The Powerful Global Spy Alliance You Never Knew Existed

a couple of things

NSA DELETES “HONESTY” AND “OPENNESS” FROM CORE VALUES

Found in the wild: Vault7 hacking tools WikiLeaks says come from CIA

Malware that WikiLeaks purports belongs to the Central Intelligence Agency has been definitively tied to an advanced hacking operation that has been penetrating governments and private industries around the world for years, researchers from security firm Symantec say.

Longhorn, as Symantec dubs the group, has infected governments and companies in the financial, telecommunications, energy, and aerospace industries since at least 2011 and possibly as early as 2007. The group has compromised 40 targets in at least 16 countries across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa, and on one occasion, in the US, although that was probably a mistake. (...)

The FBI Is Building A National Watchlist That Gives Companies Real Time Updates on Employees

(...) In typical federal background checks, the FBI expunges or returns the fingerprints it collects. But for the Rap Back system, the FBI retains the prints it collects on behalf of companies and agencies so that it can notify employers about their employee’s future encounters with law enforcement. The FBI has the license to retain all submitted fingerprints indefinitely — even after notice of death. Employers are even offered the option to purchase lifetime subscriptions to the program for the cost of $13 per person. The decision to participate in Rap Back is at employers’ discretion. Employees have no choice in the matter.

“This type of infrastructure always tends to undergo mission creep,” explained the ACLU’s Jay Stanley, referring to how agencies often find secondary uses for data beyond its original function. (...)

scahill has a new podcast coming out

INTERCEPTED

At The Intercept, we believe in holding those in power accountable, and our mission couldn’t be more urgent right now. So in January, as soon as Donald Trump and his cronies take power, we’re starting a weekly podcast: Intercepted. Every week, I will bring on guests and colleagues to discuss the most pressing stories—those unfolding in public and the ones hidden in the shadows.

 aflanigan wrote: 
prepare to "lol for real"

 miamizsun wrote: 
We certainly have our eye on YOU, that's fer sure.
 

 miamizsun wrote: 
True, but it would seem that providing clear evidence of espionage can be a tricky move for several reasons, one of which is compromising one's own methods, but also explaining how they identify the hacking "signatures" or "fingerprints" of known entities in "laymen's terms".  It seems to me that at some time there will be some sort "evidence" provided soon, but we'll have to wait and see.  The CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies have seldom (if ever) really been clear proponents of one political party or another, and the fact that the incoming President is continually denigrating American intelligence agencies and dismissing their claims shows more of his narcissism - thinking it's all about him.

 Proclivities wrote: 

i agree

and if someone is making a claim, especially one of this magnitude they should provide some evidence

i thought i heard obama say this past friday that they weren't going to release any evidence

because = super secret spy stuff you don't need to know or see

he openly admitted that the voting machines weren't hacked but wikileaks emails outing/exposing behind the scenes info was the result of russian govt handy work

assange and others say no and provide your evidence

it's no secret our politicians and their enforcers have had a boner for wikileaks/assange (example)

regards

U.S. to disclose estimate of number of Americans under surveillance

 R_P wrote: 
Yeah, I'm always a little skeptical when the only sources are "anonymous" or "unnamed officials".  I guess the more this unfolds there'll be actual people releasing statements.

Anonymous Leaks to the WashPost About the CIA’s Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence - Greenwald

He Was a Hacker for the NSA and He Was Willing to Talk. I Was Willing to Listen.

The long read
How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers
Long before Edward Snowden went public, John Crane was a top Pentagon official fighting to protect NSA whistleblowers. Instead their lives were ruined – and so was his

New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship

A newly published study from Oxford’s Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study, the Washington Post this morning described this phenomenon: “If we think that authorities are watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious.

The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87% of Americans were aware), there was “a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned ‘al-Qaeda,’ “car bomb’ or ‘Taliban.'” People were afraid to read articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of suspicion. The dangers of that dynamic were expressed well by Penney: “If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate.”

As the Post explains, several other studies have also demonstrated how mass surveillance crushes free expression and free thought. A 2015 study examined Google search data and demonstrated that, post-Snowden, “users were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the US government” and that these “results suggest that there is a chilling effect on search behavior from government surveillance on the Internet.” (...)

The FBI Has a New Plan to Spy on High School Students Across the Country

Under new guidelines, the FBI is instructing high schools across the country to report students who criticize government policies and "western corruption" as potential future terrorists, warning that "anarchist extremists" are in the same category as ISIS and young people who are poor, immigrants or travel to "suspicious" countries are more likely to commit horrific violence.

Based on the widely unpopular British "anti-terror" mass surveillance program, the FBI's "Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools" guidelines, released in January, are almost certainly designed to single out and target Muslim-American communities. However, in its caution to avoid the appearance of discrimination, the agency identifies risk factors that are so broad and vague that virtually any young person could be deemed dangerous and worthy of surveillance, especially if she is socio-economically marginalized or politically outspoken. (...)

Why We Should Teach About the FBI's War on the Civil Rights Movement

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Yeah, the whole thing is bull. The crime has been committed, the perpetrators are dead. This is just a fishing expedition for hypothetical conspirators. Those may exist but it is unlikely that there is anything of importance on the phone - especially since they know there were private phones that were destroyed.

It's not like they have 24 hours to prevent a nuclear attack or anything - there is no immanent threat. But the main thing is that this is a Pandora's box that will put more Americans (and people in other countries) at risk than it could possibly save.

Again sorry for lack of link; for some reason I can no longer link urls on this site at work.

 

http://theantimedia.org/just-found-real-reason-fbi-wants-backdoor-iphone/

The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people
"Ridiculously optimistic" machine learning algorithm is "completely bullshit," says expert.