NSA Style Guide
June 13th, 2011Via: Government Attic:
National Security Agency (NSA) SIGINT Reporter’s Style and Usage Manual, 2010 – [13-Jun-2011]
In Greece, Some See a New Lehman
June 13th, 2011Via: New York Times:
Bond traders and officials at the European Central Bank have been unified in their warnings that a restructuring of Greece’s debt would set off an investor panic similar to the one that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.
Others, however, have argued that Greece’s debt of 330 billion euros, or $473 billion, while too large for the country to bear, is small enough to allow banks and other institutions to take a loss without bringing the world financial system to its knees.
But the comparisons between Greece and Lehman grew more frequent last week as global markets reeled, spurred in part by the view that Germany’s insistence that private investors participate in a second rescue package for Athens would overcome the objections of the European Central Bank.
“It is a valid concern,” said David Riley, head of sovereign ratings at Fitch. “The Rubicon would be crossed — we would have a sovereign default event and that can be quite a shock, not just for the peripheral countries but for Spain and beyond.”
The thinking goes like this: though banks and other investors have done much to pare their Greek holdings in the last year, if they are forced to take a loss, and the ratings agencies declare Greece in default, investors would start selling in a panic. And they would not sell just the bonds of countries struggling with debt — Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy. In a hasty retreat into cash, traders would unload more liquid assets as well, everything from high-grade corporate bonds to American and emerging market equities — as occurred in 2008 after Lehman failed.
U.S. Government Finally Declassifies Pentagon Papers: Complete Archive Posted Today
June 13th, 201134% of this is newly declassified information.
Via: U.S. National Archives:
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force”, was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967. In June of 1971, small portions of the report were leaked to the press and widely distributed. However, the publications of the report that resulted from these leaks were incomplete and suffered from many quality issues.
On the 40th anniversary of the leak to the press, the National Archives, along with the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Presidential Libraries, has released the complete report. There are 48 boxes and approximately 7,000 declassified pages. Approximately 34% of the report is available for the first time.
What is unique about this, compared to other versions, is that:
– The complete Report is now available with no redactions compared to previous releases
– The Report is presented as Leslie Gelb presented it to then Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford on January 15, 1969
– All the supplemental back-documentation is included. In the Gravel Edition, 80% of the documents in Part V.B. were not included
– This release includes the complete account of peace negotiations, significant portions of which were not previously available either in the House Armed Services Committee redacted copy of the Report or in the Gravel Edition
U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors
June 13th, 2011Mmm hmm.
See: The American Culture Bomb: Satire from the Onion and a Long Forgotten U.S. Army War College Essay
There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.
…
The bayonet will still be relevant; however, informational superiority incisively employed should both sharpen that bayonet and permit us to defeat some–but never all–of our enemies outside of bayonet range. Our informational advantage over every other country and culture will be so enormous that our greatest battlefield challenge will be harnessing its power. Our potential national weakness will be the failure to maintain the moral and raw physical strength to thrust that bayonet into an enemy’s heart.
Also, U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators:
Well, what this probably means is that, when you’re connected to .mil’s PSYOP ISP, you may get a ‘special’ version of the Internet. For example, when you type in cnn.com or google.com, what you see may be quite different from what the rest of the world sees. The military could be running proxies that make sites appear any way PSYOP planners want them to appear. They could load content from the actual sites, but, on the fly, add PSYOP payloads to what is sent to the target population.
Via: New York Times:
The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.
The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”
Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.
The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.
Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.
‘The War You Don’t See’: A Film You Won’t See — An Open Letter to Noam Chomsky and the General Public
June 13th, 2011Via: Common Dreams:
Dear Noam,
I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, ‘The War You Don’t See‘, and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media.
Lannan invited me and David over a year ago and welcomed my proposal that they also host the US premiere of ‘The War You Don’t See’, in which US and British broadcasters describe the often hidden part played by the media in the promotion of war, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. The film has been widely acclaimed in the UK and Australia; the trailer and reviews are on my website www.johnpilger.com
The banning and cancellation, which have shocked David and me, are on the personal orders of Patrick Lannan, whose wealth funds the Lannan Foundation as a liberal center of discussion of politics and the arts. Some of you will have been there and will know the Lannan Foundation as a valuable supporter of liberal causes. Indeed, I was invited in 2002 to present a Lannan award to the broadcaster Amy Goodman.
What is deeply disturbing about the ban is that it happened so suddenly and inexplicably: 48 hours before David Barsamian and I were both due to depart for Santa Fe I received a brief email with a ‘sorry for the inconvenience’ from a Lannan official who had been telling me just a few days earlier what a ‘great honor’ it was to have the US premiere of my film at Lannan, with myself in attendance.
I urge you to visit the Lannan website www.lannan.org. Good people like Michael Ratner, Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald are shown as participants in discussion about freedom of speech. I am there, too, but my name is the only one with a line through it and the word, ‘Cancelled’.
Neither David Barsamian nor I have been given a word of explanation. All my messages to Lannan have gone unanswered; my calls calls are not returned; my flights were cancelled summarily. At the urging of the New Mexican newspaper, Patrick Lannan has issued a one-sentence statement offering his regrets to the Lannan-supporting ‘community’ in Santa Fe. Again, he gives no reason for the ban. I have spoken to the manager of the Santa Fe cinema where ‘The War You Don’t See’ was to be screened. He received a late-night call. Again, no reason for the ban was forthcoming, giving him barely time to cancel advertising in The New Mexican, which was forced to drop a major feature.
There is a compelling symbol of our extraordinary times in all of this. A rich and powerful individual and organization, espousing freedom of speech, has moved ruthlessly and unaccountably to crush it.
With warm regards
John Pilger
Research Credit: CB
Gay Girl in Damascus Is a Man Called Tom
June 13th, 2011Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
Amina Arraf, the “Gay Girl in Damascus” who sent the world into a frenzy after she was reportedly kidnapped by Syrian security forces, has been outed as a 40-year-old American man.
A new entry on Sunday in the blog, which for months was purportedly written by a lesbian Syrian-American woman living in Damascus, asserted that the entire saga was a hoax.
The post, which came days after an entry saying the blogger had been arrested, was signed by “Tom MacMaster” in Istanbul, Turkey.
In it, the author says the narrative was fictional but insists it “created an important voice for issues I feel strongly about”.
It says the author had never expected so much attention.
Research Credit: CB
Britain: Sign Into the Dole Website with Facebook
June 13th, 2011Via: Register:
Facebook and other social networks could be used by British citizens to sign into public services online, The Register has learned.
A Cabinet Office spokeswoman confirmed to us this morning that the department was speaking to “a range of industry” about its ID assurance scheme, a prototype for which is expected in October this year.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said in the House of Commons last month that “people will be able to use the service of their choice to prove identity when accessing any public services [via the internet].”
Companies such as banks that already hold personal customer information in their databases will be among private sector organisations involved in the new system.
But social networks are also in the mix, too.
The Cabinet Office spokeswoman didn’t want to offer specific details about individual companies such as Facebook and Google, instead preferring to say that “social networks could possibly be involved with the system.”
She was keen to stress that “no data would be held by the government through the ID assurance scheme” because, in effect, the identity authentication process would be farmed out to a variety of players in the private sector.
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
June 13th, 2011Pookie sent $75 and an anonymous reader sent 5 bitcoins. Thank you.
Update: Another 2 bitcoins arrived. Thank you.
May Earnings
June 13th, 2011Earnings in May totaled $1001.95. Thank you to everyone who helped keep Cryptogon going in May.
Deepbit Bitcoin Mining Pool to Support Cryptogon
June 13th, 2011Update: 22 ‘Yes’ Votes, But Only One Person Actually Offering to Help
Maybe this is somehow confusing.
If you want to help, you need to install the GUIMiner app (assuming you have a machine running Windows), or set up a mining app manually, and then email me for the Deepbit pool worker ID.
Voting ‘Yes’ in the poll thingy below doesn’t do anything except let me know how many people are interested—or just like playing with radio buttons on poll widgets.
—End Update—
Update: Getting Started ASAP
For people who want to get started now, and don’t need technical support, email me with the number of worker IDs you require. If you want to mine using one machine, you need one ID. Two machines, two IDs, etc. I’ll get them to you ASAP. Hint: On Windows machines, the easiest way to go for pooled mining is the GUIMiner (download). If you have a high end graphics card, definitely use GPU mining, but if you don’t, that’s fine, use the Ufasoft CPU miner.
The Deepbit profile is ready to go. All you’ll need from me are your worker IDs (which go in the ‘Email’ field) and the passwords.
If you want to help, but don’t know what any of this means, let me know and I’ll try to help you as soon as I can.
—End Update—
Are you interested in helping support Cryptogon by mining bitcoins with Deepbit? I could establish a pool account and give you worker IDs for each machine on the job.
You would be in complete control of how much mining you do as you run the client on your system.
