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.
Standoff Between Egypt’s Army Commander and Islamist President Mohamed Mursi
July 3rd, 2013Update: Egyptian Military Ousts Morsi, Suspends Constitution
Via: Washington Post:
A year after coming to office, Egypt’s first democratically elected president was swept aside by the military leaders who long presided over this country and proved Wednesday in a series of extraordinary maneuvers that they never really left.
President Mohamed Morsi’s dramatic fall from power came after months of political turmoil and days of tense protests, as millions of Egyptians took to the streets to call for his exit. Those protesters were jubilant Wednesday night, celebrating the ouster of a leader they viewed as both autocratic and incompetent.
But Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood supporters were irate, and Morsi himself was adamant that he remained the nation’s president. Aides said early Thursday that he was under house arrest as security forces rounded up at least a dozen top Muslim Brotherhood leaders, shuttered three television stations and surrounded Islamist demonstrators. Troops and tanks fanned out across Cairo, as clashes erupted in several cities.
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Update: Military Coup Under Way???
Via: NBC:
An adviser to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said Wednesday that a military coup was underway, that tanks were on the move outside Cairo and that communication with the president had been cut off.
As a military deadline came and went for Morsi to step aside, the army took control of state television, and boisterous crowds opposed to the regime cheered and danced in Tahrir Square.
Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports Morsi, also said that some of its leaders had been rounded up and arrested.
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Via: Reuters:
Egypt’s army commander and Islamist President Mohamed Mursi each pledged to die for his cause as a deadline neared on Wednesday that will trigger a military takeover backed by protesters.
Military chiefs, vowing to restore order in a country racked by demonstrations over Mursi’s Islamist policies, issued a call to battle in a statement headlined “The Final Hours”. They said they were willing to shed blood against “terrorists and fools” after Mursi refused to give up his elected office.
Less than three hours before an ultimatum was due to expire for Mursi to agree to share power or make way for an army-imposed solution, the president’s spokesman said it was better that he die in defense of democracy than be blamed by history.
In an emotional, rambling midnight television address, Mursi said he was democratically elected and would stay in office to uphold the constitutional order, declaring: “The price of preserving legitimacy is my life.”
Liberal opponents said that showed he had “lost his mind”.
Related: Tahrir Square Live Stream
Approved: HSBC Setttlement for Drug Money Laundering
July 3rd, 2013Via: Reuters:
A federal judge has approved HSBC Holdings Plc’s (HSBA.L)(HBC) record $1.92 billion settlement with federal and state investigators of charges that it flouted rules designed to stop money laundering and thwart transactions with countries under U.S. sanctions.
While noting “heavy public criticism” of the settlement, which enabled HSBC to escape criminal prosecution, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, called the decision to approve the accord “easy, for it accomplishes a great deal.”
Gleeson ruled on Monday after more than six months of review, rejecting arguments by the U.S. government and HSBC that federal judges lacked “inherent authority” over the approval or implementation of so-called “deferred prosecution agreements.”
The settlement, announced December 11, 2012, included a $1.256 billion forfeiture and $665 million in civil fines.
It resolved charges accusing HSBC of having degenerated into a “preferred financial institution” for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, money launderers and other wrongdoers through what the U.S. Department of Justice called “stunning failures of oversight.”
HSBC acknowledged compliance lapses, including a failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, and conducting transactions on behalf of customers in Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan, which were all subject to U.S. sanctions.
National Intelligence Director Apologizes for Lying to Congress
July 3rd, 2013Via: U.S. News and World Report:
The director of National Intelligence apologized in June to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for lying during a hearing, according to a letter published on the DNI website on Tuesday.
Director James Clapper appeared before the committee in March, where Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked him specifically if NSA spies on millions of Americans. Clapper answered, “No.”
Since then, Edward Snowden reportedly leaked government documents that unveiled a secretive government program that did precisely what Wyden suggested in collecting meta data for cell phone and internet records of hundreds of millions of Americans.
Clapper says the intricacy of Wyden’s question – asking for a clarification of “hundreds of millions of dossiers on people” – combined with a need to preserve classified information prompted him to give the wrong answer.
“My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize,” he wrote in the letter to committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “While my staff acknowledged the error to Sen. Wyden’s staff soon after the hearing, I can now openly correct it because the existence of the metadata collection program has been declassified.”
Absurd Giveaway to Corporate Fascists Delayed Until 2015
July 3rd, 2013Via: New York Times:
In a significant setback for President Obama’s signature domestic initiative, the administration on Tuesday abruptly announced a one-year delay, until 2015, in his health care law’s mandate that larger employers provide coverage for their workers or pay penalties. The decision postpones the effective date beyond next year’s midterm elections.
More Temp Workers Than Ever Before
July 2nd, 2013Via: Time:
On June 7, the Labor Department reported that the nation had more temp workers than ever before: 2.7 million. Almost one-fifth of the total job growth since the recession has been in the temp sector. One list of the biggest U.S. employers placed Kelly Services second only to Walmart.
Outsourcing to temp agencies has cut deep into the U.S. job market: 1 in 5 manual laborers who move and pack merchandise is now a temp, as is 1 in 6 team assemblers, who often work at auto plants. This system insulates companies from workers’-compensation claims, unemployment taxes, union drives and the duty to ensure that their workers are legal immigrants. Meanwhile, the temps suffer high injury rates, and many of them endure hours of unpaid waiting and face fees that depress their pay below the minimum wage. Many get by renting rooms in run-down houses, eating dinners of beans and potatoes and surviving on food banks and taxpayer-funded health care. They almost never get benefits and have little opportunity for advancement.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
Companies Switch to Prepaid Cards for Payroll, Employees Pay Ridiculous Fees
July 1st, 2013Via: New York Times:
A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.
For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.
But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.
