Monthly Archives: November 2014

Massive Postal Service breach hits employees and customers

Posted on by

“Hackers recently broke into a U.S. Postal Service computer system and stole personal data, including Social Security numbers, for 750,000 employees and retirees, a U.S. official familiar with the breach told CNN on Monday.  The breach also compromised the data of 2.9 million postal service customers, the official said.  The personal identifying information of the 750,000 employees and retirees includes birth dates, addresses and employment codes used in the Postal Service’s payroll systems, the official briefed on the matter said.  USPS customers’ data affected includes names, home addresses, phone numbers and emails, the official said.”

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/10/politics/postal-service-security-breach/index.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Ivan Eland: Revealed U.S. Strategy to Battle ISIS Is Wanting

Posted on by

eland_ivan_100x1331

“The United States should accept the reality that Iraq has now been effectively partitioned and recognize the autonomous governance of Sunni areas, much as the Kurds have done in northeastern Iraq. Then the Sunnis will be much less threatened by the Shi’ite central government, because it will be very weak or even non-existent. Then the Sunni tribes would have no incentive to support ISIS and thus would be more likely to turn against it—as they did before. The recognition of Iraq’s partition is the only hope for the United States to avoid escalation into another quagmire on the ground in Iraq.”

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=5194

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Obama sends 1,500 more US troops to Iraq, requests $5.6 billion for war

Posted on by

“President Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, doubling the number being deployed to help Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State.  The president also requested an additional $5.6 billion on Friday for the war against the Islamic State, in part to cover the additional deployments.  The decisions reflect a deepening U.S. involvement in the region, though the White House again stressed that U.S. personnel ‘will not be in combat,’ but rather training, advising and assisting Iraqi forces near Baghdad and Irbil.  The U.S. has been launching airstrikes on Islamic State group militants and facilities in Iraq and Syria for weeks.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/08/white-house-expected-to-approve-dod-request-to-double-number-us-soldiers-in/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Rap Sheets, Watchlists and Spy Networks Now At Cops’ Fingertips

Posted on by

“Law enforcement officials nationwide now have the ability to search multiple sensitive databases, including spy agency intranets and homeland security suspicious activity reporting – with a single login.  ‘With a single sign-on capability, there is no wrong door,’ Kshemendra Paul, program manager for the Information Sharing Environment at the Office of Director of National Intelligence, said during an interview. The databases now accessible through a single sign-on include the Homeland Security Information Network, a key exchange between state-run intelligence fusion centers and the federal government, as well as the Justice Department’s Regional Information Sharing Systems.”

http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2014/11/rap-sheets-watchlists-and-spy-networks-now-available-one-click/98423/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Documents Suggest Close Relationship Between NSA, U.S. Companies

Posted on by

“Newly disclosed National Security Agency documents suggest a closer relationship between American companies and the spy agency than has been previously disclosed.  The documents, published last week by The Intercept, describe ‘contractual relationships’ between the NSA and U.S. companies, as well as the fact that the NSA has ‘under cover’ spies working at or with some U.S. companies.  While not conclusive, the material includes some clear suggestions that at least some American companies are quite willing to help the agency conduct its massive surveillance programs.”

http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-documents-suggest-close-relationship-between-nsa-us-companies

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

FBI Director: If Apple/Google Won’t Decrypt Phones, We’ll Force Them To

Posted on by

“Everyone is stoked that the latest versions of iOS and Android will (finally) encrypt all the information on your smartphone by default. Except, of course, the FBI: Today, its director spent an hour attacking the companies and the very idea of encryption, even suggesting that Congress should pass a law banning the practice of default encryption. Comey’s  speech and thinking was out-of-touch and off on many levels: He continually referred to potential ‘bad guys’ as the only ones using encryption, and suggested that, with default encryption, people who are wrongly arrested won’t be able to unlock data within their phones that could exonerate them.”

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fbi-director-if-apple-and-google-wont-decrypt-phones-well-force-them-to

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Visit the Wrong Website, and the FBI Could End Up in Your Computer

Posted on by

“Security experts call it a ‘drive-by download’: a hacker infiltrates a high-traffic website and then subverts it to deliver malware to every single visitor. It’s one of the most powerful tools in the black hat arsenal, capable of delivering thousands of fresh victims into a hackers’ clutches within minutes.  Now the technique is being adopted by a different kind of a hacker—the kind with a badge. For the last two years, the FBI has been quietly experimenting with drive-by hacks as a solution to one of law enforcement’s knottiest Internet problems: how to identify and prosecute users of criminal websites hiding behind the powerful Tor anonymity system.”

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation_torpedo/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

FBI created fake Seattle Times Web page to nab bomb-threat suspect

Posted on by

“The FBI in Seattle created a fake news story on a bogus Seattle Times web page to plant software in the computer of a suspect in a series of bomb threats to Lacey’s Timberline High School in 2007, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco.  The deception was publicized Monday when Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., revealed it on Twitter.   In an interview, Soghoian called the incident ‘outrageous’ and said the practice could result in ‘significant collateral damage to the public trust’ if law enforcement begins co-opting the media for its purposes.”

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024888170_fbinewspaper1xml.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

FBI demands new powers to hack into computers for surveillance

Posted on by

“Under the proposed amendment, a judge can issue a warrant that would allow the FBI to hack into any computer, no matter where it is located. The change is designed specifically to help federal investigators carry out surveillance on computers that have been ‘anonymized’ – that is, their location has been hidden using tools such as Tor. The techniques involve clandestinely installing malicious software, or malware, onto a computer that in turn allows federal agents effectively to control the machine, downloading all its digital contents, switching its camera or microphone on or off, and even taking over other computers in its network.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/29/fbi-powers-hacking-computers-surveillance

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

John Hussman: Do the Lessons of History No Longer Apply?

Posted on by

“The market has re-established overvalued, overbought, overbullish conditions that mirror some of the most precarious points in the historical record such as 1929, 1937, 1974, 1987, 2000 and 2007. That syndrome is now coupled with continued evidence of a subtle shift toward more risk-averse investor psychology, primarily reflected by internal dispersion and widening credit spreads.  [..] We’ll continue to respond as the evidence changes, but under current conditions, we view the investment environment for stocks as being among a handful of the most hostile points in history.”

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc141110.htm

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet