Human Rights
In 2010, David Petraeus's four stars were ascendant. On his way to an eventual CIA directorship, he was head of CENTCOM, the premier combatant command within the armed services and arguably the current key stepping stone to the services on the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to Political Office. He was loved by the Bush administration as the architect of the surge in Iraq and entrenched enough to maneuver the Obama administration into a similar strategy in Afghanistan. He also may have been building a personal military empire that far exceeded the scope of his authority as CENTCOM commander.
While commander of CENTCOM in February 2010, General Petraeus's staff was engaging Endgame Solutions to provide offensive cyberwarfare capability. As was revealed in the HBGary emails garnered by LulzSec “While I was at their place getting briefed by Chris, Gen. Patraeus' [sic] exec called three times to set a follow-up meeting. It seems like there is plenty of interest in them.”
While commander of CENTCOM in February 2010, General Petraeus's staff was engaging Endgame Solutions to provide offensive cyberwarfare capability. As was revealed in the HBGary emails garnered by LulzSec “While I was at their place getting briefed by Chris, Gen. Patraeus' [sic] exec called three times to set a follow-up meeting. It seems like there is plenty of interest in them.”
Investigative Journalist Michael Hastings was killed Tuesday in a fiery crash close to his home in Los Angles. His car, which was reported to have been traveling at a high rate of speed, jumped the median and immediately exploded in a dramatic fashion upon impact with a tree.
Witness Luiz Cortez was quoted by KTLA as saying “I was just coming northbound on Highland and I seen a car going really fast, and all of a sudden I seen it jackknife, I just seen parts fly everywhere and I slammed on my brakes and stopped and tried to call 911.” According to various news reports the car’s engine was found in a yard between 60 and 100 feet away. Hastings was pronounced dead at the scene but his remains were too charred to immediately identify. His death was later confirmed by the LA county coroner’s office through fingerprints.
Witness Luiz Cortez was quoted by KTLA as saying “I was just coming northbound on Highland and I seen a car going really fast, and all of a sudden I seen it jackknife, I just seen parts fly everywhere and I slammed on my brakes and stopped and tried to call 911.” According to various news reports the car’s engine was found in a yard between 60 and 100 feet away. Hastings was pronounced dead at the scene but his remains were too charred to immediately identify. His death was later confirmed by the LA county coroner’s office through fingerprints.
Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the New York Times reported on Sunday, “have renewed a longstanding concern: that young Internet aficionados whose skills the agencies need for counterterrorism and cyberdefense sometimes bring an anti-authority spirit that does not fit the security bureaucracy.”
Agencies like the NSA and CIA -- and private contractors like Booz Allen -- can’t be sure that all employees will obey the rules without interference from their own idealism. This is a basic dilemma for the warfare/surveillance state, which must hire and retain a huge pool of young talent to service the digital innards of a growing Big Brother.
With private firms scrambling to recruit workers for top-secret government contracts, the current situation was foreshadowed by novelist John Hersey in his 1960 book The Child Buyer. When the vice president of a contractor named United Lymphomilloid, “in charge of materials procurement,” goes shopping for a very bright ten-year-old, he explains that “my duties have an extremely high national-defense rating.” And he adds: “When a commodity that you need falls in short supply, you have to get out and hustle. I buy brains.”
Agencies like the NSA and CIA -- and private contractors like Booz Allen -- can’t be sure that all employees will obey the rules without interference from their own idealism. This is a basic dilemma for the warfare/surveillance state, which must hire and retain a huge pool of young talent to service the digital innards of a growing Big Brother.
With private firms scrambling to recruit workers for top-secret government contracts, the current situation was foreshadowed by novelist John Hersey in his 1960 book The Child Buyer. When the vice president of a contractor named United Lymphomilloid, “in charge of materials procurement,” goes shopping for a very bright ten-year-old, he explains that “my duties have an extremely high national-defense rating.” And he adds: “When a commodity that you need falls in short supply, you have to get out and hustle. I buy brains.”
Continuing its string of highly damaging revelations about British and American surveillance operations, the Guardian has released leaked documents showing that the British government spied on finance ministers and diplomats at the G20 talks in 2009. The new evidence was leaked by Edward Snowden, the Booz Allen whistleblower currently in hiding in Hong Kong.
Further questions have arisen about the conduct of the British government's surveillance station GCHQ (Government Communication Head Quarters) after revelations that real-time intelligence gathering on foreign diplomats took place in 2009's G20 summit. This latest leak, particularly damaging since it immediately precedes a G8 summit in London about free trade, demonstrates with growing clarity the extent to which the NSA and its affiliates gain access to intelligence gathered in British surveillance operations.
Further questions have arisen about the conduct of the British government's surveillance station GCHQ (Government Communication Head Quarters) after revelations that real-time intelligence gathering on foreign diplomats took place in 2009's G20 summit. This latest leak, particularly damaging since it immediately precedes a G8 summit in London about free trade, demonstrates with growing clarity the extent to which the NSA and its affiliates gain access to intelligence gathered in British surveillance operations.
The Guardian’s recent revelations concerning the intelligence community collecting cell phone call and location data from every single American, as well as the massive cataloging of social media interactions has jump-started a new national dialogue on privacy. This new social dialogue has not yet begun to include questions about the intelligence community speaking secretly rather than listening secretly. The public may be only just beginning to understand how the intelligence community can and does intervene anonymously in national politics.
On June 8, the Columbus Dispatch carried a poll that measured people’s opinions on issues concerning affirmative action, race, and LGBT questions. While the results were generally what readers here would consider positive, the affirmative action/race, questions & answers were far more revealing in how it was said and it what wasn’t said.
First of all, the LGBT results showed the basically positive movement in people’s opinions that all media outlets have been reporting recently. Marriage equality was supported by 52%, vs. 43% in opposition. Support for anti-discrimination legislation that includes gays, lesbians was higher, with 73% supporting it and only 22% stating opposition.
Where the poll got really interesting was the next, affirmative action section.
In answer to the question;
“In order to make up for past discrimination, do you favor or oppose programs that make special efforts to help blacks and other minorities get ahead?”
The results were a positive, and overwhelming, 68% in favor with only 24% in opposition.
First of all, the LGBT results showed the basically positive movement in people’s opinions that all media outlets have been reporting recently. Marriage equality was supported by 52%, vs. 43% in opposition. Support for anti-discrimination legislation that includes gays, lesbians was higher, with 73% supporting it and only 22% stating opposition.
Where the poll got really interesting was the next, affirmative action section.
In answer to the question;
“In order to make up for past discrimination, do you favor or oppose programs that make special efforts to help blacks and other minorities get ahead?”
The results were a positive, and overwhelming, 68% in favor with only 24% in opposition.
Since the beginning of the current privacy scandal, Twitter has been careful to brand itself as a champion of privacy rights – but are they? As other tech titans first denied complicity, then joined together seeking permission to discuss it in the compliant American media, Twitter remained outside the fray.
In response to widespread public anxiety that Americans' social networking information is being funneled into the NSA's controversial PRISM program, a concerted effort has been made by Facebook, Google and Microsoft to be seen as defenders of privacy.
Microsoft released a statement on Wednesday urging the government to consider that "greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests, including FISA orders, would help the community understand and debate these important issues." Facebook made a similar public statement earlier this week, and Google asked the government "to help make it possible for Google to publish in our transparency report aggregate numbers of national security requests."
In response to widespread public anxiety that Americans' social networking information is being funneled into the NSA's controversial PRISM program, a concerted effort has been made by Facebook, Google and Microsoft to be seen as defenders of privacy.
Microsoft released a statement on Wednesday urging the government to consider that "greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests, including FISA orders, would help the community understand and debate these important issues." Facebook made a similar public statement earlier this week, and Google asked the government "to help make it possible for Google to publish in our transparency report aggregate numbers of national security requests."
On a cold night in January 1990 in Berlin, a mob of angry citizens and western intelligence agents struck a blow for freedom. They stormed the headquarters of Stasi, the secret police service of the GDR. Guards were beaten, furniture was thrown, files were stolen, files were destroyed. The most effective and pervasive apparatus of surveillance the world has known until today was exposed and dismantled.
After the dust settled and the CIA agents had spirited away the files that concerned them most, the public of a reuniting Germany was confronted by a harsh reality: their world was riddled with secret policemen and snitches. According to some estimates, as many as one in 166 East Germans spied on their fellow citizens as a full time employee of the Stasi and as many as one in seven were parttime snitches. Spouses spied on each other. The system was effective and rewarded the citizen who participated materially and psychologically.
After the dust settled and the CIA agents had spirited away the files that concerned them most, the public of a reuniting Germany was confronted by a harsh reality: their world was riddled with secret policemen and snitches. According to some estimates, as many as one in 166 East Germans spied on their fellow citizens as a full time employee of the Stasi and as many as one in seven were parttime snitches. Spouses spied on each other. The system was effective and rewarded the citizen who participated materially and psychologically.
In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the great good wizard Saruman becomes slowly corrupted by a malign influence named Sauron. Hoping to look into the future, the distance and the past he gazes into a magical crystal ball called a palantir. He finds Sauron's great unblinking eye looking back at him, bending his will, subverting him, causing him to both compete with Sauron and become just like him. He slowly breeds foul creatures and converts his citadel of Isengard into a replica of the great furnace factory of death that is Sauron's own seat of power at Mount Doom.
The Obama administration's modern day flaming eye stares at us in part through its own crystal ball called PRISM, which appears to be a data integration product made by Palantir Technologies, a secret cybersecurity firm that got its start up funding from the CIA.
The Obama administration's modern day flaming eye stares at us in part through its own crystal ball called PRISM, which appears to be a data integration product made by Palantir Technologies, a secret cybersecurity firm that got its start up funding from the CIA.
Mere hours after the revelation by the Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian.uk that Verizon had been handing over data on all its domestic subscribers to secret state police forces in the United States, an even more chilling story on domestic spying was broken. Mirroring the long term coordination between Bletchly Park and Fort Meade, the Washington Post and the Guardian released another story about domestic spying complete with classified documents confirming its existence.
The story detailed how the NSA, with the long term cooperation of the some largest tech giants, had built a database comprising the private internet communications of virtually everyone in America. These communications, including emails, videos, pictures, Skype conversations, Facebook likes, and a list of everyone’s Facebook friends has been slowly assembled and cataloged, to be reviewed as needed with the concurrence of a secret court based on an individual secret policeman's affirmation of a “reasonable suspicion.”
The story detailed how the NSA, with the long term cooperation of the some largest tech giants, had built a database comprising the private internet communications of virtually everyone in America. These communications, including emails, videos, pictures, Skype conversations, Facebook likes, and a list of everyone’s Facebook friends has been slowly assembled and cataloged, to be reviewed as needed with the concurrence of a secret court based on an individual secret policeman's affirmation of a “reasonable suspicion.”