered more than 160 million data points showing the exact whereabouts of L.A.-area drivers.

http://undergroundlosangeles.blogspot.com/2015/01/lapd-spies-on-millions-of-innocent-folks.html

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Congressman Walter Jones - 28 Pages.Org

Seeking the American government’s analysis of the 9/11 attacks, most people look to the 9/11 Commission Report. There is, however, another report that merits equal attention: the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.

President George W. Bush censored 28 pages of this report—an entire section said to describe the involvement of specific foreign governments in the attacks.

28Pages.org works to build awareness of the 28 pages and bolster the growing, bipartisan movement to pressure Congress and the president to finally release them.

http://28pages.org/

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We Were Lied To About 9/11 - Episode 18 - Bob McIlvaine

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Air Force UFO files hit the Web

The truth is out there — now on the Web. The fabled Project Blue Book, the Air Force's files on UFO sightings and investigations, have tantalized and frustrated extraterrestrial enthusiasts for decades. But this past week, nearly 130,000 pages of declassified UFO records — a trove that would make Agent Fox Mulder's mouth water — were put online.

UFO enthusiast John Greenewald has spent nearly two decades filing Freedom of Information Act requests for the government's files on UFOs and other phenomena. On Jan. 12, Greenewald posted the Blue Book files — as well as files on Blue Book's 1940s-era predecessors, Project Sign and Project Grudge — on his online database, The Black Vault.

Project Blue Book was based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Between 1947 and 1969, the Air Force recorded 12,618 sightings of strange phenomena — 701 of which remain "unidentified."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/19/air-force-ufo-files/21985651/

http://www.theblackvault.com/

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/tech/2015/01/17/air-force-ufo-files/21812539/

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How the NYPD’s Counterterrorism Apparatus Is Being Turned on Protesters

The police wearing the counterterrorism jackets at protests are perhaps the most palpable sign of the agency's transformation since 2001. Before 9/11 the NYPD had no counterterrorism bureau and the Intelligence Division focused its resources on gang activity. After the September 11 attacks, however, billions of dollars were poured into the department to counter the threat of terrorism, as a 2011 60 Minutesreport showed. Critics of the NYPD's post-9/11 turn have been arguing that practices devoted to fighting terrorism have violated the Constitution.

Now, they say, the NYPD is unleashing its counterterrorism tools on activists against police brutality, conflating legitimate protest with the threat of terrorism.

http://www.vice.com/read/how-the-nypds-counter-terror-apparatus-is-being-turned-on-police-protesters-119

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The Golden Age of Black Ops: Special Ops Missions Already in 105 Countries in 2015

During the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2014, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) deployed to 133 countries — roughly 70% of the nations on the planet — according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bockholt, a public affairs officer with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM). This capped a three-year span in which the country’s most elite forces were active in more than 150 different countries around the world, conducting missions ranging from kill/capture night raids to training exercises. And this year could be a record-breaker. Only a day before the failed raid that ended Luke Somers life — just 66 days into fiscal 2015 — America’s most elite troops had already set foot in 105 nations, approximately 80% of 2014’s total.

Despite its massive scale and scope, this secret global war across much of the planet is unknown to most Americans. Unlike the December debacle in Yemen, the vast majority of special ops missions remain completely in the shadows, hidden from external oversight or press scrutiny. In fact, aside from modest amounts of information disclosed through highly-selective coverage by military media, official White House leaks, SEALs with something to sell, and a few cherry-picked journalists reporting on cherry-picked opportunities, much of what America’s special operators do is never subjected to meaningful examination, which only increases the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175945/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_a_shadow_war_in_150_countries/

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FBI Seeks To Legally Hack You If You're Connected To TOR Or a VPN

The investigative arm of the Department of Justice is attempting to short-circuit the legal checks of the Fourth Amendment by requesting a change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These procedural rules dictate how law enforcement agencies must conduct criminal prosecutions, from investigation to trial. Any deviations from the rules can have serious consequences, including dismissal of a case. The specific rule the FBI is targeting outlines the terms for obtaining a search warrant. It's called Federal Rule 41(b), and the requested change would allow law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search electronic data without providing any specific details as long as the target computer location has been hidden through a technical tool like Tor or a virtual private network. It would also allow nonspecific search warrants where computers have been intentionally damaged (such as through botnets, but also through common malware and viruses) and are in five or more separate federal judicial districts. Furthermore, the provision would allow investigators to seize electronically stored information regardless of whether that information is stored inside or outside the court's jurisdiction.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/01/20/1540241/fbi-seeks-to-legally-hack-you-if-youre-connected-to-tor-or-a-vpn

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Think It All Started with Phones and Email? The NSA Used to Copy Our Telegrams

In the mid-1960s, there was a photocopying machine in the operations room of Western Union International in New York. Whenever a foreign government sent a cable via the company’s facilities, the Western Union operator would copy it on the machine.

That machine belonged not to Western Union International, but to the National Security Agency. It gave the NSA access to cables in which embassies communicated with their countries and to messages from nations giving instructions to their legations in the United States.

Once a week, an NSA employee came to the office and serviced the machine. He removed its film roll and replaced it with a fresh one.

http://truthstreammedia.com/think-it-all-started-with-phones-and-email-nsa-used-to-copy-our-telegrams/

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THE IRISH SLAVES: WHAT THEY WILL NEVER, EVER TELL YOU IN HISTORY CLASS

In the 17th Century, from 1600 until 1699, there were many more Irish sold as slaves than Africans. There are records of Irish slaves well into the 18th Century.Many never made it off the ships. According to written record, in at least one incident 132 slaves, men, women, and children, were dumped overboard to drown because ships’ supplies were running low. They were drowned because the insurance would pay for an “accident,” but not if the slaves were allowed to starve.
Typical death rates on the ships were from 37% to 50%.In the West Indies, the African and Irish slaves were housed together, but because the African slaves were much more costly, they were treated much better than the Irish slaves. Also, the Irish were Catholic, and Papists were hated among the Protestant planters. An Irish slave would endure such treatment as having his hands and feet set on fire or being strung up and beaten for even a small infraction. Richard Ligon, who witnessed these things first-hand and recorded them in a history of Barbados he published in 1657, stated:”Truly, I have seen cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian couldhave done to another.”(5)According to Sean O’Callahan, in To Hell or Barbados, Irish men and women were inspected like cattle there, just as the Africans were.

http://yournewswire.com/the-irish-slaves-what-they-will-never-tell-you-in-history/

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New police radars can 'see' inside homes

At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance.

Those agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, began deploying the radar systems more than two years ago with little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the U.S. Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person's house without first obtaining a search warrant.

The radars work like finely tuned motion detectors, using radio waves to zero in on movements as slight as human breathing from a distance of more than 50 feet. They can detect whether anyone is inside of a house, where they are and whether they are moving.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/

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The Inside Information That Could Have Stopped 9/11

Rossini is well placed to do just that. He’s been at the center of one of the enduring mysteries of 9/11: Why the CIA refused to share information with the FBI (or any other agency) about the arrival of at least two well-known Al-Qaeda operatives in the United States in 2000, even though the spy agency had been tracking them closely for years.

That the CIA did block him and Doug Miller, a fellow FBI agent assigned to the “Alec Station,” the cover name for CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, from notifying bureau headquarters about the terrorists has been told before, most notably in a 2009 Nova documentary on PBS, “The Spy Factory.” Rossini and Miller related how they learned earlier from the CIA that one of the terrorists (and future hijacker), Khalid al-Mihdhar, had multi-entry visas on a Saudi passport to enter the United States. When Miller drafted a report for FBI headquarters, a CIA manager in the top-secret unit told him to hold off. Incredulous, Miller and Rossini had to back down. The station’s rules prohibited them from talking to anyone outside their top-secret group.

The various commissions and internal agency reviews that examined the “intelligence failure” of 9/11 blamed institutional habits and personal rivalries among CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) officials for preventing them from sharing information. Out of those reviews came the creation of a new directorate of national intelligence, which stripped the CIA of its coordinating authority. But blaming “the system” sidesteps the issue of why one CIA officer in particular, Michael Anne Casey, ordered Rossini’s cohort, Miller, not to alert the FBI about al-Mihdhar. Or why the CIA’s Alec Station bosses failed to alert the FBI—or any other law enforcement agency—about the arrival of Nawaf al-Hazmi, another key Al-Qaeda operative (and future hijacker) the agency had been tracking to and from a terrorist summit in Malaysia.

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/23/information-could-have-stopped-911-299148.html

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Mae Brussell - Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination (9-1-78)

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Evidence of Revision - Part 6 - The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

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Complete Transcript of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Conspiracy Trial

http://www.thekingcenter.org/sites/default/files/KING%20FAMILY%20TRIAL%20TRANSCRIPT.pdf

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Senator Feinstein’s husband stands to profit big from government deal

Ever wonder how lowly paid lawmakers leave office filthy rich?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is showing how it’s done.

The US Postal Service plans to sell 56 buildings — so it can lease space more expensively — and the real estate company of the California senator’s husband, Richard Blum, is set to pocket about $1 billion in commissions.

http://pagesix.com/2015/01/16/senators-husband-stands-to-profit-from-government-deal/

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PRISON DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ON TERROR: EX-CIA OFFICER JOHN KIRIAKOU SPEAKS

John Kiriakou is the only CIA employee to go to prison in connection with the agency’s torture program. Not because he tortured anyone, but because he revealed information on torture to a reporter.

Kiriakou is the Central Intelligence Agency officer who told ABC News in 2007 that the CIA waterboarded suspected al-Qaeda prisoners after the September 11 attacks, namely Abu Zubaydah, thought to be a key al Qaeda official. Although he felt at the time that waterboarding probably saved lives, Kiriakou nevertheless came to view the practice as torture and later claimed he unwittingly understated how many times Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding.

In January 2012, Kiriakou was charged by the Justice Department for allegedly and repeatedly disclosing classified information to journalists. The Justice Department accused Kiriakou of disclosing the identity of a CIA officer involved in Zubaydah’s capture to a freelance reporter. The reporter did not publicly reveal the official’s name, but his name did appear on a website in October 2012. Kiriakou also allegedly provided New York Times reporter Scott Shane information on CIA employee Deuce Martinez, who was involved in Zubaydah’s capture and interrogation.

After agreeing to a plea deal in October 2012, Kiriakou was sentenced in January 2013 to 30 months in prison. That sentence made him the second CIA employee ever to be locked up under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which bars the release of the name of a covert agent; the first was Sharon Scranage, who in 1985 pled guilty to disclosing the identities of intelligence agents in Ghana after giving classified information to a Ghanaian, reportedly her lover.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/19/cia-agent-jailed-john-kiriakous-long-road-era-torture/

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GCHQ captured emails of journalists from top international media

GCHQ’s bulk surveillance of electronic communications has scooped up emails to and from journalists working for some of the US and UK’s largest media organisations, analysis of documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Emails from the BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde, the Sun, NBC and the Washington Post were saved by GCHQ and shared on the agency’s intranet as part of a test exercise by the signals intelligence agency.

The disclosure comes as the British government faces intense pressure to protect the confidential communications of reporters, MPs and lawyers from snooping.

The journalists’ communications were among 70,000 emails harvested in the space of less than 10 minutes on one day in November 2008 by one of GCHQ’s numerous taps on the fibre-optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/19/gchq-intercepted-emails-journalists-ny-times-bbc-guardian-le-monde-reuters-nbc-washington-post

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The U.S Government Assassinated Martin Luther King

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The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle

According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money.

During the 20th century, scientists developed so-called ABC weapons -- atomic, biological and chemical. It took decades before their deployment could be regulated and, at least partly, outlawed. New digital weapons have now been developed for the war on the Internet. But there are almost no international conventions or supervisory authorities for these D weapons, and the only law that applies is the survival of the fittest.

Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan foresaw these developments decades ago. In 1970, he wrote, "World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation." That's precisely the reality that spies are preparing for today.

The US Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force have already established their own cyber forces, but it is the NSA, also officially a military agency, that is taking the lead. It's no coincidence that the director of the NSA also serves as the head of the US Cyber Command. The country's leading data spy, Admiral Michael Rogers, is also its chief cyber warrior and his close to 40,000 employees are responsible for both digital spying and destructive network attacks.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-snowden-docs-indicate-scope-of-nsa-preparations-for-cyber-battle-a-1013409.html

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Hacking, Cyberwars & Control of The Internet - Down The Rabbit Hole w/Popeye (1-15-15)

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U.S. drug enforcement agency halts huge secret data program

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has halted a secret, nearly 15-year program that collected virtually all data on international calls between the United States and certain countries, according to documents and officials familiar with the matter.

The sweeping bulk DEA database program was stopped in September 2013, shortly after elements were revealed by Reuters and then The New York Times, according to a redacted court filing made public on Thursday and U.S. officials.

The program, run by DEA’s Special Operations Division, collected international U.S. phone records to create a database primarily used for domestic criminal cases – not national security investigations, according to records and sources involved.

DEA shared this information with other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, IRS, Homeland Security, and intelligence agencies, according to records reviewed by Reuters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/16/us-usa-dea-data-idUSKBN0KP2DD20150116

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First footage from inside GCHQ: the home of Britain's spy network

For the first time in history, cameras have been let into Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham.
GCHQ is situated in a huge circular building known as The Doughnut, the heir of the war-winning codebreakers. Up to 5,500 employees monitor the communications of of national security, “economic well-being’’ and combating serious crime.
It was originally established after World War One as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and was known under that name until 1946.
During the Second World War it was located at Bletchley Park. It was hear that it gained further prominence for its role in the breaking of the German Enigma codes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11350481/Watch-First-footage-from-inside-the-Government-Communications-Headquarters.html

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Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The program allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/

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Justice Department Kept Secret Telephone Database

The Justice Department secretly kept a database of U.S. calls to and from foreign countries for more than a decade, according to a new court filing and officials familiar with the program.

The revelation of another secret government database storing records of Americans’ calls came in a filing Thursday in the case of a man accused of conspiring to unlawfully export electronic goods to Iran.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/01/16/justice-department-kept-secret-telephone-database/

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Secret US cybersecurity report: encryption vital to protect private data

Newly uncovered Snowden document contrasts with British PM’s vow to crack down on encrypted messaging after Paris attacks

Secret US cybersecurity report warned that government and private computers were being left vulnerable to online attacks from Russia, China and criminal gangs because encryption technologies were not being implemented fast enough.

The advice, in a newly uncovered five-year forecast written in 2009, contrasts with the pledge made by David Cameron this week to crack down on encryption use by technology companies.

In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, the prime minister said on Monday there should be “no means of communication” that British authorities could not access. Cameron will use his visit to the US, which started on Thursday , to urge Barack Obama to apply more pressure to tech giants, such as Apple, Google and Facebook, which have been expanding encrypted messaging for their millions of users since the revelations of mass NSA surveillance by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/15/-sp-secret-us-cybersecurity-report-encryption-protect-data-cameron-paris-attacks

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German media: double agent 'stole' list with names of German intel agents

A double agent reportedly stole a list which contained both the real and undercover names of 3,500 German intelligence employees. The spy was arrested last July on suspicions of working for the CIA.

Investigators found a list containing confidential information about employees from Germany's foreign intelligence agency (BND) saved on a private hard drive of the alleged double agent Markus R, German media reported on Wednesday. They had seized the hard drive in a search of his apartment last summer.

The 32-year old man believed to have stolen the top-secret BND document from 2011, according to the German mass-circulation newspaper Bild. The list reportedly includes identities of the agents working at the German embassies, as well as those in German army missions in Afghanistan, Mali, Lebanon and Sudan.

The stolen document could jeopardize more than half of some 6,500 agents of BND. However, it remains unclear whether the double agent sold the list to another intelligence agency, said Bild in its Wednesday edition, citing sources close to the investigation.

http://www.dw.de/german-media-double-agent-stole-list-with-names-of-german-intel-agents/a-18189063

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CIA clears CIA in Senate hacking

The five officers involved in the CIA monitoring of computers Senate staffers used while probing the intelligence agency's torture program acted in good faith and committed no wrongdoing. That's according to a Wednesday report from an "accountability board" in which three of its five members are CIA officials.

The review board concluded there was simply a misunderstanding, that the CIA believed it could search the computers being used by staffers of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. National security was at stake, too.

"The Board determined that while an informal understanding existed that SSCI work product should be protected, no common understanding existed about the roles and responsibilities in the case of a suspected security incident," according to its highly redacted report [PDF] released Wednesday. The review said that the CIA's position was that it had "obligations under the National Security Act" and a legal duty to scour the computers "for the presence of Agency documents to which SSCI staff should not have access."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chaired the intelligence committee last year when the breaches occurred, and the politician said she was "disappointed that no one at the CIA will be held accountable."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/shocking-cia-clears-cia-in-senate-hacking-brouhaha/

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White House says net neutrality legislation not needed

The White House on Thursday said legislation was not necessary to settle so-called "net neutrality" rules because the Federal Communications Commission had the authority to write them.

Republicans in Congress are trying to drum up support for a bill that would counter the FCC's upcoming new rules. The Obama administration's comments, while not entirely rebuffing the legislative effort, could make some Democrats wary of joining it.

"In terms of legislation, we don’t believe it’s necessary given that the FCC has the authorities that it needs under Title II," a White House official told Reuters. "However, we always remain open to working with anyone who shares the president's goal of fully preserving a free and open internet now and into the future."

At stake is what rules should govern how Internet service providers (ISPs) manage web traffic on their networks to ensure they treat all Internet content fairly. At the heart of the latest phase in the debate over the rules is what legal authority should guide regulations.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/us-usa-internet-neutrality-exclusive-idUSKBN0KO2JO20150115

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Shocking History of the CIA

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Why Did the Air Force's Top Officials at the Pentagon Delay Responding to the 9/11 Attacks?

The immediate response to the 9/11 attacks of dozens of the most senior U.S. Air Force officials at the Pentagon who were together in a meeting when the attacks began appears to have been far from what we might reasonably expect, considering the serious and unprecedented crisis the officials had to deal with and the Air Force's key role in responding to it. Evidence suggests that after the first plane crash at the World Trade Center was reported on television on September 11, 2001, there was a delay of over 10 minutes before the officials' meeting was interrupted and the officials were alerted to the incident. The subsequent response of the officials appears to have been slow and lacking urgency.

Even after they saw the second hijacked plane crashing into the World Trade Center live on television, the officials reportedly spent several minutes just watching the news coverage of the attacks and then continued with their routine meeting, instead of immediately halting what they were doing and getting involved with responding to the crisis. [1] Furthermore, when the meeting finally adjourned, instead of helping with the response to the attacks, the Air Force's most senior uniformed officer initially took the time to go upstairs, simply to bring a colleague down from his office to the Pentagon's basement. [2]

Some evidence suggests that the officials in the meeting may have failed to realize the seriousness of what was taking place when they learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center, and this was why they reacted so slowly. They could, perhaps, have mistakenly thought that what they were hearing about was a simulated scenario in a training exercise. Indeed, one of the officials has recalled that when they learned of the first crash, "At first we thought it was part of the briefing." [3] The officials may therefore have felt it was unnecessary for them to respond immediately.

If the officials were indeed confused about whether the attacks were real or simulated, might their slow response have been the intended result of an attempt by some of the people who planned and perpetrated the attacks to paralyze America's defenses, so as to ensure the attacks were successful? Might these planners--presumably rogue individuals within the U.S. military--have arranged what would happen on September 11 so that these key Air Force officials would initially fail to realize that a real-world crisis was taking place, which they needed to respond to immediately?

The tactics used to prevent these officials from responding quickly could have been part of an effort to ensure key individuals from various military and government agencies, who might have organized a successful response to the attacks, were "out of the loop"--unavailable or unable to respond--when the attacks took place.

The evidence currently available is limited and inconclusive. But the behavior of the Air Force's leaders when the 9/11 attacks began certainly deserves further scrutiny.

http://911blogger.com/news/2015-01-14/why-did-air-forces-top-officials-pentagon-delay-responding-911-attacks

http://shoestring911.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-did-air-forces-top-officials-at.html

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1975 Video: CIA Admits to Congress the Agency Uses Mainstream Media to Distribute Disinfo

It has been verified by a source who claims she was there that then-CIA Director William Casey did in fact say the controversial and often-disputed line “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false,” reportedly in 1981.

Despite Casey being under investigation by Congress for being involved in a major disinformation plot involving the overthrow of Libya’s Qaddafi in 1981, and despite Casey arguing on the record that the CIA should have a legal right to spread disinformation via the mainstream news that same year, this quote continues to be argued by people who weren’t there and apparently cannot believe a CIA Director would ever say such a thing.

But spreading disinfo is precisely what the CIA would — and did — do.

This 1975 clip of testimony given during a House Intelligence Committee hearing has the agency admitting on record that the CIA creates and uses disinformation against the American people.

http://truthstreammedia.com/1975-video-cia-admits-to-congress-the-agency-uses-mainstream-media-to-distribute-disinfo/

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CIA on Trial in Virginia for Planting Nuke Evidence in Iran

Some people have heard of James Risen, a New York Times reporter who refused to name his source for a story. Damn right. Good for him. But what was the story and whom did the government want named as a source? Ah. Those questions might seem obvious, but the reporting on James Risen has avoided them like the plague for years and years now. And the independent media is not always as good at creating a story as it is at improving on stories in the corporate press.

Jeffrey Sterling went to Congress with his story. He was a CIA case officer. He is accused of having taken his story to James Risen. The prosecution is quite clearly establishing, against its own interest, during the course of this trial already, that numerous people were in on the story and could have taken it to Risen. If Sterling is to be proved guilty of the non-crime of blowing the whistle on a crime, the prosecution has yet to hint at how that will be done.

But what is the story? What is the crime that Sterling exposed for that tiny sliver of the population that's interested enough to have listened? (Sure, Risen's book was a "best seller" but that's a low hurdle; not a single prospective juror in Alexandria had read the book; even a witness involved in the case testified Wednesday that he'd only read the one relevant chapter.)

The story is this. The CIA drew up plans for a key part of a nuclear bomb (what a CIA officer on Wednesday described in his testimony as "the crown jewels" of a nuclear weapons program), inserted flaws in the plans, and then had a Russian give those flawed plans to Iran.

During the trial on Wednesday morning, the prosecution's witnesses made clear both that aiding Iran in developing a part of a bomb would be illegal under U.S. export control laws, and that they were aware at the time that there was the possibility of what they were doing constituting just such aid.

http://warisacrime.org/content/cia-trial-virginia-planting-nuke-evidence-iran

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Special Coverage from the Jeffrey Sterling Trial

http://exposefacts.org/blog/the-latest/

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Trial Begins for Former C.I.A. Official Accused of Breaching National Security

The Justice Department on Tuesday pressed ahead with the prosecution of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, a day after it said it would not force a reporter for The New York Times to testify at the trial.

The former official, Jeffrey Sterling, is accused of revealing a covert operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, the details of which were included in a 2006 book, “State of War,” by James Risen, the Times reporter. In attempting to compel Mr. Risen’s testimony for the past seven years, the Justice Department had argued that his account was crucial to their case. But under pressure from journalism groups and advocates, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. agreed not to force Mr. Risen to reveal his sources, leaving the government with a case that is largely circumstantial.


In opening arguments in Federal District Court here on Tuesday, prosecutors said that much of the information that Mr. Risen published about the Iranian operation was known only to Mr. Sterling, whom they described as a disgruntled employee who was bitter that the C.I.A. refused to settle a discrimination lawsuit he had filed. They said Mr. Sterling caused lasting harm with his disclosures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/us/politics/trial-begins-for-former-cia-official-accused-of-breaching-national-security.html?_r=0

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How German BND Spies Work with NSA

This is part III about the German parliamentary committee which investigates NSA spying activities and the cooperation between NSA and the German foreign intelligence service BND.

The hearings of a number of BND employees which are summarized below, provided many interesting details about BND cable and satellite collection and how these data are selected and filtered and how privacy rights are implemented. This was especially of concern for the cooperation between NSA and BND in the Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA).

http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2015/01/german-investigation-of-cooperation.html

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CIA Flashback: “We’ll Know Our Disinformation Program Is Complete When Everything the American Public Believes Is False.”

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

(Truthstream Media) That creepy quote above has been widely attributed to Former CIA Director William Casey.

Casey was the 13th CIA Director from 1981 until he left in January 1987. He died not long after of a brain tumor in May 1987. Dead men tell no tales, as they say.

But did William Casey really say this quote?

The quote itself has been passed around extensively on the Internet, and some people claim Casey never really said it because the only main source it traces back to is late political researcher and radio show host Mae Brussell.

Brussell was the host of the radio show Dialogue: Conspiracy. She got her start when, as a radio show guest, she questioned the official JFK assassination story and the Warren Commission Hearings by suggesting that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the only person involved in Kennedy’s murder. Perhaps the propagandized label of “conspiracy theorist” is the reason why people question the quote Brussell often repeated.

http://truthstreammedia.com/cia-flashback-well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-american-public-believes-is-false/

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One Member of Congress = 18 American Households: Lawmakers’ Personal Finances Far From Average

It would take the combined wealth of more than 18 American households to equal the value of a single federal lawmaker’s household, the Center for Responsive Politics’ latest analysis of congressional wealth finds.

The median net worth of a member of Congress was $1,029,505 in 2013 — a 2.5 percent increase from 2012 — compared with an average American household’s median net worth of $56,355. Once again, the majority of members of Congress are millionaires — 271 of the 533 members currently in office, or 50.8 percent.

While the median net worth of an American family has declined by nearly one-third between 2007 and 2013, members of Congress have recovered quite well from the recession. The Senate’s median net worth went from $2.3 million to $2.8 million over that period, while for members of the House the numbers went from $708,500 to $843,507.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/01/one-member-of-congress-18-american-households-lawmakers-personal-finances-far-from-average/

Download the full list of all current members of Congress and the most popular congressional investments here.

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F.B.I. Is Broadening Surveillance Role, Report Shows

Although the government’s warrantless surveillance program is associated with the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has gradually become a significant player in administering it, a newly declassified report shows.

In 2008, according to the report, the F.B.I. assumed the power to review email accounts the N.S.A. wanted to collect through the “Prism” system, which collects emails of foreigners from providers like Yahoo and Google. The bureau’s top lawyer, Valerie E. Caproni, who is now a Federal District Court judge, developed procedures to make sure no such accounts belonged to Americans.


Then, in October 2009, the F.B.I. started retaining copies of unprocessed communications gathered without a warrant to analyze for its own purposes. And in April 2012, the bureau began nominating new email accounts and phone numbers belonging to foreigners for collection, including through the N.S.A.’s “upstream” system, which collects communications transiting network switches.

That information is in a 231-page study by the Justice Department’s inspector general about the F.B.I.’s activities under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which authorized the surveillance program. The report was entirely classified when completed in September 2012. But the government has now made a semi-redacted version of the report public in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/us/politics/beyond-nsa-fbi-is-assuming-a-larger-surveillance-role-report-shows.html

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Rockefeller to join foreign affairs think tank

Recently retired Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) will become a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a foreign policy think tank in Washington.

Rockefeller retired at the end of the last Congress after serving in the Senate for three decades, including as the chairman of Senate Intelligence and Commerce panels.

Based in the CFR’s Washington office, he will specialize his research on Japan, East Asia and cybersecurity issues, among others, according to a release sent on Monday.

“For more than three decades, first as a governor and then a U.S. senator, Jay Rockefeller has shown an uncommon ability to get important things done,” said CFR President Richard Haass in a statement. “We are thrilled to have someone of his experience, achievement, and range join us at the Council on Foreign Relations.”

The Council on Foreign Relations is also a membership organization based in New York. Rockefeller first became a member in 1978. The council publishes Foreign Affairs bimonthly.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/229185-rockefeller-to-join-foreign-affairs-think-tank

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Some New York Police Officers Were Quick to Resort to Chokeholds, Inspector General Finds

The first investigation by New York City’s police inspector general includes the finding that in several cases where officers were found to have used a chokehold, the banned maneuver was the officer’s initial physical response to verbal resistance.

The 45-page report, released on Monday, follows the death in July of Eric Garner on Staten Island after an arresting officer placed him in a chokehold, a tactic that was banned by the Police Department two decades ago. The report looks at officers’ ongoing use of chokeholds and the department’s handling of such actions.

Headed by Philip K. Eure, who was hired in May, the inspector general’s office examined the circumstances and the disciplinary actions that resulted in 10 confrontations between officers and suspects from 2009 to June 2014 in which a separate oversight agency verified that a chokehold had been used by an officer.


In each instance, the agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, recommended stiff discipline. However, in the cases that have been decided so far, officers were given little or no punishment by the Police Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/nyregion/new-york-police-officers-are-quick-to-resort-to-chokeholds-inspector-general-finds.html

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The FBI Says It Doesn’t Need a Warrant to Track Your Cell Phone in Public

The FBI claims that it doesn't need a warrant to use so-called Stingray cell-phone tracking technology in public spaces, according to two US Senators raising privacy concerns over use of the devices.

Stingrays and similar devices intercept data by emulating a cell phone tower, say privacy groups. With the briefcase-size technology, police can identify and locate cell phone users in a general area or search for a specific person while also vacuuming up metadata from phones.

The FBI recently settled on a new policy surrounding the use of Stingrays and similar technology that requires agents to obtain a warrant before using the technology in a criminal investigation. However, the policy includes such broad exceptions that privacy advocates worry they do practically nothing to protect citizens' Fourth Amendment rights.

http://www.vice.com/read/the-fbi-says-it-doesnt-need-a-warrant-to-track-your-cellphone-in-public-112

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JFK to 9/11 Everything Is A Rich Man's Trick

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Propaganda 101: Operation Mockingbird Continues

Most Americans are under the influence of TV and radio sources for the daily dose of propaganda. Not understanding they are being lied to and made to believe a lie, it becomes a formidable task to get folks to see the light. They want to see, it’s just the lie is so big, so pervasive at this point it is hard for people to grasp the size of the depth and breadth the lie has reached.

For me, and you may disagree, propaganda is nothing more than a lie that has been presented as truth and is intended to influence how people live and think. As you read you will see that I use the words “lie” and “propaganda” interchangeably – they are the same thing for the purposes of this article and my life.

http://www.activistpost.com/2015/01/propaganda-101-operation-mockingbird.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

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Judge Orders NYPD to Release Records on X-ray Vans

A state judge has ordered the New York City Police Department to release records on a secretive program that uses unmarked vans equipped with X-ray machines to detect bombs.

The ruling follows a nearly three-year legal battle by ProPublica, which had requested police reports, training materials, contracts and any health and safety tests on the vans under the state's Freedom of Information Law.

ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer.

Richard Daddario, then the NYPD's deputy commissioner of counterterrorism, told the court in 2013 that releasing the documents would hamper the department's ability to conduct operations and endanger the lives of New Yorkers.

Disclosing them, he said, would "permit those seeking to evade detection to conform their conduct to the times, places and methods that avoid NYPD presence and are thus most likely to yield a successful attack."

But Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan called the NYPD's argument "mere speculation" and "patently insufficient" to outweigh the public's right to know.

http://www.propublica.org/article/judge-orders-nypd-to-release-records-on-x-ray-vans

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CIA mind-control program: not gone, not forgotten

“In the 1950s and 60s, the CIA engaged in an extensive program of human experimentation [MKULTRA], using drugs, psychological, and other means, in search of techniques to control human behavior for counterintelligence and covert action purposes… Most of the MKULTRA records were deliberately destroyed in 1973 by the order of then DCI Richard Helms…Helms testified that he agreed to destroy the records because ‘there had been relationships with outsiders in government agencies and other organizations and that these would be sensitive in this kind of a thing but that since the [mind-control] program was over and finished and done with, we thought we would just get rid of files as well, so that anybody who assisted us in the past would not be subject to follow-up questions, embarrassment, if you will.’”

Helms was not only admitting he destroyed the records, he was stating that the MKULTRA program deployed, through contracts, “outsiders” to carry out mind control experiments. He was determined to protect the outsiders, to keep their identity and work secret. He was also dedicated to preventing these people from exposing the nature of their mind-control work.

Subsequently, some of these “outsiders” have been revealed. But no one really knows how deep, far, and wide the CIA penetrated into academic and research communities to enable MKULTRA.

http://www.activistpost.com/2015/01/cia-mind-control-program-not-gone-not.html

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F.B.I. and Justice Dept. Said to Seek Charges for Petraeus

The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against David H. Petraeus, contending that he provided classified information to a lover while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, and leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison.

The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other highly classified information.

F.B.I. agents discovered classified documents on her computer after Mr. Petraeus resigned from the C.I.A. in 2012 when the affair became public.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/us/politics/prosecutors-said-to-recommend-charges-against-former-gen-david-petraeus.html

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9-11 in the Academic Community

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Exclusive: Edward Snowden on Cyber Warfare

Last June, journalist James Bamford, who is working with NOVA on a new film about cyber warfare that will air in 2015, sat down with Snowden in a Moscow hotel room for a lengthy interview. In it, Snowden sheds light on the surprising frequency with which cyber attacks occur, their potential for destruction, and what, exactly, he believes is at stake as governments and rogue elements rush to exploit weaknesses found on the internet, one of the most complex systems ever built by humans. The following is an unedited transcript of their conversation.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/military/snowden-transcript/

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The Invasion of America

Between 1776 and the present, the United States seized some 1.5 billion acres from North America’s native peoples, an area 25 times the size of the United Kingdom. Many Americans are only vaguely familiar with the story of how this happened. They perhaps recognise Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears, but few can recall the details and even fewer think that those events are central to US history.

Their tenuous grasp of the subject is regrettable if unsurprising, given that the conquest of the continent is both essential to understanding the rise of the United States and deplorable. Acre by acre, the dispossession of native peoples made the United States a transcontinental power. To visualise this story, I created ‘The Invasion of America’, an interactive time-lapse map of the nearly 500 cessions that the United States carved out of native lands on its westward march to the shores of the Pacific.

http://aeon.co/magazine/society/americans-must-not-forget-their-history-of-dispossession/

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Medical Tyranny: Supreme Court Just Ruled the Government Can Force a 17-Year-Old to Take Chemotherapy

How can any American living here in the supposed “land of the free” honestly believe we still are?

The Connecticut Supreme Court has now ruled that yes, the government has the power to force a minor to undergo chemotherapy treatments even if she doesn’t want to.

That’s right. The court has unanimously determined that a 17-year-old patient cannot refuse chemotherapy treatment, even if her mother agrees they want to seek alternative treatment, for her Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

We aren’t just a fascist oligarchy and a police state, but we absolutely a medical tyranny.

http://truthstreammedia.com/medical-tyranny-supreme-court-just-ruled-the-government-can-force-a-17-year-old-to-take-chemotherapy/

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We Were Lied To About 9/11 - Episode 16 - Peter Dale Scott

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Press Conference on Resolution to Declassify 9/11 Report

On Wednesday, January 7, Representatives Walter B. Jones (NC-3), Stephen Lynch (MA-8), and Senator Bob Graham (FL) held a bipartisan press conference on their newly introduced H. Res. 14, a resolution that calls on President Obama to declassify the 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001 that were initially classified by President George W. Bush and have remained classified under President Barack Obama. Senator Graham was the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence when the Joint Inquiry was written and has repeatedly called for the 28 pages to be declassified. H. Res. 14 states that declassification of the pages is necessary to provide the American public with the full truth surrounding the tragic events of September 11, 2001, particularly relating to the involvement of foreign governments.

Also attending the press conference will be representatives from 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism, and family members of victims killed in the 9/11 attacks.

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A Cyberattack Has Caused Confirmed Physical Damage for the Second Time Ever

Amid all the noise the Sony hack generated over the holidays, a far more troubling cyber attack was largely lost in the chaos. Unless you follow security news closely, you likely missed it.

I’m referring to the revelation, in a German report released just before Christmas (.pdf), that hackers had struck an unnamed steel mill in Germany. They did so by manipulating and disrupting control systems to such a degree that a blast furnace could not be properly shut down, resulting in “massive”—though unspecified—damage.

This is only the second confirmed case in which a wholly digital attack caused physical destruction of equipment. The first case, of course, was Stuxnet, the sophisticated digital weapon the U.S. and Israel launched against control systems in Iran in late 2007 or early 2008 to sabotage centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant. That attack was discovered in 2010, and since then experts have warned that it was only a matter of time before other destructive attacks would occur. Industrial control systems have been found to be rife with vulnerabilities, though they manage critical systems in the electric grid, in water treatment plants and chemical facilities and even in hospitals and financial networks. A destructive attack on systems like these could cause even more harm than at a steel plant.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/german-steel-mill-hack-destruction/

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America's Dirtiest Cops: Cash, Cocaine and Corruption on the Texas Border

How an elite anti-narcotics task force became the most brazen drug thieves on the Texas border

For the past year, Treviño and the Panama Unit had been operating one of the most efficient drug-robbery rings in Texas, taking money from some dealers and traffickers while using their police weapons and police cars to rob others. "These guys were outlaws," one former Hidalgo County deputy says. Adds another, "They were running around like that movie Training Day." They started off stealing ounces of weed and eventually stole so much they attracted the attention of the FBI, the DEA, Homeland Security and the Texas Rangers, not to mention at least one revenge-seeking gang.

The Panama Unit's crimes were a black eye on border law enforcement – especially the majority of officers who are honest cops. The case also raised questions about who is being enlisted and what resources are being devoted to fighting the nation's drug war. Until it was exposed, the unit was seen as an example of what local drug enforcement was doing right. Most incredibly, its crimes were all happening on the watch of one of the most powerful lawmen in Texas and one of the U.S. government's most trusted border advisers: the popular Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, a.k.a. Jonathan's father.

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/americas-dirtiest-cops-cash-cocaine-texas-hidalgo-county-20150105#ixzz3O30atPIG

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Argentine Supreme Court clears 9/11 truther extradition

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WITH POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA GROWING, POLICE NOW MONITORING AND CRIMINALIZING ONLINE SPEECH

This eagerness to criminalize political speech becomes more compelling as social media vests ordinary individuals with greater autonomy to disseminate news as well as their views. No longer dependent on corporate media institutions acting as Responsible Gatekeepers of Tolerable Opinions, individuals all over the world are now able to curate their own news and create their own powerful opinion platforms.

Like all technologies that threaten to subvert prevailing authority, social media–along with the Internet generally–is being increasingly targeted with police measures of control, repression and punishment. Just like mass surveillance does to the Internet, this is all part of an effort to convert these new technologies from a potential tool of subversion into one that further bolsters governing power factions.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/06/police-increasingly-monitoring-criminalizing-online-speech/

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Politicians push to declassify censored 9/11 reports

The drive to declassify the 28 censored pages of the congressional 9/11 report detailing the Saudi Arabian government’s possible role in the terror attacks has become a full-blown movement, complete with letter-writing campaigns, lawsuits and legislation.

On Wednesday, the former co-chairman of the panel that produced the heavily-redacted 2002 report will hold a Capitol Hill press conference calling for its complete release. Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham will join Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), as well as 9/11 families, to demand President Obama shine light on the entire blanked-out Saudi section.

Graham claims the redaction is part of an ongoing “coverup” of the role of Saudi officials in the 9/11 plot. He maintains the Saudi hijackers got financial aid and other help from the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and the Saudi embassy in Washington, as well as from wealthy Sarasota, Fla., patrons tied to the Saudi royal family.

http://nypost.com/2015/01/04/politicians-push-to-declassify-censored-911-reports/

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NYT Reporter James Risen Refuses to Answer Questions in CIA Leak Case

A New York Times reporter is providing little assistance to prosecutors as they put a former CIA officer on trial for allegedly leaking classified information about a botched operation in Iran.

Journalist James Risen testified Monday at an unusual pretrial hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, where ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling goes on trial next week on charges he illegally leaked national security information to Risen that the journalist used in his 2006 book, "State of War."

For years, Risen has been resisting efforts to compel his testimony, citing an obligation to protect the confidentiality of his sources. Ultimately, a federal appeals court ruled that Risen must testify.

Monday's hearing was designed to determine what exactly would be asked of Risen if he's called as a prosecution witness. The Justice Department, under pressure from free-press advocates, had previously said it would not press Risen on whether Sterling was his confidential source, and would limit its questions.

NY Times

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U.S. Drone Fleet at ‘Breaking Point,’ Air Force Says

The U.S. Air Force’s fleet of drones is being strained to the “breaking point,” according to senior military officials and an internal service memo acquired by The Daily Beast. And it’s happening right when the unmanned aircraft are most needed to fight ISIS.

The Air Force has enough MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. It just doesn’t have the manpower to operate those machines. The Air Force’s situation is so dire that Air Combat Command (ACC), which trains and equips the service’s combat forces, is balking at filling the Pentagon’s ever increasing demands for more drone flights.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/04/exclusive-u-s-drone-fleet-at-breaking-point-air-force-says.html

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FBI says search warrants not needed to use “stingrays” in public places

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the position that court warrants are not required when deploying cell-site simulators in public places. Nicknamed "stingrays," the devices are decoy cell towers that capture locations and identities of mobile phone users and can intercept calls and texts.

The FBI made its position known during private briefings with staff members of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In response, the two lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson, maintaining they were "concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests" of Americans.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/fbi-says-search-warrants-not-needed-to-use-stringrays-in-public-places/

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'Intel' Panel Hides 9/11 Facts from U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson

A prominent Florida House Democrat is making waves in Washington.
House Intelligence Committee leaders are refusing to let outspoken U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson examine a classified document because of his criticism of the National Security Agency.
Congressman Grayson told the Broward Bulldog, an investigative news website in Florida, that he has been denied access to 28 classified pages from a 2002 congressional report about the 9-11 attacks.

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Kurt Sonnenfeld: Hide In The Light

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Kurt Sonnenfeld: Complete World Trade Center Photos

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Kurt Sonnenfeld Will Be Extradited, Face Murder Charges In Denver

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Post Office Storing Copies Of Everyone’s Mail In National Database For Law Enforcement

The United States Postal Service has been compiling a database of every Americans’ mail records into a dragnet being made available to law enforcement agencies on command.

Information buried in the United States Postal Service’s annual audit, gleaned by SFGate, reveal that the USPS’ ‘mail covers‘ surveillance program has grown exponentially over the past two years

Under the program, a copy is made of every piece of mail sent through every post office. The images are then stored in a database to be at the disposal of law enforcement who might need them at a later date.

Though postal officials are not allowed to open mail and investigate its contents without a warrant, the data being collected allows law enforcement and other government officials to monitor to whom and where every individual is sending mail.

http://policestatedaily.com/post-office-storing-copies-everyones-mail-national-database-law-enforcement/

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Argentina to Extradite Kurt Sonnenfeld, 9/11 ‘Truther,’ on Murder Charge

An American who sought refuge in Argentina after he was accused of killing his wife in 2002 should be sent back to the United States, Argentina’s Supreme Court announced this week.

The decision to extradite Kurt Sonnenfeld, who moved to Argentina in 2003 after prosecutors in Denver charged him with first-degree murder, ends a long dispute between the United States Justice Department and local courts in Argentina.

Mr. Sonnenfeld, who has claimed that he has proof that the American government had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, and who has gained a following among like-minded conspiracy theorists, has said the government and prosecutors colluded to frame him for his wife’s death in order to silence him. The Denver district attorney’s office has denied these allegations.

NY Times

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We Love Surveillance

For some time now it has been clear that we are facing the greatest surveillance scandal the world has ever seen.

The perpetrators lie and cheat and betray our trust and build their very own evil empire and we just look away.
The state ignores the state’s own laws. And why?

The truth is self-evident: We love surveillance.
And here are 7 very good reasons why you should love it, too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlmYHbg5i_w

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Media Blacks Out New Snowden Interview The Government Doesn’t Want You to See

This past Sunday evening former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sat down for an interview with German television network ARD. The interview has been intentionally blocked from the US public, with virtually no major broadcast news outlets covering this story. In addition, the video has been taken down almost immediately every time it’s posted on YouTube.

In contrast, this was treated as a major political event in both print and broadcast media, in Germany, and across much of the world. In the interview, Mr. Snowden lays out a succinct case as to how these domestic surveillance programs undermine and erode human rights and democratic freedom.

http://benswann.com/media-blacks-out-new-snowden-interview-the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

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Newly published NSA documents show agency could grab all Skype traffic

A National Security Agency document published this week by the German news magazine Der Spiegel from the trove provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden shows that the agency had full access to voice, video, text messaging, and file sharing from targeted individuals over Microsoft’s Skype service. The access, mandated by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant, was part of the NSA’s PRISM program and allowed “sustained Skype collection” in real time from specific users identified by their Skype user names.

The nature of the Skype data collection was spelled out in an NSA document dated August 2012 entitled “User’s Guide for PRISM Skype Collection.” The document details how to “task” the capture of voice communications from Skype by NSA’s NUCLEON system, which allows for text searches against captured voice communications. It also discusses how to find text chat and other data sent between clients in NSA’s PINWALE “digital network intelligence” database.

The full capture of voice traffic began in February of 2011 for “Skype in” and “Skype out” calls—calls between a Skype user and a land line or cellphone through a gateway to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), captured through warranted taps into Microsoft’s gateways. But in July of 2011, the NSA added the capability of capturing peer-to-peer Skype communications—meaning that the NSA gained the ability to capture peer-to-peer traffic and decrypt it using keys provided by Microsoft through the PRISM warrant request.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/newly-published-nsa-documents-show-agency-could-grab-all-skype-traffic/

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CIA covered up the truth about UFOs for decades

The report, “The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974,” written by Gregory Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach, outlines the CIA’s involvement in the development of the U-2 spy plane.

It explains how the testing of the planes led to a massive increase in UFO reports.

“High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect — a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs),” it says in a section devoted to the issue.

http://nypost.com/2014/12/31/cia-covered-up-the-truth-about-ufos-for-decades/

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Florida congressman denied access to censored pages from Congress’ 9/11 report

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee has denied a Florida congressman’s request for access to 28 classified pages from the 2002 report of Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, told BrowardBulldog.org he made his request at the suggestion of House colleagues who have read them as they consider whether to support a proposed resolution urging President Obama to open those long-censored pages to the public.

“Why was I denied? I have been instrumental in publicizing the Snowden revelations regarding pervasive domestic spying by the government and this is a petty means for the spying industrial complex to lash back,” Grayson said last week, referring to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

Redacted on orders from then-President George W. Bush, the report says the 28 pages concern “specific sources of foreign support” for the 9/11 hijackers while they were in the U.S. Specifically, that is “the role of Saudi Arabia in funding 9/11,” according to former Florida Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the Joint Inquiry and helped write the 28 pages.

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/12/florida-congressman-denied-access-to-censored-pages-from-congress-911-report/

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