Tag Archives: Western Intel

Congress adds contested cybersecurity measures to ‘must-pass’ spending bill

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“Congress added some of the most controversial parts of the latest cybersecurity bill to its gigantic end-of-year ‘must-pass’ omnibus spending package, including mandatory sharing of any consumer data it collects with the Internal Revenue Service, FBI and the National Security Agency.  Civil liberties experts said they were dismayed that Congress had used the late-night bill to pass some of the most invasive parts of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa).  Language that would have prevented consumer financial data from being shared directly with the NSA, for example, is not in the final version of the bill.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/16/congress-cybersecurity-information-sharing-cisa-spending-bill

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No One’s Read the Senate Torture Report and It Might Be Destroyed

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“Despite the passage of 12 months, the actual report, comprising 6,700 pages, still has not been made publicly available. In fact, reading it appears to be prohibited among officials in the executive branch. Nearly a month and a half after the report’s initial release, it had not even been taken out of the package in which it was delivered to the Department of Justice and Department of State, according to government lawyers. Even the organization that was the subject of the report, the CIA, tightly controlled internal access and made ‘very limited use’ of it, as had the Department of Defense, the lawyers said in a court filing.”

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/09/one-year-after-the-senate-torture-report-no-ones-read-it-and-it-might-be-destroyed/

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“Snowden Effect” in Action: NSA Authority to Collect Bulk Phone Metadata Expires

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“The government is ‘prohibited from collecting telephone metadata records in bulk’ starting November 29. The executive branch will now be able to obtain phone metadata by asking the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to order telecommunications companies to turn over specific records. The end of the bulk collection program is a modest but real victory for former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, who provided documents concerning the program to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. The first article by Greenwald based on the documents leaked by Snowden, published on June 6, 2013, was about the bulk collection program.”

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/28/snowden-effect-in-action-nsa-authority-to-collect-bulk-phone-metadata-expires/

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GCHQ admits for the first time to ‘persistent’ hacking in the UK and abroad

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“The UK’s digital spy agency, GCHQ, has admitted for the first time in court that it hacks computers, smartphones, and networks in the UK and abroad.  In evidence published this week, GCHQ says it undertakes ‘persistent’ hacking, leaving monitoring software on targeted devices. GCHQ also admitted that it does not need to seek individual warrants before hacking a target device. Instead, the agency primarily relies on ‘thematic’ or ‘class’ warrants, which give permission to intercept communications from ‘a defined group or network.’  Jaffey stated that this definition is interpreted as broadly as possible, letting, for example, the agency target ‘all mobile phones’ in a given city.”

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/2/9834316/gchq-hacking-international-privacy-tribunal

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The Feds Won’t Stop Terrorism This Way

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“While the current rationale for encryption back doors is to fight terrorism, they wouldn’t be used just for that purpose. For proof, just look at the history of the PATRIOT Act. This law gives the US government unprecedented civil forfeiture authority over the US ‘correspondent accounts’ of any bank in the world. If an alleged terrorist or other criminal deposits money at the bank overseas, the PATRIOT Act allows the government to seize an equivalent sum of money in the correspondent account in the US.  Proponents justified the law as a necessary escalation in the ‘War on Terror.’ But the very first time the government used its new civil forfeiture authority, it had nothing to do with terrorism.”

http://www.nestmann.com/the-feds-wont-stop-terrorism-this-way

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Glenn Greenwald: Why the CIA is smearing Edward Snowden after Paris

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“There still is no evidence that the perpetrators in Paris used the Internet to plot their attacks, let alone used encryption technology.  CIA officials simply made that up. It is at least equally likely that the attackers formulated their plans in face-to-face meetings. The central premise of the CIA’s campaign — encryption enabled the attackers to evade our detection — is baseless.  Even if they had used encryption, what would that prove? Are we ready to endorse the precept that no human communication can ever take place without the U.S. government being able to monitor it? The claim that the Paris attackers learned to use encryption from Snowden is even more misleading.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1126-greenwald-snowden-paris-encryption-20151126-story.html

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The West’s Cold War strategy: arm Islamic extremists that became al-Qaida VIDEO

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“Where did militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida come from? The answer is not as complicated as many make it out to be — but, to understand, we must delve into the history of the Cold War, the historical period lied about in the West perhaps more than any other.  We needn’t reach back far into history, just a few decades.  A much-circulated photo of an article published in British newspaper the Independent in 1993 exemplifies the West’s twisted hypocrisy. Titled ‘Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace,’ it features a large photo of Osama bin Laden, who, at the time, was a Western ally.”

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/17/we_created_islamic_extremism_those_blaming_islam_for_isis_would_have_supported_osama_bin_laden_in_the_80s/

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NSA Whistleblower: Don’t Blame Edward Snowden for Paris Attacks

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“With intelligence protection largely illusionary, the only way to prevent continued terrorists attacks is for countries to re-evaluate their foreign policies. For more than a decade, Western countries have waged endless war in the Middle East producing only death, destruction, hatred—and now ISIS. At the same time, those countries have come to assume they could conduct violent regime change throughout the region—Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria—like pieces on a chessboard, with no price to pay. For them, sadly, Paris may at last be a wake-up call. There are no Robert’s Rules of Order when it comes to war, and one man’s Hellfire missile is another man’s suicide belt.”

http://time.com/4114789/paris-attacks-intelligence/

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Psychology group bans members from national security interrogations

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“The American Psychological Association (APA) has approved a ban on psychologists’ involvement in national security interrogations.  The APA adopted the plan in the wake of 542-page independent investigation (PDF) that discovered psychologists worked with the Central Intelligence Agency to help silence dissent over harsh interrogation tactics being employed by the Bush administration (including torture). What’s more, the report found that APA officials colluded with military officials to adopt APA ethics rules in order to allow psychologists to be a part of tortuous interrogations in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/psychology-group-bans-members-from-harsh-national-security-interrogations/

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Detainees sue psychologists who engineered, profited from CIA torture

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“The two psychologists whose company made more than $80 million helping draw up the CIA’s interrogation-torture program were sued Tuesday by three former war-on-terror US detainees who claim they were waterboarded, forced into tiny boxes, starved, chained, deprived of sleep, and beaten while naked.  The suit names James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, who were inspired by psychological work on dogs. Their work centered on a state of ‘learned helplessness‘ from ongoing mental and physical abuse that they believed would help interrogators coerce confessions out of detainees. The suit is the first following the government’s release of the ‘torture report’ questioning the program.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/detainees-sue-psychologists-who-engineered-profited-from-cia-torture/

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