Nicely Timed CENTCOM Social Media Hacking Smells Like a Rat

Today’s latest  installment in the National Security State’s relentless drive to implement even more surveillance and invasions of the privacy of law-abiding Americans comes courtesy of the military. Media hysteria is spiking today with a story that the social media accounts of the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) have been infiltrated and taken over by ISIS operatives. Pretty convenient if you have an onerous new cybersecurity bill that is ready to be crammed down the throats of Americans. This also comes on the heels of last week’s savage murders of ten members of French newspaper Charlie Hebdo and two cops by Islamist extremists that is being hyped 24/7 by the fear mongers in the media.

The Washington Post is reporting that “U.S. military social media accounts apparently hacked by Islamic State sympathizers”:

Social media accounts for the U.S. military’s Central Command appeared to have been hacked on Monday, with the command posting threatening messages on Twitter and YouTube to American troops.

The first rogue tweet was posted about 12:30 p.m. It appeared to come from sympathizers of the Islamic State militant group. The Central Command has orchestrated the U.S.-led airstrike campaign against the militants in Iraq and Syria and is beginning to train Iraqi troops to respond to the threat in the region.

The background and profile photo of the Centcom account were both changed to show an apparent militant and the phrases “CyberCaliphate” and “i love you isis,” using one of the acronyms for the militant group.

In a statement, the Central Command confirmed that its Twitter account had been “compromised” and said it “is taking appropriate measures to address the matter.” The statement did not elaborate on the extent or seriousness of the hack or who may have been responsible. The account was disabled by Twitter around 1:10 p.m.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the Obama administration is “examining and investigating the extent of the incident.”

You can bet that they are “investigating” it alright as in investigating how best to fold it into Emperor Barack Obama’s big pre-State of the Union address sales pitch for even more invasive surveillance laws - wrapped in the cloaking of cybersecurity and that Sony hacking.  Hell, Obama might as well just take to the podium before Congress next Tuesday, roll out a portable shredder and proceed to feed the U.S. Constitution into it on national television.

The Washington Post reports that “this story is developing”.  What all of this hacking and demagoguery by the federal government is really "developing" is an overwhelming stench of bullshit. It is getting to be pretty sad when anything that comes out of the government must be treated with pure skepticism but when the lying by high officials is the first – if not only – resort such is the level that we have descended to in this once great country.

NSA Friendly Judge Sucker Punches Microsoft in Email Privacy Ruling

The lasting damage inflicted upon American tech companies by the out of control NSA surveillance machine never gets the attention that it deserves. While the ongoing trashing of civil liberties, the gutting of the constitution and the complete elimination of all rights to privacy have turned this once great country into a borderline totalitarian state, the effects of government spying have been nothing short of devastating to business. The inability to protect privacy along with the ongoing NSA efforts to crack encryption and lack of NSA oversight are putting American business at a long-term competitive disadvantage. Once there has been sufficient development of systems in other countries that offer a degree of protection for consumers and laws that protect them from warrantless bulk data collection there will be an exodus that will only further damage an already reeling economy. The leaders of the big tech corporations get this too. They have appealed to President Barack Obama to reign in his renegade American Stasi on more than one occasion. Yet the machine only becomes more deeply entrenched in a protected position from accountability.

The latest blow to American big tech comes courtesy of  U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska who has ruled that Microsoft must surrender customer emails stored on a server in Ireland. Microsoft had fought a warrant on the basis that the overseas subsidiary was outside of the country and therefore not subject to the demands of U.S. authorities. The Redmond, WA based company has no doubt incurred the ire of the Obama regime and the national surveillance state by openly and defiantly challenging National Security Letters (NSL). Microsoft is a corporation with the resources, brand name clout and army of lawyers that can actually fight back against Leviathan. They recently won a battle with the FBI over an NSL, putting a huge bug up the ass of Eric Holder at the Justice Department. As Reuters reports in a story entitled "Microsoft ordered by U.S. judge to submit customer's emails from abroad":

Microsoft Corp must turn over a customer's emails and other account information stored in a data center in Ireland to the U.S. government, a judge ruled on Thursday, in a case that has drawn concern from privacy groups and major technology companies.

Microsoft and other U.S. companies had challenged the warrant, arguing it improperly extended the authority of federal prosecutors to seize customer information held in foreign countries.

Following a two-hour court hearing in New York, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska said a search warrant approved by a federal magistrate judge required the company to hand over any data it controlled, regardless of where it was stored.

"It is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information," Preska said.

The emails were classified not as private communications by the Obama regime but as "business records" which are subject to government confiscation under that most anti-American of laws that is the USAPATRIOT Act. The law was crammed down the throats of fear-stricken Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 with zero debate. The U.S.Congress completely rolled over despite a transformational law contradictory to the very nature of a free society. The law was originally given a sunset provision which in a rational country would be simply allowed to expire after the state of emergency. But here in what used to be the "land of the free and the home of the brave" the renewals keep coming as does the legal chicanery from the executive branch that further cement fascism firmly into place within the American judicial system.

This is the way that it now works in The Homeland. When a judge rules against the intrusions of the feds as happened back in December when Federal judge Richard Leon ruled that the NSA bulk collection of telephone records was likely "unconstitutional" and definitely "Orwellian" it isn't allowed to stand.  The usual defenders of the national surveillance state including Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey threw a tantrum and the very next week in another court, an NSA friendly verdict was declared. Judge William Pauley effectively nullified Leon's ruling by declaring such surveillance to be perfectly legal and in doing so erected a veritable firewall against the spying power of big government.

Microsoft ran into that firewall on Thursday showing that the preservation of the critical social control programs of the U.S. government along with the ability to protect the criminals in high places trumps the long-term benefits of American tech corporations.

Microsoft has issued a statement that the ruling will be appealed. It's time for big tech to unify and lawyer up because it is going to take a lot of money and effort to fight what is a corrupt and rigged system.

Executive Order 12333: The Root of All Evil

The cornerstone of the post-September 11, 2001 new order of unaccountable mass surveillance, data-mining and the transformation of the United States of America into a land of war and woe called The Homeland truly began on December 4, 1981 with then President Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12333. Long before the USA PATRIOT Act was rammed through a cowardly Congress in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks with no legitimate debate there was 12333 or "twelve-triple-tree" as insiders refer to it. With the continuing unveiling of different aspects of what is now obviously a "turnkey totalitarian" fascist state lurking just below the surface of the increasingly thinner outer veil that is the public government by whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, William Binney and Thomas Drake - as well as others who are still working anonymously (according to recent stories on NSA documents not provided by Snowden) we are on the precipice of losing even the pretense of freedom and democracy.

Executive Order 12333, which gave the intelligence apparatus a blank check to operate with impunity, to the point where it is arguable that it essentially created a shadow government  has been getting some long-deserved attention as of late. A story in McClatchy last year entitled "Most of NSA’s data collection authorized by order Ronald Reagan" is where the highly secret circumvention of the US Constitution broke out of the darkness and a recent follow-up editorial was published in the Washington Post entitled "Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans" further shedding light on this most anti-American of diktats.  That 12333 was unleashed by Reagan, whose administration served as an incubator for the neocons who would resurface during the Bush-Cheney years after 9/11 was used as both a political cudgel to batter critics of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as to implement new NSA domestic surveillance programs that far exceeded the legitimate governing principles of the US. Reagan's administration also spawned the Iran-Contra cowboys, in particular Lt. Colonel Oliver North who facilitated covert arms and drug sales to finance extremist right-wing militias in Nicaragua.

North also had a fetish for surveillance, notable a program called REX 84 that was a prototype for martial law in America and dabbled with the advanced PROMIS software to spy on political dissidents and under a vaguely defined "national emergency" would suspend the constitution and put the control of the government under FEMA. Several years back journalist Christopher Ketcham did an outstanding piece entitled "The Last Roundup" which addressed the metastasizing cancer of the authoritarian surveillance-police state and the lists that were then being compiled for potential internment when that "national emergency" was declared. I excerpt the following from Ketcham:

The overzealous compilation of a domestic watch list is not unique in post-war American history. In 1950, the FBI, under the notoriously paranoid J. Edgar Hoover, began to "accumulate the names, identities, and activities" of suspect American citizens in a rapidly expanding "security index," according to declassified documents. In a letter to the Truman White House, Hoover stated that in the event of certain emergency situations, suspect individuals would be held in detention camps overseen by "the National Military Establishment." By 1960, a congressional investigation later revealed, the FBI list of suspicious persons included "professors, teachers, and educators; labor-union organizers and leaders; writers, lecturers, newsmen, and others in the mass-media field; lawyers, doctors, and scientists; other potentially influential persons on a local or national level; [and] individuals who could potentially furnish financial or material aid" to unnamed "subversive elements." This same FBI "security index" was allegedly maintained and updated into the 1980s, when it was reportedly transferred to the control of none other than FEMA (though the FBI denied this at the time).

FEMA, however—then known as the Federal Preparedness Agency—already had its own domestic surveillance system in place, according to a 1975 investigation by Senator John V. Tunney of California. Tunney, the son of heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney and the inspiration for Robert Redford's character in the film The Candidate, found that the agency maintained electronic dossiers on at least 100,000 Americans, which contained information gleaned from wideranging computerized surveillance. The database was located in the agency's secret underground city at Mount Weather, near the town of Bluemont, Virginia. The senator's findings were confirmed in a 1976 investigation by the Progressive magazine, which found that the Mount Weather computers "can obtain millions of pieces [of] information on the personal lives of American citizens by tapping the data stored at any of the 96 Federal Relocation Centers"—a reference to other classified facilities. According to the Progressive, Mount Weather's databases were run "without any set of stated rules or regulations. Its surveillance program remains secret even from the leaders of the House and the Senate."

Ten years later, a new round of government martial law plans came to light. A report in the Miami Herald contended that Reagan loyalist and Iran-Contra conspirator Colonel Oliver North had spearheaded the development of a "secret contingency plan,"—code named REX 84—which called "for suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the United States over to FEMA, [and the] appointment of military commanders to run

state and local governments." The North plan also reportedly called for the detention of upwards of 400,000 illegal aliens and an undisclosed number of American citizens in at least 10 military facilities maintained as potential holding camps.

North's program was so sensitive in nature that when Texas Congressman Jack Brooks attempted to question North about it during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, he was rebuffed even by his fellow legislators. "I read in Miami papers and several others that there had been a plan by that same agency [FEMA] that would suspend the American Constitution," Brooks said. "I was deeply concerned about that and wondered if that was the area in which he [North] had worked." Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Iran, immediately cut off his colleague, saying, "That question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that, sir." Though Brooks pushed for an answer, the line of questioning was not allowed to proceed.

Wired magazine turned up additional damaging information, revealing in 1993 that North, operating from a secure White House site, allegedly employed a software database program called PROMIS (ostensibly as part of the REX 84 plan). PROMIS, which has a strange and controversial history, was designed to track individuals—prisoners, for example—by pulling together information from disparate databases into a single record. According to Wired, "Using the computers in his command center, North tracked dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon's enemies list or Senator Joe McCarthy's blacklist looks downright crude." Sources have suggested to Radar that government databases tracking Americans today, including Main Core, could still have PROMIS based legacy code from the days when North was running his programs.

In the wake of 9/11, domestic surveillance programs of all sorts expanded dramatically. As one well-placed source in the intelligence community puts it, "The gloves seemed to come off." What is not yet clear is what sort of still-undisclosed programs may have been authorized by the Bush White House. Marty Lederman, a high-level official at the Department of Justice under Clinton, writing on a law blog last year, wondered, "How extreme were the programs they implemented [after 9/11]? How egregious was the lawbreaking?" Congress has tried, and mostly failed, to find out.

12333 was very fortuitous for the opportunist North, a traitor if there ever were one and the rest of his Iran-Contra cabal who are to this day turning up in positions of influence as the Obama regime relentlessly targets that longtime neocon object of hatred Russia. Reagan's executive order is now even more dangerous given the ridiculous criteria that the US government is using to place law-abiding citizens on an ever expanding "terorist" watch list as was just documented in a huge story by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux at The Intercept entitled  "Blacklisted: The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist" where the secret Obama administration enhanced rulebook was published. What we have here is absolute power with absolutely no accountability and with the courts and congress being weaponized against the people no realistic chance to effect any meaningful reform of these out of control agencies and programs.

While it is somewhat encouraging that "twelve-triple-three" is finally getting noticed and according to a story that was published yesterday in The Guardian entitled "US warned: surveillance reform hinges on change to Reagan executive order" the same former State Department official who wrote the Washington Post editorial on 12333 is pushing for awareness that any serious reform must start with the rollback of this crown jewel of the fascist state. I excerpt from The Guardian piece:

Like Snowden, Tye means to spark a debate on the proper boundaries of NSA authorities. His focus is on an obscure, Reagan-era executive order that serves as a foundational set of rules for the intelligence apparatus. The order, known as Executive Order 12333, renders the current surveillance debate hollow, he said, even as it shows signs of traction in the Senate.

"Without reform of activities under 12333, changes to the 215 program won't address the major challenges to Americans' privacy from the NSA," Tye, who until April worked on promoting internet freedom issues at Foggy Bottom, told the Guardian, using legal shorthand for the domestic phone data collection.

Without recourse to the trove of documentation Snowden disclosed to journalists – and speaking somewhat obliquely to underscore his stated refusal to discuss classified information – Tye said that 12333 provides NSA with a pathway to collect and retain Americans' data without a warrant, routing around laws intend to restrict and control both.

Tye is correct but the clock is ticking and time is rapidly running out. With half the world ablaze with war and social unrest - largely due to a deranged US foreign policy - and Obama and Kerry hellbent on starting World War III to avenge personal slights by Putin we very well are nearing that "national emergency" that Lt. Colonel North was setting up a response for. Any "terrorist" attack - either legitimate or that promised Dick Cheney special will firmly lockdown this country forever and all of that data that has been mined will be used to generate the pickup lists. If you are even reading this there is a damned good chance that you will be on one.

Treacherous Senate Rolls Out New Cybersecurity Bill

The number one enemy of the American people and enablers of the ongoing spree to gut the US Constitution is at it again with yet another attack on privacy. The Senate, led by the impenetrable firewall of cellulite that protects the NSA Stasi - California's Dianne Feinstein - has just passed out of committee a new cybersecurity bill that represents the institutionalized rottenness of the legislative body in all of it's resplendent putrescence. The onerous bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) was voted on in secret to avoid that always pesky public scrutiny and with a 12-3 win is headed to the full Senate in an election year where it should easily pass given the renewed climate of fear-mongering and demagoguery since the magnificently fortuitous appearance of ISIS and the return of US troops to Iraq. The Republicans will bludgeon the always feckless Democrats as being weak on terrorism and the party of Obama and Hillary, terrified at being called chicken will submit.

The bill is a resurrection of CISPA which while passing the House of Representatives - it was championed by the puffy fascist from Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers who will soon be leaving for a right-wing talk radio career - didn't make through the Senate which allowed Feinstein and her fellow snakes ample opportunity to scheme and CISA was the result. This bill is nothing but one more betrayal by the US Congress and a sellout to corporate America, which will have bestowed upon it the gift of immunity as customer data is passed onto the NSA without a warrant under the guise of protection against cyber attacks - the newest version of WMD which serve as justification to sell out Americans for political gain.

According to a story in The Guardian, "Senate committee adopts cybersecurity bill opposed by NSA critics":

Pushed by Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, the California Democrat and Georgia Republican who lead the committee, the bill would remove legal obstacles that block firms from sharing information "in real time" about cyber-attacks and prevention or mitigation measures with one another and with the US government.

Worrying civil libertarians is that the NSA and its twin military command, US Cyber Command, would receive access to vast amounts of data, and privacy guidelines for the handling of that data are yet to be developed.

A draft of the bill released in mid-June would permit government agencies to share, retain and use the information for "a cybersecurity purpose" – defined as "the purpose of protecting an information system or information that is stored on, processed by or transiting an information system from a cybersecurity threat or security vulnerability" – raising the prospect of the NSA stockpiling a catalogue of weaknesses in digital security, as a recent White House data-assurance policy permits.

It would also prevent participating companies from being sued for sharing data with each other and the government, even though many companies offer contract terms of service prohibiting the sharing of client or customer information without explicit consent.

AND

Champions of a similar bill that passed the House of Representatives last year despite a White House veto threat urged the full Senate to follow the intelligence panel's lead.

"These attacks cost our country billions of dollars through the loss of jobs and intellectual property. We are confident that the House and the Senate will quickly come together to address this urgent threat and craft a final bill that secures our networks and protects privacy and civil liberties," said Mike Rogers of Michigan and Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House intelligence committee.

[That would be the same Dutch Ruppersberger whose  Congressional district happens to include the Fort Meade command center of the NSA Stasi and Mike Rogers whose wife is a lobbyist - isn't it a conflict of interest to have a husband who presides over the House Intelligence Committee?]

But digital rights advocates warn that the measure will give the government, including the NSA, access to more information than just that relating to cyberthreats, potentially creating a new avenue for broad governmental access to US data even as Congress and the Obama administration contemplate restricting the NSA's domestic collection.

The bill contains "catch-all provisions that would allow for the inclusion of a lot more than malicious code. It could include the content of communications. That's one of the biggest concerns," said Gabriel Rottman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The CISA data-sharing agreement is nothing more than a convenient end-around, a circumvention of any sort of legal restraint that will throw open the door to increased data-mining and content grabbing of millions of innocent US citizens/consumers which will be delivered to an unaccountable NSA without any oversight. But then again that is what Congress, particularly the high-powered committee heads are there for, to grease the rails and use every sort of legal trickery in the book to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution while selling out their constituents for a dollar a dozen.

There is still an opportunity to stop CISA by bringing immense public pressure and utilizing privacy organization petitions and mailing tools but it is going to be a pitched, uphill battle against an entrenched enemy that in no way other than lip-service represents regular Americans. 

Dianne Feinstein Lashes Out While Corrupt Congress Guts NSA Reforms

Apparently having now put her little snit with the CIA behind her, Senate Intelligence Committee boss Dianne Feinstein, the woman who has long served as an impenetrable firewall of cellulite between accountability and the run amok NSA Stasi is back with a vengeance. DiFi, while appearing on the Sunday morning bloviation circuit with CNN's Candy Crowley snapped while discussing the new Glenn Greenwald book "No Place to Hide" that - “It’s not a surveillance program, it’s a data-collection program”. The testy California Senator may have inadvertently let the the cat out of the bag on that one because it IS a data-collection program, specifically a data-mining program conducted on damned near the entire US population and once it has been collected it is being stored for some yet to be defined future use. That future use is to be social control and the best protection that money can buy for a system so vile and corrupt that there really is no adequate terminology to truly describe it.

The data that has been collected will be used to identify political dissidents or troublemakers challenging the imposition of fascism in America. But that is the purpose (outside of the surveillance end which likely includes sexual blackmail of political figures, industrial espionage on a grand scale, money laundering, the manipulation of financial markets and probably even state sanctioned drug trafficking) of what the NSA and the millions of private contractors - to lock down the illicit activities of those in high places when the shit finally does hit the fan and as in all tyrannies the roundup of problem people is a top priority. Criminals like Feinstein fully understand what the programs are for because she is the one charged with oversight which is pretty much like the financial oversight that has been provided by those like Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson - the best and probably oldest scam in the book is to enable corruption by putting a crook or in Feinstein's case, a sociopath with zero morality in charge of minding the store.

Feinstein like the other treasonous swine who have hijacked the country using the September 11, 2001 attacks as an excuse continues to engage in the same fear-mongering to avoid oversight that has been used since Dick Cheney took over the show on that day while Bush was flying around the country like a scared rabbit. DiFi played the "terror" card by saying “I know they will come after us if they can, I see the intelligence” [not bothering to say exactly who "they" are nor that the "intelligence" is cooked to exaggerate such threats and keep the money rolling in] and “Terror is not down in the world, it is up" [failing to mention that the Empire's wars of aggression aren't exactly winning hearts and minds]. Call it what it is but now would be a perfect time for some sort of false flag attack that would forever end scrutiny of the rising menace of the star-spangled totalitarian state before it has finished baking, as the late Hunter S. Thompson put it "paranoia is just another word for ignorance" and nothing should ever be put beyond the capability of the lunatics who are running the system these days.

To the Obama administration and this most detestable of legislatures there has been no bigger thorn in the side than former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Just when the NSA Stasi stories had died down allowing the war machine to turn attention towards backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine and goading Russian leader Vladimir Putin into a response that would trigger a new Cold War - sending arms sales skyrocketing - there is renewed interest. This comes due to the Greenwald book and the surprisingly wide media attention that the author has been getting in The Homeland. There are also, as Greenwald promises more stories to come and soon including that really serious stuff that he has been teasing us with. In his GQ interview "The Man Who Knows Too Much" he made the statement that:

There's a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I'm saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it.

I suspect that Feinstein and her ilk have an inkling about exactly what that "big missing piece" is and while it may not be the smoking gun that nails them all to the wall it may provide a sufficient piece of the puzzle that will provide other journalists, activists and bloggers with the material to begin to tie together a lot of disparate coincidences and strangeness into the damning indictment of criminals in high places that is desperately needed. The scum are likely praying for a terrorist attack - the bigger, the better - right about now.

On the "reform" front things aren't working out so well in terms of transparency and control over the surveillance AND data collection colossus. Predictably the so-called USA FREEDOM Act is being disemboweled by right-wing talk radio bound Michigan Congressmen Mike Rogers and his on the take authoritarian allies.  According to a story in The Hill entitled "Advocates fear NSA bill is being gutted":

Privacy advocates are worried that a bill intended to reform the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) is being watered down before it heads to the House floor.

“Last stage negotiations” between members of the House and the Obama administration could significantly weaken provisions in the NSA bill, people familiar with the discussions say.

“Behind the scenes, there’s some nervousness,” one House aide said.

Earlier this month, the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees came together to approve a compromise version of the USA Freedom Act. That bill, authored by Patriot Act author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), would scale back many of the sweeping surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden.

To win the support of NSA defenders, lawmakers abandoned some reform provisions in Sensenbrenner’s original bill. One of the major changes was dropping the appointment of a constitutional advocate to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the NSA’s spying requests, and substituting it for a panel of experts.

The bill was also stripped of language that would have allowed tech companies to publish more specific information about the number and types of government requests for user data they receive.

During Judiciary consideration, an amendment to allow less specific reporting was added back into the bill, but some worry that provision is in danger now because the administration thinks it’s already reached a deal that allows tech companies to publish more information about the NSA requests.

While pro-reform advocacy groups and members hailed the House bill as a positive first step, many lamented the revisions and said the legislation will be in trouble on the floor if it undergoes further changes.

There is a “growing chorus of concern” that the bill that makes it to the floor for a vote could be a less meaningful version of what passed the Judiciary and Intelligence committees with overwhelming bipartisan support, the aide said.

Reform advocates warn they will withdraw their support for the bill if the final version doesn’t pass muster.

The only "muster" that will be passed is that of the status quo as those who have assumed positions of power do not surrender it willingly. The best hope would be for the forthcoming stories from Greenwald and his associates will be sufficiently shocking so as to make the case for not only reform but a movement to dismantle the NSA entirely as the enemy to a free society and affront to the US Constitution that it has become. Trials, convictions and prison sentences for the enablers of this monstrous pox on the planet would be an added bonus.  

US Mired in Cold War Mentality as Cuban Twitter Scheme Exposed

It's back to the future in The Homeland circa 2014. When the neocons and the dimwitted Obama administration are not actively poking the bear in Russia, for example the destabilization and overthrow of the democratically elected leader in Ukraine and hurling propaganda stink bombs at the Sochi Winter Olympic games they are still to this day trying to foment revolution in Cuba. Jesus Christ, have any of the lunatics who are running this great star-spangled asylum ever studied history? The government that Castro built - after kicking out mobsters and rapacious corporate interests, not that there is much if any difference - has endured for nearly sixty years and eleven US presidents. It would just have to be the ultimate narcissist, Barack Obama who thinks that he can be the one to finally stick a fork into it.

The latest example in an endless series of botched plots is that of ZunZuneo, or the "Cuban Twitter" that was revealed to be a covert attempt by the Obama regime to destabilize the government. Hell, we can't do anything rational such as to normalize relations and open Cuba to American investment and trade the proverbial rising tide that would lift all boats, if anything the ongoing debacle in Iran is proof of that, the dirty trick bag has to be opened and the Cuban government subverted in the finest of post WW II US foreign policy tradition. The story of this show of stupidity by Team Obama was broken by the Associated Press. I excerpt the following from the piece entitled "US SECRETLY CREATED 'CUBAN TWITTER' TO STIR UNREST":

In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government.

McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit executives who would not be told of the company's ties to the U.S. government.

McSpedon didn't work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid.

According to documents obtained by The Associated Press and multiple interviews with people involved in the project, the plan was to develop a bare-bones "Cuban Twitter," using cellphone text messaging to evade Cuba's strict control of information and its stranglehold restrictions over the Internet. In a play on Twitter, it was called ZunZuneo — slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet.

Documents show the U.S. government planned to build a subscriber base through "non-controversial content": news messages on soccer, music and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize "smart mobs" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice that might trigger a Cuban Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."

So the cover is now blown on USAID as being just another front for the endless series of escapades by the US government and the NGO's which are really for the most part front groups in the meddling in the affairs of other countries. The Cold War may officially be over but the dead enders just never stop. Just look at the escalating mess in Ukraine where the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which took place of the more ostentatious CIA in doing the dirty work of toppling governments not sufficiently following the Washington line. Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland during a speech to predatory corporations looking to feast on the spoils of the carved up Ukraine boasted of the $5 billion that the US government had plowed into the country - hell, it's not like it could be used to actually do some investment in America. The NED's role in spreading "democracy" at gunpoint and beating the concept into all who refuse to go along with the corporate colonization in the torture chambers of the murderous despots that we the US taxpayers fund was already well established but USAID. at least had some semblance of legitimacy - good job Obama, there that one goes as well. Is it too late to get George W. Bush to come back?

The White House naturally denied that the Cuban Twitter plot was a covert operation but there are Congressional (yes those worthless bastards) probes forthcoming. With Senator Robert "whore chaser" Menendez already chiming in approvingly:  "The whole purpose of our democracy programs, whether it be in Cuba or other parts of the world, is in part to create a free flow of information in closed societies" - the sheer hypocrisy is incredible, given that the New Jersey based kingpin of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee continue to be one of the most vocal advocates of the unconstitutional NSA Stasi mass domestic surveillance and data-mining programs. For further elaboration on the ZunZuneo operation as well as other more nefarious aspects of the collaborative program between the NSA and those Norsefire fascists across the pond at GCHQ Glenn Greenwald has just published a very good piece over at his new platform The Intercept entitled "The “Cuban Twitter” Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket", it like all of his work is strongly recommended reading.

So on and on it goes with this sick obsession with Cold War style skullduggery and an absolute refusal to become an honest partner in what is an increasingly globalized world where the US establishment as well as the deep state and shadow government that lie underneath continue with their wretched, dishonest and murderous ways. The one place that is so badly in need of one of those regime changes is right here in the US of A. 

The Al Qaeda Switchboard: Did CIA Obstruction of Justice Enable 9/11 Attacks?

The arguments being presented by the defenders of the NSA Stasi’s metadata harvesting efforts, in particular federal judge William Pauley whose post-Christmas ruling erected a firewall for the activities of the unconstitutional fascist surveillance state should be carefully scrutinized. A recent article in The New Yorker entitled “The Al Qaeda Switchboard” poses some critical questions for arguments made to justify the intrusions on the telephone data of tens of millions of law abiding Americans. The story which was written by the Pulitzer Prize winning Lawrence Wright who wrote the book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" reports that both the NSA and CIA already had the information that could have prevented the attacks yet for whatever reason, the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency with an extensive history of subterfuge as well as a disregard for the law withheld the critical information from the FBI.

This is a very interesting and brief article and is of particular relevance after Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings where questions were posed to Obama’s surveillance review panel and prior to Friday’s speech outlining “smart changes” (translation: cosmetic bullshit) as far as implementing controls over a rogue agency. While the entrenched defenders of the fascist surveillance state continue to write their columns, appear on television talk shows to recite talking points and otherwise engage in the all too standard post September 11, 2001 use of fear-mongering to preserve their oppressive programs of which a formal explanation of exactly why all of that information on innocent citizens is needed. Before I go into the New Yorker column please note the following on metadata from a piece by former NSA analyst Kirk Wiebe over at Antiwar.com entitled “NSA’s Preference for Metadata":

Metadata collection can answer all but one of the five “W’s” of journalism: the Who, What, Where and When. Given time, it can even respond to “Why” someone interfaces with digital information systems the way they do. It can do this because it is possible to discern patterns of behavior in metadata.

A very simple example: You go to work via a toll road, taking essentially the same route five days a week, for about 48 weeks a year. A license plate scanner produces information about where your car was when it was scanned – and at what time. Your passive transponder (e.g., E-Z Pass) records your entrance onto the toll road at which ramp, and when you were there. The same transponder reports when and where you got off the toll road.

You stopped to get gas. Your credit card records where you were and when you bought the gas. You arrive at work and turn on your computer. Your Internet service provider (ISP) records when an IP address was given to your computer and what time it was provided. The IP address is associated with a server at a location with a specific address and is associated with your name.

So it is possible to know when you arrived at work. Or perhaps you called your wife to tell her you arrived safely. Your phone has locational information and the time of the call is recorded. Of course, the phone is associated with your account/name.

Similarly, any deviation from these patterns – for whatever reason – would also be apparent. A consistent deviation might reveal a significant change in your personal life (e. g. job trouble, health problems, marital difficulties).

Just a necessary and well-written bit of context as to what the actual data that the NSA Stasi and its serpents nest of defenders are fighting to keep gathering on American citizens - not terrorists - at least not yet until the day arrives when the crackdown comes and the elimination of dissidents and political problems is put into action. While this metadata and the pattern analysis could at least in theory be used to ferret out and monitor actual terrorists (as they are currently defined) the real underlying problem is that this is being used against all Americans and without warrants as well as through the authorization of a secret court that the actual judiciary powers of the U.S. that operate outside of such secrecy are now mounting a push to reject any oversight of.

Now to the Wright piece, "The Al Qaeda Switchboard" from which I will excerpt several paragraphs in the interest of the greater good so that this critical information can be shared:

Last month, two federal judges came to opposing conclusions about these issues. On December 16th, Judge Richard J. Leon, in Washington, D.C., ruled that the indiscriminate hoarding violates the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and its prohibition of unreasonable searches. Two weeks later, in New York, Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that the metadata-collection program was lawful and effective.

Judge Pauley invoked the example of Khalid al-Mihdhar, a Saudi jihadist who worked for Al Qaeda. On 9/11, he was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. In early 2000, Mihdhar made seven calls from San Diego to an Al Qaeda safe house in Yemen. According to Pauley, the N.S.A. intercepted the calls, but couldn’t identify where Mihdhar was calling from. Relying on testimony by Robert Mueller, the former director of the F.B.I., Pauley concluded that metadata collection could have allowed the bureau to discover that the calls were being made from the U.S., in which case the bureau could have stopped 9/11.

If he is right, advocates of extensive monitoring by the government have a strong case. But the Mihdhar calls tell a different story about why the bureau failed to prevent the catastrophe. The C.I.A. withheld crucial intelligence from the F.B.I., which has the ultimate authority to investigate terrorism in the U.S. and attacks on Americans abroad.

In August, 1998, truck bombs destroyed two American Embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania, killing two hundred and twenty-four people. Three days later, F.B.I. investigators captured a young Saudi named Mohammad al-‘Owhali at a hotel outside Nairobi. He had fresh stitches in his forehead and bloody bandages on his hands. In his pocket were eight brand-new hundred-dollar bills. Two skilled interrogators, Steve Gaudin and John Anticev, persuaded ‘Owhali to write down the number he called after the bombing. It belonged to Khalid al-Mihdhar’s father-in-law, Ahmed al-Hada, and was one of the most important pieces of information ever obtained in the effort to prevent terrorist acts in the U.S. It became known as the Al Qaeda switchboard.

The N.S.A.’s tracking of calls to and from the Hada household allowed the F.B.I. to map the global network of Al Qaeda. But not all the information was shared. In 1999, Mihdhar’s name surfaced in one of the recorded calls, linking him to Al Qaeda. “Something nefarious might be afoot,” an N.S.A. analyst wrote, but Mihdhar’s name was not passed on to the F.B.I.

Saudi intelligence also alerted the C.I.A. that Mihdhar and his friend Nawaf al-Hazmi, another future hijacker, were members of Al Qaeda. In December, 1999, the C.I.A. learned through the Al Qaeda switchboard that the two would be travelling to Malaysia for a meeting in early January. The agency broke into Mihdhar’s hotel room in Dubai and photographed his passport, which had a multi-entry visa to the U.S. That information was not given to the F.B.I.; nor was the State Department told to revoke his visa, or Immigration to place Mihdhar and Hazmi on the list of people forbidden to enter the U.S. The C.I.A. evidently had begun an operation, and it wanted no interference from other government agencies.

The meeting in Malaysia turned out to be an Al Qaeda summit to discuss plans for 9/11 and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, which took place in October, 2000. The C.I.A. had its Malaysian counterparts conduct surveillance of the meeting, but did not show that information—mainly photographs of the participants—to the F.B.I., in effect obstructing its investigation into the deaths of seventeen American sailors.

When the cable about Mihdhar’s U.S. visa and the Malaysia meeting arrived at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, an F.B.I. officer sought permission to transmit the findings to the bureau. Although there was a protocol to allow the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to exchange critical information, he was told, “This is not a matter for the F.B.I.”

Three months later, the C.I.A. learned from Thai intelligence that Hazmi had arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. If the agency had checked the flight manifest, it would have found that Mihdhar was travelling with him. Mihdhar and Hazmi moved to San Diego and began taking flying lessons. And Mihdhar began calling Yemen.

And-

Judge Pauley cites the 9/11 Commission Report for his statement that telephone metadata “might have permitted the N.S.A. to notify the [F.B.I.] of the fact that al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from inside the United States.” What the report actually says is that the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. already knew that Al Qaeda was in America, based on the N.S.A.’s monitoring of the Hada phone. If they had told the F.B.I., the agents would have established a link to the embassy-bombings case, which “would have made them very interested in learning more about Mihdhar.” Instead, “the agents who found the source were being kept from obtaining the fruits of their work.”

The N.S.A. failed to understand the significance of the calls between the U.S. and Yemen. The C.I.A. had access to the intelligence, and knew that Al Qaeda was in the U.S. almost two years before 9/11. An investigation by the C.I.A.’s inspector general found that up to sixty people in the agency knew that Al Qaeda operatives were in America. The inspector general said that those who refused to cooperate with the F.B.I. should be held accountable. Instead, they were promoted.

And

The intelligence community has since been reorganized to prevent such closeting of information. Many terrorist schemes have been discovered and prevented. But questions remain about how the C.I.A. handled events leading up to 9/11. What did the agency intend to do about the Al Qaeda operatives in America? The former national-security adviser Richard Clarke believes that the C.I.A. hoped to recruit them.

Edward Snowden broke the law, and the Obama Administration has demanded that he be brought to justice. No one has died because of his revelations. The C.I.A.’s obstruction of justice in the Cole investigation arguably also was a crime. Its failure to share information from the Al Qaeda switchboard opened the door to the biggest terrorist attack in history. As long as we’re talking about accountability, why shouldn’t we demand it of the C.I.A.? 

Mr. Wright asks some very valuable and insightful questions in "The Al Qaeda Switchboard" and none of them have been answered by the defenders of the NSA metadata collection programs. It would seem that were the CIA to have acted in good faith as well as the interests of American citizens that the information that could have potentially stopped 'the day that changed everything' but then again, maybe they didn't want to stop it for whatever reasons served their interests. It does beg some questions and not the state-corporate media and corrupt establishment's fitting of those who ask them with the cone-shaped tin-foil dunce hat and then sent to sit in the corner with a sign upon the pejorative "conspiracy theorist" is written and taped to their backs.

The Surveillance State Counter Offensive Begins

Given the immense amount of time, money and effort put forth into the construction of the infrastructure of the fascist surveillance state of the new American century along with the eradication of civil liberties it was inevitable that the big pushback was coming. A scant week and a half after the body blow delivered to the NSA Stasi by federal judge Richard Leon for “likely unconstitutional” and “Orwellian” domestic data-mining/spying programs the hydra has reconfigured. Today’s ruling by U.S. District Judge William Pauley in a New York court that the NSA programs are indeed constitutional has delivered a shot across the bow to those seeking to bring the tyrannical apparatus to heel and delivered a belated Christmas present to authoritarian defenders of the abuses of the state against individual rights. The ruling has already sent the treacherous enablers of the destruction of all privacy into jubilation, the porcine terrorist supporting neo-McCarthyist bigot Peter King praised Pauley, stating that his decision “preserves a vital weapon for the United States in our war against international terrorism”. Peals of festive holiday laughter will echo thoughout the lavish homes of vacationing elected officials particularly Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein because nothing quite delivers like a reprobate judge in a friendly venue. What Judge Pauley didn't bother to mention when rubber-stamping fascism with the 'terrorism' seal of approval is that none of the spying has ever been proven to have stopped even one terror plot but is very useful to the state when dissenters begin to be officially labeled as 'terrorists'.

The ruling smacked down an ACLU challenge to the anti-American domestic bulk data collection of the phone records of tens of millions of law abiding citizens whose constitutional rights ot not be subjected to unreaonable searches. Pauley played the 9/11 card beautifully in writing that “technology allowed al Qaeda to operate decentralized and plot international attacks remotely” and that the programs represented the “government’s counter-punch”. Sucker punch is more like it given that Americans have never been given any say so in the use of the ‘day that everything changed’ to steal their tax money and use it to pay billions of dollars to well-heeled contractors waving campaign donations at corrupt politicians to effectively pay for their own enslavement. Fittingly the ruling was delivered in Manhattan, the birthplace of the full blown fascist takeover of what used to be at least in theory a free country.

Sunday morning talk show bookers are likely frantically lining up their Sabbath day state propaganda forums with the usual defenders of this new order and the those same programs will serve as the launching pad for the coming smear campaigns, fear-mongering and official lies that will now be used to cement the surveillance systerms into place forever. Again, all of this is not any surprise for there are too many criminals in high places and far too much rottenness that would be exposed were the NSA programs brought under control and exposed to transparency. There had to have been much gnashing of the teeth earlier this week when former government contractor Booz-Allen employee turned whistleblower Edward Snowden effectively rubbed the noses of the usurpers into a big pile of shit with his “mission accomplished” statement then followed up by his response to the Queen of England’s Christmas address. Now it’s payback time.

At the tip of the spear will be the professional electronic hitmen, for example celebrity pundit, fascist activist and Harvard big shot Alan Dershowitz who appeared on CNN on Wednesday to viciously slime former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald in his typical cowardly and vile manner:

“As far as Greenwald is concerned, he’s an ideologue. I don’t think he would have revealed this information if it had been critical of Venezuela or Cuba or the Palestinian Authority. You know, he doesn’t like America. He doesn’t like Western democracies. He’s never met a terrorist he didn’t like. So he’s a very hard-left ideologue that uses this to serve his political agenda not simply to reveal information in a neutral way. That makes him very different from WikiLeaks, I think.”

A charlatan of the highest order Dershowitz despite his high public profile has little credibility which makes him a perfect regular on the state-corporate media whenever the need for character assassination beckons. It is rarely if ever noted that he is a media whore of an opportunist whose idea of legal integrity was to attach himself to the O.J. Simpson murder trial like a barnacle on the bottom of a garbage barge. It was a media circus that never lacked for clowns and the careers of long tenured cable television ‘legal experts’ are owed to “the Juice”. The references to leftism and being a “very hard left ideologue” are regular talking points directly from the fanatic infested neocon sewer in which the likes of David Horowitz, Pamela Gellar, James Kirchick, BIll Kristol and other propagandists deliver their jeremiads from via Commentary, Front Page Magazine and The Weekly Standard. The attack on Greenwald is a preemptive shot at the new media venture First Look Media, already high on the hit list for a lazy, venal and corrupt media establishment grown fat from suckling off of power. Dershowitz makes Geraldo Rivera look like a towering giant of journalism by comparison.

It would be interesting to know what ensured that Judge Pauley could be counted on to be the go to guy on this latest use of the Constitution as toilet paper but don’t count any serious analysis from the normal poisoned information channels while trashing Judge Leon’s competence and integrity are fair game. Just listen to Bush regime’s legal eagle on codifying torture John Yoo whose expertise has been trotted out for something outside of opining on whether the president has the right to crush a child’s testicles to smear Leon as "out of touch".

The attack dogs have now been loosed, have the scent of blood in their nostrils and hunt in packs.

Federal Judge: NSA Spying is Orwellian and Unconstitutional

In a stunning smackdown of the NSA surveillance machine a federal judge ruled today that the mass collecting of the phone records of millions of Americans was likely unconstitutional. Judge Richard Leon of the D.C. District Court and an appointee of George W. Bush not only denounced the activities of the American Stasi as “almost Orwellian in scope” and opined that founding father James Madison would be “aghast” at the magnitude of the government surveillance program but also skepticism of NSA claims that such spying has prevented terrorist attacks.  In a 68 page opinion Judge Leon challenged the bread and butter argument that massive data mining programs keep Americans safe daring to challenge the claims of NSA Commandant Keith Alexander at a time when the public relations campaign to get citizens to accept funding their own enslavement is kicking into high gear. “The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack” wrote Leon and taken to the next step would such collections of metadata if truly used as advertised why did they not prevent the Boston Marathon bombing last April?

This is somewhat uncharted territory and legions of government lawyers ensconced in the rotten to the core Justice Department will be working around the clock to find some arcane legal argument that will allow the NSA to continue to ignore what remains of the Constitution.  It is a nice bit of hope today but don’t forget that the same ‘legal’ apparatus found a way to justify former Bush-Cheney figure John Yoo’s statement that the chief executive could order the crushing of a child’s testicles on a whim and also failed to effectively halt the torture state that rose out of the smoking ashes of the World Trade Center. While the ruling came out in favor of conservative activist Larry Klayman, the founder of watchdog group Judicial Watch there should be no victory laps taken just yet. While the DOJ will be working overtime for the holidays (unlike the traitors and leeches in congress) so will the spooks at the NSA as they pore through their data center collection on Judge Leon trying to find some sort of past statement or affiliation which they will then feed into their state media smear machine to discredit him.

The ruling was a bit of a stunning blow to the new surge of positive media puff pieces fed into the propaganda mills seeking to burnish the image of the NSA.  CBS 60 Minutes aired a segment on Sunday night to a national television audience that was so inherently dishonest and rife with conflicts of interest that it is now obvious that the network along with it’s flagship ‘news’ show have now been completely captured by the corrupt government. Not that this should come as a surprise considering the recent revelations that the now infamous Benghazi “Embassy House” segment aired in October and featuring ace bimbo Lara Logan was total bullshit and that her husband was a professional operative who worked on psy ops in Iraq. The reverberations against the NSA piece are already starting to percolate and I will be writing on this in detail tomorrow.  Now that a federal court has actually come out and challenged the constitutionality of Commandant Keith Alexander’s Stasi activities it is the proverbial turd in the holiday party punchbowl.

The online version of Judge Leon’s ruling can be found here.