Current Affairs Surveillance in the US reaches new levels

[peterms]

Looking at the intensity of that fire, you'd imagine anyone inside would be burnt to a cinder.

 

You'd be quite wrong, though.  The coroner was apparently able to identify him by his fingerprints, so he must have been barely burnt at all.  Somehow.

[AVFCforever1991]

 

Edited June 25, 2013 by AVFCforever1991

[maqroll]

This Hastings thing has assassination written all over it, frankly. Or at the very least, he was being chased or meant to feel as though he was being chased. 

 

Welcome to Obama's America. I doubt Glenn Greenwald will be visiting his family any time soon.

[The_Rev]

 

[MrDuck]

 

 

Amusingly enough, the airline in question doesn't serve alcohol either

[peterms]

Welcome to Obama's America. I doubt Glenn Greenwald will be visiting his family any time soon.

 

I see Greenwald's house was burgled, but only a laptop was taken.

 

With so many of these things, it seems the secret police don't even bother to disguise their actions.  It's a form of intimidation, showing they don't need to conceal their actions if they don't want to.

[BOF]

Further proof that the constitution is now very much optional in U.S. justice. This time, the first amendment, no less, as a judge decided to prohibit a man's attorney from "mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial."

Jeff Olson, a 40-year-old man from San Diego, Calif., will face jail time for charges stemming from anti-big bank messages he scrawled in water-soluble chalk outside Bank of America branches last year.

The San Diego Reader reported Tuesday that a judge had decided to prohibit Olson's attorney from "mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial."

With that ruling, Olson must now stand trial on 13 counts of vandalism, charges that together carry a potential 13-year jail sentence and fines of up to $13,000.

"Oh my gosh," Olson said on his way out of court on Tuesday. "I can't believe this is happening."

In an interview with San Diego's KGTV, Olson maintained that "free speech is protected" and said he "was encouraging folks to close their accounts at big Wall Street banks to transfer their money local nonprofit, community credit unions."

The Reader first broke news of the case over the weekend, reporting that Olson and his partner had been active in the campaign to encourage people to move their money as early as 2011. During one protest outside of a Bank of America branch, they drew the ire of Darell Freeman, vice president of Bank of America's Global Corporate Security, who accused them of running a business with their demonstration.

Olson later began showing his opposition with chalk drawings outside various Bank of America branches. Security camera footage from the banks apparently recorded his actions, and he eventually got a call from San Diego's Gang Unit in August 2012, when he gave up the artistic protests. The Reader reports that Freeman aggressively pressured city attorneys to bring charges against Olson until they announced that they would do so in April.

(Click over to the Reader for more on Olson's back story.)

Olson told KGTV that one of the branches had claimed it cost them $6,000 to clean up the water-soluble chalk writing.

[leviramsey]

Correct ruling in any case. The First Amendment does not confer a positive right that trumps property rights.

Further, including the exhortations to move money to credit unions arguably made the protest commercial speech, which is subject to far less First Amendment protection. Absent that, and he'd have a chance at a First Amendment claim.

The current Supreme Court, which has tended towards First Amendment absolutism, though, would probably be willing to elevate commercial speech to full speech as far as the First Amendment is concerned (which would essentially invalidate all restrictions on commercial advertising).

Best case, afaic: conviction, followed by appeal which establishes First Amendment protection for commercial speech.

[BOF]

All of that ignores the bare faced cheek of a known liar like BoA moaning about some chalk on their pavement, although I suppose this is veering away from the surveillance topic so I'll leave it there.

[BOF]

In response to pressure against granting asylum to Edward Snowden, Ecuador renounces its US trade benefits and offers the US $23 million for human rights training.

Ecuador offers U.S. rights aid, waives trade benefits

Ecuador's leftist government thumbed its nose at Washington on Thursday by renouncing U.S. trade benefits and offering to pay for human rights training in America in response to pressure over asylum for former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

The angry response threatens a showdown between the two nations over Snowden, and may burnish President Rafael Correa's credentials to be the continent's principal challenger of U.S. power after the death of Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

"Ecuador will not accept pressures or threats from anyone, and it does not traffic in its values or allow them to be subjugated to mercantile interests," government spokesman Fernando Alvarado said at a news conference.

In a cheeky jab at the U.S. spying program that Snowden unveiled through leaks to the media, the South American nation offered $23 million per year to finance human rights training.

The funding would be destined to help "avoid violations of privacy, torture and other actions that are denigrating to humanity," Alvarado said. He said the amount was the equivalent of what Ecuador gained each year from the trade benefits.

"Ecuador gives up, unilaterally and irrevocably, the said customs benefits," he said.

An influential U.S. senator on Wednesday said he would seek to end those benefits if Ecuador gave Snowden asylum.

Snowden, 30, is believed to be at Moscow's international airport and seeking safe passage to Ecuador.

The Andean nation's government denies reports that it provided a travel document to the former National Security Agency contractor, whose U.S. passport has been revoked.

The government has not been able to process his asylum request because he is not on Ecuadorean territory, another government official said.

COMBATIVE CORREA

Never shy of taking on the West, the pugnacious Correa last year granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to help him avoid extradition from Great Britain to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault accusations.

The 50-year-old U.S.-trained economist won a landslide re-election in February on generous state spending to improve infrastructure and health services, and his Alianza Pais party holds a majority in the legislature.

Ecuadorean officials said Washington was unfairly using the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which provides customs benefits in exchange for efforts to fight the drug trade, as a political weapon.

The program was set to expire at the end of this month.

An OPEC nation of 15 million people, Ecuador exported $5.4 billion worth of oil, $166 million of cut flowers, $122 million of fruits and vegetables and $80 million of tuna to the United States under the Andean trade program in 2012.

Termination of the benefits could hurt the cut flower industry, which has blossomed under the program and employs more than 100,000 workers, many of them women.

Critics of Correa say Ecuador's embrace of Assange - and now possibly Snowden - is hypocritical given what they say is his authoritarian style and suppression of media at home.

Supporters of Correa say he has simply taken on media and business elites who were trying to erode what the president calls his "Citizens' Revolution."

[BOF]

Now hang on. I'm no law-talking-guy but ... doesn't that mean ... ?

US government declares hacking an act of war, then hacks allies

Revelations from European leaders on Monday that the National Security Agency bugged European Union offices in Washington and hacked into its computer network bring to light hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. government.

In 2011, the Pentagon released its first formal cyber strategy, which called computer hacking from other nations an "act of war," according to the Wall Street Journal. In late June of this year, WSJ reported that Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, released information alleging the U.S. government was hacking Chinese targets "that include the nation's mobile-phone companies and one of the country's most prestigious universities."

Now that EU offices have been hacked by the U.S. government as well, one must wonder if that was an "act of war" on the part of the United States.

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Pentagon officials emphasized in 2011, however, that not every cyberattack would be considered an act of war unless it threatened American lives, commerce or infrastructure. There would also have to be indisputable evidence that the suspected nation state was involved.

U.S. hacking of China and the EU may not have caused such harm to those countries, but that hasn't stopped EU officials from expressing outrage. "I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of U.S. authorities spying on EU offices," Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament said. "If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations."

Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign minister, also chimed in, calling the practice "abominable."

A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that "bugging friends is unacceptable."

French President Francois Hollande condemned the practice as well, saying, "We cannot accept this type of behavior between partners and allies." Hollande later said that the hacking was not necessary for anti-terrorism efforts. "We know that there are systems which have to control notably for the threat against terrorism, but I do not think that this is in our embassies or in the EU that this risks exist," he said.

President Obama, however, doesn't seem to think he's done anything wrong.

Apparently, you might be a terrorist if you work for the EU.

[BOF]

Snowden leak: Microsoft added Outlook.com backdoor for Feds

There are red faces in Redmond after Edward Snowden released a new batch of documents from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division covering Microsoft's involvement in allowing backdoor access to its software to the NSA and others.

Documents seen by The Guardian detail how the NSA became concerned when Microsoft started testing Outlook.com, and asked for access. In five months Microsoft and the FBI created a workaround that gives the NSA access to encrypted chats on Outlook.com. The system went live in December last year – two months before Outlook.com's commercial launch.

Those Outlook users not enabling encryption get their data slurped as a matter of course, the documents show. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption," an NSA newsletter states.

Microsoft's cloud storage service SkyDrive is also easy to access, thanks to Redmond's work with the NSA. The agency reported on April 8, 2013 that Microsoft has built PRISM access into Skydrive in such a way as to remove the need for NSA analysts to get special authorization for searches in Microsoft's cloud.

"Analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this – a process step that many analysts may not have known about," the leaked NSA document states. "This new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response. This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established."

The documents also detail how Microsoft and Skype have also been working with the intelligence agencies to install monitoring taps. Work began on integrating Prism into Skype in November 2010, they state, three months before the company was issued with an official order to comply by the US Attorney General.

Data collection began on February 6, 2011, and the NSA document says the planned systems worked well, with full metadata collection enabled. It praised Microsoft for its help, saying "collaborative teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the Prism system."

Work to integrate Skype into Prism into Skype didn't stop there, however. In July 2012 an NSA newsletter states Microsoft installed an upgrade that tripled the amount of Skype videos that can be monitored by NSA analysts.

"The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete 'picture'," it says.

In a statement, Microsoft said that it only complies with legal demands for customer information for law enforcement and national security purposes, and that the company isn't involved in giving "the kind of blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks."

"When we upgrade or update products legal obligations may in some circumstances require that we maintain the ability to provide information in response to a law enforcement or national security request. There are aspects of this debate that we wish we were able to discuss more freely," it said.

Not that Microsoft hasn't been making a big thing about the privacy of its communications systems in the past. Its Gmail Man ad campaign lambasted Google for snooping in people's mail to match them with advertisers, and the tagline "Your email is your business" seems somewhat ironic these days. The advert is no longer on Microsoft's YouTube channel.

The leaked documents come from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division, which handles commercial company liaison for data collection by the agency. The documents show that, once collected by Prism, the NSA shares its data directly with the CIA and FBI via a custom application.

"The FBI and CIA then can request a copy of Prism collection of any selector..." the document says. "These two activities underscore the point that Prism is a team sport!"

In a joint statement, Shawn Turner, spokesman for the director of National Intelligence, and Judith Emmel, spokeswoman for the NSA, told The Guardian that the wiretapping referred to in the document was court-ordered and was subject to judicial oversight.

"Not all countries have equivalent oversight requirements to protect civil liberties and privacy," they said. "In practice, US companies put energy, focus and commitment into consistently protecting the privacy of their customers around the world, while meeting their obligations under the laws of the US and other countries in which they operate."

[Tegis]

Just lovely

 

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'

[BOF]

Including the list of people reading the Guardian's article about XKeyscore

[OutByEaster?]

Is it me, but in the good old days, when a President got caught out doing something dodgy and/or illegal, didn't that President get to resign in shame? If Watergate happened today, would it be the President or the journalists in most trouble?

[BOF]

It's not the president doing this though. If anything, this is finally showing those who didn't already realise it that it's not the president that runs the place.  The people just vote for the new puppet while the real power stays in situ.  In a way, the democracy is a sham to placate the population.

[CrackpotForeigner]

It's not the president doing this though. If anything, this is finally showing those who didn't already realise it that it's not the president that runs the place.  The people just vote for the new puppet while the real power stays in situ.  In a way, the democracy is a sham to placate the population.

 

I don't claim to know for sure where the real power lies (although "Where the Big Money is" seems the most likely and, sadly, logical answer), but Obama has proven himself spineless, at best. Even if he can't make the rules himself, it was quite clear when he was elected that there was significant support for "Change", including the closing of Gitmo. If he had any balls he would at least be making public speeches telling the public what he would like to do instead of drone bombings, spying, imprisonment, and torture. 

[AVFCforever1991]

[Awol]

 

It's not the president doing this though. If anything, this is finally showing those who didn't already realise it that it's not the president that runs the place.  The people just vote for the new puppet while the real power stays in situ.  In a way, the democracy is a sham to placate the population.

 

I don't claim to know for sure where the real power lies (although "Where the Big Money is" seems the most likely and, sadly, logical answer), but Obama has proven himself spineless, at best. Even if he can't make the rules himself, it was quite clear when he was elected that there was significant support for "Change", including the closing of Gitmo. If he had any balls he would at least be making public speeches telling the public what he would like to do instead of drone bombings, spying, imprisonment, and torture. 

 

It's not as if this stuff is happening and Obama is powerless to stop it, in terms of the drone strike programme he has reportedly been instrumental in ramping it up - including targetting US citizens abroad for assassination. Combine that with the things he's got up to with the IRS like targetting his political opponents, seizing the records and call information of journalists at AP (and more) etc. then it all adds up to Obama actually being a complete fraud. 

 

Not that Romney was a better option.

[AVFCforever1991]

Wonder how many people in the US know that a 16 year old US citizen was killed by a drone in Yemen?

 

 

Edited August 1, 2013 by AVFCforever1991