AG Holder Announces Task Force on ‘Homegrown’ Terrorists.

AG Holder Announces Task Force on ‘Homegrown’ Terrorists. Los Angeles Times

The task force will chiefly comprise leaders from the FBI, the Justice Department’s National Security Division and U.S. Attorneys. Called the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, it is a recreation of a task force formed by former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The task force fell into disuse after 9/11.

Though the original task force, which was little known, focused mainly on right-wing zealots, Holder’s version is aimed at U.S. citizens or visitors radicalized via the Internet. Holder said the government will continue to fight terrorists abroad.

“But we also must concern ourselves with a different type of threat. We face an escalating danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” he said.

Read the full story here.

NSA possibly involved in major Belgian telecom provider hack

Obama in Sweden:  “And I can give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we’re not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls. 

NSA possibly involved in major Belgian telecom provider hack.(RT).

This weekend internet and telephone services provider Belgacom in Belgium revealed to have found traces of a digital intrusion in its internal IT system. Belgacom is a public company, of which the majority of shares is owned by the Belgian state.

"The inquiry has shown that the hacking was only possible by an intruder with significant financial and logistic means," they said. "This fact, combined with the technical complexity of the hacking and the scale on which it occurred, points towards international state-sponsored cyber espionage."
 
The company claims to have taken all appropriate actions to protect the integrity of its IT system and to further reinforce the prevention against possible incidents.

The newspaper 'De Standaard' however cites anonymous but reliable sources confirming that the National Security Agency was already monitoring all Belgacom international telephone traffic 'during at least two years'.

Belgacom has filed a complaint against an unknown third party and 'is granting its full support to the investigation that is being performed by the Federal Prosecutor'.

As to the perpetrators and their motives, the company states 'it is up to the Federal Prosecutor’s investigation to bring clarity on this'.

In the meantime the Belgian prime minister Elio Di Rupo also condemned the hack in an official press release, stating: "The Government takes notice that the technology used would indicate the high level involvement of another country."

"If this hypothesis is confirmed and the intrusion is indeed of a case of so-called cyber espionage, the government strongly condemns this intrusion and this breach of the integrity of the public company."

"In that case, the government will take the appropriate steps."

The hack takes an extra dimension as Brussels, the capital of Belgium, hosts the official seats of the European Commission and the European Parliament, but also the NATO headquarters and many lobby organizations. 

Hmmm.......Obama in Sweden:  “And I can give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we’re not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls. What we try to do is to target very specifically areas of concern. Having said that, what I’ve said domestically and what I say to international audiences is with changes in technology, with the growth of our capabilities, if our — if our attitude is, because we can do it we should go ahead and do it, then we may not be, you know, addressing some of the legitimate concerns and dangers that exist anytime we’re talking about intelligence gathering and surveillance.”

"YES WE CAN" - NSA Can Spy on Smart Phone Data

"YES WE CAN" - NSA Can Spy on Smart Phone Data.HT: SPIEGEL.

SPIEGEL has learned from internal NSA documents that the US intelligence agency has the capability of tapping user data from the iPhone, devices using Android as well as BlackBerry, a system previously believed to be highly secure. 

The United States' National Security Agency intelligence-gathering operation is capable of accessing user data from smart phones from all leading manufacturers. Top secret NSA documents that SPIEGEL has seen explicitly note that the NSA can tap into such information on Apple iPhones, BlackBerry devices and Google's Android mobile operating system.

 The documents state that it is possible for the NSA to tap most sensitive data held on these smart phones, including contact lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information about where a user has been.

The documents also indicate that the NSA has set up specific working groups to deal with each operating system, with the goal of gaining secret access to the data held on the phones.

In the internal documents, experts boast about successful access to iPhone data in instances where the NSA is able to infiltrate the computer a person uses to sync their iPhone. Mini-programs, so-called "scripts," then enable additional access to at least 38 iPhone features.

The documents suggest the intelligence specialists have also had similar success in hacking into BlackBerrys. A 2009 NSA document states that it can "see and read SMS traffic." It also notes there was a period in 2009 when the NSA was temporarily unable to access BlackBerry devices. After the Canadian company acquired another firm, it changed the way in compresses its data. But in March 2010, the department responsible declared it had regained access to BlackBerry data and celebrated with the word, "champagne!"

The documents also state that the NSA has succeeded in accessing the BlackBerry mail system, which is known to be very secure. This could mark a huge setback for the company, which has always claimed that its mail system is uncrackable.

In response to questions from SPIEGEL, BlackBerry officials stated, "It is not for us to comment on media reports regarding alleged government surveillance of telecommunications traffic." The company said it had not programmed a "'back door' pipeline to our platform."

The material viewed by SPIEGEL suggests that the spying on smart phones has not been a mass phenomenon. It has been targeted, in some cases in an individually tailored manner and without the knowledge of the smart phone companies.
Hmmmm......Obama in Sweden:  "And I can give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we’re not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls. What we try to do is to target very specifically areas of concern. Having said that, what I’ve said domestically and what I say to international audiences is with changes in technology, with the growth of our capabilities, if our -- if our attitude is, because we can do it we should go ahead and do it, then we may not be, you know, addressing some of the legitimate concerns and dangers that exist anytime we’re talking about intelligence gathering and surveillance."




 Visit SPIEGEL ONLINE International on Monday for the full article.
 

Daniel Ellsberg: US on Verge of Becoming Police State Under Obama.

Daniel Ellsberg: US on Verge of Becoming Police State Under Obama.HT: Newsmax.

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says the United States is on the verge of becoming a police state as evidenced by the National Security Agency's data collection programs and the treatment of secret document leakers Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. 

"We have not only the capability of a police state, but certain beginnings of it right now," Ellsberg told The Huffington Post Wednesday. "And I absolutely agree with Edward Snowden. It's worth a person's life, prospect of assassination, or life in prison or life in exile — it's worth that to try to restore our liberties and make this a democratic country."

He cited the NSA's phone- and Internet data collection programs as evidence that the nation has reached the "capability" of becoming a police state.

"When people understand that their every conversation of every kind on phones, email, chat logs whatever, is being recorded and can be retrieved, that will certainly curtail people's freedom of speech over any digital means," Ellsberg continued in an interview carried on HuffPost Live.Hmmm....."Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty". ~ Plato.Read the full story here.

"Et Tu Jones?" - Obama’s former adviser ridicules statement that NSA doesn’t spy on Americans.

"Et Tu Jones?" - Obama’s former adviser ridicules statement that NSA doesn’t spy on Americans.(RT).

"Everybody knows I love this president, but this is ridiculous," former-Special Adviser for Green Jobs Van Jones said Wednesday on CNN. "First of all, we do have a domestic spying program, and what we need to be able to do is figure out how to balance these things, not pretend like there’s no balancing to be done.”

The remark made by Jones, who currently serves as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, directly contrasts with comments Obama made earlier in the week to late night talk show host Jay Leno.

“We don’t have a domestic spying program,” Obama told Leno during a Tuesday night interview. "What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat."

Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Jones jabbed the president’s remarks while also assaulting the commander-in-chief’s record with regards to charging intelligence leakers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden with espionage.

Despite campaigning on a platform of utmost transparency, Obama and his administration have so far charged more leakers with espionage than all previous presidents combined twice over. Speaking to CNN, Jones challenged the president’s past behavior towards whistleblowers and suggested that Snowden, the 30-year-old leaker of classified National Security Agency documents, stands little chance of a fair trial in America.

“But much more important, he said something else that I thought that was really awful,” Jones continued. He said that if somebody like Snowden wanted to be a whistleblower, they could have gone ahead.

“Well, hold on a second, sir. That is — you are right now prosecuting more whistleblowers – not only than any American president, than every American president combined! So you can’t then come out on Leno and yuck it up and say, 'Well, whistleblowers, come on out and we’ll treat you right.' because you haven’t been doing that.”

Last week, Russia approved Snowden’s request for asylum by allowing him a one-year stay overseas as charges of spying loom stateside. Meanwhile, days earlier a military judge convicted Army Private First Class Bradley Manning with multiple counts of espionage for his role in sharing classified material with the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Manning’s court-martial is currently in its sentencing phase and could end with Col. Denise Lind sending him to prison for a maximum of 90 years. Read the full story here.

Video - Customs and Border Patrol agency has considered equipping its fleet of domestic Predators with “non-lethal” weapons.

Video - Customs and Border Patrol agency has considered equipping its fleet of domestic Predators with “non-lethal” weapons. HT: Slate.

The expansion of drones into domestic airspace continues to raise unresolved privacy and civil liberties questions, particularly as military-style drones like the Predator are capable of flying beyond sight at high altitude, carrying powerful cameras that can zoom in and covertly monitor the ground below. Recently disclosed documents have compounded these concerns, revealing that the Customs and Border Patrol agency has considered equipping its fleet of domestic Predators with “non-lethal” weapons and eavesdropping equipment to pick up phone calls on the ground below. (The FBI did not disclose in its letter to Paul whether it uses large military-style drones like the Predator, or smaller, commercially available drones like the Octocopter.)Read the full story here.

Video - Shia LaBeouf revealed government spying in 2008.

Video - Shia LaBeouf revealed government spying in 2008.

In a 2008 interview on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," LaBeouf (who was at the time promoting his conspiracy action film "Eagle Eye") revealed the extent to which the United States monitors Americans.

In "Eagle Eye," LaBeouf played a young man who was manipulated by an intelligence-gathering super force. According to LaBeouf, an FBI consultant on the film told the actor that one in five phone calls is "recorded and logged."
"I laughed at him, and then he played back a phone conversation I had had two years prior," LaBeouf told Jay Leno. "It's extremely creepy."
So, what exactly did the authorities hear the star of "The Company You Keep" say? "It was one of those 'What are you wearing?' type of things," LaBeouf said. "Yeah, so it was mad weird."
That would likely make the person on the other end of the line China Brezner, the actress LaBeouf reportedly dated from 2004 to 2007 after meeting her on the Montreal set of "The Greatest Game Ever Played."

Related: FBI’s Use of Patriot Act to Secretly Obtain Americans’ Business Records Increased by 1,000% Under Obama

‘Call it Digital Blackwater’: Meet the Contractors Analyzing Your Private Data.

‘Call it Digital Blackwater’: Meet the Contractors Analyzing Your Private Data.HT: Salon. By Tim Shorrock.

Amid the torrent of stories about the shocking new revelations about the National Security Agency, few have bothered to ask a central question. Who’s actually doing the work of analyzing all the data, metadata and personal information pouring into the agency from Verizon and nine key Internet service providers for its ever-expanding surveillance of American citizens?

Well, on Sunday we got part of the answer: Booz Allen Hamilton. In a stunning development in the NSA saga, Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald revealed that the source for his blockbuster stories on the NSA is Edward Snowden, “a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.” Snowden, it turns out, has been working at NSA for the last four years as a contract employee, including stints for Booz and the computer-services firm Dell.

The revelation is not that surprising. With about 70 percent of our national intelligence budgets being spent on the private sector – a discovery I made in 2007 and first reported in Salon – contractors have become essential to the spying and surveillance operations of the NSA.

From Narus, the Israeli-born Boeing subsidiary that makes NSA’s high-speed interception software, to CSC, the “systems integrator” that runs NSA’s internal IT system, defense and intelligence, contractors are making millions of dollars selling technology and services that help the world’s largest surveillance system spy on you. If the 70 percent figure is applied to the NSA’s estimated budget of $8 billion a year (the largest in the intelligence community), NSA contracting could reach as high as $6 billion every year.

But it’s probably much more than that.

“The largest concentration of cyber power on the planet is the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32,” says Michael V. Hayden, who oversaw the privatization effort as NSA director from 1999 to 2005. He was referring not to the NSA itself but to the business park about a mile down the road from the giant black edifice that houses NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. There, all of NSA’s major contractors, from Booz to SAIC to Northrop Grumman, carry out their surveillance and intelligence work for the agency.

With many of these contractors now focused on cyber-security, Hayden has even coined a new term — “Digital Blackwater” – for the industry. “I use that for the concept of the private sector in cyber,” he told a recent conference in Washington, in an odd reference to the notorious mercenary army. “I saw this in government and saw it a lot over the last four years. The private sector has really moved forward in terms of providing security,” he said. Hayden himself has cashed out too: He is now a principal with the Chertoff Group, the intelligence advisory company led by Michael Chertoff, the former secretary of Homeland Security.Read the full story here.

"CHANGE" - Russia may deem civil servants’ use of Gmail, Facebook ‘high treason’.

"CHANGE" - Russia may deem civil servants’ use of Gmail, Facebook ‘high treason’.(RT).

Lower House deputy Ilya Kostunov sent letters to Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin (who oversees the Russian defense industry sector), the heads of the Defense Ministry, Federal Security Service and the Communications Ministry with a request to make official recommendation on usage of the popular US internet services such as Gmail and Facebook and sometimes also hardware devices produced by US companies.

The politician told Izvestia daily that the instructions should be made part of the civil servants’ contracts “so that they understood that by sending information through US services they not only fill up the dossiers on themselves and their organizations but can provide aid to a foreign state or organization that are engaged in anti-Russian activities”. “This falls under article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code as this is high treason,” he added.
Persons convicted under this article face up to 20 years in prison.
The MP told reporters that in the letter he reminded ministers and state officials about the scandal involving the US National Security Agency and its classified program PRISM that collects and analyses data on the Internet. According to the newspapers that broke the story the US special services have direct access to the servers of such companies as Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Skype, AOL and others.
“Certainly, the heads of United States intelligence assured that they were strictly observing the law and protected US citizens’ right for privacy. But as far as foreign citizens such as Russians are concerned they and other intelligence services from NATO countries have no limitations at all” Kostunov explained.
According to the MP, foreigners were not only studying the electronic correspondence but also remotely used microphones and video cameras to learn more about the civil servants’ movement, habits, contacts and behavior.
Besides, careless handling of classified information by using free and popular internet services can lead to it falling into the hands of independent hackers, Kostunov warned.
The politician suggested the introduction of obligatory encryption for all information transferred via the internet.
Experts and public figures agreed that proper regulation is necessary. Even the chairman of the unregistered Pirate Party of Russia said that using personal accounts of free services for official state correspondence was “totally unacceptable”.
An internet presence once became a fashion among Russian officials, especially during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev who presents himself as a keen supporter of hi-tech and the newest digital trends. At the same time, this tendency recently started to fade.
For example Deputy PM Rogozin, whose tweets never failed to make headlines in conventional media, has announced that he would no longer tweet personally leaving this to his press service.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, on the contrary, said in a recent interview that all his posts and other movements in social networks were personal. Medvedev’s Facebook account has recently gained one million likes.Read the full story here.

Glenn Beck live : "We have completely Lost Our Country"

Glenn Beck: "We have completely Lost Our Country"  can be heard live here.

'I'm Not A Dictator' Obama Claims That Government Tyranny is Impossible, Because “Government is Us”.

'I'm Not A Dictator' Obama Claims That Government Tyranny is Impossible, Because “Government is Us”.(Breitbart).By Ben Shapiro.In his big pitch in Colorado on Wednesday for further gun control, President Obama made an astonishing statement about gun rights advocates’ fears of governmental gun seizures. He said that such worries would just feed “into fears about government. You hear some of these folks: ‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government. We can’t do background checks because the government’s going to come take my guns away.’ The government’s us. These officials are elected by you … I am constrained as they are constrained by the system that our founders put in place.”

There are two odd angles to this statement. The first is Obama’s overarching theme: government violation of rights is impossible because “the government is us,” and we can’t violate our own rights. 
Were this true, we could do away with the Constitution altogether. We would also never have to worry about democracies turning tyrannical, or electing tyrannical rulers. In this odd vision, Germany, Italy, and Spain remained liberal democracies throughout the twentieth century, World War II never happened, and Egypt, the Gaza Strip, and Turkey are all thriving centers of freedom.

The government is most assuredly not us – at least not all of us – which is why our system of government is designed to protect the rights of minorities while still allowing majorities to legislate without violating those rights. Obama’s defense to charges of incipient tyranny is that tyranny can never happen here. Which, of course, makes it more likely that tyranny will happen here.Hmmmm......Obama Blames “Founding Fathers” For Making It Difficult For Him To “Bring Change”But..."I will keep plotting" Read the full story here.

Drone Be Gone! Oregon Company to Sell Drone Defense Technology to Public.

Drone Be Gone! Oregon Company to Sell Drone Defense Technology to Public.(USN).Do you want to keep drones out of your backyard?

An Oregon company says that it has developed and will soon start selling technology that disables unmanned aircraft.

The company, called Domestic Drone Countermeasures, was founded in late February because some of its engineers see unmanned aerial vehicles—which are already being flown by law enforcement in some areas and could see wider commercial integration into American airspace by 2015—as unwanted eyes in the sky.

“I was personally concerned and I think there’s a lot of other people worried about this,” says Timothy Faucett, a lead engineer on the project. “We’ve already had many inquiries, a lot of people saying ‘Hey, I don’t want these drones looking at me.’”

Domestic Drones Countermeasures was formed as a spin-off company from Aplus Mobile, which sells rugged computer processors to defense contractors—though the company won’t discuss its specific technology because it is still applying for several patents. Faucett says that work has helped inform its anti-drone technology.

The company will sell land-based boxes that are “non-offensive, non-combative and not destructive.” According to the company, “drones will not fall from the sky, but they will be unable to complete their missions.”

Though Faucett wouldn’t discuss specifics, he says the boxes do not interfere with a drone’s navigation system and that it doesn’t involve “jamming of any kind.” He says their technology is “an adaptation of something that could be used for military application” with the “combat element replaced with a nondestructive element.”

For now, Faucett admits the technology is "expensive," but the company is already ready to design custom anti-drone boxes for customers.

"We envision it could be cheap enough for residential use very soon," he says. "It's quite possible to deploy it if you were shooting a movie and wanted to protect your set, or if you had a house in Malibu and wanted to protect that, we could deploy it there. If a huge company like Google wanted to protect its server farms, it can be scaled up for a larger, fixed installation." Hmmmm.....Should i call Wall Mart now?Read the full story here.