Amy Bishop Updates
February 17th, 2010There is more weird information coming in, almost by the hour, on the Amy Bishop situation. The story has long since slid down the page, but I have been updating the thread constantly.
Is DARPA Calling for Improvements to ECHELON’s Voice Recognition Systems?
February 16th, 2010I’ll just plonk my entire commentary from U.S. Allegedly Listened In on Calls of Americans Abroad—I Know, You’re Shocked into this post:
This is probably the biggest not-news-to-you-or-me post ever to appear on Cryptogon. What is described below has been standard operating procedure for NSA for decades. What seems strange, though, is the amount of mundane traffic that is winding up in the queues of the human analysts. This could mean a few things:
1. The ECHELON dictionary systems aren’t very good and are generating a lot of false positives.
2. The net is being cast much wider on purpose, using more mainstream terms to task the dictionary systems.
3. More individuals are being targeted for routine surveillance, which may result in more human transcriptions of the raw intercepts.
4. All of the above???
Also, I find it interesting that the allegations only cover calls originating in the Middle East and the Green Zone in Iraq. Is the point for us to think that we’re not being monitored when we make international calls from other areas???
I suppose that some imbeciles might reach that conclusion from reading this.
And now…
Via: Register:
So it’s interesting to note that Pentagon boffins have now stated that perhaps the most intriguing reputed capability of Echelon – the ability to automatically pick out words of interest and flag that conversation up as important to its human masters – doesn’t work. Or anyway, it only works on good, clear lines: a noisy or degraded signal frustrates it.
The news comes as part of a solicitation from the Pentagon crazytech bureau, DARPA, in which the maverick military mayhem mavens request assistance with building a Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech (RATS) system. According to DARPA:
Existing transcription and translation and speech signal processing technologies are insufficient for working with noisy or degraded speech signals that are of importance to current and future Department of Defense (DoD) operations. Currently, there is no technological solution [our emphasis] which effectively addresses this kind of noisy and distorted speech signal, so operational units are forced to allocate significant human resources for this task.
One should note that America’s feared National Security Agency (NSA, generally thought to be in charge of Echelon) is actually an arm of the DoD, not a civilian organisation.
DARPA says that the proposed RATS system should be able to tackle noisy audio signals and tell on its own whether they are speech or something else such as music. It should then be able to identify the language being spoken, and tell whether the speaker is a person of interest using voiceprint technology. Finally, the RATS software should be able to “identify specific words or phrases from a list of items in the language being spoken” – just what Echelon is supposed to be able to do already, only DARPA assure us that no such tech exists. Or anyway, none able to tackle a noisy signal.
Foreign Demand for U.S. Treasury Securities Falls by Record Amount as China Reduces Holdings
February 16th, 2010Ben Bernanke, please pick up the nearest white courtesy phone.
Via: AP:
The government said Tuesday that foreign demand for U.S. Treasury securities fell by the largest amount on record in December with China reducing its holdings by $34.2 billion.
The reductions in holdings, if they continue, could force the government to make higher interest payments at a time that it is running record federal deficits.
The Treasury Department reported that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, surpassing the previous record of a $44.5 billion drop in April 2009.
The big drop in China’s holdings meant that it lost the top spot in terms of foreign ownership of U.S. Treasuries, dropping to second place behind Japan.
Japan also reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries, cutting them by $11.5 billion to $768.8 billion in December, but that amount was still more than China’s December total of $755.4 billion.
The $53 billion decline in holdings of Treasury securities came primarily from a drop in official government holdings, which fell by $52.3 billion. The holdings of foreign private investors fell by $700 million during the month of December.
For all of 2009, foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries dipped by $500 million. In 2008, foreigners had increased their holdings of U.S. Treasuries by $456 billion as a global financial crisis triggered a flight to the safety of U.S. government debt.
That flight to safety had driven down the interest rates that the government was having to pay on its debt to record lows with rates on some short-term securities dipping into negative territory for brief periods.
The Obama administration on Feb. 1 released a new budget plan which projects that the deficit for this year will total a record $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year’s record of $1.4 trillion deficit. The trillion-dollar-plus deficit have been caused by a deep recession, which has reduced government tax receipts, and the massive spending that has been undertaken to jump-start the economy and stabilize the financial system.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
February 16th, 2010MW2 sent $20. MW3 sent $20. Thank you.
The CIA and NSA Want You to Be Their Friend on Facebook
February 16th, 2010Don’t break out the foil, the U.S. News & World Report article states, because the spooks are telling you up front, here we are. Oh sure. What this shit-for-brains article doesn’t explore is how many hundreds or thousands of full time, professionally run honeypots, black propaganda outlets, sock puppets/trolls/shills etc. are operational on Facebook.
See: EFF Sues CIA, DOJ, Others Over Facebook Surveillance:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the CIA, the US Department of Defense, Department of Justice and three other government agencies on Tuesday for allegedly refusing to release information about how they are using social networks in surveillance and investigations.
The not-for-profit internet rights watchdog group formally asked more than a dozen agencies or departments in early October to provide records about federal guidelines on the use of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr for investigative or data-gathering purposes, according to the lawsuit.
The requests were prompted by published news reports about how authorities are using social networks to monitor citizen activities and aid in investigations. For example, according to the lawsuit, government officials have: used Facebook to hunt for fugitives and search for evidence of underage drinking; researched the activities of an activist on Facebook and LinkedIn; watched YouTube to identify riot suspects; searched the home of a social worker because of Twitter messages regarding police actions he sent during the G-20 summit; and used fake identities to trick Facebook users into accepting friend requests.
So, how many intelligence assets are operating in a covert capacity on Facebook?
At minimum, the answer is more than zero. As an upper end estimate, I would venture a guess that, because of compartmentalization, the executive echelons of spookdom don’t even know how many Facebook pages and users their various divisions, special access programs and cutouts are running.
Of course, one might argue that Facebook IS an intelligence asset, a giant sensor, that distributes analysis and archival tasks to remote nodes. In, Feds Push for Tracking Cell Phones, I wrote:
Focusing on the network operators misses the point. The beam splitters don’t discriminate; they send a copy of everything, every single bit, to Uncle. So, sure, the carriers don’t want to spend money on archiving all of that surveillance data, but what is the state doing with its copy of the stream?
The answer is: We have almost no idea, and the Obama regime is determined to make sure that it stays that way.
What proof do I have that beam splitters are installed—on Facebook fiber—that are sending a copy of everything to Uncle? None. But consider this, from the Guardian:
The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which “identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions”.
The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. “We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries,” defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. “We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts.” In-Q-Tel’s first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and – with Breyer – board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: “She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century.”
Now, consider the network analysis of Facebook that a researcher was able to carry out from the outside:
As I’ve been digging deeper into the data I’ve gathered on 210 million public Facebook profiles, I’ve been fascinated by some of the patterns that have emerged. My latest visualization shows the information by location, with connections drawn between places that share friends. For example, a lot of people in LA have friends in San Francisco, so there’s a line between them.
Looking at the network of US cities, it’s been remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections locally but few contacts outside the cluster.
I’m not even capable of thinking up the kinds of analysis that would be possible by having total access to Facebook data. However, again, while I’m just guessing, if U.S. Intelligence didn’t have entire divisions, roomfuls of people, dedicated datacenters and other infrastructure, etc. for dealing exclusively with network (and other types of) analysis of Facebook data, I would be very, very surprised.
But, no need for tinfoil, gentle citizen. Move along. These are just recruiting tools. Nothing to see here.
Via: U.S. News & World Report:
The online social-networking service Facebook works for finding old classmates or arranging happy hours, so why not use it to help recruit the next generation of spies? That’s what’s happening now in cyberspace, as the country’s intelligence community turns to such sites to attract a wider range of résumés.
The CIA now has its own Facebook page, as does the hush-hush National Security Agency, which vacuums up the world’s communications for analysis. Both invite Facebook members to register and read information about employment opportunities. It’s part of a larger, multiyear hiring push to boost the size of the U.S. intelligence community.
But should the country’s secret spy agency be encouraging potential hires to publicize their interest in the intelligence field? Apparently, it’s not a concern. In the first place, since the groups are not directly moderated, it is impossible to control who registers as a member. Some may enroll on the site out of curiosity. And, of course, none of those who show interest are yet officers in the clandestine service.
Even so, once they are on the CIA payroll, employees face no prohibition against keeping social-networking accounts or pages. “While agency officers are not, as a rule, prohibited from maintaining a page on Facebook, they are made aware of precautions to take if they choose to do so,” says CIA spokesman George Little.
But the Facebook posting shouldn’t necessarily cause a run on tinfoil hats. The pages aren’t designed to surreptitiously gather information about those who visit the site, as fearful skeptics allege. In reality, says the CIA, they are flashy recruiting posters, “used strictly for informational purposes.”
Comment note: The MIT page about tinfoil helmets is old and off topic. Don’t be a jackass by submitting it here. Better yet, go over to the U.S. News site and make yourself useful over there.
Britain: Nanoscale Energy Storage Material Under Development
February 16th, 2010Related: The EEstor Situation
Via: AFP:
A nanoscale material developed in Britain could one day yield wafer-thin cellphones and light-weight, long-range electric cars powered by the roof, boot and doors, researchers have reported.
For now, the new technology — a patented mix of carbon fibre and polymer resin that can charge and release electricity just like a regular battery — has not gone beyond a successful laboratory experiment.
But if scaled-up, it could hold several advantages over existing energy sources for hybrid and electric cars, according to the scientists at Imperial College London who developed it.
Lithium-ion batteries used in the current generation of plug-in vehicles are not only heavy, which adds to energy consumption, but also depend on dwindling supplies of the metal lithium, whose prices have risen steadily.
The new material — while expensive to make — is entirely synthetic, which means production would not be limited by availability of natural resources.
Another plus: conventional batteries need chemical reactions to generate juice, a process which causes them to degrade over time and gradually lose the capacity to hold a charge.
The carbon-polymer composite does not depend on chemistry, which not only means a longer life but a quicker charge as well.
Because the material is composed of elements measured in billionths of a metre, “you don’t compromise the mechanical properties of the fibers,” explained Emile Greenhalgh, an engineer at Imperial College and one of the inventors.
As hard as steel, it could in theory double as the body of the vehicle, cutting the weight by up to a third.
The Tesla Roadster, a luxury electric car made in the United States, for example, weighs about 1,200 kilos (2,650 pounds), more than a third of which is accounted for by batteries, which turn the scales at a hefty 450 kilos (990 pounds). The vehicle has a range of about 300 kilometers (185 miles) before a recharge is needed.
“With our material, we would ultimately lose that 450 kilos (990 pounds),” Greenhalgh said in an interview. “That car would be faster and travel further.”
Vehicles with bodies crafted from the new material would likewise shed weight because it is four time lighter than steel, while remaining as strong and stiff.
“It is the sort of thing you find in tennis rackets or fishing rods — a carbon fibre composite,” Greenhalgh said.
“We aim to increase the surface area of the fibres as much as possible without degrading the mechanical properties. The larger the surface, the more electrical charge they can store.”
The European Union (EU) announced last week that it would sink 3.4 million euros (4.6 million dollars) over three years into developing the new technology, with Imperial College coordinating a project spread over nine companies and institutes in Britain, Sweden, Germany and Greece.
Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has said it might build a demonstration panel into an existing electric car prototype.
Within three years, the researchers expect shave 15 percent off the weight of a car, and in five to six years, be able to integrate the material into the body.
But it will take a decade before the new material could fully replace existing batteries, Greenhalgh cautioned.
One of the question marks is cost.
Carbon fibre is a lot more expensive than steel, but mass production should bring down costs dramatically, he said.
Greece: Cash Business Transactions Over €1500 Will Be Outlawed in 2011
February 15th, 2010Via: Reuters:
“From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards”
America’s Deadly Robots Rewrite the Rules
February 15th, 2010Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
The kohl-eyed Hakimullah Mehsud probably is dead. He was the target for a missile fired last month from an unmanned aircraft hovering over the Afghan-Pakistani border – but launched by an operator in the US.
Mehsud was the ruthless mastermind of multiple suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan. He was part of a suicide mission on December 30 at Khost, just across the border in Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA agents who were working on the covert operation that now appears to have ended Mehsud’s brief and brutal leadership of the Taliban in Pakistan.
In the artistry of war, the insertion of a Jordanian double-agent who detonated his explosive vest inside this super-sensitive CIA bunker was flawless. But, in their payback, the enraged Americans confirmed the breadth of a new horizon in modern warfare – launching 15 clinical drone attacks in which more than 100 people died along the border, as Washington’s electronic eyes and guns sought out Mehsud and his Taliban and al-Qaeda allies.
War does not get more radical than this – technically, politically and, perhaps, ethically.
Consider: for the first time ever, a civilian intelligence agency is manipulating robots from halfway around the world in a program of extrajudicial executions in a country with which Washington is not at war.
Consider, too: the drone wars were initiated under the presidency of George Bush. But it is the Democrat Barack Obama who has given them flight and stumped up sufficient funding to spark serious debate on the end of the ”Top Gun” era of the fighter-pilot.
And there is this: despite decades of American disquiet about assassinations abroad and a shrill Republican critique of him as a security wuss, the professorial Obama is the new killer on the block, authorising more drone attacks in the first year of his term in office than Bush did in his entire presidency.
Royal Dutch Shell: Massive Data Leak
February 15th, 2010Via: ComputerWorldUK:
The security measures at Royal Dutch Shell are under close scrutiny after the details of 176,000 employees and contractors were emailed to campaigners.
Shell has been the target of extensive campaigning, particularly over its operations in Nigeria. Last year it reached a $15 million out of court settlement, over its alleged involvement in the death of Nigerian activists including the poet Ken Saro-Wiwa. Shell said the payment did not mean it accepted responsibility.
Shell’s IT security systems and procedures apparently failed to prevent an email being sent by disaffected staff to campaigners, with an attachment of the contact details of its employees. Details included home telephone numbers of some staff who worked remotely.
The data is approximately six months old, which could suggest it was taken by a former employee, the Financial Times speculated.
Research Credit: AHux
Huge Collection of Videos
February 15th, 2010It’s a good thing that my bandwidth is metered.
Via: sprword:
The documentaries below epitomize the importance of free flowing information and the lack of it in mainstream media.
