The New Warrior Cop Is Out of Control
July 8th, 2013Via: Salon:
SWAT teams raiding poker games and trying to stop underage drinking? Overwhelming paramilitary force is on the rise.
Book: Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces by Radley Balko
Mexican Police Chief Killed with Rifle from Fast and Furious Program
July 8th, 2013Via: Los Angeles Times:
A high-powered rifle lost in the ATF’s Fast and Furious controversy was used to kill a Mexican police chief in the state of Jalisco earlier this year, according to internal Department of Justice records, suggesting that weapons from the failed gun-tracking operation have now made it into the hands of violent drug cartels deep inside Mexico.
Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the police chief in the city of Hostotipaquillo, was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire. Also killed was one of his bodyguards. His wife and a second bodyguard were wounded.
Local authorities said eight suspects in their 20s and 30s were arrested after police seized them nearby with a cache of weapons — rifles, grenades, handguns, helmets, bulletproof vests, uniforms and special communications equipment. The area is a hot zone for rival drug gangs, with members of three cartels fighting over turf in the region.
A semi-automatic WASR rifle, the firearm that killed the chief, was traced back to the Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun store in Glendale, Ariz. The notation on the Department of Justice trace records said the WASR was used in a “HOMICIDE – WILLFUL – KILL –PUB OFF –GUN” –ATF code for “Homicide, Willful Killing of a Public Official, Gun.”
In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of NSA
July 7th, 2013…people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage, cyberattacks and _____<---fill in the blank. Via: New York Times:
In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.
Deutsche Boerse to Launch Cloud Exchange to Trade Computing Power
July 6th, 2013Via: Reuters:
German financial markets operator Deutsche Boerse is planning to commoditize computing power with the launch early next year of the world’s first independent exchange for trading cloud computing capacity.
The advent of cloud computing, whereby a remote network of computers is made available online, has not only enabled users to ditch much of their own costly hardware but also to switch between third-party machines according to where processing power is cheapest.
Deutsche Boerse said the Cloud Exchange will open as a spot market in the first quarter of next year to companies and other organizations which outsource their data storage and computer processing needs, enabling them to buy capacity just like they would commodities such as oil and electricity.
Dozens Killed in Egypt as Gunfire and Running Battles Erupted in Several Cities
July 6th, 2013Via: AP:
Egyptian officials say the country’s interim president has held talks with the army chief and interior minister following a deadly day of clashes across the country that killed at least 30 people.
Adly Mansour met with army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who is also the defense minister, as well as Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police, at the Ittihadiya presidential palace Saturday.
It was the first time Mansour, who formally dissolved the parliament Friday, has worked out of the president’s main offices since he was sworn-in Thursday as the country’s interim leader. Mansour, who was appointed by the military, took over a day after the military overthrew Mohammed Morsi, who was the country’s first democratically elected president.
And Now… Talking Train Window Advertisements
July 6th, 2013When I saw this yesterday, I was sure that it was a hoax.
I guess it’s real.
Via: BBC:
A German firm is proposing to transmit adverts via train windows so that the sound appears to “come from inside the user’s head” when passengers lean against them.
The idea would use bone conduction technology, a technique that transmits sound to the inner ear by passing vibrations through the skull.
The concept has been developed by ad agency BBDO Germany on behalf of broadcaster Sky Deutschland.
North Carolina National Guard Rapid Reaction Force Civil Unrest Training Photos
July 6th, 2013Via: Public Intelligence:
The following photos depict soldiers from the 252nd Combined Arms Battalion training in June for their role as a “rapid reaction force” capable of responding anywhere in the state of North Carolina within “four to eight hours with additional forces arriving within 24 to 36 hours.” The same unit trained in March to respond “to an emergency ahead of federal assets by providing site security, establishing roadblocks or checkpoints, and assisting civilian authorities in controlling civil disturbances.”
The exercises depicted below were held from June 10-14 at an abandoned shopping mall and a water treatment facility in Charlotte. Soldiers trained to suppress protesters who perform a sit-in as part of a fictional group called “The Pink Panthers.” According to the North Carolina National Guard, the exercise at the water treatment facility tests soldiers’ “ability to use nonlethal force to disperse a crowd of aggressors.” Photos of the exercise show soldiers operating from Be On the Look Out (BOLO) notices with the identities of specific individuals in the crowd, listed as “AIN Members,” that are to be targeted for arrest.
Research Credit: HongPong
Frenchelon Stories Making the Rounds
July 5th, 2013The ECHELON Trigger Words Generator has used the term Frenchelon since around 2001.
Via: ZDnet:
An investigative report by French daily paper Le Monde has uncovered what it calls the “French Big Brother”: Its own local version of the PRISM-like systems in place in the US and the UK.
Le Monde’s report states that French external intelligence agency the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) has been intercepting metadata from phone calls, emails, and internet activity from domestic services, as well as between France and other countries.
The information was captured and stored in a database in servers that a total of six French intelligence agencies and Paris’ prefectural police have access to. The other agencies are the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM), the Directorate of Protection and Security of Defense (DPSD), the Central Directorate of Internal Security (DCRI), the Directorate of National Intelligence and Customs Investigations (DNRED), and the country’s anti-fraud division, Tracfin.
It is believed that the data is compressed and stored in a datacentre spanning three floors in DGSE’s basement. Le Monde has linked the PRISM-eque system to DGSE’s supercomputer, which its technical director Bernard Barbier has previously spoken about.
According to Le Monde, the supercomputer is able to process tens of millions of gigabytes of data, and generates enough thermal energy to heat DGSE’s buildings.
99% of Android Devices Vulnerable to Exploit
July 5th, 2013Via: BlueBox:
The Bluebox Security research team – Bluebox Labs – recently discovered a vulnerability in Android’s security model that allows a hacker to modify APK code without breaking an application’s cryptographic signature, to turn any legitimate application into a malicious Trojan, completely unnoticed by the app store, the phone, or the end user. The implications are huge! This vulnerability, around at least since the release of Android 1.6 (codename: “Donut” ), could affect any Android phone released in the last 4 years– or nearly 900 million devices– and depending on the type of application, a hacker can exploit the vulnerability for anything from data theft to creation of a mobile botnet.
U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
July 3rd, 2013Via: New York Times:
Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.
“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.
“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.
As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, but that is only a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.
