Archive for August, 2013
FBI Agents Gave Informants Permission to Break the Law Thousands of Times in 2011
August 4th, 2013Via: USA Today: The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation’s top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime. The U.S. Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin tracking crimes […]
Britain: Companies Give GCHQ Unlimited Access to Data on Undersea Fiber Optic Cables
August 3rd, 2013Via: Guardian: Some of the world’s leading telecoms firms, including BT and Vodafone, are secretly collaborating with Britain’s spy agency GCHQ, and are passing on details of their customers’ phone calls, email messages and Facebook entries, documents leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden show. BT, Vodafone Cable, and the American firm Verizon Business – together […]
NSA Collects ‘Word for Word’ Every Domestic Communication, Says Former Analyst
August 3rd, 2013Via: PBS: JUDY WOODRUFF: Both Binney and Tice suspect that today, the NSA is doing more than just collecting metadata on calls made in the U.S. They both point to this CNN interview by former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Clemente was asked if the government had a way […]
Serco: The Company That Is Running Britain
August 3rd, 2013Via: Guardian: From prisons to rail franchises and even London’s Boris bikes, Serco is a giant global corporation that has hoovered up outsourced government contracts. Now the NHS is firmly in its sights. But it stands accused of mismanagement, lying and even charging for non-existent work. Research Credit: afterhours
Albert Einstein Did Not Want to Associate with Israeli Terrorists
August 3rd, 2013I was able to find the letter on Sotheby’s site: 21 June 2007, 10:00 AM, New York, 159 Einstein, Albert. Via: Deir Yassin Remembered: Prior to the creation of the State of Israel, two Jewish terrorist groups were working to cleanse Palestine of its Arab inhabitants and its British occupiers. The more brutal of these […]
Major Outage on Several Webhosting Companies Owned by Endurance International Group
August 2nd, 2013There’s a huge webhosting outage this morning on domains associated with Endurance International Group companies. BlueHost is one of those companies, and both cryptogon.com and cryptogon.net have been affected. The sites are going up and down, so if you notice this, there’s no need to let me know. Just try back in a couple of […]
Al-Qaeda Backers Receive U.S. Government Contracts in Afghanistan
August 2nd, 2013Via: Bloomberg: Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing “due process rights” as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending. The U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office has declined to act in 43 such cases, John […]
‘Not a Crisis, but an Economic Transition’: Australia to Impose Levy on Bank Deposits
August 2nd, 2013Via: BBC: Australia has unveiled a levy on some bank deposits to raise money towards a fund aimed at safeguarding against a banking collapse. Deposits up to A$250,000 will have to pay a levy of 0.05% from January 2016. It will be imposed on banks and not account holders. But banks have warned costs may […]
Sweden: Peak Garbage
August 2nd, 2013The number of times that the word oil appears in this piece: Zero. A lot of that stuff that they’re burning is made out of petroleum. In other words, they’re burning a lot of oil. Via: New York Times: This is a city that imports garbage. Some comes from England, some from Ireland. Some is […]
Volvo Gave Away the Most Important Design They Ever Patented
August 2nd, 2013Via: Priceonomics: In 1958, people rarely buckled up. While race car drivers and fighter pilots wore harnesses, the seat belts available in cars simply banded across one’s lap. In crashes, they frequently did more harm than good. The sudden pressure put on the abdomen during a crash caused internal injuries. At the time, Volvo was […]
