Journalist Michael Hastings Dies In Car Crash
June 19th, 2013Update: Autopsy Shows Journalist Michael Hastings Had Meth, Pot In System At Time Of Fiery Auto Crash
Via: The Smoking Gun:
The family of journalist Michael Hastings was trying to get him into drug rehab at the time he died in a fiery Los Angeles car wreck, according to a coroner’s report released today.
Hastings, 33, was speeding when he “apparently lost control of his vehicle colliding with a tree head-on in a center grass median” around 4:30 AM on June 18. “Death was rapid, within seconds” due the “massive blunt force trauma” endured by the writer.
The L.A. coroner’s report notes that Hastings’s family told investigators that they were attempting to get Hastings into detox since they thought he “had started to use drugs again in the past month or so.” Hastings was believed to have been sober “for about the past 14 years.”
A brother told a coroner’s investigator that he believed Hastings was “currently using DMT,” a hallucinogenic, and medicinal marijuana, which “was believed as prescribed for PTSD, as decedent was a war journalist, having had assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in Baghdad a few years ago.”
A toxicology screen revealed “a small amount of amphetamine” in Hastings’s blood, which was “consistent with possible intake of methamphetamine many hours before death.” However, the amount detected was “unlikely to have an intoxicative effect at the time of the accident.” Additionally, “marijuana was present in the blood…indicating intake hours earlier.”
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Update: Hastings Sent Colleagues Email Hours Before Crash
Via: KTLA:
Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs told KTLA that he received an email from Hastings on Monday.
Biggs had known Hastings since 2008, when the journalist was embedded in his unit in Afghanistan.
“On Monday morning, I woke up and I got an email, and it’s very panicked,” Biggs said.
He was blind-copied on the email, which was sent to Hastings’ colleagues.
In part, it said that the feds were interviewing his close friends and associates, and that he was onto a big story and needed to get off the radar.
The FBI has denied that Hastings was ever under investigation.
—End Update—
Update: Fire
conceptualdecay sent in this local TV news piece about the crash:
Remember Ashley Turton?
The wife of a key White House aide was found dead early Monday in a sport-utility vehicle that was heavily damaged by fire in the garage of the couple’s Capitol Hill home, sources familiar with the incident said.
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Update: WikiLeaks Claims Contact from Hastings Just Before Death
Via: WikiLeaks / Twitter:
Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.
Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 19, 2013
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Via: NPR:
Michael Hastings, the journalist whose candid interviews of Gen. Stanley McChrystal led to the officer’s eventual removal from his post, has died in a car crash. The news was announced Tuesday by BuzzFeed, which employed Hastings, 33. He was reportedly killed in an accident this morning in Los Angeles.
FBI Has Started Using Surveillance Drones Inside U.S.
June 19th, 2013Via: Huffington Post:
FBI Director Robert Mueller revealed Wednesday that the bureau uses drones to conduct surveillance on U.S. soil.
Asked by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) if the FBI was following in the footsteps of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in pursuing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, Mueller said yes. The vehicles are used in very narrow circumstances for surveillance, he said.
Asked if the bureau had developed a set of policies governing drone use and privacy protections, however, Mueller said that such a process was just starting.
“We are in the initial stages of doing that,” Mueller said, emphasizing that the FBI drone program was in the nascent stages. “I will tell you that our footprint is very small. We have very few of limited use, and we’re exploring not only the use, but the necessary guidelines for that use.”
He added that drones were used “in a very, very minimal way, and very seldom.”
Offensive Cyber Effect Operations
June 19th, 2013Via: CNN:
Today, the United States is conducting offensive cyberwar actions around the world.
More than passively eavesdropping, we’re penetrating and damaging foreign networks for both espionage and to ready them for attack. We’re creating custom-designed Internet weapons, pre-targeted and ready to be “fired” against some piece of another country’s electronic infrastructure on a moment’s notice.
This is much worse than what we’re accusing China of doing to us. We’re pursuing policies that are both expensive and destabilizing and aren’t making the Internet any safer. We’re reacting from fear, and causing other countries to counter-react from fear. We’re ignoring resilience in favor of offense.
Welcome to the cyberwar arms race, an arms race that will define the Internet in the 21st century.
Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued last October and released by Edward Snowden, outlines U.S. cyberwar policy. Most of it isn’t very interesting, but there are two paragraphs about “Offensive Cyber Effect Operations,” or OCEO, that are intriguing:
“OECO can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging. The development and sustainment of OCEO capabilities, however, may require considerable time and effort if access and tools for a specific target do not already exist.
“The United States Government shall identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power, establish and maintain OCEO capabilities integrated as appropriate with other U.S. offensive capabilities, and execute those capabilities in a manner consistent with the provisions of this directive.”
These two paragraphs, and another paragraph about OCEO, are the only parts of the document classified “top secret.” And that’s because what they’re saying is very dangerous.
Cyberattacks have the potential to be both immediate and devastating. They can disrupt communications systems, disable national infrastructure, or, as in the case of Stuxnet, destroy nuclear reactors; but only if they’ve been created and targeted beforehand. Before launching cyberattacks against another country, we have to go through several steps.
We have to study the details of the computer systems they’re running and determine the vulnerabilities of those systems. If we can’t find exploitable vulnerabilities, we need to create them: leaving “back doors” in hacker speak. Then we have to build new cyberweapons designed specifically to attack those systems.
Sometimes we have to embed the hostile code in those networks, these are called “logic bombs,” to be unleashed in the future. And we have to keep penetrating those foreign networks, because computer systems always change and we need to ensure that the cyberweapons are still effective.
Like our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, our cyberweapons arsenal must be pretargeted and ready to launch.
NSA Implementing ‘Two-Person’ Rule To Stop The Next Edward Snowden
June 19th, 2013This is great. They can spend all day trying to comply with their increasingly cumbersome security directives.
Via: Forbes:
The next Edward Snowden may need a partner on the inside.
On Tuesday, National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a congressional hearing of the Intelligence Committee that the agency is implementing a “two-person” system to prevent future leaks of classified information like the one pulled off by 29-year-old Booz Allen contractor Edward Snowden, who exfiltrated “thousands” of files according to the Guardian, to whom he has given several of the secret documents.
U.S. Government Bans Americans From the Skies Without Explanation
June 19th, 2013Via: ACLU:
The government does not have the unchecked authority to place individuals on a secret blacklist without providing them any meaningful opportunity to object, the ACLU argued in a brief filed last Friday with the federal district court in Oregon.
We made the filing in Latif v. Holder, our lawsuit asserting that the government violated the Fifth Amendment due process rights of 13 Americans, including four military veterans, by placing them on the No Fly List and refusing to give them any after-the-fact explanation or a hearing at which they can clear their names.
Our brief highlighted the utter irrationality of the government’s No Fly List procedures. The plaintiffs in Latif all flew for years without any problems. But more than two years ago, they were suddenly branded as suspected terrorists based on secret evidence, publicly denied boarding on flights, and told by U.S. and airline officials that they were banned from flying, perhaps forever. Each of them asked the government to remove them from the No Fly List through the only “redress” mechanism available—the Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry Program. But the government has refused to provide any explanation or basis for their inclusion in the list. Our clients have been stuck in limbo ever since.
3 NSA Veterans Speak Out On Snowden: We Told You So
June 19th, 2013Update: New Tice Interview
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I wonder if Tice was invited to participate in this…
Via: USA Today:
In a roundtable discussion, a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers tell USA TODAY that Edward Snowden succeeded where they failed.
When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government’s collection of Americans’ phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.
Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.
For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media.
To the intelligence community, the trio are villains who compromised what the government classifies as some of its most secret, crucial and successful initiatives. They have been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime.
Today, they feel vindicated.
They say the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who worked as a systems administrator, proves their claims of sweeping government surveillance of millions of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. They say those revelations only hint at the programs’ reach.
On Friday, USA TODAY brought Drake, Binney and Wiebe together for the first time since the story broke to discuss the NSA revelations. With their lawyer, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, they weighed their implications and their repercussions. They disputed the administration’s claim of the impact of the disclosures on national security — and President Obama’s argument that Congress and the courts are providing effective oversight.
Autism Tied to Air Pollution
June 19th, 2013Via: Bloomberg:
Researchers seeking the roots of autism have linked the disorder to chemicals in air pollution and, in a separate study, found that language difficulties of the disorder may be due to a disconnect in brain wiring.
Researchers from Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that pregnant women exposed to high levels of diesel particulates or mercury were twice as likely to have an autistic child compared with peers in low-pollution areas. The findings, published today in Environmental Health Perspectives, are from the largest U.S. study to examine the ties between air pollution and autism.
Bank of America Mortgage Swindling, Employees Told to Lie to Customers
June 19th, 2013Via: Salon:
Bank of America’s mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification – but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose sworn statements were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts.
“Bank of America’s practice is to string homeowners along with no apparent intention of providing the permanent loan modifications it promises,” said Erika Brown, one of the former employees. The damning evidence would spur a series of criminal investigations of BofA executives, if we still had a rule of law in this country for Wall Street banks.
The government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which gave banks cash incentives to modify loans under certain standards, was supposed to streamline the process and help up to 4 million struggling homeowners (to date, active permanent modifications number about 870,000). In reality, Bank of America used it as a tool, say these former employees, to squeeze as much money as possible out of struggling borrowers before eventually foreclosing on them. Borrowers were supposed to make three trial payments before the loan modification became permanent; in actuality, many borrowers would make payments for a year or more, only to find themselves rejected for a permanent modification, and then owing the difference between the trial modification and their original payment. Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner famously described HAMP as a means to “foam the runway” for the banks, spreading out foreclosures so banks could more readily absorb them.
These Bank of America employees offer the first glimpse into how they pulled it off. Employees, many of whom allege they were given no basic training on how to even use HAMP, were instructed to tell borrowers that documents were incomplete or missing when they were not, or that the file was “under review” when it hadn’t been accessed in months. Former loan-level representative Simone Gordon says flat-out in her affidavit that “we were told to lie to customers” about the receipt of documents and trial payments. She added that the bank would hold financial documents borrowers submitted for review for at least 30 days. “Once thirty days passed, Bank of America would consider many of these documents to be ‘stale’ and the homeowner would have to re-apply for a modification,” Gordon writes. Theresa Terrelonge, another ex-employee, said that the company would consistently tell homeowners to resubmit information, restarting the clock on the HAMP process.
China’s Great Uprooting: Moving 250 Million Into Cities
June 18th, 2013Via: New York Times:
China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.
The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.
This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly to find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends increasingly on a consuming class of city dwellers.
Pentagon to Begin Training Women for Combat Roles by 2015
June 18th, 2013Anybody’s Son (Or Daughter) Will Due
Via: CBS:
Women may be able to start training as Army Rangers by mid-2015 and as Navy SEALs a year later under plans set to be announced by the Pentagon that would slowly bring women into thousands of combat jobs, including those in elite special operations forces.
Details of the plans were obtained by The Associated Press. They call for requiring women and men to meet the same physical and mental standards to qualify for certain infantry, armor, commando and other front-line positions across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reviewed the plans and has ordered the services to move ahead.
