Archive for the 'Covert Operations' Category
New Docs Show How Reagan-Era Executive Order Unbounded NSA
October 1st, 2014Via: Ars Technica: A set of newly declassified documents shows definitively and explicitly that the United States intelligence community relies heavily on what is effectively unchecked presidential authority to conduct surveillance operations, as manifested through the Reagan-era Executive Order (EO) 12333. And at a more basic level, the new documents illustrate that the government is […]
Unmasking the Five Eyes’ Global Surveillance Practices
September 29th, 2014Via: GIS Watch: The Five Eyes alliance – comprised of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Canada’s Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) – is the continuation of an intelligence partnership formed in the aftermath […]
Bash Bug May Pose Bigger Threat Than Heartbleed
September 26th, 2014Unbelievable. Via: Reuters: A newly discovered security bug in a widely used piece of Linux software, known as “Bash,” could pose a bigger threat to computer users than the “Heartbleed” bug that surfaced in April, cyber experts warned on Wednesday. Bash is the software used to control the command prompt on many Unix computers. Hackers […]
Managing a Nightmare: The CIA Reveals How It Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb
September 25th, 2014Via: First Look: Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism. The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and […]
Entire Australian Web to be Monitored and Whistleblowers to be Jailed
September 25th, 2014In terms of the surveillance side of this, I guess that they want to be able to have a legal framework for what has been going on for decades. Via: Sydney Morning Herald: Australian spies will soon have the power to monitor the entire Australian internet with just one warrant, and journalists and whistleblowers will […]
Suspicions Run Deep in Iraq That C.I.A. and the Islamic State Are United
September 25th, 2014Via: New York Times: The United States has conducted an escalating campaign of deadly airstrikes against the extremists of the Islamic State for more than a month. But that appears to have done little to tamp down the conspiracy theories still circulating from the streets of Baghdad to the highest levels of Iraqi government that […]
Australian Government Scrambles to Authorize Mass Surveillance
September 24th, 2014Via: EFF: This week, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott used recent terrorist threats as the backdrop of a dire warning to Australians that “for some time to come, the delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift. There may be more restrictions on some, so that there can be more protection for others.” […]
ISIS: Israeli Secret Intelligence Service
September 24th, 2014Via: Memory Hole: In an excerpt from a 1990 C-SPAN interview with Brian Lamb, Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, authors of the book Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community (Houghton Mifflin 1990), describe (passage at about 2:40) how the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office officially refers to its subordinate organization “the […]
Sydney Beheading Plot Accused Was a Small-Time TV Actor
September 18th, 2014Let me get this straight: “The Terrorists” talk about beheading people on the phone? Everyone knows about mass surveillance except, “Australia’s most senior Islamist militant,” and his TV actor minion? Mmm hmm. Via: New Zealand Herald: The 22-year-old Sydney man arrested in the nation’s largest counter-terrorism operation allegedly conspired with Australia’s most senior Islamist militant […]
John Key Concedes Edward Snowden May Well Be Right, While Repeating Absurd Denials
September 16th, 2014Thanks, Captain. Via: New Zealand Herald: Prime Minister John Key acknowledged today that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s claim that New Zealanders’ data is accessible through the controversial XKeyscore system “may well be right”. However, he maintained that information will not have been gathered under any Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) mass surveillance programme as the […]
