School Districts Got Military Gear from Pentagon
September 26th, 2014Via: CBS:
A CBS News review shows campus police across the country have received millions of dollars worth of military gear from the Pentagon.
Now, there are calls to halt those transfers, even though some agencies say the weapons are necessary.
CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez reports from the University of Texas, Arlington, that the University of Texas System’s police protect more than a dozen campuses and 330,000 people across the state.
The director of police said those additional weapons and gear are necessary, given the type of emergencies that can happen.
When University of Texas police responded to a bomb threat in 2012, they arrived in a Humvee. It’s one of three large military vehicles the university’s police system has acquired from the Department of Defense. They recently received a mine-resistant vehicle, which was designed to withstand roadside bombs on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The turret has been removed, so there’s no weapons systems associated with it,” University of Texas System Director of Police Michael Heidingsfield said.
He says its purpose is to protect the occupants and save lives.
“That vehicle will be used solely in response to an active shooter or armed intruder events,” Heidingsfield said. “Or perhaps in anticipation of a major natural catastrophic event.”
The university’s police department is one of at least 125 school law enforcement agencies in 25 states that have received military gear free of charge from the Department of Defense. That includes police departments for 23 kindergarten-through-12 school districts and 102 colleges and universities.
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 became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.
These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga — information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.
On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.
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 face up to 10 years’ jail for disclosing classified information.
The government’s first tranche of tougher anti-terrorism bills, which will beef up the powers of the domestic spy agency ASIO, passed the Senate by 44 votes to 12 on Thursday night with bipartisan support from Labor.
The bill, the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014, will now be sent to the House of Representatives, where passage is all but guaranteed on Tuesday at the earliest.
Anyone – including journalists, whistleblowers and bloggers – who “recklessly” discloses “information … [that] relates to a special intelligence operation” faces up to 10 years’ jail.
Any operation can be declared “special” by an authorised ASIO officer.
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 the C.I.A. is secretly behind the same extremists that it is now attacking.
“We know about who made Daesh,” said Bahaa al-Araji, a deputy prime minister, using an Arabic shorthand for the Islamic State on Saturday at a demonstration called by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to warn against the possible deployment of American ground troops. Mr. Sadr publicly blamed the C.I.A. for creating the Islamic State in a speech last week, and interviews suggested that most of the few thousand people at the demonstration, including dozens of members of Parliament, subscribed to the same theory. (Mr. Sadr is considered close to Iran, and the theory is popular there as well.)
Research Credit: winstonsmith
Bosch DLR130K Digital Distance Measurer
September 25th, 2014I’ve been selling solar power systems to people here in New Zealand for the past few months. When someone wants to get a system, I have to conduct a site visit to make sure that their property is suitable and gather information for the installers. I take pictures of the roof, meter box or boxes, distribution boards, etc. Google and Bing sometimes have satellite imagery that is usable to do a roof measurement, but mostly they don’t, or clouds are covering the property.
It’s up to me to measure the roof, and draw a plan.
I did a few site visits where I climbed up onto roofs with a 30 meter wind-up measuring tape and that pretty much sucked. It’s Northland New Zealand, expect wind and or rain.
I went looking for a better way to do it and found this Bosch DLR130K Digital Distance Measurer:
Bosch DLR130K
I found it hard to believe that this gadget would be accurate down to the millimeter. I ran my standard tape measure out from a wall and tried it from a few different distances.
Believe it or not, it reads the exact distance.
So this is far more accuracy than I need, but to be able to stand at the corner of a roof and zap the length and width in a couple of seconds is very nice. I still carry my 30 meter wind-up tape measure with me… as ballast, I guess. haha No, I suppose the handy Bosch laser gadget could crap out on me, or something. But I don’t plan on using that old-style tape much on future jobs.
The Bosch DLR130K comes with a sturdy nylon carrying pouch and some batteries.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
September 25th, 2014Thank you.
Anonymous Bitcoin .187
AH $25
AD $5
JC $10
China’s Tech Factories Turn to Student Labor
September 25th, 2014Via: Dow Jones:
CHONGQING, China—On the outskirts of this southwestern Chinese hub lie the student factories.
Schools send thousands of teenagers here to put together electronic devices for some of the world’s largest brands. Many students say they are given no choice.
…
Student interns have become increasingly entrenched in China’s labor force, especially among major electronics makers. At some factories, interns say they outnumber regular workers.
Some major brands like H-P and Apple Inc. AAPL -0.87% say they are working with their suppliers to make sure intern use is reasonable and complies with labor laws, but acknowledge that violations occur.
The practice has the official stamp of approval of China’s Ministry of Education, which in 2010 said vocational schools must supply students to fill labor shortages.
…
On a recent evening, uniformed workers streamed out of Chongqing’s major electronics factories to buy noodles or sizzling sausages. Of the roughly two dozen workers stopped at random, nearly all said they were vocational students, with majors ranging from computer science to tourism to education.
Some interns said they were paid around the same as regular workers, or around 1,300 renminbi ($212) a month before overtime, though several students, including a 16-year-old girl surnamed Yang who makes laptops at Compal, said they had to pay most of their base wages to their school.
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.”
This pronouncement came as two of a series of three bills effecting that erosion of freedoms made their way through Australia’s Federal Parliament. These were the second reading of a National Security Amendment Bill which grants new surveillance powers to Australia’s spy agency, ASIO, and the first reading of a Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill that outlaws speech seen as “advocating terrorism”. A third bill on mandatory data retention is expected to be be introduced by the end of the year.
Whilst all three bills in this suite raise separate concerns, the most immediate concern—because the bill in question could be passed this week—is the National Security Amendment Bill. Introduced into Parliament on 16 July, it endured robust criticism during public hearings last month that led into an advisory report released last week. Nevertheless the bill was introduced into the Senate this Tuesday with the provisions of most concern still intact.
In simple terms, the bill allows law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant to access data from a computer—so far, so good. But it redefines “a computer” to mean not only “one or more computers” but also “one or more computer networks”. Since the Internet itself is nothing but a large network of computer networks, it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the bill may stealthily allow the spy agency to surveil the entire Internet with a single warrant.
U.S. Attacking Oil Infrastructure Belonging to… ISIS?
September 24th, 2014Via: CNN:
U.S. and coalition warplanes pounded ISIS positions in eastern Syria on Wednesday, targeting what a Pentagon official described as mobile oil refineries being used by the so-called Islamic State terror group to help finance its operations.
The latest round of airstrikes were aimed at cutting off money flowing to ISIS, which makes up to $2 million a day from oil produced by the mobile refineries, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told CNN.
Fighter jets from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates flew alongside U.S. aircraft during the operation, hitting 12 locations, Kirby said.
FBI Plans Rapid DNA Dragnets
September 24th, 2014Via: Nextgov:
The FBI is preparing to accelerate the collection of DNA profiles for the government’s massive new biometric identification database.
Developers of portable DNA analysis machines have been invited to a Nov. 13 presentation to learn about the bureau’s vision for incorporating their technology into the FBI’s new database.
So-called rapid DNA systems can draw up a profile in about 90 minutes.
The Next Generation Identification system, or NGI, the successor to the FBI’s criminal fingerprint database, is designed to quickly ID crooks through facial recognition, iris matching, tattoo cross-checks and vocal recordings, among other unique traits.
But critics say aggregating DNA along with all this other data makes it easier for authorities to track the general population.
Various FBI divisions “are collaborating to develop and implement foundational efforts to streamline and automate law enforcement’s DNA collection processes” including at arrest, booking and conviction, according to an Aug. 19 notice about the industry briefing. The ongoing groundwork is expected to facilitate the “integration of Rapid DNA Analysis into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index (CODIS) and Next Generation Identification (NGI) systems from the booking environment.”
