I’ve said for many years that I have no idea what actually happened on 9/11, but I am highly confident the government’s official story is complete and total bullshit. A third building fell on that fateful day, WTC7. No planes hit the building and yet it came down at free fall speed. Even the government … Read more
I remember 9/11 like it was yesterday. I was one year into my Wall Street career. I got up that morning just like every other morning and headed toward Union Square station to get on the subway down to 3 World Financial Center, the headquarters of Lehman Brothers. I had just purchased breakfast in the … Read more
It is the job of the Fourth Estate to act as a check and a restraint on the others, to illumine the dark corners of Ministries, to debunk the bureaucrat, to throw often unwelcome light on the measures and motives of our rulers. ‘News’, as Hearst once remarked, ‘is something which somebody wants suppressed: all the rest is advertising’. That job is an essential one and it is bound to be unpopular; indeed, in a democracy, it may be argued that the more unpopular the newspapers are with the politicians the better they are performing their most vital task.
– Brian R. Roberts from a October 29, 1955 article in the London periodical “Time & Tide”
I’ve used the above quote before, and it is one that many others have paraphrased in various ways over the past century. The key point is that news is supposed to be delivered by people who do not have direct financial conflicts of interests that will cause their news or opinions to be biased based on receiving a fat paycheck from an outside entity. If such conflicts exist, they should at the very least be disclosed. It’s hilarious that so many pundits call Glenn Greenwald an “activist” and not a “journalist,” when it is clear he is delivering information based on a genuine passion for civil liberties. Many of these same people that accuse Glenn of “activism” are paid shills for public relations (PR) firms that represent large corporate clients and special interests. Even worse, it is almost never admitted on air. I’d much rather a person report the news biased with a genuine passion for a cause than based on a bias that revolves around his or her bank account size.
I’ve been waiting for someone to put together a more comprehensive article on this topic, because while many people recognize that television news is nothing more than tabloid garbage or statist/corporate propaganda, most people don’t understand the inner workings of it all. One of the primary reasons television news is so bad is because the so-called “experts” or pundits are actually quite often highly paid spokespeople for special interests, something which is disgracefully almost never disclosed by the anchors.
There’s nothing like waking up to the smell of censorship in the morning…and that’s exactly what happened to John Hopkins cryptography professor Matthew Green on September 9th. I’ve seen Matthew’s tweets come across my stream from time to time so I knew that he was highly regarded. ArsTechnica reports that: Matthew Green is a well-known cryptography professor, … Read more
This is a really funny, short video making fun of that segment of the population referred to as Obamabots, the seemingly lobotomized drones who support everything Obama does simply because, well he’s Obama. In it, the actors plead with you to help raise funds for World War III and one of them passionately states: There … Read more
In one of the more bizarre stories I have seen in a while, Dallas-based graphic designer Chase Giunta was forced to give up a Twitter handle he had been using for years after JP Morgan complained. He had been using the handle to retweet criticisms of the TBTF bank, and after he refused to sell the … Read more
This parody site of the NSA came across my Twitter feed today and I was very impressed with what I saw. At first, I expected it to just present me with a ton of laughs like a mainstream media article or The Onion might, but I quickly realized that much of the information on this … Read more
The situation below describes something that goes way beyond the usual revolving door that now represents the core characteristic of the crony capitalist, ponzi U.S. economy. No, the likely appointment of Valerie Caproni as a federal judge in one of the most important districts in America represents an even more sinister trend, a trend that is a core characteristic of all totalitarian regimes that have ever existed. What I am referring to is the fact that all deeply corrupt regimes with tyrannical tendencies will promote and embed the nastiest, most flawed characters possible into positions of power because they will do the dirty deeds most normal, decent people would never consider. Basically, you decide to promote those who have the most destructive track records possible to serve as your praetorian guard. It was this signal that demonstrated to me that Obama was a total fraud very early in his Presidency. It was clear the moment he promoted two of the most destructive human beings in the nation to powerful financial and economic positions, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Well now we can add a new one to the list: Valerie Caproni.
Valerie has an unblemished track record of surveillance abuse appeasement that would make almost any civil liberties tyrant’s mouth water. She was the FBI’s top lawyer from 2003-2011, during which time she objected to the few objections that the secret FISA court offered. Moreover, she seemed to relish in the fact that the government can do whatever it wants in secret. Oh and did I mention she’s an executive a Northrop Grumman? Good times.
She’s scheduled for a vote on her judgeship today, and I have no doubt she will receive the position. Just as I assume Larry Summers will be appointed head of the Federal Reserve. These days, the very worst in America always rise to the top. More from the Guardian:
A former senior FBI official implicated in surveillance abuses is poised to become a federal judge in one of the US’s most important courts for terrorism cases.
Valerie Caproni, the FBI’s top lawyer from 2003 to 2011, is scheduled to receive a vote on Monday in the Senate for a seat on the southern district court of New York.
Caproni has come under bipartisan criticism over the years for enabling widespread surveillance later found to be inappropriate or illegal. During her tenure as the FBI’s general counsel, she clashed with Congress and even the Fisa surveillance court over the proper scope of the FBI’s surveillance powers.
“It is a shame that the White House has chosen to nominate former FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni to a lifelong position as a federal judge given her narrow views of Americans’ privacy rights as demonstrated by her actions in the George W Bush administration,” said Lisa Graves, a Justice Department official in the Clinton and early Bush administrations.
A representative of the defense company Northrop Grumman, where Caproni currently serves as an executive, said Caproni was not available for interviews.
I mean Texans and indictments…it’s like a Texas Bar Mitzvah. My dad was indicted, you know, I have friends that have been indicted, have gone to prison…it happens.
– Barret Brown during an RT Interview, a year before being raided by the FBI and subsequently incarcerated.
Barrett Brown is one of those figures that immediately captured my attention after first learning about him while watching the Anonymous documentary We are Legion.I soon realized that he had been incarcerated a mere three months prior to me serendipitously stumbling upon the film. It wasn’t difficult to see that he must have been onto something very, very big for the Feds to go after him so aggressively. You don’t charge a person with 105 years in prison merely as revenge for a youtube video in which you threaten an FBI agent. No, there was something much deeper going on here.
It was only after the Edward Snowden revelations that I realized exactly what was going on. As we all know by now, Snowden’s last employer was technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. As soon as I read that, I remembered that the first person to bring Booz Allen to my attention as a nefarious corporate entity was none other than Barrett Brown. Barrett was focused, indeed obsessed, with the shady and dangerous relationship between defense/intelligence contractors and the U.S. government. He was getting too close to unearthing things that some of the most powerful people in the world didn’t want to see the light of day, and so he was silenced and put in a cage. Just as tyrants have always historically done to those who are smarter and more courageous and capable than they could ever be.
Anyone that looks at the Barrett Brown case with an unbiased eye will soon realize that the government is engaged in a political witch-hunt, much like what happened to internet prodigy Aaron Swartz. The case is so preposterous that Barrett was beginning to garner considerable media attention. One example of the absurdity of his case was recently highlighted by Vice in an article that points out:
Keep in mind, Barrett is facing a 45-year sentence under one indictment that alleges he shared a link to illegally obtained, hacked information. In contrast, the individual actually found guilty of hacking the data is serving a sentence of ten years.
The government of course doesn’t want people to know about this sort of thing, and so the prosecution recently requested a gag order from Texas district court judge Sam Lindsay. Sadly, last week this request was granted (check out the gag order itself here). Kevin Gosztola of Firedog Lake summarized the dangers of this gag order better than I ever could. He writes:
As the Free Barrett Brown group highlights on its website, at stake is the right to link, because one of the offenses stems from Brown’s decision to share a link to something released online from the Stratfor emails. It also implicates the First Amendment, as Brown is charged with concealing information related to journalistic sources and his own work products. It also raises issues of press freedom and selective prosecution, since it appears that in the three indictments handed down against Brown the government is targeting him for daring to expose the operations of private security and intelligence companies.
The gag order was not pursued to protect the interests of the accused. It was pursued to limit the flow of information to the press because the government has known from the beginning that what they were doing looked like vindictive or selective prosecution.
Gagging Brown and his defense team has the effect of preventing those participating in the trial from speaking to the press about the trial until after the trial has concluded. Once the trial is over, the press may have little interest in what Brown or his lawyers have to say. This means the public is deprived of the opportunity to challenge the government’s handling of the trial when it most matters, especially if the handling is abusive and in violation of Brown’s rights.
It’s ironic and disturbing that in a case where press freedom is at stake, the defendant and his lawyers have been barred from talking to the press. The prosecution asked for a gag order in part because they said articles about Brown’s case contained inaccuracies, but pointed to no articles to prove their point. Seemingly, the problem was the articles were too accurate, and therefore making the prosecution’s case look bad. The fact remains, Brown is being prosecuted for conduct that is central to journalism, and the charges related to linking should be thrown out immediately.
With all that in mind, I provide some excerpts below from the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, which profiles Barrett. The article is certainly not a one-sided celebration of him, and in fact I question the author’s undue focus on his drug abuse, considering substance abuse is one of the most common traits exhibited by almost every great writer that has ever lived. In any event, the story will hopefully get Barrett’s case more public attention in the face of this absurd gag order. From Rolling Stone:
Encountering Barrett Brown’s story in passing, it is tempting to group him with other Anonymous associates who have popped up in the news for cutting pleas and changing sides. Brown’s case, however, is a thing apart. Although he knew some of those involved in high-profile “hacktivism,” he is no hacker.His situation is closer to the runaway prosecution that destroyed Aaron Swartz, the programmer-activist who committed suicide in the face of criminal charges similar to those now being leveled at Brown. But unlike Swartz, who illegally downloaded a large cache of academic articles, Brown never broke into a server; he never even leaked a document.His primary laptop, sought in two armed FBI raids, was a miniature Sony netbook that he used for legal communication, research and an obscene amount of video-game playing. The most serious charges against him relate not to hacking or theft, but to copying and pasting a link to data that had been hacked and released by others.
“What is most concerning about Barrett’s case is the disconnect between his conduct and the charged crime,” says Ghappour. “He copy-pasted a publicly available link containing publicly available data that he was researching in his capacity as a journalist. The charges require twisting the relevant statutes beyond recognition and have serious implications for journalists as well as academics. Who’s allowed to look at document dumps?”
While most of the media, including the alternative media, has been focused primarily on our psychopathic leaders’ attempt to drag us into a Syrian civil war alongside al-Qaeda, some really crucial new information has been released about the NSA from the Snowden documents.
Specifically, we now know the lengths to which the NSA has fought to make encryption useless. Disturbingly, there was a debate about all of this in the 1990’s. Back then the NSA, with the help of the Clinton administration, attempted to install a backdoor into all encryption called a “Clipper Chip.” This was shot down, but the NSA went ahead and did it covertly anyway. This is the type of total unconstitutional slime we are dealing with.
The most absurd part of the recent revelations is the realization that the NSA isn’t actually cracking most of the encryption due to smarts or math, but rather by coercing major technology companies to allow them unfettered access. Part of this coercion unsurprisingly revolves around generous monetary payoffs to “grease the surveillance wheels” courtesy of a hefty Black Budget.
The first highlighted article is from yesterday’s New York Times. The information is so devastating to the already battered reputation of the criminal NSA that according to the paper:
Intelligence officials asked The Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read. The news organizations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the article because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful privacy tools.
Some key excepts below:
Many users assume — or have been assured by Internet companies — that their data is safe from prying eyes, including those of the government, and the N.S.A. wants to keep it that way. The agency treats its recent successes in deciphering protected information as among its most closely guarded secrets, restricted to those cleared for a highly classified program code-named Bullrun, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.
Beginning in 2000, as encryption tools were gradually blanketing the Web, the N.S.A. invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop. Having lost a public battle in the 1990s to insert its own “back door” in all encryption, it set out to accomplish the same goal by stealth.
The N.S.A. hacked into target computers to snare messages before they were encrypted. In some cases, companies say they were coerced by the government into handing over their master encryption keys or building in a back door. And the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards followed by hardware and software developers around the world.
Paul Kocher, a leading cryptographer who helped design the SSL protocol, recalled how the N.S.A. lost the heated national debate in the 1990s about inserting into all encryption a government back door called the Clipper Chip.
“And they went and did it anyway, without telling anyone,” Mr. Kocher said. He said he understood the agency’s mission but was concerned about the danger of allowing it unbridled access to private information.
Intelligence officials asked The Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read. The news organizations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the article because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful privacy tools.
The full extent of the N.S.A.’s decoding capabilities is known only to a limited group of top analysts from the so-called Five Eyes: the N.S.A. and its counterparts in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Only they are cleared for the Bullrun program, the successor to one called Manassas — both names of an American Civil War battle.A parallel GCHQ counterencryption program is called Edgehill, named for the first battle of the English Civil War of the 17th century.
Think about the fact that they named these programs after Civil War battles. What does that tell us about how they view “the people” in relation to government?
