News Items

Now MasterCard Wants Your Fingerprints…

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Earlier this week, USA Today reported that massive payment processor MasterCard had joined the FIDO alliance. FIDO is an acronym for Fast IDentity Online, and the group describes itself as: The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance is a 501(c)6 non-profit organization nominally formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication devices … Read more

NSA Chief Admits “Only One or Perhaps Two” Terror Plots Stopped by Spy Program

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Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration.

– From Today’s Washington Times

“One or perhaps two.” Or perhaps zero. The guy has the nerve to say “perhaps.” How do you not know? What a bunch of lying assholes. How the heck does 54 turn into “one or two,” and I’ll tell you something else, I don’t believe the one or two figure for a minute. I mean there’s no way he would say “zero” when he is fighting to keep his petty little Stasi state intact. Furthermore, how about some details here. What was the one plot the NSA foiled? Some teenager throwing firecrackers on the White House lawn? These guys need to get lost already. From the Washington Times:

The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.

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The True Story Behind Edward Snowden’s Email Service Provider Lavabit

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A month ago, the tech world was abuzz with news that Ladar Levison decided to shutter his encrypted email service Lavabit, rather than betray the trust of his clients by selling out their privacy to the U.S. government. The writing was on the wall, and shortly thereafter another encrypted email service, Silent Circle, made a similar decision to shutdown.

Well two months later we finally have some more information about what went down behind the scenes, all of which demonstrate the true American hero that Mr. Levison really is. He can now talk about the events leading up to the shut down of Lavabit and redacted versions of the court pleadings are available online. Yesterday, Wired published an article detailing some of what we have learned. Kevin Poulsen writes:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan immediately ordered Lavabit to comply, threatening Levison with criminal contempt — which could have potentially put him in jail.

By July 9, Lavabit still hadn’t defeated its security for the government, and prosecutors asked for a summons to be served for Lavabit, and founder Ladar Levison, to be held in contempt “for its disobedience and resistance to these lawful orders.”

The judge also rejected Lavabit’s motion to unseal the record. “This is an ongoing criminal investigation, and there’s no leeway to disclose any information about it.”

In an interesting work-around, Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type. The government, not unreasonably, called the printout “illegible.”

Freakin’ awesome.

“To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data,” prosecutors wrote.

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Former DHS Chief Privacy Officer Was Regularly Called a “Terrorist” by the Intelligence Community

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So it appears one of the few decent people at the gestapo that is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was constantly berated and referred to as a “terrorist” for her attempts to defend the privacy of American citizens. So let me get this straight, the tea party are “terrorists,” privacy officers that look after … Read more

Video of the Day: Interview with Matt Taibbi About JP Morgan and the CNBC “Presstitutes”

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The top definition of presstitute according to Urban Dictionary is: 1. presstitute A member of the media who will alter their story and reporting based on financial interests or other ties with usually partisan individuals or groups. It has become abundantly clear in recent years that the mainstream media can not be identified as anything … Read more

The Carlyle Group is the Latest “Smart Money” Investor to Ditch the Buy-to-Rent Trade

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At first, the rise in residential real estate prices across the U.S. was hard to explain. The economy remained in the dumps, while college kids were saddled with debts and poor paying jobs. A large portion of the demographic that typically enters the first home market was simply put, not in the market. Pretty soon it became obvious what was happening. Insider types and “smart money” was simply buying up every property they could find in order to turn around and rent them to the average citizen who had just been priced out of the market due their all cash bids. Add to this tens of billions of dollars in foreign laundered money and voilà, a new housing bubble was born.

However, as more and more lemmings began to chase the trade, initial investors have started to get nervous. First it was Och Ziff, then OakTree, then Carrington and finally now perhaps the most infamous of all insider private equity firms, the Carlyle Group. So now we have four well known and respected investors actively and publicly trying to exit the trade. As usual, they are selling to suckers such as life-insurance companies and real estate investment trusts.

From Bloomberg:

Carlyle Group LP (CG), the private-equity firm with more than a third of its $2.3 billion U.S. real estate fund in apartments, is reducing holdings of multifamily housing as rent growth slows from a post-recession surge.

Apartment-rent growth is slowing as the U.S. homebuying market rebounds and a wave of multifamily building adds to supply. In the third quarter, tenants on average paid 3 percent more than a year earlier after landlord concessions, down from 3.9 percent annual growth in effective rents in 2012, research firm Reis Inc. (REIS) said in a report today.

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Here’s What Happens When an MSNBC Anchor Attempts to Sign Up for ObamaCare…

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Apparently “Hope and Change” means broken websites and a complete and total echo chamber of nothingness on the other end of the phone when you call the ObamaCare help desk. This short segment is priceless and pretty much sums up the “state of the union” in the American Banana Republic. It’s kind of ironic that … Read more

Bulgarian-German Novelist and Privacy Activist Denied Entry into the USA

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It just keeps getting creepier and creepier. So far, I can’t find many english language articles on this disturbing event, but The Guardian has posted some key information on their website. It informs us that: A Bulgarian-German novelist and privacy activist was on Monday refused entry to the US, writes the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent Philip Oltermann. … Read more

Picture of the Day: The Government Shutdown

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Another work of genius by William Banzai7. Pretty much sums it up. I repeat, the 50 states should all secede from Washington D.C. Like this post? Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G Follow me on Twitter.

The Only Telecom CEO to Refuse NSA Spy Demands Has Been Released from Jail

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Here’s a really interesting story that many people may not be familiar with. By now, we all know that every single major telecom CEO bent over submissively the minute the NSA came calling for data. Except one. A forgotten man in the entire NSA spy scandal is Joseph Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest, who actually refused to participate in the NSA’s illegal activities when they first propositioned him in 2001. Several years later, he was convicted of insider trading.

Perhaps I’m just a conspiracy theorist, but I find it quite coincidental that a country which lets Jon Corzine off the hook, a country where not a single CEO or executive of a financial institution was indicted with regard to the 2008 crisis, a country where James Clapper lies to Congress about the NSA and face zero repercussions; that in such a country the only major corporate CEO to go to jail for financial crimes is the one that refused to play ball with the NSA.

Well it seems the man himself shares such sentiments, and he continues to express them. Mr Nacchio was released from his four and a half year sentence on September 20th. More from the Washington Post:

Just one major telecommunications company refused to participate in a legally dubious NSA surveillance program in 2001. A few years later, its CEO was indicted by federal prosecutors. He was convicted, served four and a half years of his sentence and was released this month.

Prosecutors claim Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was guilty of insider trading, and that his prosecution had nothing to do with his refusal to allow spying on his customers without the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But to this day, Nacchio insists that his prosecution was retaliation for refusing to break the law on the NSA’s behalf.

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