AIPAC`s Fed Candidate Stanley Fischer on a Warpath

Transcription

KC & Associates Investigations Research Associates
Quinault Valley Guns & Blades / Urban Escape & Evasion Course For 1st Responders
International Relations * Military * Terrorism * Business * Security
www.kcandassociates.org [email protected]
Kathleen Louise dePass Press Agent/Publicist .360.288.2652
From the desk of Craig B Hulet?
Report: NSA Intercepting Laptops Ordered Online, Installing Spyware
Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
The NSA Uses Powerful Toolbox in Effort to Spy on Global Networks
The growing use of license plate readers and its threat to privacy
Graphs by MIT Students Show the Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata and
Dianne Feinstein Admits That Her 'NSA Reform' Bill Is About Protecting Existing
Surveillance Programs
Your USB cable, the spy: Inside the NSA’s catalog of surveillance magic
Latest batch of documents leaked shows NSA's power to pwn.
The Israeli Criminals behind the NSA Spy Scandal AIPAC's Fed Candidate Stanley
Fischer on a Warpath against Iran
Declassified Files on Israeli Nuclear Smuggling Revealed Benjamin Netanyahu at Heli
Trading Company involved / More Israel disclosures in Snowden’s trove of 'significant stories'
– Greenwald
Sovereign Citizens
A Growing Domestic Threat to Law Enforcement
by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Analysis Section
Feds announce test sites for drone aircraft / I worked on the US drone program. The public
should know what really goes on
Navy’s 757-Sized Drone Will Provide Big-Time Surveillance
Drone Survival Guide
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Surveillance
Attack
Military surveillance
Domestic surveillance
Consumer
For Unofficial use only
Global Drone deployment U.S. Military
English / Pashto
Leaked Photos of Chemtrail Dispersal System This bogey don’t hunt! Hulet, Out!
FBI Drops Law Enforcement as 'Primary' Mission’ to ‘National Security
The absurdly dangerous militarization of America’s police
Tone Deaf NSA Officials Tell Reporter It's Time to Reform the First Amendment
Rampant Prosecutorial Misconduct
Why aren’t the Wall Street criminals prosecuted?
“Electronic Surveillance Of Private Citizens … Subversive Of Constitutional Government” Was One Of The
Articles Of Impeachment Against President Richard Nixon Approved By A Bipartisan 28 To 10 Vote Of The
House Judiciary Committee On July 27, 1974 Why Isn’t Obama Impeached for Mass Surveillance?
WashingtonsBlog
Report: NSA Intercepting Laptops Ordered Online, Installing Spyware
With each new story we hear of the NSA’s spying program, things get a little bit crazier—a little
more Hollywood, and a lot more galling.
From planting agents in video games like World of Warcraft to a spy satellite adorned with a worlddevouring, tentacled octopus (pictured above) the NSA has shown time and again that it’s willing to
go to just about any length to gather intelligence on both domestic and foreign citizens.
The latter isn’t problematic beyond diplomatic tension. Spy agencies are, by design, bankrolled to
spy on allies and enemies abroad. When it comes to domestic spying, however, we run into
problems.
The latest report, this time via Der Spiegel and based on internal NSA documents, reveals that the
NSA, in conjunction with the CIA and FBI, has begun intercepting laptops purchased online in
order to install (quite literal) spyware and even hardware on the machines. The NSA terms this
“interdiction.” Agents divert shipments to secret warehouses, carefully open the packages, install
the software and/or hardware, and send them on their way.
According to the report, this operation is carried out by the NSA’s elite hacking unit, or TAO—not
to be confused with the much less imposing Taoism—though there are few details on the scope or
targets of the program.
The spy agency reportedly has backdoor access to numerous hardware and software systems from
prominent tech companies such as Cisco, Dell, and Western Digital, among others. The NSA can
even exploit Microsoft Windows error reports to find weak spots in compromised machines in order
to install Trojans and other viruses.
The Der Spiegel report also notes that the NSA has successfully tapped into some of the massive,
under-sea fiber-optic cables that connect the global data infrastructure, in particular the “SEA-MEWE-4″ cable system.
“This massive underwater cable bundle connects Europe with North Africa and the Gulf states and
then continues on through Pakistan and India,” Der Spiegel reports, ”all the way to Malaysia and
Thailand. The cable system originates in southern France, near Marseille. Among the companies
that hold ownership stakes in it are France Telecom, now known as Orange and still partly
government-owned, and Telecom Italia Sparkle.”
As the aforementioned giant octopus logo proudly proclaims: “Nothing is beyond our reach.” Lately
it appears that this is not so much boasting as a simple statement of fact.
The NSA Uses Powerful Toolbox in Effort to Spy on Global Networks
Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
By SPIEGEL Staff
Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
By SPIEGEL Staff
The NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon.
It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even
intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is
targeting.
In January 2010, numerous homeowners in San Antonio, Texas, stood baffled in front of their
closed garage doors. They wanted to drive to work or head off to do their grocery shopping, but
their garage door openers had gone dead, leaving them stranded. No matter how many times they
pressed the buttons, the doors didn't budge. The problem primarily affected residents in the western
part of the city, around Military Drive and the interstate highway known as Loop 410.
In the United States, a country of cars and commuters, the mysterious garage door problem quickly
became an issue for local politicians. Ultimately, the municipal government solved the riddle. Fault
for the error lay with the United States' foreign intelligence service, the National Security Agency,
which has offices in San Antonio. Officials at the agency were forced to admit that one of the
NSA's radio antennas was broadcasting at the same frequency as the garage door openers.
Embarrassed officials at the intelligence agency promised to resolve the issue as quickly as
possible, and soon the doors began opening again.
It was thanks to the garage door opener episode that Texans learned just how far the NSA's work
had encroached upon their daily lives. For quite some time now, the intelligence agency has
maintained a branch with around 2,000 employees at Lackland Air Force Base, also in San Antonio.
In 2005, the agency took over a former Sony computer chip plant in the western part of the city. A
brisk pace of construction commenced inside this enormous compound. The acquisition of the
former chip factory at Sony Place was part of a massive expansion the agency began after the
events of Sept. 11, 2001.
On-Call Digital Plumbers
One of the two main buildings at the former plant has since housed a sophisticated NSA unit, one
that has benefited the most from this expansion and has grown the fastest in recent years -- the
Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. This is the NSA's top operative unit -- something
like a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked.
According to internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL, these on-call digital plumbers are
involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies. TAO's area of
operations ranges from counterterrorism to cyber attacks to traditional espionage. The documents
reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO's disposal have become -- and also how it exploits the
technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its
discreet and efficient attacks.
The unit is "akin to the wunderkind of the US intelligence community," says Matthew Aid, a
historian who specializes in the history of the NSA. "Getting the ungettable" is the NSA's own
description of its duties. "It is not about the quantity produced but the quality of intelligence that is
important," one former TAO chief wrote, describing her work in a document. The paper seen by
SPIEGEL quotes the former unit head stating that TAO has contributed "some of the most
significant intelligence our country has ever seen." The unit, it goes on, has "access to our very
hardest targets."
A Unit Born of the Internet
Defining the future of her unit at the time, she wrote that TAO "needs to continue to grow and must
lay the foundation for integrated Computer Network Operations," and that it must "support
Computer Network Attacks as an integrated part of military operations." To succeed in this, she
wrote, TAO would have to acquire "pervasive, persistent access on the global network." An internal
description of TAO's responsibilities makes clear that aggressive attacks are an explicit part of the
unit's tasks. In other words, the NSA's hackers have been given a government mandate for their
work. During the middle part of the last decade, the special unit succeeded in gaining access to 258
targets in 89 countries -- nearly everywhere in the world. In 2010, it conducted 279 operations
worldwide.
Indeed, TAO specialists have directly accessed the protected networks of democratically elected
leaders of countries. They infiltrated networks of European telecommunications companies and
gained access to and read mails sent over Blackberry's BES email servers, which until then were
believed to be securely encrypted. Achieving this last goal required a "sustained TAO operation,"
one document states.
This TAO unit is born of the Internet -- created in 1997, a time when not even 2 percent of the
world's population had Internet access and no one had yet thought of Facebook, YouTube or
Twitter. From the time the first TAO employees moved into offices at NSA headquarters in Fort
Meade, Maryland, the unit was housed in a separate wing, set apart from the rest of the agency.
Their task was clear from the beginning -- to work around the clock to find ways to hack into global
communications traffic.
Recruiting the Geeks
To do this, the NSA needed a new kind of employee. The TAO workers authorized to access the
special, secure floor on which the unit is located are for the most part considerably younger than the
average NSA staff member. Their job is breaking into, manipulating and exploiting computer
networks, making them hackers and civil servants in one. Many resemble geeks -- and act the part,
too.
Indeed, it is from these very circles that the NSA recruits new hires for its Tailored Access
Operations unit. In recent years, NSA Director Keith Alexander has made several appearances at
major hacker conferences in the United States. Sometimes, Alexander wears his military uniform,
but at others, he even dons jeans and a t-shirt in his effort to court trust and a new generation of
employees.
The recruitment strategy seems to have borne fruit. Certainly, few if any other divisions within the
agency are growing as quickly as TAO. There are now TAO units in Wahiawa, Hawaii; Fort
Gordon, Georgia; at the NSA's outpost at Buckley Air Force Base, near Denver, Colorado; at its
headquarters in Fort Meade; and, of course, in San Antonio.
One trail also leads to Germany. According to a document dating from 2010 that lists the "Lead
TAO Liaisons" domestically and abroad as well as names, email addresses and the number for their
"Secure Phone," a liaison office is located near Frankfurt -- the European Security Operations
Center (ESOC) at the so-called "Dagger Complex" at a US military compound in the Griesheim
suburb of Darmstadt.
But it is the growth of the unit's Texas branch that has been uniquely impressive, the top secret
documents reviewed by SPIEGEL show. These documents reveal that in 2008, the Texas
Cryptologic Center employed fewer than 60 TAO specialists. By 2015, the number is projected to
grow to 270 employees. In addition, there are another 85 specialists in the "Requirements &
Targeting" division (up from 13 specialists in 2008). The number of software developers is
expected to increase from the 2008 level of three to 38 in 2015. The San Antonio office handles
attacks against targets in the Middle East, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, not to mention Mexico,
just 200 kilometers (124 miles) away, where the government has fallen into the NSA's crosshairs.
Targeting Mexico
Mexico's Secretariat of Public Security, which was folded into the new National Security
Commission at the beginning of 2013, was responsible at the time for the country's police,
counterterrorism, prison system and border police. Most of the agency's nearly 20,000 employees
worked at its headquarters on Avenida Constituyentes, an important traffic artery in Mexico City. A
large share of the Mexican security authorities under the auspices of the Secretariat are supervised
from the offices there, making Avenida Constituyentes a one-stop shop for anyone seeking to learn
more about the country's security apparatus.
Operation WHITETAMALE
That considered, assigning the TAO unit responsible for tailored operations to target the Secretariat
makes a lot of sense. After all, one document states, the US Department of Homeland Security and
the United States' intelligence agencies have a need to know everything about the drug trade, human
trafficking and security along the US-Mexico border. The Secretariat presents a potential
"goldmine" for the NSA's spies, a document states. The TAO workers selected systems
administrators and telecommunications engineers at the Mexican agency as their targets, thus
marking the start of what the unit dubbed Operation WHITETAMALE.
Workers at NSA's target selection office, which also had Angela Merkel in its sights in 2002 before
she became chancellor, sent TAO a list of officials within the Mexican Secretariat they thought
might make interesting targets. As a first step, TAO penetrated the target officials' email accounts, a
relatively simple job. Next, they infiltrated the entire network and began capturing data.
Soon the NSA spies had knowledge of the agency's servers, including IP addresses, computers used
for email traffic and individual addresses of diverse employees. They also obtained diagrams of the
security agencies' structures, including video surveillance. It appears the operation continued for
years until SPIEGEL first reported on it in October.
The technical term for this type of activity is "Computer Network Exploitation" (CNE). The goal
here is to "subvert endpoint devices," according to an internal NSA presentation that SPIEGEL has
viewed. The presentation goes on to list nearly all the types of devices that run our digital lives -"servers, workstations, firewalls, routers, handsets, phone switches, SCADA systems, etc."
SCADAs are industrial control systems used in factories, as well as in power plants. Anyone who
can bring these systems under their control has the potential to knock out parts of a country's critical
infrastructure.
The most well-known and notorious use of this type of attack was the development of Stuxnet, the
computer worm whose existence was discovered in June 2010. The virus was developed jointly by
American and Israeli intelligence agencies to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, and successfully so.
The country's nuclear program was set back by years after Stuxnet manipulated the SCADA control
technology used at Iran's uranium enrichment facilities in Natanz, rendering up to 1,000 centrifuges
unusable.
The special NSA unit has its own development department in which new technologies are
developed and tested. This division is where the real tinkerers can be found, and their inventiveness
when it comes to finding ways to infiltrate other networks, computers and smartphones evokes a
modern take on Q, the legendary gadget inventor in James Bond movies.
Having Fun at Microsoft's Expense
One example of the sheer creativity with which the TAO spies approach their work can be seen in a
hacking method they use that exploits the error-proneness of Microsoft's Windows. Every user of
the operating system is familiar with the annoying window that occasionally pops up on screen
when an internal problem is detected, an automatic message that prompts the user to report the bug
to the manufacturer and to restart the program. These crash reports offer TAO specialists a welcome
opportunity to spy on computers.
When TAO selects a computer somewhere in the world as a target and enters its unique identifiers
(an IP address, for example) into the corresponding database, intelligence agents are then
automatically notified any time the operating system of that computer crashes and its user receives
the prompt to report the problem to Microsoft. An internal presentation suggests it is NSA's
powerful XKeyscore spying tool that is used to fish these crash reports out of the massive sea of
Internet traffic.
The automated crash reports are a "neat way" to gain "passive access" to a machine, the
presentation continues. Passive access means that, initially, only data the computer sends out into
the Internet is captured and saved, but the computer itself is not yet manipulated. Still, even this
passive access to error messages provides valuable insights into problems with a targeted person's
computer and, thus, information on security holes that might be exploitable for planting malware or
spyware on the unwitting victim's computer.
Although the method appears to have little importance in practical terms, the NSA's agents still
seem to enjoy it because it allows them to have a bit of a laugh at the expense of the Seattle-based
software giant. In one internal graphic, they replaced the text of Microsoft's original error message
with one of their own reading, "This information may be intercepted by a foreign sigint system to
gather detailed information and better exploit your machine." ("Sigint" stands for "signals
intelligence.")
One of the hackers' key tasks is the offensive infiltration of target computers with so-called implants
or with large numbers of Trojans. They've bestowed their spying tools with illustrious monikers like
"ANGRY NEIGHBOR," "HOWLERMONKEY" or "WATERWITCH." These names may sound
cute, but the tools they describe are both aggressive and effective.
According to details in Washington's current budget plan for the US intelligence services, around
85,000 computers worldwide are projected to be infiltrated by the NSA specialists by the end of this
year. By far the majority of these "implants" are conducted by TAO teams via the Internet.
Increasing Sophistication
Until just a few years ago, NSA agents relied on the same methods employed by cyber criminals to
conduct these implants on computers. They sent targeted attack emails disguised as spam containing
links directing users to virus-infected websites. With sufficient knowledge of an Internet browser's
security holes -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer, for example, is especially popular with the NSA
hackers -- all that is needed to plant NSA malware on a person's computer is for that individual to
open a website that has been specially crafted to compromise the user's computer. Spamming has
one key drawback though: It doesn't work very often.
Nevertheless, TAO has dramatically improved the tools at its disposal. It maintains a sophisticated
toolbox known internally by the name "QUANTUMTHEORY." "Certain QUANTUM missions
have a success rate of as high as 80%, where spam is less than 1%," one internal NSA presentation
states.
A comprehensive internal presentation titled "QUANTUM CAPABILITIES," which SPIEGEL has
viewed, lists virtually every popular Internet service provider as a target, including Facebook,
Yahoo, Twitter and YouTube. "NSA QUANTUM has the greatest success against Yahoo, Facebook
and static IP addresses," it states. The presentation also notes that the NSA has been unable to
employ this method to target users of Google services. Apparently, that can only be done by
Britain's GCHQ intelligence service, which has acquired QUANTUM tools from the NSA.
A favored tool of intelligence service hackers is "QUANTUMINSERT." GCHQ workers used this
method to attack the computers of employees at partly government-held Belgian
telecommunications company Belgacom, in order to use their computers to penetrate even further
into the company's networks. The NSA, meanwhile, used the same technology to target highranking members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at the
organization's Vienna headquarters. In both cases, the trans-Atlantic spying consortium gained
unhindered access to valuable economic data using these tools.
The NSA's Shadow Network
The insert method and other variants of QUANTUM are closely linked to a shadow network
operated by the NSA alongside the Internet, with its own, well-hidden infrastructure comprised of
"covert" routers and servers. It appears the NSA also incorporates routers and servers from nonNSA networks into its covert network by infecting these networks with "implants" that then allow
the government hackers to control the computers remotely. (Click here to read a related article on
the NSA's "implants".)
In this way, the intelligence service seeks to identify and track its targets based on their digital
footprints. These identifiers could include certain email addresses or website cookies set on a
person's computer. Of course, a cookie doesn't automatically identify a person, but it can if it
includes additional information like an email address. In that case, a cookie becomes something like
the web equivalent of a fingerprint.
A Race Between Servers
Once TAO teams have gathered sufficient data on their targets' habits, they can shift into attack
mode, programming the QUANTUM systems to perform this work in a largely automated way. If a
data packet featuring the email address or cookie of a target passes through a cable or router
monitored by the NSA, the system sounds the alarm. It determines what website the target person is
trying to access and then activates one of the intelligence service's covert servers, known by the
codename FOXACID.
This NSA server coerces the user into connecting to NSA covert systems rather than the intended
sites. In the case of Belgacom engineers, instead of reaching the LinkedIn page they were actually
trying to visit, they were also directed to FOXACID servers housed on NSA networks. Undetected
by the user, the manipulated page transferred malware already custom tailored to match security
holes on the target person's computer.
The technique can literally be a race between servers, one that is described in internal intelligence
agency jargon with phrases like: "Wait for client to initiate new connection," "Shoot!" and "Hope to
beat server-to-client response." Like any competition, at times the covert network's surveillance
tools are "too slow to win the race." Often enough, though, they are effective. Implants with
QUANTUMINSERT, especially when used in conjunction with LinkedIn, now have a success rate
of over 50 percent, according to one internal document.
Tapping Undersea Cables
At the same time, it is in no way true to say that the NSA has its sights set exclusively on select
individuals. Of even greater interest are entire networks and network providers, such as the fiber
optic cables that direct a large share of global Internet traffic along the world's ocean floors.
One document labeled "top secret" and "not for foreigners" describes the NSA's success in spying
on the "SEA-ME-WE-4" cable system. This massive underwater cable bundle connects Europe with
North Africa and the Gulf states and then continues on through Pakistan and India, all the way to
Malaysia and Thailand. The cable system originates in southern France, near Marseille. Among the
companies that hold ownership stakes in it are France Telecom, now known as Orange and still
partly government-owned, and Telecom Italia Sparkle.
The document proudly announces that, on Feb. 13, 2013, TAO "successfully collected network
management information for the SEA-Me-We Undersea Cable Systems (SMW-4)." With the help
of a "website masquerade operation," the agency was able to "gain access to the consortium's
management website and collected Layer 2 network information that shows the circuit mapping for
significant portions of the network."
It appears the government hackers succeeded here once again using the QUANTUMINSERT
method.
The document states that the TAO team hacked an internal website of the operator consortium and
copied documents stored there pertaining to technical infrastructure. But that was only the first step.
"More operations are planned in the future to collect more information about this and other cable
systems," it continues.
But numerous internal announcements of successful attacks like the one against the undersea cable
operator aren't the exclusive factors that make TAO stand out at the NSA. In contrast to most NSA
operations, TAO's ventures often require physical access to their targets. After all, you might have
to directly access a mobile network transmission station before you can begin tapping the digital
information it provides.
Spying Traditions Live On
To conduct those types of operations, the NSA works together with other intelligence agencies such
as the CIA and FBI, which in turn maintain informants on location who are available to help with
sensitive missions. This enables TAO to attack even isolated networks that aren't connected to the
Internet. If necessary, the FBI can even make an agency-owned jet available to ferry the high-tech
plumbers to their target. This gets them to their destination at the right time and can help them to
disappear again undetected after as little as a half hour's work.
Responding to a query from SPIEGEL, NSA officials issued a statement saying, "Tailored Access
Operations is a unique national asset that is on the front lines of enabling NSA to defend the nation
and its allies." The statement added that TAO's "work is centered on computer network exploitation
in support of foreign intelligence collection." The officials said they would not discuss specific
allegations regarding TAO's mission.
Sometimes it appears that the world's most modern spies are just as reliant on conventional methods
of reconnaissance as their predecessors.
Take, for example, when they intercept shipping deliveries. If a target person, agency or company
orders a new computer or related accessories, for example, TAO can divert the shipping delivery to
its own secret workshops. The NSA calls this method interdiction. At these so-called "load
stations," agents carefully open the package in order to load malware onto the electronics, or even
install hardware components that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence agencies. All
subsequent steps can then be conducted from the comfort of a remote computer.
These minor disruptions in the parcel shipping business rank among the "most productive
operations" conducted by the NSA hackers, one top secret document relates in enthusiastic terms.
This method, the presentation continues, allows TAO to obtain access to networks "around the
world."
Even in the Internet Age, some traditional spying methods continue to live on.
REPORTED BY JACOB APPELBAUM, LAURA POITRAS, MARCEL ROSENBACH, CHRISTIAN
STÖCKER, JÖRG SCHINDLER AND HOLGER STARK
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Related SPIEGEL ONLINE links:
Shopping for Spy Gear Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox (12/29/2013)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,940994,00.html
Friendly Fire How GCHQ Monitors Germany, Israel and the EU (12/20/2013)
Oil Espionage How the NSA and GCHQ Spied on OPEC (11/11/2013)
Fresh Leak on US Spying NSA Accessed Mexican President's Email (10/20/2013)
Quantum Spying GCHQ Used Fake LinkedIn Pages to Target Engineers (11/11/2013)
Ally and Target US Intelligence Watches Germany Closely (08/12/2013)
Related internet links
"Washington Post": Bericht über Cyber-Attacken 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-spy-agencies-mounted-231-offensivecyber-operations-in-2011-documents-show/2013/08/30/d090a6ae-119e-11e3-b4cbfd7ce041d814_story.html
Feds move to block discovery in NSA lawsuits
By JOSH GERSTEIN |
1/8/14 8:57 PM EST
The Justice Department moved Wednesday night to block the plaintiffs in the most successful legal
challenges to the National Security Agency's call-tracking program from obtaining more details
about how the surveillance effort operates.
In a motion filed with U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, government lawyers asked the judge
to halt further proceedings before him while appeals go forward in a pair of lawsuits brought by
conservative legal activist Larry Klayman. The suits led last month to Leon's landmark ruling that
the NSA's call database, aimed at making it easier for the government to trace leads in potential
terrorism cases, likely violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
"Even if the mere collection of information about Plaintiffs’ communications constitutes a Fourth
Amendment search...conclusively resolving the reasonableness of that search ultimately could risk
or require disclosure of exceptionally sensitive and classified intelligence information regarding the
nature and scope of the international terrorist threat to the United States, and the role that the NSA’s
intelligence-gathering activities have played in meeting that threat," the government motion states.
"Plaintiffs have made clear their intentions to seek discovery of this kind of still-classified
information, concerning targets and subjects, participating providers, and other operational details
of the challenged NSA intelligence programs," the motion (posted here) adds. "Contentious
litigation over the availability of classified information to litigate these cases against the
Government Defendants, and the significant risks to national security if such information were
disclosed, could and should be avoided by allowing the Court of Appeals to rule first on the legal
viability of Plaintiffs’ claims against the Government Defendants."
Klayman's past litigation has been known for being as impactful and sometimes more impactful in
the discovery phase, where lawyers demand documents and conduct depositions, as in its ultimate
outcome. So, the government's desire to head that process off for now, and perhaps entirely, is
understandable.
Klayman didn't immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment for this item, but made clear in
an interview last month that he was eager to start demanding information on the NSA's surveillance
efforts.
"We’re heading to discovery. We’ve got an entree into the NSA,” he crowed just after Leon issued
his ruling determining that the mass collection of phone data was probably unconstitutional. The
conclusion led Leon to order a halt to NSA's gathering of phone data on Klayman and one of his
clients, but the judge halted that part of his order pending appeal.
The new government filing also underscores a still unresolved aspect of the NSA call-tracking
effort: just how comprehensive it is.
"Although the Government has acknowledged that the program involves the collection and
aggregation of a large volume of data from multiple providers, it has not represented in this
litigation, nor does the record contain any representations by the Government, that the program
captures information about all (or even virtually all) telephone calls to, from, or within the United
States," the Justice Department lawyers wrote.
The motion goes on to point to a declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order from
August that stated: "production of all call detail records of all persons in the United States has never
occurred under this program."
While not noted in the new motion, a report from an outside group President Barack Obama tapped
to examine surveillance efforts added more granularity about the program to the public record last
month. "The meta-data captured by the program covers only a portion of the records of only a few
telephone service providers,” the Review Group report said.
Drone Survival Guide
 Surveillance
 Attack
 Military surveillance
 Domestic surveillance
 Consumer
For Unofficial use only
Global Drone deployment U.S. Military
English / Pashto
21st century birdwatching
Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the
predators in the present-day? Drones are remote-controlled planes that can be used for anything
from surveillance and deadly force, to rescue operations and scientific research. Most drones are
used today by military powers for remote-controlled surveillance and attack, and their numbers are
growing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicted in 2012 that within 20 years there
could be as many as 30.000 drones flying over U.S. Soil alone. As robotic birds will become
commonplace in the near future, we should be prepared to identify them. This survival guide is an
attempt to familiarise ourselves and future generations, with a changing technological environment.
This document contains the silhouettes of the most common drone species used today and in the
near future. Each indicating nationality and whether they are used for surveillance only or for
deadly force. All drones are drawn in scale for size indication. From the smallest consumer drones
measuring less than 1 meter, up to the Global Hawk measuring 39,9 meter in length. To keep this
document widely available it can be downloaded in .pdf or .doc format. New translations will be
made available over time.
DISCLAIMER This document is for information purposes only, with the intent of free distribution
of publicly available information. We do not condone violent or destructive behavior against people
or property in any way or form. All content may be freely shared, adapted, and translation for noncommercial purposes. Available for free on the website. www.dronesurvivalguide.org
Hiding from Drones
Drones are equipped with extremely powerful camera’s which can detect people and vehicles at an
altitude of several kilometers. Most drones are equipped with night vision, and/or infrared vision
camera’s, so-called FLIR sensors. These can see human heat signatures from far away, day or night.
However there are ways to hide from drones.
1. Day camouflage: Hide in the shadows of buildings or trees.
Use thick forests as natural camouflage or use camouflage nets.
2. Night camouflage: hide inside buildings or under protection of trees or foliage. Do not use
flashlights or vehicle spot lights, even at long distances. Drones can easily spot this during
night missions.
3. Heat camouflage: Emergency blankets (so-called space blankets) made of Mylar can block
infrared rays. Wearing a space blanket as a poncho at night will hide your heat signature
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
from infrared detection. Also in summer when the temperature is between 36°C and 40°C,
infrared camera’s cannot distinguish between body and its surroundings.
Wait for bad weather. Drones cannot operate in high winds, smoke, rainstorms or heavy
weather conditions.
No wireless communication. Using mobile phones or GPS based communication will
possibly compromise your location.
Spreading reflective pieces of glass or mirrored material on a car on a roof will confuse the
drone’s camera.
Decoys. Use mannequins or human-sized dolls to mislead the drone’s reconnaissance.
‘Evading Thermal Imaging And Radar Detection’, United States Militia, Special Forces.
Hacking Drones
Drones are remote controlled. The pilots operating the drone can be thousands of kilometers away
at Ground Control stations. The control link is the satellite transmitted datalink by which the pilot
controls the plane. By jamming or intercepting the datalink, one can interfere with the drones
controls. The data link can be encrypted but often is not.
1. Interception. A sophisticated technique is using sky grabber software with a satellite dish
and a TV tuner to intercept the drone’s frequencies. Communication from and to the drone
can be intercepted.
2. Interference. By broadcasting on different frequencies or pack of frequencies the link
between the drone pilot and the drone can be disconnected.
3. GPS spoofing. Small, portable GPS transmitters can send fake GPS signals and disrupt the
Drones navigation systems. This can be used, for example, to steer drones into selfdestruction flight paths or even hijack them and land them on a runway.
Sources:
‘Health Ranger’s intelligence analysis of military drones: payloads, countermeasures and more’,
www.naturalnews.com, July 16, 2012. By Mike Adams
‘The Al-Qaida Papers - Drones’, This document is one of several found by The Associated Press in
buildings recently occupied by al-Qaida fighters in Timbuktu, Mali. Associated Press, Feb 2013.
DRONE SURVIVAL GUIDE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BIRDWATCHING
Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the
predators in the present-day? Drones are remote-controlled planes that can be used for anything from
surveillance and deadly force, to rescue operations and scientific research. Most drones are used today
by military powers for remote-controlled surveillance and attack, and their numbers are growing. The
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicted in 2012 that within 20 years there could be as many
as 30.000 drones flying over U.S. Soil alone. As robotic birds will become commonplace in the near
future, we should be prepared to identify them. This survival guide is an attempt to familiarise
ourselves and future generations, with a changing technological environment.
This document contains the silhouettes of the most common drone species used today and in the near
future. Each indicating nationality and whether they are used for surveillance only or for deadly force.
All drones are drawn in scale for size indication. From the smallest consumer drones measuring less
than 1 meter, up to the Global Hawk measuring 39,9 meter in length.
Want to know more about the motivation behind this project? Read the FAQ
ORDER THE DRONE SURVIVAL GUIDE ON ALUMINIUM PAPER
English/Pashto edition. Offset printed on Chromolux ALU-E mirrored paper. Size 48 x 33 cm. EUR 10
incl. shipping. Order via paypal below. Due to the increased interest after the Gizmodo article, Popular
Science, and The Verge, organizing orders and shipping may take longer than usual.
Top of Form
ABOUT THE DRONE SURVIVAL GUIDE
The guide contains tactics for hiding from drones and interfering with the drones’ sensors,
collected from various online sources. Health Ranger’s intelligence analysis of military drones:
payloads, countermeasures and more’, by Mike Adams and ‘The Al-Qaida Papers - Drones’,
Associated Press, Feb 2013. To keep this document widely available it can be downloaded in .pdf
or .doc format. Send a new translation to us and receive a free printed Drone Survival Guide. All
translations will be shared here. The Drone Survival Guide is collected and translated as a form of
civil initiative, not for profit and without government or commercial funding and/or support.
Want to know more? Read the FAQ
A REFLECTIVE FORM
One of the techniques for misleading a drone's camera is putting reflective material on the
rooftops of houses or cars (glass, mirror) to try to reflect sunlight into the drone's camera, making
this poster a useful tool to interfere with the drone's sensors. On a more associative level the
mirrored material reminds us that drone surveillance is ultimately people watching people. In a
way we are looking at ourselves through sophisticated mirrors.
DISCLAIMER This document is for information purposes only, with the intent of free
distribution of publicly available information. We do not condone violent or destructive behavior
against people or property in any way or form. All content may be freely shared, adapted, and
translation for non-commercial purposes.
DRONE SURVIVAL GUIDE
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Are drones dangerous?
Drone is a popularized name for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) which is used to designate
anything from a remote controlled toy quadcopter, to a CIA predator, to small unmanned planes used
to monitor illegal fishing. Technologies are used for better or worse, and the same goes for drones.
Drones are never dangerous as a phenomenon, but they can be used with harmful intent. We should be
aware of how governments and other parties use them and if legislation and monitoring is properly
installed. By promoting awareness I hope we can engage in a public discussion about for what
purpose, and in what circumstances we should allow the use of drones.
Will the Drone Survival Guide (DSG) protect me from drones?
Of course not. The DSG is an art project to inform citizens worldwide about the dangers and
capabilities of drones used by governments worldwide. It has some tips how to hide from the drone's
sensors and how they work, but it is very naieve to think you will be safe if you follow these
instructions if you were targeted by a drone with harmful intent. Even a small drone used as a toy can
fall out of the sky and hurt you, so keep looking up!
Are you promoting actions of violence against drones?
Explicitly not. The DSG is intented for the purpose of sharing public information, and call for peaceful
activism in creating awareness to limit the use of drones against people. This project is pacifist in
nature and I am absolutely against all forms of violence against people or property.
Are you helping / aiding enemies of NATO with this guide?
Of course not. The drone countermeasures in the guide have been publicly available for years, in
various newssources and blogs. They are not very sophisticated and most of them you could figure out
yourself. They won't be of much help in an actual battle scenario. Note that 87 nations in the world
have drones, so countermeasures apply to all sides. Please be aware that all of the countermeasures are
about misleading the drone's sensors and I am against any violence against people or property.
What is that Arabic looking text on your guide?
It is not Arabic but Pashto, a language spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Not coincidentally the area
where most drones are deployed worldwide, and many civilians lose their life because of them.
Making the DSG bilingual is a statement that we should remember to address not just an English
speaking audience when we talk about peaceful activism. A goal for me would be to use the posters in
the Pashto speaking area for educational and peaceful activist purposes, together with a local, nonpolitical organisation.
Why are all these translations on the site?
Readers / visitors of the site sent me their translations because I put out an open call. I check the
basics, but I am not able to check all the languages so I cannot promise the quality or the content of the
translations is up to any standard. All translations are made available freely to use, and I think it is a
great thing so many people are helping me. When your translation chosen for the site, you will receive
a free poster.
How do I order?
You can use the Paypal link on the site. Price of one poster is 10 euro including shipping worldwide.
Somehow the link takes you to a Dutch language environment and I don't know how to fix this. Try
Google translate or changing the language within the paypal site. If you want more posters simply
order several times or e-mail me for an international money transfer.
Who are you?
I am a self-employed artist/graphic designer from the Netherlands with an interest in coming up with
projects that promote public discussion on issues that I think need to be discussed.
Who paid you? Are you affiliated with a political organisation?
This project I did as a civilian and I paid for the production myself. I did not receive any funding or
subisidiary for making it and I am not affiliated with any political organisation. I am a self-employed
artist/designer.
Where's my poster? I ordered it a week ago!
There was a lot of attention and many orders came in. I will try to take care of them as quick and
accurate as possible, but it might take a bit longer than usual. Everyone that placed an order will
receive their guide.
Navy’s 757-Sized Drone Will Provide Big-Time Surveillance
By Allen McDuffee 01.07.14
Northrop Grumman’s MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft system. Photo: Alan Radecki/Northrop
Grumman
A new drone with the mammoth wingspan of a Boeing 757 is set to give the U.S. Navy some serious
surveillance power.
Northrop Grumman and the Navy say they’ve just completed the ninth flight trial of the Triton
unmanned aircraft system (UAS), an improvement upon its predecessor in the Air Force, the Global
Hawk.
With its 130-foot wingspan, Triton will provide high-altitude, real-time intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (ISR) from a sensor suite that supplies a 360-degree view at a radius of over 2,000
nautical miles, allowing monitoring from higher and farther away than any of its competitors.
But should a closer look be necessary, unique de-icing and lightning protection capabilities allow
Triton to plunge through the clouds to get a closer view and automatically classify ships. And in recent
tests, the drone was able to easily recover from perturbations in its flight path caused by turbulence.
Although Triton has a higher degree of autonomy than the most autonomous drones, operators on the
ground will be able to obtain high-resolution imagery, use radar for target detection and provide
information-sharing capabilities to other military units.
Thus far, Triton has completed flights up to 9.4 hours at altitudes of 50,000 feet at the company’s
manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California. According to Northrop Grumman, Triton could support
missions up to 24 hours.
Northrop Grumman reported earlier that Triton had demonstrated structural strength of the drone’s
wing — a key capability that will allow the aircraft to descend from high altitudes to make positive
identification of targets during surveillance missions — even when it was subjected to a load at 22
percent above the Navy’s requirement.
“During surveillance missions using Triton, Navy operators may spot a target of interest and order the
aircraft to a lower altitude to make positive identification,” said Mike Mackey, Northrop Gumman’s
Triton UAS program director, in a statement. “The wing’s strength allows the aircraft to safely
descend, sometimes through weather patterns, to complete this maneuver.”
Under an initial contract of $1.16 billion in 2008, the Navy has ordered 68 of the MQ-4C Triton
drones with expected delivery in 2017 — a slip from the initial anticipated date of December 2015.
I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on
Few of the politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue how it actually
works (and doesn't)
Heather Linebaugh theguardian.com, Sunday 29 December 2013
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and
Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I'd start with: "How many
women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?" And: "How many men have you
seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from
severed legs?" Or even more pointedly: "How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in
Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an
IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?"
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what
actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched
dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right
outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
The US and British militaries insist that this is an expert program, but it's curious that they feel the
need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology
reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian
casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough
to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light.
This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure.
One example comes to mind: "The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon?" I felt
this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right
people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian's life all because of a
bad image or angle.
It's also important for the public to grasp that there are human beings operating and analysing
intelligence these UAVs. I know because I was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an
almost daily routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone. UAV proponents
claim that troops who do this kind of work are not affected by observing this combat because they are
never directly in danger physically.
But here's the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the
conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see
someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it
becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and
suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the
haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little
unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.
Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we fight it, and become bitter. Some
troops seek help in mental health clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can
talk to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it interesting that the suicide statistics
in this career field aren't reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions are
heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety.
Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain's secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond.
I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the
military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or
he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.
The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public
remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will
continue.
Editor's note: Heather Linebaugh does not possess any classified material and has honored her nondisclosure agreement since the time of her discharge
Exclusive: Leaked Photos of Chemtrail Dispersal System
The mere existence of such a contraption does nothing to prove such is being used for nefarious
reasons at all. If some one, any one company had come to me in 1979 and asked me to design such
a transportable system I could have done so at the time with sufficient funds, that is the kind of
things Pen & Quill, Inc. were prepared to do and capable of producing. What is, or may be
dispensed using such equipment is obvious, from pesticides to fertilizer; from insect deterrent
(mosquitos, blowflies); to any sort of useful, though maybe environmentally questionable, product.
The mere existence proves nothing but that the equipment exists for any number of obvious reasons.
Now should they find a product being delivered in substantial quantities that could harm, alter one’s
mind or brain function, cripple or kill leaving no known trace evidence of wrong-doing, that would
be news. The claim that someone, some asshole may have called it a nigger-killer being sent to
Africa simply tells us there remains a shitload of shitheads in the white world (Jews and Hispanics
as well as others often partake of such a dysphemism as well of course) working in plants
throughout the world! (We didn’t all know that already?) That racism is on the rise, not generally
dissipated by any stretch of the imagination?
If one could find such less than extraordinary manufactured equipment “in use” proving (the
chemical compound revealed that is) its nefarious intent, then that would be both news and an
exclusive topic for spreading; until such time the equipment is found dispensing something toxic or
dangerous to humans it means nothing, other than the fear-inducement herein reported by the
original source, silly sensationalism that it is, it is more of the same ranting of demented frightened
children, big children true enough, but child-like in every respect.
This bogey don’t hunt! Hulet, Out!
by Grimnir Freeman • November 27, 2013 • 86 Comments
These are photos and descriptions provided to me by a confidential informant of what appears to be
a chemtrail dispersal system.
You be the judge, but it seems very likely that chemtrails are exactly what this system is for.
Pump Inlet and Outlet - This picture is of the diesel motor that powers the system.
The pump itself is the big disc shaped thing to the left of the big cylinder sticking up with a hose
coming out of it.
Ducts - These are the ducts the fluid travels to and from the pump in.
Tanks - Approximately 4 1/2 feet high and 5 1/2 feet long each.
They are installed on a cargo handling system in the main cabin, close to the over-wing exits. One
tank is emptied through the widow plug on one side of the plane. Then the unit is switched over to
the other tank, which sprays out of the other side of the plane.
Sprayer screws on end - This is the part that actually sticks out of the window plug.
The window plug is on the end that sticks out to show how it goes. Just behind the pipe beside the
white bottle is the sprayer that screws on the end after the system is installed in the aircraft.
New window plug - The existing window plug is taken out and this one is put in.
The rubber somewhat seals around the pipe, but not well enough to pressurize the aircraft. It would
be unable to fly above 10,000 feet unless everyone inside wore oxygen masks.
Sprayer Exhaust Closeup - This is the left side of the aircraft.
There is a sprayer coming out of one window plug, and an exhaust duct coming out of the other for
the engine.
Sprayer Closeup - This is the right side of the aircraft with the sprayer installed.
Sprayer and Exhaust Installed - View from in front of the left wing.
This system explains so much. For years working in the industry I was always on the lookout for
anything indicative of a sprayer system. I had a little doubt about the chemtrail story because I
never saw evidence of a sprayer system in all the years I worked on airplanes. It didn't dawn on me
it would be removable. This system is made so that it can be installed quickly, used, and then
removed as desired. When not installed, the aircraft can be used as a normal 737 cargo plane. The
system can also be moved from one aircraft to another. Main cabin windows are held in by just a
few screws. If I remember correctly, it is eight screws per window. Then put the other window
plugs in. I have been told there is also accommodation for releasing a fluid tank from the drain for
the deactivated aft lav. This is a 737 cargo plane that has been converted from a passenger plane.
They are very common. The workers at the facility saw this thing on a test run in front of the
hangar. Water was used in the test. It came out of the sprayers in a fine mist. If sprayed from several
thousand feet, people on the ground would never know they had been sprayed. My friend said they
were testing to see the spray pattern and next they were going to move the spray nozzles to the back
windows and test again. Officially it is said to be a sprayer for oil dispersant. That was the second
explanation. The first was that it was a big crop duster. The company realized the workers weren't
buying that, and laughing about it. They knew enough about aircraft to know that was impossible.
So they changed the story. The supervisors in the plant call it a nigger-killer. (assholes!) The aircraft
is going to be sent to Africa when it leaves this facility. When this facility was leased by another
company, I worked there for 15 years. There was another aircraft that came through there years ago
that requested BLOOD RESISTANT CARPET!!! The scary thing is, there was carpet like that
available. Now you tell me why they would know they would need blood resistant carpet ahead of
time??? Anyway, I just thought it was noteworthy that this plane was also bound for Africa.
Here is a link to a discussion on other aerial spraying systems: Aerial Spraying
Sovereign Citizens
Sovereign Citizens A Growing Domestic Threat to Law Enforcement By the FBI’s
Counterterrorism Analysis Section
Sovereign Citizens
A Growing Domestic Threat to Law Enforcement
By the FBI’s Counterterrorism Analysis Section
© Thinkstock.com
They could be dismissed as a nuisance, a loose network of individuals living in the United States
who call themselves “sovereign citizens” and believe that federal, state, and local governments
operate illegally. Some of their actions, although quirky, are not crimes. The offenses they do
commit seem minor, like creating false license plates, driver’s licenses, and even currency.
However, a closer look at sovereign citizens’ more severe crimes, from financial scams to
impersonating or threatening law enforcement officials, gives reason for concern. If someone
challenges (e.g., a standard traffic stop for false license plates) their ideology, the behavior of these
sovereign-citizen extremists quickly can escalate to violence. Since 2000, lone-offender sovereigncitizen extremists have killed six law enforcement officers. In 2010, two Arkansas police officers
stopped sovereign-citizen extremists Jerry Kane and his 16-year-old son Joseph during a routine
traffic stop on Interstate 40. Joseph Kane jumped out of the vehicle and opened fire with an AK-47
assault rifle, killing both officers.
The sovereign-citizen threat likely will grow as the nationwide movement is fueled by the Internet,
the economic downturn, and seminars held across the country that spread their ideology and show
people how they can tap into funds and eliminate debt through fraudulent methods. As sovereign
citizens’ numbers grow, so do the chances of contact with law enforcement and, thus, the risks that
incidents will end in violence. Law enforcement and judicial officials must understand the
sovereign-citizen movement, be able to identify indicators, and know how to protect themselves
from the group’s threatening tactics.
Ideology and Motivation
The FBI considers sovereign-citizen extremists as comprising a
domestic terrorist movement, which, scattered across the United
States, has existed for decades, with well-known members, such as
The FBI considers
Terry Nichols, who helped plan the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
sovereign-citizen
bombing. Sovereign citizens do not represent an anarchist group,
extremists as
nor are they a militia, although they sometimes use or buy illegal
comprising
a domestic
weapons. Rather, they operate as individuals without established
terrorist movement…
leadership and only come together in loosely affiliated groups to
train, help each other with paperwork, or socialize and talk about
their ideology. They may refer to themselves as “constitutionalists”
or “freemen,” which is not necessarily a connection to a specific
group, but, rather, an indication that they are free from government control. They follow their own
set of laws. While the philosophies and conspiracy theories can vary from person to person, their
core beliefs are the same: The government operates outside of its jurisdiction. Because of this
belief, they do not recognize federal, state, or local laws, policies, or regulations.1
One prevalent sovereign-citizen theory is the Redemption Theory, which claims the U.S.
government went bankrupt when it abandoned the gold standard basis for currency in 1933 and
began using citizens as collateral in trade agreements with foreign governments.2 These beliefs can
provide a gateway to illegal activity because such individuals believe the U.S. government does not
act in the best interests of the American people. By announcing themselves as sovereign citizens,
they are emancipated from the responsibilities of being a U.S. citizen, including paying taxes,
possessing a state driver’s license, or obeying the law.
Illegal Activity
The Redemption Theory belief leads to their most prevalent
method to defraud banks, credit institutions, and the U.S.
government: the Redemption Scheme. Sovereign citizens
believe that when the U.S. government removed itself from
the gold standard, it rendered U.S. currency as a valueless
credit note, exchanging one credit document (such as a dollar
bill) for another. They assert that the U.S. government now
uses citizens as collateral, issuing social security numbers and
birth certificates to register people in trade agreements with
other countries. Each citizen has a monetary net worth, which
they believe is kept in a U.S. Treasury Direct account, valued
from $630,000 to more than $3 million. These accounts, they
claim, are in a third-party’s name, a “strawman,” that they can
access, which they commonly refer to as “freeing money from
the strawman.” In essence, it is extorting money from the U.S. Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building,
Treasury Department. Sovereign citizens file legitimate IRS
Oklahoma City.
and Uniform Commercial Code forms for illegitimate
purposes, believing that doing so correctly will compel the U.S. Treasury to fulfill its debts, such as
credit card debts, taxes, and mortgages.3
At a minimum, these activities create a voluminous influx of documents that clog the courts and
other government agencies. But, the idea behind the Redemption Theory also leads sovereign
citizens to find criminal sources of income as they travel the country, teach fraudulent tactics to
others for a fee, and participate in white collar crimes. The latter offenses include mail, bank,
mortgage, and wire fraud; money laundering; tax violations; and illegal firearms sales and
purchases.
At seminars, sovereign citizens charge participants a fee in exchange for information on
Redemption Theory schemes and other methods to avoid paying taxes, sometimes even selling
materials, such as CDs or DVDs. They also sell fraudulent documents—including drivers’ licenses,
passports, diplomat identification, vehicle registrations, concealed firearms permits, law
enforcement credentials, and insurance forms—to other sovereign citizens and illegal immigrants
and charge fees for “consultant services” to prepare sovereign-citizen paperwork. Several recent
incidents highlight their activities.

In Sacramento, California, two sovereign-citizen extremists were convicted of running a
fraudulent insurance scheme, operating a company completely outside of state insurance
regulatory authorities. The men sold “lifetime memberships” to customers and promised to
pay any accident claims against members. The company collected millions of dollars, but
paid only small auto insurance claims and ignored large ones.4

In Kansas City, Missouri, three sovereign-citizen extremists were convicted in a phony
diplomatic credential scandal. They charged customers between $450 and $2,000 for a
diplomatic identification card that bestowed “sovereign status,” supposedly to enjoy
diplomatic immunity from paying taxes and from stops and arrests by law enforcement.5

In Las Vegas, Nevada, four men affiliated with the sovereign-citizen-extremist movement
were arrested by the Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force on federal money laundering, tax
evasion, and weapons charges. The undercover investigation revealed that two of the
suspects allegedly laundered more than a million dollars and collected fees for their
services.6
One example of a white collar crime that escalated into a standoff includes a New Hampshire
husband and wife convicted of federal income tax evasion, failure to honor federal payroll taxes,
and other conspiracy fraud charges. Elaine A. and Edward L. Brown, both sovereign-citizen
extremists in their 60s, never appeared at their 2007 trial or at sentencing. In protest, the Browns
barricaded themselves in their home during the summer and fall of 2007, receiving supporters,
issuing militant and threatening statements, and stockpiling weapons and explosives. They were
charged with weapons offenses after their arrest in October 2007 when law enforcement discovered
pipe bombs, improvised explosive devices made of gun powder cans with nails and screws taped to
the outside, and a large cache of handguns and rifles that included .50-caliber rifles.7
However, even when sovereign citizens go to prison for crimes, they continue criminal activity
behind bars. Inmates provide a new population for them to sway to adopt the sovereign-citizen
ideology; they then can train these inmates to help them defraud banks, credit institutions, and the
U.S. government. They can create fraudulent businesses from inside prison walls and complete
fraudulent financial documents to receive lines of credit from legitimate banks. The learning system
goes both ways—inmates can teach sovereign citizens new criminal methods that they can use
either from inside the prison or when they are released.
Indicators
It is important
Sovereign citizens often produce documents that contain peculiar or
out-of-place language. In some cases, they speak their own
language or will write only in certain colors, such as in red crayon.
Several indicators can help identify
these individuals.
to realize sovereign
citizens’ tactics to
harass and intimidate
law enforcement,
court, and government
officials, as well as
financial institution
employees.

References to the Bible, The Constitution of the United
States, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, or treaties with
foreign governments8

Personal names spelled in all capital letters or interspersed
with colons (e.g., JOHN SMITH or Smith: John)

Signatures followed by the words “under duress,” “Sovereign Living Soul” (SLS), or a
copyright symbol (©)

Personal seals, stamps, or thumb prints in red ink

The words “accepted for value”9
They also carry fraudulent drivers’ licenses to indicate their view that law enforcement does not
have the authority to stop their vehicle or may write “No Liability Accepted” above their signature
on a driver’s license to signify that they do not accept it as a legitimate identification document.
Intimidation, Obstruction, and Protection
It is important to realize sovereign citizens’ tactics to harass and intimidate law enforcement, court,
and government officials, as well as financial institution employees. Methods can range from
refusing to cooperate with requests, demanding an oath of office or proof of jurisdiction, filming
interactions with law enforcement that they later post on the Internet, and filing frivolous lawsuits
or liens against real property. They convene their own special courts that issue fake but realisticlooking indictments, warrants, and other documents. They also can use real government documents,
including suspicious activity reports, in an attempt to damage the credit or financial history of
specific individuals.
While these efforts may seem obviously fraudulent, it is important to address these actions, which
can have devastating outcomes for the individuals they target. The sovereign citizens’ efforts also
can be a gateway for them to harass, terrorize, and target others in hopes of changing behaviors that
they perceive as threatening.
The Court Security Improvement Act of 2007 is one protection for officials who the sovereign
citizens could target. The provisions under Title 18 created a new criminal offense for false liens
against the real or personal property of officers or federal government employees, including judges
and prosecutors. It also created as a new crime the disclosure of personal, identifying information to
intimidate or incite violence against these individuals.10
Conclusion
Although the
sovereign-citizen
movement does not
always rise to violence,
Although the sovereign-citizen movement does not always rise to
violence, its members’ illegal activities and past violent—including
fatal—incidents against law enforcement make it a group that
should be approached with knowledge and caution. It is important
that law enforcement be aware of sovereign citizens’ tactics so
agencies can warn the public of potential scams, spot illegal activity
and understand its potential severity, and be prepared for and
protect against violent behavior or backlash through intimidation
and harassment.
its members’…
activities…make it
a group that should
be approached with
knowledge and
caution.
Endnotes
1
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit
and Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit, Sovereign Citizen Danger to Law Enforcement
(Washington, DC, 2010).
2
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit
II, Sovereign Citizens: An Introduction for Law Enforcement (Washington, DC, 2010).
3
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Domestic
Terrorism Analysis Unit, Sovereign Citizen Extremist Movement (Washington, DC, 2011).
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California, “Two ‘Sovereign Citizens’ Sentenced in
Illegal Insurance Scam,” press release, 2/24/2010;
http://sacramento.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel10/sc022410.htm (accessed June 14, 2011).
4
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Missouri, “Three Men Sentenced for Conspiracy to
Use Fake Diplomatic Identification,” press release, 2/8/2010;
http://kansascity.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel10/kc020810.htm (accessed June 14, 2011).
5
U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney, District of Nevada, “Members of Anti-Government
Movement Arrested on Federal Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Weapons Charges,” press
release, 3/6/2009; http://www.justice.gov/usao/nv/press/march2009/davis030609.htm (accessed
June 14, 2011).
6
U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney’s Office-District of New Hampshire, press releases,
1/18/2007 and 7/9/2009, “Jury Convicts Lebanon Dentist and Husband in Tax Case,” and “Edward
and Elaine Brown Convicted”; http://www.justice.gov/tax/usaopress/2007/txdv07WEM_Browns.pdf
and http://www.atf.gov/press/releases/2009/07/070909-bos-edward-and-elaine-brownconvicted.html (accessed June 14, 2011).
7
8
The authors wish to stress that the majority of individuals who carry or refer to these resources are
law-abiding citizens. However, in some instances, possession of these items may serve as one
indicator of a sovereign-citizen extremist.
9
Sovereign Citizens: An Introduction for Law Enforcement.
10
Court Security Improvement Act of 2007; http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW110publ177/pdf/PLAW-110publ177.pdf (accessed June 14, 2011).
Mr. Hunter is an intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Analysis Section.
Dr. Heinke is the counterterrorism coordinator for the State Ministry of the Interior in Bremen,
Germany.
FBI Drops Law Enforcement as 'Primary' Mission JOHN HUDSON
JANUARY 5, 2014
The FBI's creeping advance into the world of counterterrorism is nothing new. But quietly and
without notice, the agency has finally decided to make it official in one of its organizational fact
sheets. Instead of declaring "law enforcement" as its "primary function," as it has for years, the FBI
fact sheet now lists "national security" as its chief mission. The changes largely reflect the FBI
reforms put in place after September 11, 2001, which some have criticized for de-prioritizing law
enforcement activities. Regardless, with the 9/11 attacks more than a decade in the past, the timing
of the edits is baffling some FBI-watchers.
"What happened in the last year that changed?" asked Kel McClanahan, a Washington-based
national security lawyer.
McClanahan noticed the change last month while reviewing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request from the agency. The FBI fact sheet accompanies every FOIA response and highlights a
variety of facts about the agency. After noticing the change, McClanahan reviewed his records and
saw that the revised fact sheets began going out this summer. "I think they're trying to rebrand," he
said. "So many good things happen to your agency when you tie it to national security."
Although a spokesman with the agency declined to weigh in on the timing of the change, he said the
agency is just keeping up with the times. "When our mission changed after 9/11, our fact sheet
changed to reflect that," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson told Foreign Policy. He noted that the FBI's
website has long-emphasized the agency's national security focus. "We rank our top 10 priorities
and CT [counterterrorism] is first, counterintel is second, cyber is third," he said. "So it is certainly
accurate to say our primary function is national security." On numerous occasions, former FBI
Director Robert Mueller also emphasized the FBI's national security focus in speeches and
statements.
FBI historian and Marquette University professor Athan Theoharis agreed that the changes reflect
what's really happening at the agency, but said the timing isn't clear. "I can't explain why FBI
officials decided to change the fact sheet... unless in the current political climate that change
benefits the FBI politically and undercuts criticisms," he said. He mentioned the negative attention
surrounding the FBI's failure in April to foil the bomb plot at the Boston Marathon by Dzhokhar
and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Whatever the reason, the agency's increased focus on national security over the last decade has not
occurred without consequence. Between 2001 and 2009, the FBI doubled the amount of agents
dedicated to counterterrorism, according to a 2010 Inspector's General report. That period coincided
with a steady decline in the overall number of criminal cases investigated nationally and a steep
decline in the number of white-collar crime investigations.
"Violent crime, property crime and white-collar crime: All those things had reductions in the
number of people available to investigate them," former FBI agent Brad Garrett told Foreign
Policy. "Are there cases they missed? Probably."
Last month, Robert Holley, the special agent in charge in Chicago, said the agency's focus on
terrorism and other crimes continued to affect the level of resources available to combat the violent
crime plaguing the city. "If I put more resources on violent crime, I'd have to take away from other
things," he told The Chicago Tribune.
According to a 2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigation, the Justice Department did not replace
2,400 agents assigned to focus on counterterrorism in the years following 9/11. The reductions in
white-collar crime investigations became obvious. Back in 2000, the FBI sent prosecutors 10,000
cases. That fell to a paltry 3,500 cases by 2005. "Had the FBI continued investigating financial
crimes at the same rate as it had before the terror attacks, about 2,000 more white-collar criminals
would be behind bars," the report concluded. As a result, the agency fielded criticism for failing to
crack down on financial crimes ahead of the Great Recession and losing sight of real-estate fraud
ahead of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis.
In many ways, the agency had no choice but to de-emphasize white-collar crime. Following the
9/11 attacks, the FBI picked up scores of new responsibilities related to terrorism and
counterintelligence while maintaining a finite amount of resources. What's not in question is that
government agencies tend to benefit in numerous ways when considered critical to national security
as opposed to law enforcement. "If you tie yourself to national security, you get funding and you get
exemptions on disclosure cases," said McClanahan. "You get all the wonderful arguments about
how if you don't get your way, buildings will blow up and the country will be less safe."
- See more at:
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/01/02/us_customs_not_sorry_for_destroying_11_rare_
flutes_of_renowned_musician#sthash.oUfy2XXS.dpuf
Police becoming more militarized as wars wind down
Story by Jana Eschbach / CBS 12
FORT PIERCE, Fla. - Of the 60,000 cities in this country one of the top ranked for gun violence is
on the Treasure Coast. New Orleans, Detroit, Baltimore and Miami are among the top. Coming in at
number 56 is the relatively small city of Fort Pierce where there were 150 shootings this past year.
Now their police officers say they are using military type tactical equipment to fight crime. The new
MRAP looks like a tank on wheels.
"Mine response ambush protection." said Officer Keith Holmes , who applied to acquire the MRAP
from the US Military for the Fort Pierce Police Department, "The military was pretty much handing
them out to the different cities and I put in the application for it, and we got pushed through due to
the violence in the city we have here."
Used last in Afghanistan, "They brought this back from Afghanistan and now its in Fort Pierce.. for
officer rescues, search warrants, things like that that an officer would need protection." Holmes
said.
"If we need it, we have it," said Police Chief Sean Baldwin, "we've had around 150 shootings this
year."
Chief Baldwin said the gun violence was not the direct reason for getting the MRAP. But, the city
ranked as number 56 in the nation for the most gun violence, according to statistics compiled by the
Centers for Disease Control.
"It's for a the potential of a terrorist attack or even something more locally.. A shooting incident
when we have hostages, or an officer down that needs to be rescued, that's what this is for." Chief
Baldwin said.
Still many libertarians argue the police departments these days are becoming too militarized.
"I agree to a certain extent its overkill but for the cost, for $2000, yes its what we need." said
Officer Holmes.
Purchased through a program from the U-s Military for $2,000, an armored swat vehicle could cost
in the $150,000 range.
"You know, it is overkill, until we need it. And you know we don't get to forecast that. We don't
know what dangers we are going to face." Chief Baldwin said.
The military is unloading hundreds of these types of vehicles post Operation Enduring Freedom.
More and more police agencies are signing up to use retired military equipment.
To see the list of most dangerous cities for gun violence the list is at:
Tone Deaf NSA Officials Tell Reporter It's Time to Reform the First Amendment
Daniel Drezner has a fairly incredible short blog post over at Foreign Policy magazine about his
experience visiting the NSA as the organization is seeking to ramp up its PR campaign about how
it's not actually evil. We've already covered the 60 Minutes debacle, but in many ways this piece is
just as enlightening, as he notes just how incredibly tone deaf NSA officials appear to be -- unable
to understand why people are upset about what they're doing.
The NSA's biggest strategic communications problem, however, is that they've been so walled off
from the American body politic that they have no idea when they're saying things that sound tonedeaf. Like expats returning from a long overseas tour, NSA staffers don't quite comprehend how
much perceptions of the agency have changed. The NSA stresses in its mission statement and
corporate culture that it "protects privacy rights." Indeed, there were faded banners proclaiming
that goal in our briefing room. Of course, NSAers see this as protecting Americans from foreign
cyber-intrusions. In a post-Snowden era, however, it's impossible to read that statement without
suppressing a laugh.
It might be an occupational hazard, but NSA officials continue to talk about the threat environment
as if they've been frozen in amber since 2002. To them, the world looks increasingly unsafe. Syria is
the next Pakistan, China is augmenting its capabilities to launch a financial war on the United
States, and the next terrorist attack on American soil is right around the corner. They could very
well be correct -- except that the American public has become inured to such warnings over the
past decade, and their response has been to tell politicians to focus on things at home and leave the
rest of the world alone. A strategy of "trust us, the world is an unsafe place" won't resonate now the
way it did in the immediate wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
But, perhaps the most tone deaf of all, was the statement from one NSA official suggesting that it's
time to reform the First Amendment, because he's not at all happy about how reporters have
covered the NSA recently. As Drezner notes, he's not sure if it's a joke or not, but it really doesn't
matter. That seems like something you should not joke about if you're an NSA person, given
everything that's going on.
The NSA's attitude toward the press is, well, disturbing. There were repeated complaints about the
ways in which recent reportage of the NSA was warped or lacking context. To be fair, this kind of
griping is a staple of officials across the entire federal government. Some of the NSA folks went
further, however. One official accused some media outlets of "intentionally misleading the
American people," which is a pretty serious accusation. This official also hoped that the Obama
administration would crack down on these reporters, saying, "I have some reforms for the First
Amendment."
It seems that the public might have some reforms for the intelligence community as well. And those
would actually be constitutional, unlike what that particular NSA officials had in mind for free
speech and the press. There's even more in the Drezner piece that is well worth reading, including
the how the NSA was unable to properly manage his own personal information which he had to
send them in order to get his pass to come for a visit.
Feds announce test sites for drone aircraft
January 2, 2014 >
By MICHELLE RINDELS
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Six states were named Monday by federal officials to develop test sites for
drones - a critical next step for the burgeoning industry that could one day produce thousands of
unmanned aircraft for use by businesses, farmers and researchers.
Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia will host the research sites, providing
diverse climates, geography and air traffic environments as the Federal Aviation Administration
seeks to safely introduce commercial drones into U.S. airspace.
Members of Congress and other politicians lobbied intensely to bring the work to their states.
Representatives were jubilant about the likelihood that the testing will draw companies interested in
cashing in on the fledgling industry.
An industry-commissioned study has predicted more than 70,000 jobs would develop in the first
three years after Congress loosens drone restrictions on U.S. skies. The same study projects an
average salary range for a drone pilot between $85,000 and $115,000.
"This is wonderful news for Nevada that creates a huge opportunity for our economy," said U.S.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada. In New York, Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat, called the
announcement a boon for his state.
Drones have been mainly used by the military, but governments, businesses, farmers and others are
making plans to join the market. Many universities are starting or expanding curriculum involving
drones.
The FAA does not currently allow commercial use of drones, but it is working to develop
operational guidelines by the end of 2015, although officials concede the project may take longer
than expected.
The FAA projects some 7,500 commercial drones could be aloft within five years of getting
widespread access to the skies above America.
"Today was an important step," said attorney Ben Gielow of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle
Systems International, noting the announcement came after months of delays and data gathering. "I
think we're all anxious to get this moving."
The competition for a test site was robust, with 25 entities in 24 states submitting proposals, FAA
Administrator Michael Huerta said during a conference call with reporters.
At least one of the six sites chosen by the FAA will be up and running within 180 days, while the
others are expected to come online in quick succession, he said. However, the designation as a test
site doesn't come with a financial award from the government.
In choosing Alaska, the FAA cited a diverse set of test site locations in seven climatic zones. New
York's site at Griffiss International Airport will look into integrating drones into the congested
northeast airspace. And Nevada offered proximity to military aircraft from several bases, Huerta
said.
The extent that lobbying influenced the selection of the sites was unclear.
"Politics likely always plays a role in some level in this, but I couldn't tell you specifically what the
politics were," said Brendan M. Schulman, part of a New York City-based law group focused on
drone issues. "Part of the selection ... is an evaluation of the dedication and seriousness the sites
were showing in pursuing this."
The testing will determine whether drones can detect and avoid aircraft and other obstacles, and if
they can operate safety when contact is lost with operators.
The growing use of drones has sparked criticism among conservatives and liberals who fear the
creation of a surveillance state in which authorities track and scrutinize every move of citizens.
"I just don't like the concept of drones flying over barbecues in New York to see whether you have a
Big Gulp in your backyard or whether you are separating out your recyclables according to the city
mandates," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., referring to a New York City ban on supersized soft drinks.
Paul has introduced a bill that would prohibit drones from checking for criminal or regulatory
violations without a warrant.
Huerta said his agency is sensitive to privacy concerns involving drones. Test sites must have a
written plan for data use and retention, and will be required to conduct an annual review of privacy
practices that involves public comment.
That policy provided little comfort for the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Someday drones will be commonplace in U.S. skies and, before that happens, it's imperative that
Congress enact strong, nationwide privacy rules," ACLU attorney Catherine Crump said in a
statement.
Associated Press writers Dave Kolpack in Fargo, N.D., and Chris Carola in Albany, N.Y.,
contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
“Electronic Surveillance Of Private Citizens … Subversive Of Constitutional Government”
Was One Of The Articles Of Impeachment Against President Richard Nixon Approved By A
Bipartisan 28 To 10 Vote Of The House Judiciary Committee On July 27, 1974
Posted on January 8, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog
Why Isn’t Obama Impeached for Mass Surveillance?
One of the crimes against the Constitution for which the House Judiciary Committee voted to
impeach Nixon was:
The electronic surveillance of private citizens … subversive of constitutional government ….
2 former presidents, a vice president and a judge all warn that the NSA’s current mass surveillance
is tyranny. Top American constitutional experts say that spying by the Obama administration is
worse than the spying done by Nixon.
Why isn’t Obama impeached for such tyranny?
In fact, historians say that the NSA’s spying is worse than the Stasi East Germans. They also say
that NSA spying is exactly the type of oppression that the Founding Fathers launched the
Revolutionary War to stop. And see this.
Where is America’s immune system?
01/07/2014
Graphs by MIT Students Show the Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata
By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 11:47am
You've probably heard politicians or pundits say that “metadata doesn't matter.” They argue that
police and intelligence agencies shouldn't need probable cause warrants to collect information about
our communications. Metadata isn’t all that revealing, they say, it’s just numbers.
But the digital metadata trails you leave behind every day say more about you than you can
imagine. Now, thanks to two MIT students, you don't have to imagine—at least with respect to your
email.
Deepak Jagdish and Daniel Smilkov's Immersion program maps your life, using your email
account. After you give the researchers access to your email metadata—not the content, just the
time and date stamps, and “To” and “Cc” fields—they’ll return to you a series of maps and graphs
that will blow your mind. The program will remind you of former loves, illustrate the changing
dynamics of your professional and personal networks over time, mark deaths and transitions in your
life, and more. You’ll probably learn something new about yourself, if you study it closely enough.
(The students say they delete your data on your command.)
Whether or not you grant the program access to your data, watch the video embedded below to see
Jagdish and Smilkov show illustrations from Immersion and talk about what they discerned about
themselves from looking at their own metadata maps. While you’re watching, remember that while
the NSA and FBI are collecting our phone records in bulk, and using advanced computer algorithms
to make meaning from them, state and local government officials can often also get this information
without a warrant.
When President Obama said that the phone surveillance program “isn’t about” “listening to your
telephone calls,” he was deflecting attention from the terrifying fact that there’s nothing currently
stopping the government from amassing and data-mining every scrap of metadata in the world
about us. He made it sound like metadata spying isn't a big deal, when it's pretty much the golden
ticket.
Metadata surveillance is extremely powerful, and we are all subject to it, constantly. If you want to
see something resembling what the NSA sees when it looks at your data, give Jagdish and
Smilkov’s program a try. Then tell the government: get a warrant.
See also this post on Immersion by the ACLU's Matt Harwood.
This is an edited version of a post first published on the ACLU of Massachusetts' Privacy SOS blog.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
The growing use of license plate readers and its threat to privacy
Law enforcement agencies throughout the nation are increasingly adopting automated license plate
recognition (ALPR) technologies, which function to automatically capture an image of the vehicle’s
license plate, transform that image into alphanumeric characters, compare the plate number
acquired to one or more databases of vehicles of interest, and alert the officer when a vehicle of
interest has been observed, all within a matter of seconds.(spying on citizens & tracking our every
movement)
For more about how license plate readers are spying on our every movement click here, here &
here.
This project was designed to assess ALPR implementation among law enforcement agencies in
the United States, and to identify emerging implementation practices to provide operational
and policy guidance to the field. A random sample of 444 local, state, and tribal law
enforcement agencies was surveyed. A total of 305 agencies responded to the initial survey
(68.7%). Three-quarters of respondents (235 agencies, 77.0%) indicated that they were not
using ALPR, while 70 agencies (23.0%) responded that they were using ALPR. A longer, more
detailed survey was sent to the 70 agencies who confirmed they were using ALPR, and 40
agencies (57.1%) responded.
Survey respondents had typically implemented mobile ALPR systems (95%), and were
primarily using ALPR for auto theft (69%), vehicle and traffic enforcement (28%), and
investigations (25%). Agencies reported increases in stolen vehicle recoveries (68%), arrests
(55%), and productivity (50%). Fewer than half (48%) had developed ALPR policies. Over
half (53%) updated their ALPR hot lists wirelessly, and nearly half (43%) updated their hot
lists once each day. A total of 40% of respondents retain ALPR data for six months or less
(n=16). Five respondents (13%) indicated they retain ALPR data indefinitely, while two
indicated that retention is based on the storage capacity of the equipment installed.
Realizing the core business values that ALPR promises, however, can only be achieved through
proper planning, implementation, training, deployment, use, and management of the technology and
the information it provides. Like all tools and technologies available to law enforcement, ALPR
must also be carefully managed. Policies must be developed and strictly enforced to ensure the
quality of the data, the security of the system, compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and
the privacy of information gathered. (It's all about the money, corporate funding & profitability are
responsible for spying in the name of terrorism)
Dianne Feinstein Admits That Her 'NSA Reform' Bill Is About Protecting Existing
Surveillance Programs
from the oops dept
See, there's a problem when you lie: you always forget how to keep your story straight. You may
remember, for example, that Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the end of October, released a bill that
pretended to be about reforming the NSA and its surveillance programs. The bill was spun in a way
that was designed to make people think it was creating real reforms, with a fact sheet claiming that
it "prohibited" certain actions around bulk data collection, but which actually codified them in the
law, by including massive loopholes. It was an incredibly cynical move by Feinstein and her staff,
pretending that their bill to actually give the NSA even greater power and to legalize its abuses, was
about scaling back the NSA. But that's the spin they put on it -- which almost no one bought.
But, it seems that even Feinstein has forgotten that her bill is supposed to pretend that it's about
reining in the NSA. On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee met with the White House's
task force, to discuss its recommendations for surveillance reform (which don't go far enough, but
go way beyond what Feinstein wants). In discussing what happened in the meeting, Feinstein
basically lets slip that she disagrees with the reforms suggested, and that support for her bill means
that others are against reform as well:
Those recommendations were criticized by supporters of the NSA’s programs, including Intelligence
Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has said that taking the information out of the
government’s hands could put the country at risk. Feinstein has spoken out against proposed
reforms that would require as much, and has sponsored her own committee bill that would preserve
the agency’s methods.
“Our bill passed by 11-4, so you know there’s substantial support for the programs,” she said.
In other words, "my bill is for people who already support these programs." Exactly the opposite of
what her marketing and public statements about the bill have been. Oops. Next time, she should try
to not misrepresent her own bill, and maybe she can keep her story straight.
Your USB cable, the spy: Inside the NSA’s catalog of surveillance magic
Latest batch of documents leaked shows NSA's power to pwn.
by Sean Gallagher - Dec 31, 2013
A diagram of an NSA BIOS-based attack, brought to you by sneakernet.
NSA leaks

Worried about snooping, India won’t partner with Google for elections

How should states fight the NSA? Turn off the water, say some

Report: Obama set to approve “public advocate” position, more NSA reforms

NSA dreams of quantum computer that can break encryption

Snowden speaks from Moscow: “The mission’s already accomplished”
The National Security Agency’s sophisticated hacking operations go way beyond using software
vulnerabilities to gain access to targeted systems. The agency has a catalog of tools available that
would make James Bond’s Q jealous, providing NSA analysts access to just about every potential
source of data about a target.
In some cases, the NSA has modified the firmware of computers and network hardware—including
systems shipped by Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, and Juniper Networks—to give its
operators both eyes and ears inside the offices the agency has targeted. In others, the NSA has
crafted custom BIOS exploits that can survive even the reinstallation of operating systems. And in
still others, the NSA has built and deployed its own USB cables at target locations—complete with
spy hardware and radio transceiver packed inside.
Documents obtained by Der Spiegel reveal a fantastical collection of surveillance tools dating back
to 2007 and 2008 that gave the NSA the power to collect all sorts of data over long periods of time
without detection. The tools, ranging from back doors installed in computer network firmware and
software to passively powered bugs installed within equipment, give the NSA a persistent ability to
monitor some targets with little risk of detection. While the systems targeted by some of the
“products” listed in the documents are over five years old and are likely to have been replaced in
some cases, the methods and technologies used by all the exploit products could easily still be in
use in some form in ongoing NSA surveillance operations.
Special delivery
There’s no indication from the documents that the manufacturers played any role in the
development or delivery of the backdoors (something that manufacturers are now loudly telling
their customers, too). The documents, which appear to be pages from a catalog of capabilities
provided by the NSA's ANT division for the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division,
show that many of the tools on offer are ordinary Windows exploits designed to use parts of the
operating system to “phone home” to the NSA with data; like most malware, these packages can be
dropped in place remotely and are probably the least interesting of the new revelations.
Hardware- and firmware-based backdoors, by contrast, require laying hands on the actual target
systems. In some cases, the NSA’s operators install backdoor hardware and firmware directly onto
the systems by “interdiction”—the systems are diverted during shipping to “load stations” where
the surveillance components are installed. (This interception may have been accomplished with the
cooperation of shipping companies or other government agencies; details of the process remain
murky.) In other cases, the NSA uses an insider with a USB device or remote access tools deployed
by other means to gain access to computer systems, allowing the NSA to “reflash” their low-level
BIOS firmware.
Either way, the altering of systems’ firmware or hardware gives the NSA the ability to install
backdoors that can survive a total operating system wipe and re-installation. One BIOS attack,
called SWAP, was developed by the NSA to attack a number of types of computers and operating
systems by loading surveillance and control software at boot-up. SWAP uses the Host Protected
Area on a computer’s hard drive to store the payload and installs it before the operating system
boots.
More specialized BIOS attacks were developed to take advantage of motherboard-based System
Management Mode (SMM) capabilities on Dell and Hewlett-Packard servers. Dell PowerEdge
servers were targeted with an implant called DEITYBOUNCE, while HP Proliant 360DL G5
servers were targeted with one called IRONCHEF. Both allowed NSA operators to gain remote
control of systems in SMM mode—giving the agency firmware-level control over infected servers
and the ability to do things like run “rootkits” on the server operating system.
The ANT "product" listing for IRONCHEF, the BIOS attack on HP servers, showing an example
attack scenario where remote operators use a covert wireless network to take control of servers.
Network hardware is also a target for the NSA’s BIOS attacks. For example, one collection of BIOS
hacks called the “MONTANA” family (SCHOOLMONTANA, SIERRAMONTANA, and
STUCCOMONTANA), was designed to target Juniper Networks routers using the JUNOS
operating system—a FreeBSD derivative. Once installed, the hacked BIOS actually modifies the
operating system kernel in memory when the router is booted, giving an NSA remote operations
center full command and control over the router and allowing for selected network traffic to be sent
back to the operations center over an external network connection. Even physically replacing the
CompactFlash memory card the router boots from wouldn't get rid of this back door.
Juniper routers weren’t the only targets of these sorts of BIOS “implants,” either—firewalls and
routers from Cisco and Huawei were also on the 2007 menu for firmware and software exploits.
Such router exploits didn’t even require interception of the hardware but could in many cases be
remotely installed by way of another hack.
For systems where a BIOS hack is impractical, the NSA has other tools to install a persistent
backdoor. One, called GINSU, uses a PCI bus device installed on the computer. An implant called
BULLDOZER creates a stealth wireless bridge, providing radio-based remote control of the
backdoor to TAO operators. If the rootkit on the system (called KONGUR) is removed by a system
re-installation, the GINSU backdoor can re-install the software on the next boot-up.
Enlarge / GINSU allows the NSA to slice and dice computers' hard drives and control them
remotely over a covert radio connection.
Reach out and touch someone
An implanted wireless device is the NSA’s go-to approach for dealing with “air-gapped”
networks—networks that don’t have an Internet connection for security reasons. There are a number
of other implanted devices that the NSA has in its TAO arsenal, including USB and Ethernet
implants that can transmit short-range radio signals and more robust implanted hardware for longerrange transmissions. These radio links create a shadow Internet that allows the NSA to move data
out of an adversary’s network and into its TURMOIL and X-KEYSCORE collection system.
The COTTONMOUTH series of implants are USB devices that provide a covert wireless bridge
into a target network. They can be integrated into any USB plug, so check your mouse.
For networks that the NSA can't get to physically, there's NIGHTSTAND, a self-contained Wi-Fi
hacking system that can break into networks up to eight miles away, in optimum conditions.
NIGHTSTAND hijacks the target network and uses packet injection attacks to install exploits on
the target network's computers. Combined with a Windows exploit called SOMBERKNAVE,
which uses a computer's Wi-Fi adapter to "phone home" with data, it could be used to collect data
from target computers even when they're not intentionally connected to a network.
Enlarge / According to the ANT catalog, the NIGHTSTAND Wi-FI exploit system's attack is
"undetectable by the user."
But why stop at network data? The NSA also uses some fairly exotic tools to grab computer video,
keyboard strokes, and even audio from inside more difficult-to-reach places by using passive
electronic devices that are actually powered by radar. These devices, charged by a specially tuned
continuous wave radio signal sent from a portable radar unit (operating at as little as 2W up to as
much as 1kW of power in the 1-2GHz range), send back a data stream as a reflected signal,
allowing the NSA’s operators to tune in and view what’s happening on a computer screen or even
listen to what’s being said in the room as they paint the target with radio frequency energy—as well
as giving a relative rough location of devices within a building for the purposes of tracking or
targeting.
Hacking smartphones
The 2007 NSA wish book for analysts also includes a number of software tools that allow data to be
stolen from a variety of smartphones and dumb cell phones. One software hack, called
DROPOUTJEEP, is a software implant for Apple iOS devices that allows the NSA to remotely
control and monitor nearly all the features of an iPhone, including geolocation, text messages, and
the microphone and camera. (Researcher and developer Jake Appelbaum, who helped write the
Spiegel article revealing the documents, said separately this week that the NSA claims
DROPOUTJEEP installations are always successful.) Another package, called TOTEGHOSTLY,
does the same for phones based on the Windows Mobile embedded operating system.
Both the DROPOUTJEEP and TOTEGHOSTLY releases mentioned in the 2007 product listing
required “close access methods” for installation—in other words, a human being getting up close
and personal with the phone to install it. “A remote installation capacity will be pursued for a future
release,” the document states. But another tool, called MONKEYCALENDAR, allowed the NSA to
remotely install location-tracking software onto any GSM phone by way of a software implant for
SIM cards.
But these aren't the only way the NSA can get to cell phone data. Also in the bag of tricks are a
number of wireless monitoring devices, as well as “networks in a box” and other gear that can pose
as cell towers and networks—intercepting devices as they enter an area and grabbing up their voice,
data, and SMS traffic. A "tripwire" program called CANDYGRAM can send out alerts whenever a
cell phone hits a specified cell tower.
Old tricks, new tricks
It’s important to note that the exploits in the documents are largely over five years old, so they don’t
necessarily give a complete picture of what the NSA is capable of today. That doesn’t mean that
these techniques are no longer in circulation—given the stubbornness of Windows XP, many of the
exploits developed for older Windows platforms may have years left in them, and some of the
adversaries the NSA is trying to monitor don’t have Fortune 500 hardware refresh rates.
A frequent defense of what the NSA does with its bag of tricks is that in many ways it is no
different from what other countries (including China, Russia, and France) try to do to the United
States and other countries via their intelligence organizations. These documents show the key way
the NSA is different—its vast technical resources and ability to essentially put itself into the supply
chain for technology flowing to the rest of the world. US officials have long suspected China of
doing the same thing with hardware from companies such as Huawei and ZTE, but these documents
essentially spell out that "interdiction" is part of the US intelligence strategy, too.
The exposure of the techniques and capabilities of the NSA creates another problem for the agency,
in that it provides those hard-to-get-at organizations the TAO was created to go after with an idea of
how the NSA has targeted and will target them. It also creates a problem for companies like Cisco
and Juniper, who now face the same sort of scrutiny the US and others put Huawei under for its
connections to the Chinese military. Even if Dell, HP, Cisco, and Juniper had no hand in creating
the backdoors for their products, the documents will undoubtedly be used against them the next
time they try to sell hardware to a foreign government.
ROBOTICS
FUTURISTIC HUMAN LIKE ROBOTS
UNVEILED AT THE DARPA ROBOTICS
CHALLENGE
JANUARY 9, 2014 1 COMMENT
The DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) is a two-year Pentagon-funded competition which pushes
the contestants to design the most humanistic robots possible. The aim of the challenge is to
develop robots that will be able to perform human-like functions in environments and conditions
that are not suitable or safe for human beings. The first physical trials were held on the 20th of
December at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida. The trials consisted of a series of eight tasks
which included an obstacle course and various other challenges. Here is a look at some of the
contenders of the DRC.
1. THOR and THOR-OP
These two bots belong to the same team with THOR being the taller and more capable of the pair.
THOR (Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot) is the closest to simulating human stability and
musculature. This stable movement is due to THOR’s series of elastic actuators which give it a
bouncing gait. However, THOR was declared unready for the competition this year and so THOROP (Open Platform) was used in place of it’s big brother. With a smaller height and a more Asimolike movement, THOR-OP isn’t as able as THOR, but still competent enough to perform most of
the tasks at the trials (such as opening doors, turning valves, etc.). THOR-OP will only be carrying
the team for this year’s trials as THOR will be brought back into action in 2014.
2. CHIMP
The team at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is familiar to DARPA’s challenges. They won the
the 2007 Urban Challenge with an autonomous pickup truck. The team has developed a 400-pound
humanoid that resembles an ape more than a human due to its disproportionately long arms (10 feet
when opened completely). The robot has tank treads attached to each limb to help it cover longer
distances, so it doesn’t have to worry about balancing itself. When standing, CHIMP has a total
height of 5′ 2″. CHIMP also uses 3-D mapping instead of a live feed camera to provide the
controllers with feedback.
3. Valkyrie
This creation was submitted by NASA and developed by the Johnson Space Center. The robot
stands 6′ 2″ tall and has a fabric enclosed frame. The defining feature of the Valkyrie, however, is
not the external looks but the large variety of cameras placed all over the robots frame including
head, torso, feet, knees and arms. Valkyrie had an edge at the trials this week due to JSC’s
experience with robots such as Robonaut and Robonaut 2.
4. RoboSimian
The second entry by NASA was created by Jet Propulsion’s Lab and looks the least like a
humanoid. In fact, the RoboSimian doesn’t look like any biological creature. The creators say that
the robot does have an ape-like profile but other than that, the lack of a head or face or any distinct
standing position make the RoboSimian stand out from the other robots at the DRC. The robot’s
four limbs have a large number of joints which give it an incredible amount of mobility, even
allowing the limbs to fold into themselves. The body has cameras at different angles so that it can
scuttle around without having to turn around. This incredible mobility is sure to give the
RoboSimian an advantage in certain tasks at the trials.
5. Hubo
Hubo is probably the lightest of the robots at the DRC. The robot has the size and strength of a 10year old boy and it’s weight of 130 pounds makes it easy for it to be carried by a human to the place
where it is to be used. This gives Hubo a real world advantage. Besides this, the team that
developed Hubo has a few replacements to take over in case one of the robots breaks down or
malfunctions. The DRC-Hubo is a foot taller than its predecessor and 20 percent heavier, but it’s
still lightweight and mobile enough to perform the tasks at the trials. The stalk-like head does look
slightly scary but it gives Hubo an elevated view and greater visibility.
6. HRP-2-Based Robot
This mysterious robot built by the Japan-based team, Schaft, Inc. doesn’t even have a name yet.
This robot is the one to beat at the DRC as all other teams say that it will be able to complete the
mobility-based tasks with relative ease. The water-cooled motors powered by fast discharge
batteries give the robot great amounts of power on demand. The roboticists of the University of
Tokyo have recorded their robots performance around the lab and it is quite impressive in terms of
mobility. One point of interest which is irrelevant to the robot itself is the fact that Schaft, Inc. was
acquired by Google this year, which only makes this team a greater competitor in the DRC.
7. Atlas
All of the previous teams were Track A teams and built both the hardware and software for the
DRC. The Track B participants which will develop only the software, were provided with their own
robots – the Atlas robot by Boston Dynamics. The robot does have a reputation for tripping due to
its lack of stability. The recent acquisition of Boston Dynamics by Google has just made the DRC
slightly more interesting. The last time Google swooped in on a DARPA competition, the internet
giant ended up creating its own driverless car. This time around Google’s participation could create
the humanoids we’ve seen in movies for so many years or it could delay the process to next year’s
rounds in December 2014.
Intel announces Edison, a computer the size of an SD card
By Sean Hollister on January 6, 2014
Don't miss stories Follow The Verge
Intel built a processor for wearable computing, and now it has a tiny computer where that processor
can live. At CES 2014, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced Edison, "a full Pentium-class PC"
that's the size and shape of the SD card you might otherwise put in your camera. It's powered by a
dual-core Quark SOC, runs Linux, and has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, according to
the company. Intel even has a specific app store designed for Edison, and a special version of
Wolfram that will come to the tiny computer.
To demonstrate the potential for Edison, Intel showed a concept for a "Nursery 2.0." In the concept,
a baby was wearing a Mimo onesie outfitted with sensors tracking things like temperature, and
Edison was used to display that information on, of all things, a coffee mug. When the baby was
comfortable, blinking lights on the mug show a happy green smiling face, but when something is
wrong that face turns red. A much more useful application, however, involved using Edison to
switch on a bottle warmer when your baby starts to stir, that way it's ready come feeding time.
Singularity: The robots are coming to steal our jobs
By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter
Are robots on the
verge of real intelligence?
If you worry that the robots are coming, don't, because they are already here.
Artificial intelligence agents are already involved in every aspect of our lives - they keep our
inboxes free of spam, they help us make our web transactions, they fly our planes and if Google
gets its way will also soon drive our cars for us.
"AI's are embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives," head of AI at Singularity University, Neil
Jacobstein, told the BBC.
"They are used in medicine, in law, in design and throughout automotive industry."
And each day the algorithms that power away, making decisions behind the scenes, are getting
smarter.
It means that one of the biggest quests of the modern world - the search to make machines as
intelligent as humans - could be getting tantalisingly close.
Mr Jacobstein predicts that artificial intelligence will overtake human intelligence in the mid-2020s,
begging the question - what will a society dominated by machine intelligence look like and what
exactly will be our role in it?
Stealing jobs?
Will we work side
by side with robots?
We may get to put our feet up more, for a start.
Chinese company Hon Hai, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, has announced it
intends to build a robot-making factory and replace 500,000 workers with robots over the next three
years.
But not having a job will also mean not having a wage, a radical change for a world used to
working for a living.
"AIs will cause significant unemployment but that doesn't equate with poverty," said Mr Jacobstein.
"AIs and other exponential technologies are going to generate vast amounts of wealth.
"We have to be willing to change the social contract we have with people about how wealth is
distributed."
He tends towards the optimistic view of machines and humans working in perfect harmony, side by
side.
"The best combination for problem solving is a human and a computer," he said.
Dangerous future
Author and documentary-maker James Barrat sits in a very different camp. He is so worried about
the onslaught of artificial intelligence that he has written a book about it.
Our Final Invention examines whether the increasing domination of artificial intelligence is going
to mean the end of the human era.
"Advanced AI is a dual-use technology, like nuclear fission. Fission can illuminate cities or
incinerate them. At advanced levels, AI will be even more volatile and dangerous than fission, and
it's already being weaponised in autonomous drones and battlefield robots," Barrat told the BBC.
"More than any other science it forces us to probe ourselves - what are these things we call
intelligence, conscience, emotion? But in looking inward we better see our own predilection for
irrational violence and technological recklessness. Our innovation always runs far ahead of our
stewardship," he said.
The robot revolution may be some way off if a competition organised by the Pentagon's research
unit Darpa in December is anything to go by.
Videos posted online showed the robots remained much slower than humans, often unsteady on
their feet with some failing to complete any of the challenges.
Google bot
Will Google build a
real robot next?
Nonetheless there is a buzz around robots and artificial intelligence at the moment. Google has just
bought eight robotic firms, while Facebook has its very own AI lab.
Speculation is rife about what Google will do with its new acquisition.
Google robots could be very powerful, thinks Mr Barrat. "That's one route to human level
intelligence. A high quality personal assistant wouldn't be just a smartphone - it'd have a humanoid
body. Why humanoid? So it can drive your car, use your tools, bounce the baby, act as your
bodyguard if need be," he said.
start adding silicon to themselves?
Will people
If the rise of the robots is inevitable - albeit a few years off - then it is also a logical step that
humans will eventually be eliminated from the decision chain entirely, meaning AIs will be
controlling other AIs.
That was already happening in our laptops and computers, said Mr Jacobstein.
"Anti-virus software is basically AI techniques that is being used to detect other AIs that we call
viruses and worms," he said.
But he acknowledges that controls to make sure that the phrase "robot failure" doesn't replace
"human failure" would have to be built into future AI systems.
"We would build the same layered control system we need in everyday life with humans. We want
to look at the risks and build controls that stops that rogue behaviour," he said.
Brain upgrade
Our brains haven't had a major upgrade for 50,000 years ”
End Quote Neil Jacobstein Singularity University
While Mr Jacobstein remains sanguine about the robot takeover, he is well aware that many see it as
the stuff of nightmares. "Some people ask, 'How do you sleep at night knowing the prospects for
artificial intelligence?' but it isn't artificial intelligence that keeps me awake at night, it is human
stupidity," he said.
For him, the only way that humans will keep up with the robots is to become more like them.
"Our brains haven't had a major upgrade for 50,000 years and if your laptop or smartphone hadn't
had an upgrade in five years you might be concerned about that," he said.
Already we have access to AI's such as Siri and Google Now and are pretty much constantly
connected to the web via our smartphones, so it isn't so much of a step to imagine a future where
silicon is embedded in our skulls.
And it could be the only way for us to keep up with the robots
DO YOU REALLY THINK MCDONALDS WILL BE PAYING BURGER FLIPPERS $15
PER HOUR?
Posted on 12th January 2014 by Administrator
Liberal do-gooders are so funny when they attempt to control the world. Their latest media aided
cause is doubling the pay of fast food workers so they can have a living wage. Fast food jobs are for
teenagers and adult dullards. You can’t earn a living working as a fast food worker. It seems only
liberals don’t get it. Obama and his minions can push for an increase in the minimum wage and
doubling of fast food wages, but it will just result in more people joining his free shit SNAP army.
You can bet that McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King and every other bottom line oriented
corporation is experimenting with RoboBurgerBoy. Robots will be replacing more dullards over the
coming years.
Meet the Robot That Makes 360 Gourmet Burgers Per Hour
By Brian Merchant
No human hand touched this hamburger. It was made entirely by robots
One robot, rather—a 24 square foot gourmet-hamburger-flipping behemoth built by Momentum
Machines. It looks like this:
The San Francisco-based robotics company debuted its burger-preparing machine last year. It can
whip up hundreds of burgers an hour, take custom orders, and it uses top-shelf ingredients for its
inputs. Now Momentum is proposing a chain of ‘smart restaurants’ that eschew human cooks
altogether.
Food Beast points us to the Momentum’s official release, where the company blares:
“Fast food doesn’t have to have a negative connotation anymore. With our technology, a restaurant
can offer gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices. Our alpha machine replaces all of the
hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. It does everything employees can do except better.”
And what might this robotic burger cook of the future do better than the slow, inefficient, wagesucking line cooks of yore?

It slices toppings like tomatoes and pickles only immediately before it places the slice onto
your burger, giving you the freshest burger possible.

…custom meat grinds for every single customer. Want a patty with 1/3 pork and 2/3 bison
ground after you place your order? No problem.

It’s more consistent, more sanitary, and can produce ~360 hamburgers per hour.
Furthermore, the “labor savings allow a restaurant to spend approximately twice as much on high
quality ingredients and the gourmet cooking techniques make the ingredients taste that much
better.” Hear that? Without all those cumbersome human workers, your hamburger will be twice as
good. For the same cost.
I don’t doubt this is where we’re heading; robots are making inroads in manufacturing, farming, and
they’re doing more domestic work around the house, too. Yeah, robots are taking our jobs, and it’s
not a question of if, but when and how. Economists often treat the service industry as some last
bastion of downsize-proof labor, but, clearly, robots will make sandwiches and take orders, too.
A future where we can get gourmet burgers, cheaply and on the quick, sounds pretty nice. But that
future will also have structural unemployment, unless we start taking major strides to rethink and
reform how we work in a world where robots are doing much of the heavy lifting. If we can, with
robots flipping all the burgers, and the right social policies, maybe at least a semi-techno-utopia is
on the way…
Rampant Prosecutorial Misconduct
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
In the justice system, prosecutors have the power to decide what criminal charges to bring, and
since 97 percent of cases are resolved without a trial, those decisions are almost always the most
important factor in the outcome. That is why it is so important for prosecutors to play fair, not just
to win. This obligation is embodied in the Supreme Court’s 1963 holding in Brady v. Maryland,
which required prosecutors to provide the defense with any exculpatory evidence that could
materially affect a verdict or sentence.
Yet far too often, state and federal prosecutors fail to fulfill that constitutional duty, and far too
rarely do courts hold them accountable. Last month, Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, issued the most stinging indictment of this systemic
failure in recent memory. “There is an epidemic of Brady violations abroad in the land,” Judge
Kozinski wrote in dissent from a ruling against a man who argued that prosecutors had withheld
crucial evidence in his case. “Only judges can put a stop to it.”
The defendant, Kenneth Olsen, was convicted of producing ricin, a toxic poison, for use as a
weapon. Federal prosecutors knew — but did not tell his lawyers or the court — that an
investigation of the government’s forensic scientist, whose lab tests were critical to the case, had
revealed multiple instances of sloppy work that had led to wrongful convictions in earlier cases. A
state court found the scientist was “incompetent and committed gross misconduct.”
Yet the majority of the federal appeals court panel ruled that the overall evidence of Mr. Olsen’s
guilt — including websites he visited and books he bought — was so overwhelming that the failure
to disclose the scientist’s firing would not have changed the outcome.
This is the all-too-common response by courts confronted with Brady violations. Judge Kozinski
was right to castigate the majority for letting the prosecution refuse to turn over evidence “so long
as it’s possible the defendant would’ve been convicted anyway,” as the judge wrote. This creates a
“serious moral hazard,” he added, particularly since prosecutors are virtually never punished for
misconduct. According to the Center for Prosecutor Integrity, multiple studies over the past 50 years
show that courts punished prosecutorial misconduct in less than 2 percent of cases where it
occurred. And that rarely amounted to more than a slap on the wrist, such as making the prosecutor
pay for the cost of the disciplinary hearing.
Brady violations are, by their nature, hard to detect, but Judge Kozinski had no trouble coming up
with more than two dozen examples from federal and state courts just in the last few years, and
those are surely the tip of the iceberg. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 43
percent of wrongful convictions are the result of official misconduct.
The Brady problem is in many ways structural. Prosecutors have the task of deciding when a piece
of evidence would be helpful to the defense. But since it is their job to believe in the defendant’s
guilt, they have little incentive to turn over, say, a single piece of exculpatory evidence when they
are sitting on what they see as a mountain of evidence proving guilt. The lack of professional
consequences for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence only makes the breach of duty more
likely. As Judge Kozinski wrote, “Some prosecutors don’t care about Brady because courts don’t
make them care.”
Courts should heed Judge Kozinski’s call, but it will take more than judges to fix the problem.
Prosecutors’ offices should adopt a standard “open file” policy, which would involve turning over
all exculpatory evidence as a rule, thus reducing the potential for error.
Fighting prosecutorial misconduct is not only about protecting the innocent. It is, as Judge Kozinski
wrote, about preserving “the public’s trust in our justice system,” and the foundation of the rule of
law.
KC & Associates Investigations Research Associates
Quinault Valley Guns & Blades / Urban Escape & Evasion Course For 1st Responders
International Relations * Military * Terrorism * Business * Security
www.kcandassociates.org [email protected]
Kathleen Louise dePass Press Agent/Publicist .360.288.2652
Triste cosa es no tener amigos, pero más triste ha de ser no tener enemigos porque quién no tenga enemigos señal es de
que no tiene talento que haga sombra, ni carácter que impresione, ni valor temido, ni honra de la que se murmure, ni
bienes que se le codicien, ni cosa alguna que se le envidie. A sad thing it is to not have friends, but even sadder must it
be not having any enemies; that a man should have no enemies is a sign that he has no talent to outshine others, nor
character that inspires, nor valor that is feared, nor honor to be rumored, nor goods to be coveted, nor anything to be
envied. -Jose Marti
From the desk of Craig B Hulet?
Why aren’t the Wall Street criminals prosecuted? What prevails in America is not democracy, but a
revival of what in former epochs was called aristocratic privilege
Why aren’t the Wall Street criminals prosecuted?
By Barry Grey
7 January 2014
In May 2012, only days after JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon revealed that his bank had lost
billions of dollars in speculative bets, President Barack Obama publicly defended the multimillionaire CEO, calling him “one of the smartest bankers we’ve got.” What Obama did not
mention is that Dimon is a criminal.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the government will shortly announce the latest in a long
list of sweetheart settlements with Wall Street banks involved in criminal wrongdoing. Federal
regulators and prosecutors will, as early as this week, make public a “deferred prosecution” deal
letting JPMorgan and its top executives off the hook for their complicity in the $20 billion Ponzi
scheme run by disgraced financier Bernie Madoff.
In return for payment of some $2 billion in fines, the biggest US bank and its CEO will be allowed
to avoid a criminal indictment or admission of guilt, even as they acknowledge the government’s
list of illegal actions carried out by the bank during its twenty-year relationship with Madoff.
There is ample evidence, including internal emails from senior executives, proving that top
management was well aware that Madoff, who kept his firm’s accounts at JPMorgan, was running a
scam. Madoff himself, in a 2011 interview from prison, said, “There were people at the bank who
knew what was going on.”
JPMorgan chose not to warn US regulators and to continue its lucrative relationship with the Ponzi
schemer. (See: “US in sweetheart deal with JPMorgan over complicity in Madoff Ponzi scheme”).
This is a violation of federal laws, including the Bank Secrecy Act.
The settlement amounts to an acknowledgment that Dimon was a criminal co-conspirator with
Madoff. Yet Madoff has been sentenced to 150 years in prison, while Dimon is going scot-free.
Dimon and his bank were complicit in a fraud that cost thousands of retirees their life savings and
bankrupted a number of charities. But this is only a small part of the human tragedy and social
carnage from multiple swindles and frauds carried out by JPMorgan.
Over the past two years, Dimon’s bank has settled charges that it palmed off toxic mortgage
securities on false pretenses, filed false reports to conceal over $6 billion in losses from soured
derivatives bets, manipulated energy prices, forged foreclosure documents to force families out of
their homes, charged credit card holders for services it did not provide, and defrauded pension funds
and other institutional investors.
It is currently being investigated for its role in rigging Libor, the global benchmark interest rate, and
bribing Chinese officials.
JPMorgan is not the exception; it is the rule. Virtually every major bank that operates on Wall Street
has settled charges of fraud and criminality on a staggering scale. In 2011, the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations released a 630-page report on the financial crash of 2008
documenting what the committee chairman called “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of
interest and wrongdoing.”
These multiple crimes by serial lawbreakers have had very real and very destructive consequences.
The entire world has been plunged into an economic slump that has already lasted more than five
years and shows no signs of abating. Tens of millions of families have lost their homes as a result of
predatory mortgages pushed by JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks.
The collapse of the housing and credit markets in 2007-2008 as a result of rampant speculation and
fraud has bankrupted entire countries—Greece, Ireland, Iceland and Spain, to name a few. Detroit
and other cities have been thrown into bankruptcy as a result of bankers’ machinations.
Governments all over the world have used the economic crisis as an opportunity to carry out a
relentless assault on the working class, ripping up the social gains achieved in the course of a
century of struggle. Millions of lives have been destroyed by homelessness, hunger and disease as a
result of the practices of the Jamie Dimons of the world.
And while billions of people have grown poorer, Dimon and his fellow plutocrats have grown richer
than ever. Their banks, shielded by bribed politicians, regulators and governments, have raked in
record profits, subsidized by trillions in taxpayer bailouts and virtually free cash provided by the
Federal Reserve.
Dimon was paid $23.1 million in 2011 and $11.5 million in 2012, adding to a personal fortune that
is in the hundreds of millions.
With the $2 billion in fines to be levied in the Madoff settlement, JPMorgan will have paid out $20
billion in legal costs just over the past year. The scale of the fines is an indication of the colossal
dimensions of the crimes committed by the bank, but they represent only a small fraction of the
immense wealth it controls. The fines have been calibrated by the Obama administration, in
negotiations with Dimon, to avoid threatening the bank’s viability.
JPMorgan, which has reported more than $20 billion in annual profits over the past several years,
boasts that it has set aside $28 billion to cover fines and legal costs. As of July 2011, it had $244
billion cash on hand.
All of the criminal activities of the bankers, and the resulting social devastation, have been
motivated by personal greed. These are parasites whose behavior can be described only as
sociopathic. Dimon and his like do not even remotely contribute to the betterment of society.
Corruption is nothing new to American capitalism. But unlike the robber barons of past eras,
today’s plutocrats are not associated with the development of the productive forces, such as steel
and auto. People like Dimon make their fortunes from the manipulation of money—chiefly other
people’s money. The criminality that pervades capitalism today is bound up with activities that are
entirely parasitic and destructive of the productive forces.
More is involved here than subjective personality traits. Dimon and his counterparts on Wall Street
are personifications of a system characterized by staggering levels of social inequality. The
criminality they exhibit is the inevitable manifestation of a society where the richest 0.1 percent
control 10.3 percent of income, and the wealthiest 1 percent control 35 percent of the wealth. Such
levels of inequality shape the legal and political structures and are ultimately incompatible with
democracy.
Not a single Wall Street bank or leading banker has been criminally indicted and prosecuted, let
alone jailed, for his or her crimes. That this is the result of a deliberate policy on the part of the
Obama administration was spelled out last March by Attorney General Eric Holder. Testifying
before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder explained that the federal government chooses not
to prosecute top bankers because “if we do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact
on the national economy, perhaps the world economy.”
This is an admission that the Wall Street parasites are above the law. What prevails in America is
not democracy, but a revival of what in former epochs was called aristocratic privilege. Under
feudalism, the aristocracy enjoyed immunity from the laws that applied to ordinary people. Today’s
financial aristocracy is, in practice, similarly immunized.
This is a country where 2 million people are behind bars. Every day people are hauled into court
and thrown into jail for committing crimes whose principal cause is economic destitution. American
society is remorseless in its treatment of the poor, but infinitely forgiving when it comes to the
atrocities of the rich.
It is this reactionary social layer that controls the levers of political power, from the White House to
Congress and the courts. It dominates the major political parties and bribes its representatives. It
owns the mass media.
The bankers cannot be called to account for their crimes because they control the political system
and because criminality has become an essential feature of the US and global financial system. To
attack any part of it threatens to unravel the entire rotten edifice.
It is the task of the working class to break the stranglehold of the financial plutocracy. This is a
revolutionary task. Financial fraud and criminality are embedded in the very structure of the
capitalist system.
The working class must organize itself independently in a struggle against the financial elite and all
of its parties and institutions. It must expropriate the vast wealth obtained by the bankers through
illegal and antisocial means and use it to provide jobs and social services to the masses of people.
This is the only basis for bringing criminals like Jamie Dimon to justice.
This is just the starting point for a fundamental restructuring of society. The subordination of the
financial system to the personal accumulation of wealth must be ended. The banks and major
corporations must be taken out of private hands and placed under public ownership and democratic
control, so that they can be used as instruments of international economic planning, as part of a
socialist economy geared to human need, not private profit.
From the comments:
[–]bankregulatorburner [score hidden] 6 hours ago*
Burner account. I had a career as both a bank regulator as well as a second career running the
department within an investment bank that was responsible for ensuring compliance with the laws.
The system is screwed up, but not for the reasons in this article or otherwise commonly kicked
around on the internet.
A view from inside the system... I was hired right out of college to audit and investigate banks,
investment banks, trading firms, etc. for compliance with securities and banking laws. I had zero
experience with banking or securities trading but was hired by a quasi governmental agency to audit
the largest and most complex companies in the world. I was earning a quasi governmental salary at
the time. Once i had a few years under my belt, and because i was relatively bright, i was hired on
the 'street side' at an investment bank for about twice as much money to help them deal with the
regulators.
At the lower ranks the regulators just become a training ground for the bright and motivated that go
to work at the investment banks and the remainder of the staff at the regulators, in large part are
those who were maybe not as bright, polished, or motivated enough to get a job at an investment
bank. Because there is such a large disparity in compensation, the talent flows to the banking side.
At the top side of the regulator staff, it is very rare for directors to to be chosen from the inside and
are typically picked up from the 'street side'. These individuals have desires of putting in a few
years back at the regulator simply to pad the resume so they can go back out to the 'street side' and
aim for the top compliance job as Chief Compliance Officer of a very large investment bank which
pays 10 fold more at millions per year. Because of these motivations, they tend to 1) write soft
policy and 2) be somewhat soft on enforcement since they will want back into the club at some
point and want to be viewed as very 'business friendly'.
Because the talent draw is to the banking side you will just have much brighter talent pool of people
at the investment banks in the regulatory/compliance department. Wall street tends to be one of the
most powerful draws of talent in the world. This has changed over the years, but more than ever top
end quantitative doctors are being hired from the best schools in the world in banking for securities
development, trading algorithms, and risk mitigation analysis. To put it bluntly... the directors at the
banks are definitely 'the smartest guys in the room'. The people making the money at the banks are
just way ahead of the curve and doing things either 1) before the regulators even understand what is
going on, 2) before the regulators can get through the bureaucracy to create a law to address a
problem, 3) or are so well versed in the laws that that brush right up against the laws without
overstepping.
Not that infrequently i would hear from directors at investment banks that they were put into
positions that they really had a hard time dealing with because certain things were legal (because
regulators were to slow to understand what was going on) and profitable and therefore they would
have to make a business decision to do these things to fulfill their legal obligation to act in the best
interest of their client despite their moral objection.
For what its worth, I got out of the business completely because of the lack of soul, but there is a lot
less 'corruption', 'deviousness', 'class warfare', 'heartlessness', etc. than people think. There is
however greed, but its not necessarily a bad thing. In general, people want to make lots of money
because they want a big house for their family, security for their kids, a nice car, fancy clothes, etc.
but people work really hard for it and genuinely do not want to break the law or do any harm. They
will however do everything within their power to make as much money as possible within the
framework of the system. The regulatory system is just woefully understaffed, not talented enough,
burdened with bureaucracy, and structured in a way to be soft and slow on enforcement and policy
writing.
On January 2, 2013, David Eckert failed to make a complete stop when he pulled out of a
Walmart store in Deming, NM. A police officer then asked David to get out of his car and claimed
he saw Eckert “clenching his buttocks” which supposedly was a sign that Eckert had drugs in his
anal cavity. According to news reports, Eckert voluntarily consented to a search of his car by a K-9
unit. No drugs were found. But the police officers involved were not satisfied and Eckert was then
put in investigative detention while they secured a warrant from a judge to search his body. Then
Eckert’s humiliating examination began at a nearby medical center.
Here is a summary from the local NBC TV station KOB 4 about what Mr. Eckert went through.
1. Eckert’s abdominal area was X-rayed; no narcotics were found.
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were
found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were
found.
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of
doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to
defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No
narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to
defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No
narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then X-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy
where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large
intestines. No narcotics were found.
His attorney, Shannon Kennedy has filed a lawsuit against the City of Deming, Deming police
officers on behalf of Eckert. “This is essentially medical anal rape, numerous times over a 12-hour
period,” Kennedy said. “I can’t imagine anything more horrifying than what happened to our
client.”
Eckert later received a bill for his torture from the hospital, which threatened to turn him over to
a collections agency if he failed to pay. Eckert is said to be so traumatized by the experience it is
reported he is a prisoner in his own home and afraid to come out.
Chris Hedges
The Last Gasp of American Democracy
Posted on Jan 5, 2014
AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta
He got the memo: The National Security
Agency director, Gen. Keith Alexander,
testifies on Capitol Hill in December at a
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on
“Continued Oversight of U.S. Government
Surveillance Authorities.”
By Chris Hedges
This is our last gasp as a democracy. The state’s wholesale intrusion into our lives and obliteration
of privacy are now facts. And the challenge to us—one of the final ones, I suspect—is to rise up in
outrage and halt this seizure of our rights to liberty and free expression. If we do not do so we will
see ourselves become a nation of captives.
The public debates about the government’s measures to prevent terrorism, the character
assassination of Edward Snowden and his supporters, the assurances by the powerful that no one is
abusing the massive collection and storage of our electronic communications miss the point. Any
state that has the capacity to monitor all its citizenry, any state that has the ability to snuff out
factual public debate through control of information, any state that has the tools to instantly shut
down all dissent is totalitarian. Our corporate state may not use this power today. But it will use it if
it feels threatened by a population made restive by its corruption, ineptitude and mounting
repression. The moment a popular movement arises—and one will arise—that truly confronts our
corporate masters, our venal system of total surveillance will be thrust into overdrive.
The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes
its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy,
incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical
evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus,
there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will
be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be
treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black
mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.
I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men,
invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi—
the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and
sword” of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes.
My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear
hung like icicles over every conversation.
The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a
network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were
102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the population—one for every 166
East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government
pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites,
and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.
The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in
the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain
category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches
and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there
will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This
information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not
matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is
irrelevant.
The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in
which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used
against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control,
Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It
ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along
with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state. The corporate state, in our
case, has used the law to quietly abolish the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution,
which were established to protect us from unwarranted intrusion by the government into our private
lives. The loss of judicial and political representation and protection, part of the corporate coup
d’état, means that we have no voice and no legal protection from the abuses of power. The recent
ruling supporting the National Security Agency’s spying, handed down by U.S. District Judge
William H. Pauley III, is part of a very long and shameful list of judicial decisions that have
repeatedly sacrificed our most cherished constitutional rights on the altar of national security since
the attacks of 9/11. The courts and legislative bodies of the corporate state now routinely invert our
most basic rights to justify corporate pillage and repression. They declare that massive and secret
campaign donations—a form of legalized bribery—are protected speech under the First
Amendment. They define corporate lobbying—under which corporations lavish funds on elected
officials and write our legislation—as the people’s right to petition the government. And we can,
according to new laws and legislation, be tortured or assassinated or locked up indefinitely by the
military, be denied due process and be spied upon without warrants. Obsequious courtiers posing as
journalists dutifully sanctify state power and amplify its falsehoods—MSNBC does this as slavishly
as Fox News—while also filling our heads with the inanity of celebrity gossip and trivia. Our
culture wars, which allow politicians and pundits to hyperventilate over nonsubstantive issues,
mask a political system that has ceased to function. History, art, philosophy, intellectual inquiry, our
past social and individual struggles for justice, the very world of ideas and culture, along with an
understanding of what it means to live and participate in a functioning democracy, are thrust into
black holes of forgetfulness.
The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, in his essential book “Democracy Incorporated,” calls
our system of corporate governance “inverted totalitarianism,” which represents “the political
coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.” It differs from
classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader; it finds
its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted
totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, replace decaying structures with new
structures. They instead purport to honor electoral politics, freedom of expression and the press, the
right to privacy and the guarantees of law. But they so corrupt and manipulate electoral politics, the
courts, the press and the essential levers of power as to make genuine democratic participation by
the masses impossible. The U.S. Constitution has not been rewritten, but steadily emasculated
through radical judicial and legislative interpretation. We have been left with a fictitious shell of
democracy and a totalitarian core. And the anchor of this corporate totalitarianism is the unchecked
power of our systems of internal security.
Our corporate totalitarian rulers deceive themselves as often as they deceive the public. Politics, for
them, is little more than public relations. Lies are told not to achieve any discernable goal of public
policy, but to protect the image of the state and its rulers. These lies have become a grotesque form
of patriotism. The state’s ability through comprehensive surveillance to prevent outside inquiry into
the exercise of power engenders a terrifying intellectual and moral sclerosis within the ruling elite.
Absurd notions such as implanting “democracy” in Baghdad by force in order to spread it across the
region or the idea that we can terrorize radical Islam across the Middle East into submission are no
longer checked by reality, experience or factually based debate. Data and facts that do not fit into
the whimsical theories of our political elites, generals and intelligence chiefs are ignored and hidden
from public view. The ability of the citizenry to take self-corrective measures is effectively stymied.
And in the end, as in all totalitarian systems, the citizens become the victims of government folly,
monstrous lies, rampant corruption and state terror.
The Romanian poet Paul Celan captured the slow ingestion of an ideological poison—in his case
fascism—in his poem “Death Fugue”:
Black milk of dawn we drink it at dusk
we drink it at noon and at daybreak we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we are digging a grave in the air there’s room for us all
We, like those in all emergent totalitarian states, have been mentally damaged by a carefully
orchestrated historical amnesia, a state-induced stupidity. We increasingly do not remember what it
means to be free. And because we do not remember, we do not react with appropriate ferocity when
it is revealed that our freedom has been taken from us. The structures of the corporate state must be
torn down. Its security apparatus must be destroyed. And those who defend corporate
totalitarianism, including the leaders of the two major political parties, fatuous academics, pundits
and a bankrupt press, must be driven from the temples of power. Mass street protests and prolonged
civil disobedience are our only hope. A failure to rise up—which is what the corporate state is
counting upon—will see us enslaved.
The absurdly dangerous militarization of America’s police
More and more local departments are splurging for heavy-duty combat machinery. Here's
why we should all be nervous
JIM HIGHTOWER, ALTERNET
(Credit: Reuters/Philip Andrews)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
What a Christmas little Bastrop had! It’s still a mystery how Santa Claus got it down the
chimney, but Bastrop got a nifty present that most children could only dream about: A big honkin’,
steel-clad war toy called MRAP.
But Bastrop is not a six-year-old child, and an MRAP is not a toy. Bastrop is a Texas county of
some 75,000 people, and MRAP stands for “Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected.” It’s a heavilyarmored military vehicle weighing about 15 tons — one of several versions of fighting machines
that have become the hot, must-have playthings of police departments all across the country.
Are the good people of Bastrop facing some imminent terrorist threat that warrants military
equipment? No, it’s a very pleasant, laid-back place. And while the county is named for a 19th
century land developer and accused embezzler, it’s never been a haven for particularly dangerous
criminals — indeed, the relatively few crimes in Bastrop today don’t rise above the level of routine
police work.
Even the sheriff’s department, which is the proud owner of the MRAP tank, says it doesn’t have a
specific use for the machine, but “It’s here if we need it.” Well, yeah … but that same feeble
rational would apply if the county decided to get an atom bomb — you just never know when a big
mushroom cloud might come in handy!
What we have here is the absurdly dangerous militarization of America’s police departments. Our
sprawling Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon (which gave the MRAP to Bastrop)
are haphazardly spreading war equipment, war techniques and a war mentality to what are supposed
to be our communities’ peacekeepers and crime solvers.
Having the technology and mindset for military actions, local authorities will find excuses to
substitute them for honest police work, turning common citizens into “enemies.” As a spokesman
for the Bastrop sheriff’s department said of the MRAP, “With today’s society … there’s no way the
thing won’t be used.” How comforting is that?
But now, let’s turn from the battlefield to the gridiron.
In the ever-escalating competition to be the No. 1 big-time college football program in the nation,
Ohio State University bulked up last fall with a monster recruit named Maxx. Actually, it’s not the
coaching staff that signed up this brute, but the OSU campus police department. And the recruit’s
full name is MaxxPro — not a player, but a 19-ton armored fighting vehicle built by a pentagon
contractor to withstand “ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IEDs, and Nuclear, Biological and
Chemical environments.” Wow, college games really have gotten rough!
But the campus PD, which received the MaxxPro as a gift from the Pentagon (ie, us taxpayers), says
it’s not just playing games, but deploying Maxx for things like hostage scenarios, killers loose on
campus, and extreme flooding of up to three feet. Well, have such things been a problem at OSU?
Uh … no. Would a huge, slow, gas-guzzling vehicle designed for warfare be effective if any of the
above were actually to occur? No response.
Oh, by the way, operating these machines requires specially trained personnel — is anyone in the
department qualified? Again, no answer. Also, the vehicles are subject to frequent rollovers, and
they lack the ability to go off-road or to maneuver in confined areas. That doesn’t sound ideal for a
college campus. Not to worry, though, for the gendarmes said they were adjusting Maxx to fit their
needs. How? Removing the top gun turret and repainting the vehicle.
OSU police finally admitted that Maxx would mostly be used to drive them around campus and
provide a police “presence” on football game days. Great — police authorities now believe they
need a show of military force to keep tailgaters in check.
Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be
Fighting For
Guaranteed jobs, universal basic incomes, public finance and more
30
Comment
8466
Fast-food workers protest outside of a Burger King in Los Angeles.
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By Jesse A. Myerson
January 3, 2014 10:00 AM ET
It's a new year, but one thing hasn't changed: The economy still blows. Five years after Wall Street
crashed, America's banker-gamblers have only gotten richer, while huge swaths of the country are
still drowning in personal debt, tens of millions of Americans remain unemployed – and the new
jobs being created are largely low-wage, sub-contracted, part-time grunt work.
Millennials have been especially hard-hit by the downturn, which is probably why so many people
in this generation (like myself) regard capitalism with a level of suspicion that would have been
unthinkable a decade ago. But that egalitarian impulse isn't often accompanied by concrete
proposals about how to get out of this catastrophe. Here are a few things we might want to start
fighting for, pronto, if we want to grow old in a just, fair society, rather than the economic hellhole
our parents have handed us.
1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
Unemployment blows. The easiest and most direct solution is for the government to guarantee that
everyone who wants to contribute productively to society is able to earn a decent living in the
public sector. There are millions of people who want to work, and there's tons of work that needs
doing – it's a no-brainer. And this idea isn't as radical as it might sound: It's similar to what the
federal Works Progress Administration made possible during Roosevelt's New Deal, and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. vocally supported a public-sector job guarantee in the 1960s.
A job guarantee that paid a living wage would anchor prices, drive up conditions for workers at
megacorporations like Walmart and McDonald's, and target employment for the poor and long-term
unemployed – people to whom conventional stimulus money rarely trickles all the way down. The
program would automatically expand during private-sector downturns and contract during privatesector upswings, balancing out the business cycle and sending people from job to job, rather than
job to unemployment, when times got tough.
Some economists have proposed running a job guarantee through the non-profit sector, which
would make it even easier to suit the job to the worker. Imagine a world where people could
contribute the skills that inspire them – teaching, tutoring, urban farming, cleaning up the
environment, painting murals – rather than telemarketing or whatever other stupid tasks bosses need
done to supplement their millions. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
2. Social Security for All
But let's think even bigger. Because as much as unemployment blows, so do jobs. What if people
didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in
which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account
every month. A proposal along these lines has been gaining traction in Switzerland, and it's starting
to get a lot of attention here, too.
We live in the age of 3D printers and self-replicating robots. Actual human workers are increasingly
surplus to requirement – that's one major reason why we have such a big unemployment problem. A
universal basic income would address this epidemic at the root and provide everyone, in the words
of Duke professor Kathi Weeks, "time to cultivate new needs for pleasures, activities, senses,
passions, affects, and socialities that exceed the options of working and saving, producing and
accumulating."
Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social
programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get
a life.
3. Take Back The Land
Ever noticed how much landlords blow? They don't really do anything to earn their money. They
just claim ownership of buildings and charge people who actually work for a living the majority of
our incomes for the privilege of staying in boxes that these owners often didn't build and rarely if
ever improve. In a few years, my landlord will probably sell my building to another landlord and
make off with the appreciated value of the land s/he also claims to own – which won't even get
taxed, as long as s/he ploughs it right back into more real estate.
Think about how stupid that is. The value of the land has nothing to do with my idle, remote
landlord; it reflects the nearby parks and subways and shops, which I have access to thanks to the
community and the public. So why don't the community and the public derive the value and put it
toward uses that benefit everyone? Because capitalism, is why.
The most mainstream way of flipping the script is a simple land-value tax. By targeting wealthy real
estate owners and their free rides, we can fight inequality and poverty directly, make disastrous
asset price bubbles impossible and curb Wall Street's hideous bloat. There are cooler ideas out
there, too: Municipalities themselves can be big-time landowners, and groups can even create largescale community land trusts so that the land is held in common. In any case, we have to stop letting
rich people pretend they privately own what nature provided everyone.
4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody
Hoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock
of this country leads to such horrific inequality. "Capital stock" refers to two things here: the
buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds
that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of
production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets.
This detachment means that there's a way easier way to collectivize wealth ownership than having
to stage uprisings that seize the actual airplanes and warehouses and whatnot: Just buy up their
stocks and bonds. When the government does that, it's called a sovereign wealth fund. Think of it
like a big investment fund that buys up assets from the private sector and pays dividends to all
permanent U.S. residents in the form of a universal basic income. Alaska actually already has a
fund like this in place. If it's good enough for Levi Johnston, it's good enough for you.
5. A Public Bank in Every State
You know what else really blows? Wall Street. The whole point of a finance sector is supposed to
be collecting the surplus that the whole economy has worked to produce, and channeling that
surplus wealth toward its most socially valuable uses. It is difficult to overstate how completely
awful our finance sector has been at accomplishing that basic goal. Let's try to change that by
allowing state governments into the banking game.
There is only one state that currently has a public option for banking: North Dakota. When North
Dakotans pay state taxes, the money gets deposited in the state's bank, which in turn offers cheap
loans to farmers, students and businesses. The Bank of North Dakota doesn't make seedy, destinedto-default loans, slice them up inscrutably and sell them on a secondary market. It doesn't play
around with incomprehensible derivatives and allow its executives to extract billions of dollars. It
just makes loans and works with debtors to pay them off.
If that idea – or any of the others described in this piece – sounds good to you, there's a bitter
political struggle to be waged. Let's get to work.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-economic-reforms-millennials-shouldbe-fighting-for-20140103#ixzz2q2NHOaS7
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
News
Contact: HHS Press Office
202-690-6343
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 3, 2014
Obama administration takes additional steps to strengthen the federal background check
system
Continuing efforts to keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands
Today, as part of President Obama’s continuing efforts to reduce gun violence, the Department of
Health and Human Services issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to remove
unnecessary legal barriers under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Privacy Rule that may prevent states from reporting certain information to the National Instant
Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
The NICS helps to ensure that guns are not sold to those prohibited by law from having them,
including felons, those convicted of domestic violence, and individuals involuntarily committed to a
mental institution. To date, background checks have prevented over two million guns from falling
into the wrong hands.
However, the background check system is only as effective as the information that is available to it.
According to a 2012 Government Accountability Office report, 17 states had submitted fewer than
10 records of individuals prohibited for mental health reasons. Additional records have been
submitted over the past year as a result of federal and state actions, but there is more work to be
done.
“There is a strong public safety need for this information to be accessible to the NICS, and some
states are currently under-reporting or not reporting certain information to the NICS at all,” said
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “This proposed rulemaking is carefully balanced to protect and
preserve individuals’ privacy interests, the patient-provider relationship, and the public’s health and
safety.”
On April 23, 2013, the department published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
requesting the public’s input on how HIPAA may affect some states’ ability to report to the NICS
and ways in which these barriers could be addressed without discouraging individuals from seeking
mental health services. Over 2,000 comments were received from individuals, state agencies,
health care providers, professional organizations, consumer advocacy groups, and other
stakeholders.
The NPRM announced today would modify the HIPAA Privacy Rule to permit certain HIPAAcovered entities to disclose to the NICS the identities of persons prohibited by federal law from
possessing or receiving a firearm for reasons related to mental health.
Seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally
prohibited from having a firearm, and nothing in this proposed rule changes that. Furthermore,
nothing in this proposed rule would require reporting on general mental health visits or other
routine mental health care, or exempt providers solely performing these treatment services from
existing privacy rules.
The proposal would give states and certain covered entities added flexibility to ensure accurate but
limited information is reported to the NICS, which would not include clinical, diagnostic, or other
mental health information. Instead, certain covered entities would be permitted to disclose the
minimum necessary identifying information about individuals who have been involuntarily
committed to a mental institution or otherwise have been determined by a lawful authority to be a
danger to themselves or others or to lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs.
Importantly, the proposed permission focuses on those entities performing relevant commitments,
adjudications, or data repository functions.
The proposed modifications would merely permit, and not require, covered entities to report to the
NICS. In addition, the proposed rule would not change the existing permitted uses and disclosures
of protected health information under the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
The NPRM will be available for review beginning at 4:15pm on Friday, January 3, 2014, at:
http://www.federalregister.gov. Comments can be submitted to http://www.regulations.gov.
SHOCKING EVIDENCE HITLER ESCAPED GERMANY
Newly declassified FBI, U.S. intel files raise startling questions
Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun
WASHINGTON – Everyone knows Adolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot in his underground
bunker on April 30, 1945.
At least, that has been the conventional wisdom.
Now comes WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi’s new book, “Hunting Hitler: New
Scientific Evidence That Hitler Escaped Germany.”
Examining declassified FBI and U.S. military intelligence files, Corsi makes a compelling case that
U.S. investigators suspected from the beginning Hitler had escaped. For political purposes, the
evidence indicates, they were willing to go along with the cover story that in the final days of World
War II, Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun, and the two took their lives in a joint-suicide ritual
just before the Soviet army entered Berlin.
But the truth is, no one actually saw Hitler commit suicide. There are no photographs documenting
a joint suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun, and the bodies of the two were never recovered or preserved
for positive identification.
Get Jerome Corsi’s “Hunting Hitler: New Scientific Evidence
That Hitler Escaped Germany” at WND’s Superstore.
In 2009, Corsi pointed out, Nicholas Bellatoni, the Connecticut state archaeologist, was allowed by
the Russian Federation State Archive in Moscow to examine skull fragments the Russians have
claimed for decades are proof Hitler committed suicide.
Bellatoni’s startling findings prompted Corsi to investigate further.
“What caused me to question Hitler’s suicide was Bellatoni’s DNA analysis that proved
conclusively the skull fragments belonged not to Hitler, but to a 40-year-old woman unrelated to
Eva Braun,” Corsi said.
In “Hunting Hitler,” Corsi posits Hitler made his way to Argentina with the help of U.S.
intelligence agents that had been secretly working with the Nazis since 1943. Allen Dulles, then an
agent of the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, the predecessor agency to the CIA, was
communicating secretly with top Nazis from his office in Bern, Switzerland, Corsi said.
Corsi brings to light many troubling questions, including:

Why were the Americans unable to obtain physical evidence of Hitler’s remains after the
Russians absconded with his body?

Why did both Stalin and Eisenhower doubt Hitler’s demise?

Why did nobody in Hitler’s bunker hear any shots fired?

Did U.S. intelligence agents in Europe, including the OSS and Allen Dulles (who later
headed the CIA under President Eisenhower), aid Hitler’s escape, as they did with so many
other Nazis?

Argentinean media reported Hitler arrived in the country and it continued to report his
presence. Why have the findings not made it to the US?
Corsi relies on autopsy reports, interrogation transcripts, documents from Soviet archives, CIA
reports, extensive research in the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington,
D.C., and in College Park, Md., and more to back up his case.
Did U.S. intelligence help Hitler get away?
His evidence is shockingly abundant, and his clear argument lends credence to a new theory that
disembowels the double-suicide narrative.
“The story Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide was a cover story, designed by U.S. intelligence
agents at the end of World War II to facilitate the escape not only of Hitler and Eva Braun, but also
of top Nazi war criminals such as Adolf Eichmann who was discovered in 1960 hiding in
Argentina,” Corsi argued.
He presents documentary evidence Allen Dulles’ wartime mission in Switzerland included helping
Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary, to funnel billions of dollars of Nazi ill-gotten financial gain out
of Germany and invest in the U.S. and Argentinian stock markets to provide a financial cushion to
survive in hiding after the war.
In the National Archives at College Park, Corsi discovered a clipping from the U.S. military
newspaper “The Stars and Stripes” published Oct. 8, 1945, reporting a shocking statement made by
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the supreme commander of the Allied Forces.
The short piece read: “There is ‘reason to believe’ that Hitler may still be alive, according to a
remark made by Gen. Eisenhower to Dutch newspapermen. The general’s statement reversed his
previous opinion that Hitler was dead.”
Corsi asks why Eisenhower’s shocking claim has gone largely unreported in U.S. newspapers and
history books even until today.
Was Hitler on the U-530?
Tracing Hitler’s escape route, Corsi found in the National Archives documentary evidence Hitler
got to Argentina in a German submarine, the U-530 that mysteriously surfaced outside the harbor at
Mar del Plata under the command of Otto Wermuth and his executive officer, Karl Felix Schuller,
after having spent weeks making surreptitious drops of passengers along Argentina’s Atlantic shore.
Hidden away in the National Archives, Corsi found a U.S. naval intelligence report written July 18,
1945, by the Naval Attaché in Buenos Aires who notified Washington there was reason to believe
U-530 had landed Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in the south of Argentina before the submarine
journeyed on to surrender at Mar del Plata.
Corsi had newspaper reports translated of Hitler and Braun being welcomed by wealthy Nazi
sympathizers among Argentina’s large German community. The Germans there had constructed a
mansion hidden away in the dense mountain forests of Bariloche to provide the Nazi führer with
comfort and security in his elder years.
Argentine newspaper report
Corsi writes: In 1943, architect Alejandro Bustillo, at the request of German supporters of Hitler
then living in Argentina, designed and constructed an elaborate resort residence for Hitler and Eva
Braun, Residencia Inalco, located in a remote area between San Carlos de Bariloce Villa La
Angostura, bordering the Nahuel Haupi Lake, outside the city of Bariloche, in the province of Río
Negro, Argentina.”
In southern Argentina in the region of the Andes adjoining Chile, he writes, “the surroundings and
the Hitler residence were selected and designed to have a distinct feel of Hitler’s Obersalzberg
retreat above the town of Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler moved into the residence in
June 1947.”
Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf
Hitler suicide story
Bone with bullet hole found by Russians in 1946 came from an unknown woman, not the German
leader
The Observer, Uki Goñi 26 September 2009
A general view of what Russian officials claim to be a fragment of Adolf Hitler's skull, at an
exhibition in Moscow, Wed April 26, 2000. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/AP
In countless biographies of Adolf Hitler the story of his final hours is recounted in the traditional
version: committing suicide with Eva Braun, he took a cyanide pill and then shot himself on 30
April 1945, as the Russians bombarded Berlin.
Some historians expressed doubt that the Führer had shot himself, speculating that accounts of
Hitler's death had been embellished to present his suicide in a suitably heroic light. But a fragment
of skull, complete with bullet hole, which was taken from the bunker by the Russians and displayed
in Moscow in 2000, appeared to settle the argument.
Until now. In the wake of new revelations, the histories of Hitler's death may need to be rewritten –
and left open-ended. American researchers claim to have demonstrated that the skull fragment,
secretly preserved for decades by Soviet intelligence, belonged to a woman under 40, whose
identity is unknown. DNA analyses performed on the bone, now held by the Russian State Archive
in Moscow, have been processed at the genetics lab of the University of Connecticut. The results,
broadcast in the US by a History Channel documentary, Hitler's Escape, astonished scientists.
According to Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni, it was clear from the
outset that something was amiss. "The bone seemed very thin; male bone tends to be more robust,"
he said. "And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone
under 40." In April 1945 Hitler turned 56.
Bellantoni had flown to Moscow to inspect the gruesome Hitler trophies at the State Archive, which
included the skull fragment as well as bloodstains from the bunker sofa on which Hitler and Braun
were believed to have committed suicide. He was allowed only one hour with the Hitler trove,
during which time he applied cotton swabs and took DNA samples. "I had the reference photos the
Soviets took of the sofa in 1945 and I was seeing the exact same stains on the fragments of wood
and fabric in front of me, so I knew I was working with the real thing."
The samples were then flown back to Connecticut. At the university's centre for applied genetics,
Linda Strausbaugh closed her lab for three days to work exclusively on the Hitler project. "We used
the same routines and controls that would have been used in a crime lab," she said. To her surprise,
a small amount of viable DNA was extracted. She then replicated this through a process known as
molecular copying to provide enough material for analysis. "We were very lucky to get a reading,
despite the limited amount of genetic information," she said.
The result was extraordinary. According to witnesses, the bodies of Hitler and Braun had been
wrapped in blankets and carried to the garden just outside the Berlin bunker, placed in a bomb
crater, doused with petrol and set ablaze.
But the skull fragment the Russians dug up outside the Führerbunker in 1946 could never have
belonged to Hitler. The skull DNA was incontestably female. The only positive physical proof that
Hitler had shot himself had suddenly been rendered worthless. The result is a mystery reopened
and, for conspiracy theorists the tantalising possibility that Hitler did not die in the bunker.
For decades after the war the fate of Hitler's corpse was shrouded in secrecy. No picture or film was
made public. As the Soviet Army secured control of Berlin in May 1945, Russian forensic
specialists under the command of the counterintelligence unit Smersh (an acronym for "Death to
Spies") dug up what was presumed to be the dictator's body outside the bunker and performed a
post-mortem examination behind closed doors. A part of the skull was absent, presumably blown
away by Hitler's suicide shot, but what remained of his jaw coincided with his dental records, a fact
reportedly confirmed when the Russians showed his surviving dental work to the captured assistants
of Hitler's dentist. The autopsy also reported that Hitler, as had been rumoured, had only one
testicle.
But Stalin remained suspicious. In 1946 a second secret mission was dispatched to Berlin. In the
same crater from which Hitler's body had been recovered, the new team found what it believed was
the missing skull fragment with a bullet exit wound through it. The Russians also took fragments of
Hitler's bloodstained sofa.
Even this failed to satisfy Stalin, who clamped a secrecy order on all matters related to Hitler's
death. Unknown to the world, Hitler's corpse was interred at a Smersh centre in Magdeburg, East
Germany. There it remained long after Stalin's death in 1953. Finally, in 1970, the KGB dug up the
corpse, cremated it and secretly scattered the ashes in a river. Only the jawbone, the skull fragment
and the bloodstained sofa segments were preserved in the deep archives of Soviet intelligence. The
bunker was destroyed in 1947 and eventually paved over. Then, in 2000, the Russian State Archive
in Moscow staged an exhibition, The Agony of the Third Reich. The skull fragment was displayed,
but only photographs of Hitler's jawbone were on view. The head of the archive, Sergei Mironenko,
said he had no doubt the skull fragment was authentic. "It is not just some bone we found in the
street, but a fragment of a skull that was found in a hole where Hitler's body had been buried," he
said.
In the wake of Bellantoni and Strausbaugh's findings, Mironenko's confidence was clearly
misplaced. But could the fragment of skull belong to Eva Braun, who died at 33 and was laid
alongside her beloved Führer in the same crater? "We know the skull corresponds to a woman
between the ages of 20 and 40," said Bellantoni, but he is sceptical about the Braun thesis. "There is
no report of Eva Braun having shot herself or having been shot afterwards. It could be anyone.
Many people were killed around the bunker area." Sixty-four years later, the world is still in the
dark about what really happened in Hitler's bunker on 30 April 1945.
Uki Goñi is author of The Real Odessa (Granta), about the escape of Nazi war criminals from
Europe
Arianna Huffington announces launch of World Post news website
Tony Blair and Bill Gates among new site's contributors
• Backers include 'homeless billionaire' Nicolas Berggruen theguardian.com,
Arianna Huffington arrives for Glamour Magazine's Women Of The Year event in New York in
November. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
The 1% are about to get their own publication. The digital media titan Arianna Huffington and the
billionaire investor Nicolas Berggruen on Wednesday announced the launch of World Post, a
comment and news website that looks set to become a platform for some of the most powerful
people on the planet.
Inevitably, the World Post will be launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
this month. Many of its contributors including former British prime minister Tony Blair,
Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Google’s Eric Schmidt are regulars at the annual jamboree for the
world’s most connected people. Many are also advisers to the Berggruen Institute, the billionaire
investor’s nonpartisan policy think tank.
Berggruen, known as the “homeless billionaire” because he prefers living in hotels to owning
houses, said the 50/50 venture with Huffington Post owner AOL would not just be a platform for
the world’s elite. “You have to start somewhere,” he said. “A lot of these people are knowledgable.
On the other hand you will see a lot of unknown voices, young voices and from places that are not
that obvious.”
Huffington said: “You can have all those heads of state and major business people, etcetera etcetera,
writing right next to an unemployed man from Spain, a student from Brazil. The great heart of
HuffPo is no hierarchy.”
The site will have its own stand-alone presence but will also replace the Huffington Post’s current
world section. The Huffington Post will run the advertising side of the business and will also
organise conferences and sponsored sections. Neither side will comment on how much funding has
been put into the business.
Berggruen said World Post would be run for profit. “I think that’s healthy,” he said. “But if we were
going to make an investment in the most exciting areas to make an investment, it probably wouldn’t
be this. If it doesn’t make money, we will still support it,” he said. “We’re not in it just to make
money.
"It has to be profitable to be sustainable,” Huffington said.
The Huffington Post is now in 10 countries and will use its locally based journalists as well as three
new dedicated foreign correspondents in Beijing, Beirut and Cairo to supply content for World Post
alongside its other contributors. More hires are expected. But Huffington said its main strength
would be in its ability to collaborate with local new organisations as well as its top level
contributors.
“Collaboration is the key, especially in the linked economy,” said Huffington. “Recognising that
you are not going to do the only good coverage. If you can bring your reader what other good work
is being done, you improve their experience. That’s really what the heart of World Post is about.”
The publication's initial editorial board has deep ties to media companies around the world.
Alongside Huffington and Berggruen it includes Juan Luis Cebrian, founding editor of El Pais,
Dileep Padgaonkar, consulting editor of the Times of India, Yoichi Funabashi, former editor-inchief of Asahi Shimbun, and Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman of eBay and backer of a new
investigative reporting organisation, First Look Media, set up with former Guardian journalist
Glenn Greenwald.
Huffington said 42% of the Huffington Post’s 94m unique visitors each month come from outside
the US. “Just over two years ago we didn’t have an international edition anywhere,” she said.
“We have an incredible opportunity to use the pieces we already have on the board to speak to our
existing audience and grow that audience simply by embracing the fact that we are an international
entity,” said Peter Goodman, executive business and global news editor for the Huffington Post.
The launch comes amid a wave of new money going into media ventures. Berggruen said it was
clear that traditional news organisations were still struggling and that many more would fail. “I
think there will be a few media voices that really have weight and will survive but fewer and
fewer,” he said.
Berggruen, an avid art collector, said World Post would also move beyond public policy and would
address issues that interest people around the world including the environment, health and the arts.
“Culture is much bigger than politics. It will be about science, art. Anything that captures our
imagination and our lives,” he said.
Another board member Nathan Gardels, a syndication expert, media fellow at the World Economic
Forum and editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, said the news industry was regaining an
international perspective unseen since the end of the cold war.
“Most of the world’s media has fragmented then rationalized and then re-localized,” he said. Thirty
years ago the news was much more international, he said, “despite the fact that we are more
interdependent than ever.”
“There is definitely an audience now for an international perspective. There may not be enough
people in Los Angeles who want that but globally I think there is.”
The Israeli Criminals Behind the NSA Spy Scandal
June 13, 2013
At the center of the NSA scandal is a gang of Israeli high-tech criminals which is connected to the
false-flag terror attacks of 9-11. These connections underline the involvement of the same Israeli
criminals to both 9-11 and the NSA's secret program to collect and store our personal information
and conversations, which came about mainly as a consequence of 9-11.
Two Israeli companies, Narus and Verint, are involved in the National Security Agency (NSA) spy
scandal in which copies of our phone calls and email data are sent to secret rooms at NSA buildings
across the country. These Israeli companies are closely connected to Unit 8200, the electronic
espionage unit of the Israeli military. (Narus was acquired by Boeing in 2010.)
Jacob "Kobi" Alexander
The founder and former chairman of Verint is wanted by the FBI for a long list of crimes. He is
veteran Israeli intelligence officer.
Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the former head of Comverse, the parent company of Verint, is a wanted
criminal who has fled U.S. justice to Africa and probably subsequently to Israel. It is important to
note that Kobi Alexander and Comverse were closely connected to Odigo, the Israeli messaging
system that was used to warn Israelis to stay away from the World Trade Center on 9-11.
Furthermore, the NSA has used Israeli encryption software from RSA Security, Inc. since 2006,
which means that Israelis hold the encryption keys to the entire NSA computer network. The
Israelis obviously have easy access to everything at the NSA.
The following video clip is of James Bamford discussing the two Israeli companies, Narus and
Verint, who are involved in the massive collection of our telephone and Internet data. Bamford was
on "Democracy Now!" on October 14, 2008, discussing the role of these Israeli companies, who are
closely tied to Israeli intelligence.
To have access to personal phone calls and emails allows Israeli intelligence to blackmail and
control people, like General David Petraeus, who was forced to resign from his position as director
of the C.I.A. after an extra-marital affair was revealed by unknown agents who had access to his
personal email.
James Bamford on Democracy Now! - October 14, 2008
Video Link - http://youtu.be/hI_k9Xt00YE
Bamford wrote an article entitled "Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the
NSA" for Wired.com in April 2012 in which he discussed the Israeli companies and the criminals
who ran them:
In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive
contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual
bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network.
According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by
Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my
book The Shadow Factory in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while
Verizon said it does not comment on such matters.
At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus, now
owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in 2004. Narus did
not return a call seeking comment.
What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well
as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of
spying on the U.S.
In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had
developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly
passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country.
The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong
supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we
had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.”
Several of the top people involved in these Israeli wiretapping companies are if fact criminals who
are currently wanted for serious crimes committed in the United States, as Bamford explains in the
2012 article:
Like Narus, Verint was founded in Israel by Israelis, including Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a
former Israeli intelligence officer. Some 800 employees work for Verint, including 350 who
are based in Israel, primarily working in research and development and operations, according
to the Jerusalem Post. Among its products is STAR-GATE, which according to the
company’s sales literature, lets “service providers … access communications on virtually any
type of network, retain communication data for as long as required, and query and deliver
content and data …” and was “[d]esigned to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent
sessions, call data records, and communications.”
In a rare and candid admission to Forbes, Retired Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, a former
commander of the highly secret Unit 8200, Israel’s NSA, noted his former organization’s
influence on Comverse, which owns Verint, as well as other Israeli companies that dominate
the U.S. eavesdropping and surveillance market. “Take NICE, Comverse and Check Point for
example, three of the largest high-tech companies, which were all directly influenced by 8200
technology,” said Gefen. “Check Point was founded by Unit alumni. Comverse’s main
product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology.”
According to a former chief of Unit 8200, both the veterans of the group and much of the
high-tech intelligence equipment they developed are now employed in high-tech firms around
the world. “Cautious estimates indicate that in the past few years,” he told a reporter for the
Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in 2000, “Unit 8200 veterans have set up some 30 to 40 high-tech
companies, including 5 to 10 that were floated on Wall Street.” Referred to only as “Brigadier
General B,” he added, “This correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and
starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental: Many of the technologies in use
around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were
developed and improved by Unit veterans.”
Equally troubling is the issue of corruption. Kobi Alexander, the founder and former
chairman of Verint, is now a fugitive, wanted by the FBI on nearly three dozen charges of
fraud, theft, lying, bribery, money laundering and other crimes. And two of his top associates
at Comverse, Chief Financial Officer David Kreinberg and former General Counsel William
F. Sorin, were also indicted in the scheme and later pleaded guilty, with both serving time in
prison and paying millions of dollars in fines and penalties.
When asked about these contractors, the NSA declined to “verify the allegations made.”
Kobi Alexander is also closely connected to the 9-11 criminal atrocity. Alexander and Comverse
are connected to the Israeli Odigo messaging company through which warnings were sent to the
Israelis who were expected to be at work at the World Trade Center on 9-11. As I explained in an
article entitled "Why was Kobi Alexander Allowed to Flee? The Israeli Fugitive, Odigo, and the
Forewarning of 9/11" in August 2006:
The case of the Israeli criminal Kobi Alexander is like the proverbial "tip of the iceberg."
While Alexander's crimes, through which he became immensely wealthy, are now evident,
they are but a very small piece of a much larger Zionist criminal network – connected to the
9/11 terror attacks – which remains hidden beneath the surface.
Alexander, former head of the Israel-based Comverse Technology, was, until his crimes were
discovered, one of the highest paid executives in the United States.
In the year 2000, for example, he reportedly earned some $102.5 million, with $93 million
coming from the "exercise of options." We now know that most of Alexander's money was
made through the fraudulent "exercise of options."
Comverse Technology, the U.S.-based "parent company" of an older and much bigger Israelbased company with the same name, is the owner of the Verint, Ulticom, Starhome, Mercom
and Startel companies. The key positions in these companies are all held by Israeli nationals.
Alexander, was recently allowed to flee the United States after he and two other former
Comverse executives were charged with securities, mail and wire fraud by U.S. prosecutors
in Brooklyn, New York. A warrant has been issued for his arrest...
While Alexander is obviously connected with Israel's military intelligence apparatus and
George Soros through the mutually owned investment fund ComSor, what is not widely
reported is his company's close links with Odigo, the Israeli-run instant messaging company
that received – and conveyed – urgent warning messages about the imminent terror attacks on
the World Trade Center, several hours before the first plane hit...
Shortly after 9-11, Odigo was completely taken over by Comverse Technology, which had
been part owner of Odigo since early 2000, if not earlier. Shortly after 9/11, five executives
from Comverse were reported to have profited by more than $267 million from "insider
trading."
Avner Ronen, the "founder" of Odigo, was Vice President of Business Development of
Comverse Technology in October 2005. This indicates that Ronen and Alexander, both Israeli
military officers with computer backgrounds, have been close business partners since early
2000.
Sources and Recommended Reading:
"Israelis Hold Keys to NSA/US Military Computer Networks," by Christopher Bollyn, June 16,
2006, also published as "Israeli Code on U.S. Government Computers" in Solving 9-11: The
Original Articles, p. 157
http://rense.com/general72/sisi.htm
"Narus knows what you are doing on the network" by Om Malik, Forbes, August 11, 1999
http://www.forbes.com/1999/08/11/feat.html
"Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA" by James Bamford,
Wired.com, April 3, 2012
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/shady-companies-nsa/all/
"Why was Kobi Alexander Allowed to Flee? The Israeli Fugitive, Odigo, and the Forewarning of
9/11" by Christopher Bollyn, August 24, 2006, also published as "The Israeli Fugitive and the
Forewarning of 9-11" in Solving 9-11: The Original Articles, p. 162
http://www.bollyn.com/why-was-kobi-alexander-allowed-to-flee/
Declassified Files on Israeli Nuclear Smuggling Revealed Benjamin Netanyahu at Heli
Trading Company involved
Posted by: TP Newswire Tags: american smuggler israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Benjamin
Netanyahu nuclear, Benjamin Netanyahu spy, iran israel, Iran nuclear weapons, is israel nuclear,
israel attack, israel iran nuclear, israel nuclear smuggling, israel nuclear technology, israel nuclear
weapons, israeli nuclear weapons, nuclear iran, nuclear-weapons, Richard Kelly Smyth Posted
date: July 30, 2012 | Comment
Washington, U.S.A. — The following is being released by the Institute for Research: Middle
Eastern Policy – The FBI partially declassified and released files linking Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu to a nuclear technology smuggling ring that targeted the United States. The
declassified files are now publicly available online at
http://www.IRmep.org/ila/krytons/06272012_milco_mdr.pdf
FBI agents interviewed indicted American smuggler Richard Kelly Smyth on April 16-17, 2002, at
the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. The secret interview report details how during trips to
Israel Smyth’s handler placed him in contact with Benjamin Netanyahu at Heli Trading Company.
The FBI report suggests that “Smyth and [Netanyahu] would meet in restaurants in Tel Aviv and in
[Netanyahu's] home and/or business. It was not uncommon for [Netanyahu] to ask Smyth for
unclassified material.”
Smyth was indicted in the mid-1980s for smuggling 800 dual use “krytrons” without proper export
licenses through a multi-front company network. Smyth fled the U.S. and lived abroad, supported
by unknown means, until he was captured by Interpol and returned to the U.S. in 2001. He was
convicted in 2002.
During the 2002 Smyth counterintelligence debriefing, the FBI learned that the Israeli Ministry of
Defense ordered and paid an Israeli company called Heli Trading for krytrons. Heli in turn sourced
them fromCalifornia-based MILCO in a clandestine operation codenamed “Project Pinto.” The
report reveals how MILCO illegally shipped other prohibited military articles under general
Commerce Department export licenses rather than smuggling them out via Israeli diplomatic
pouches.
Released on the Internet on July 4, 2012, the files have been the subject of reporting in the Israeli
press, including Israeli National News, Ma’ariv and The Marker. Some U.S. alternative media also
explored the implications of the formerly secret files including Antiwar.com, Tikkun
Olam, Mondoweiss and CounterPunch. WBAI radio and the Scott Horton Show have hosted
interviews.
Although the FBI report has now been sent to the New York Times, Washington Post, all members
of Congress and United Nations members, no top-tier establishment news coverage, Congressional
or UN investigations have been made public. On Friday, National Public Radio syndicated host
Diane Rehmimmediately disconnected IRmep Research Director Grant F. Smith when he asked her
reporter roundtable to assess the implications of the Netanyahu espionage ring. An audio clip of the
brief exchange is available at: http://www.IRmep.org/NPR.mp3
IRmep is a private nonprofit that studies how warranted law enforcement and civil action can
improve U.S. Middle East policy.
More Israel disclosures in Snowden’s trove of 'significant stories' – Greenwald
Published time: January 07, 2014 10:52
Combo of file pictures shows US journalist Glenn Greenwald (L, October 9, 2013 in Brasilia) and
Glenn Greenwald, the investigative journalist who first published Edward Snowden leaks, said that
the NSA whistleblower still has "a huge number of very significant stories to reveal," including
those relating to Israel.
"There definitely are stories left that involve the Middle East, that involve Israel. The reporting is
going to continue at roughly the same pace that has been happening," the former Guardian
journalist said in an interview with Channel 10 television station that aired Monday night.
"I don’t want to preview any stories that aren’t yet published, but it’s definitely the case that there
are a huge number of very significant stories that are left to report," the Brazil-based Greenwald
said, adding that the journalists will continue releasing stories "at roughly the same pace that has
been happening."
"We have only had these documents for seven months, which, given their volume and complexity, is
not a very long time," he noted.
Documents leaked in December by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, revealed that the US
National Security Agency worked hand in hand with the UK's GCHQ to target email addresses
belonging to the then-serving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud
Barak, among others. According to an exclusive report by the Israeli news agency, Debka,
specializing in intelligence and security news, after 2009 Washington introduced "a high-powered,
multilayered system of intelligence-gathering” – especially against Israel, about which neither
Snowden nor the Israelis have been forthcoming. This system, the agency claimed, had a "single
narrow focus: to pick up the slightest murmur or clue suggesting that Israel was about to launch an
attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, which it had threatened to do without prior notice to Washington."
"Listening in on the laconic conversations Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held with Ehud
Barak was not enough. What the spies were told to look for was out-of-the-way conduct, such as an
order placed suddenly for a large quantity of aircraft fuel, or the import of an unusual amount of
emergency medical equipment," Debka's report concluded.
The Israeli Parliament (Photo by James Emery / flickr.com)
The NSA responded to media reports claiming it had spied on top Israeli brass by saying that it is
"not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity," while NSA
spokeswoman, Bernadette Meehan, added that the US "gathers foreign intelligence of the type
gathered by all nations."
After Snowden's revelations top Israeli politicians demanded that the US stop "systematically
spying" on Israel. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office at first chose to stifle the
scandal, with the growing public outrage he has, however, demanded investigation into the matter.
"In the close ties between Israel and the United States, there are things that must not be done and
that are not acceptable to us," Netanyahu said speaking to the left-wing Likud party meeting in the
Knesset on December 23.
A number of Israeli politicians and lawmakers said that Israel had to use the revelations of US
spying to press Washington to free jailed Israeli agent, Jonathan Pollard, a spy jailed for passing
classified material to Israel while working as a US Naval intelligence analyst. He revealed
information that Iran, Syria, Iraq and Libya were busy developing weapons of mass destruction to
attack Israel. The whistleblower pleaded guilty and received a life sentence in 1987. In 1995 Israel
granted him citizenship, and has lobbied for his release since then. Pollard has already spent nearly
30 years in a federal prison, an all-time record, as no one in US history has ever been given a life
sentence for a similar offense, whose average time is usually between two and four years.
Greenwald said Israel was "absolutely right" in linking the NSA spying to the Jonathan Pollard case
because "it does underlie, underscore exactly the hypocrisy that lies at the center of so much of
what the US government does."
"When the US government goes around the world criticizing other countries for spying on allies
and prosecuting them, are they going to maintain that with a straight face when they’re doing
exactly that?" the journalist wondered.
Snowden’s previous NSA files that made headlines across the world have revealed US operations
targeting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s cellphone as well as Angela Merkel’s.
"The United States government loves to claim that the value of surveillance is to stop terrorism.
Does the United States government think that Angela Merkel is a terrorist or that Israel’s
democratically elected officials are involved in terrorism?" Greenwald wrapped up.
Israeli ministers demand end to US spying, but Netanyahu lets revelations 'pass quietly'
Published time: December 22, 2013 13:40
Top Israeli politicians want the US to stop "systematically spying" on Israel after revelations that
the NSA intercepted emails of former top brass. Much to everybody's surprise, the Prime Minister’s
Office has chosen to stifle the scandal, however.
"The secret is out," Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said Sunday. "The US is systematically
spying on the defense and diplomatic leadership here in Israel. Is this how friends treat each
other?"
Housing Minister Uri Ariel said on Israel Radio he expected the US to admit wrongdoing.
The NSA responded to media reports claiming it had spied on Israeli government officials by
saying that it is "not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity,"
Haaretz newspaper reported. NSA spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan added that the US "gathers
foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations."
Labor Member of Knesset Nachman Shai said: "The silence of Israeli officials following these
reports is disappointing and shameful."
"We cannot let such revelations pass quietly. Like Germany and Brazil, we should ask the US for
clarification, or at least confirmation that such spying has stopped."
Documents leaked last week by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the UK's
GCHQ intelligence agency worked hand in hand with that of the US to target email addresses
belonging to the then-serving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud
Barak, among others.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.(AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)
Snowden’s previous NSA files have revealed US operations targeting Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff’s cellphone and that of Angela Merkel. Earlier this week the German Chancellor told Der
Spiegel that the Obama administration’s tactics are on a par with those of the notorious East
Germany police, the Stasi.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has kept silent on the revelations. His only reaction came
when a number of Israeli politicians called on Washington to release Jonathan Pollard, a spy jailed
for passing classified material to Israel while working as a US Naval intelligence analyst.
Israel doesn't need a "special incident to talk about the release of Jonathan Pollard," Netanyahu
said. "We are dealing with this with every US president, including with President Obama, all the
time, including now," he added during his weekly cabinet meeting.
The "Prisoner of Zion" revealed information that Iran, Syria, Iraq and Libya were busy developing
weapons of mass destruction to attack Israel. The whistleblower pleaded guilty and received a life
sentence in 1987. In 1995 Israel granted him citizenship, and has lobbied for his release since then.
Pollard has already spent nearly 30 years in a federal prison, an all-time record, as no one in the US
history has ever been given a life sentence for similar offense, whose median time is between two
and four years.
Meanwhile, one member of Knesset who heads the parliamentary lobby pushing for Pollard’s
release said that "the most recent revelations about spying and surveillance by the US against its
ally needs to light a red light of morality for any logical person."
"There needs to be reciprocity in any relationship between countries," Ayelet Shaked said on
Sunday. "It is inconceivable that while Pollard has been rotting in an American prison for decades
for spying, which was considered an unforgivable crime by the American government, we are now
informed that the US has been spying against Israel, and this is just swept under the rug."
Jonathan Pollard.(Reuters)
Israeli investigative journalist David Bedein has proposed a tit-for-tat way-out.
"The way to facilitate the freedom of Jonathan Pollard is to cordially request the government of
Israel to detain an identified operative of the American government and to exchange him for
Pollard."
He said that people who ask the White House to free Pollard "on moral grounds" have a deep
misconception about the US.
"America does not run according to sentiments. The US operates according to interests at hand and
according to the rules of hardball diplomacy," Bedein wrote on his blog.
AIPAC's Fed Candidate Stanley Fischer on a Warpath against Iran
Dual-citizen nominee's lifetime benefit to Israel comes at a heavy cost to
America
By Grant F. Smith, Director of Research, IRmep
The rushed campaign to insert Stanley Fischer straight
from his position leading Israel's central bank into the
number two spot at the Federal Reserve has allowed little
time for research into the appointee's career or for
informed public debate about his record. Like the failed
recent Obama administration-Israel lobby pincer move to
ram approval for U.S. military strikes on Syria through
Congress, avoiding such due diligence through velocity
may actually be the only means for successful Senate
confirmation.
Some of Fischer's accomplishments—from co-authoring a
seminal textbook on macroeconomics to handling
economic crisis at the IMF have—not surprisingly—been
recalled by his many supporters. Other doings that shed
light on Fischer's controversial attributes—such as
overhauling how U.S. aid and trade packages are
delivered to Israel—have been mostly ignored. Appointing an openly dual IsraeliAmerican citizen into the most important central bank in the world could be a watershed
moment. While the doors of federal government have long swung open for Israel-lobby
appointees focusing most—if not all—their energies on advancing the interests of a
foreign state, any who were actually Israeli dual citizens have traditionally kept that a
closely-guarded secret. Fischer's long-term boosters, including the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), likely want to accustom Americans to openly dual citizens
circulating between top roles in the U.S. and Israeli governments. A closer examination
of Fischer reveals that average Americans have good reason to oppose his appointment,
because his lifelong achievements for Israel have imposed high costs and few benefits to
the United States while making peace more difficult to achieve.
Economics
Stanley Fischer was born in Northern Rhodesia
in 1943. He studied at London School of
Economics and received a PhD in economics
from MIT. He taught and chaired the MIT
economics department and co-authored a
leading macroeconomics textbook with Rudiger
Dornbusch. Fischer joined the World Bank in
1988 and became the first deputy managing
director of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) in 1994. He oversaw emergency bailout
lending and austerity programs over Mexico,
Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil and
Argentina. High flying Citigroup—under the
helm of Sanford "Sandy" Weill—recruited
Fischer in 2002. There he rose to become vice
president with a seven-figure pay package.
Israel
Fischer has not only been an ardent supporter of
Israel, his professional efforts began when he
took sabbatical leave to Israel in 1972 and 19761977. He was a visiting scholar at the Bank of
Israel in 1980. More importantly for Israel, Stanley Fischer won an appointment to the
Reagan administration's U.S.-Israel Joint Economic Discussion Group that dealt with
Israel's 1984-1985 economic crisis. In October of 1984, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon
Peres arrived in Washington asking an initially reluctant Reagan Administration for an
additional $1.5 billion in U.S. emergency funding—over and above the already-promised
aid $5.6 billion aid package.[i] The help amounted to U.S. taxpayers funding each Israeli
citizen $1,650. Another key component of the plan called for a largely unilateral lowering
of U.S. tariffs and trade barriers to Israel, a program initially called "Duty Free Treatment for
U.S. Imports from Israel" but later repackaged and sold as America's first "free trade"
agreement. Over time the FTA reversed a previously balanced U.S.-Israel trading
relationship for one that has produced a cumulative deficit to the U.S. that passed $100
billion in 2013. Seventy American industry groups opposed to the give-away in 1984
were disenfranchised when Israeli Economics Minister Dan Halpern and AIPAC illegally
obtained a classified compendium of their industry, market and trade secrets to use
against them in lobbying and public relations. An FBI espionage and theft of government
property investigation was quashed before it could narrow in on those inside the U.S.
government who delivered the secrets to Halpern.
The U.S.-Israel Joint
Economic Discussion
Group fundamentally
transformed U.S. aid to
Israel forever. Before the
Reagan administration,
most U.S. aid to Israel
took the form of loans that
had to be repaid with
interest. After the input of
Fischer's team, subsequent
U.S. aid was delivered in
the form of outright grants
paid directly from the U.S.
Treasury—never to be
repaid or conditioned
when Israel took actions the U.S. opposed.
Like many of Fischer's later IMF austerity programs, the Joint Discussion Group initially
announced that strings attached to the aid would make it temporary. Secretary of State
George Shultz insisted during a 1985 address to AIPAC that "Israel must pull itself out of
its present economic trauma . . . . No one can do it for them . . .our help will be of little
avail if Israel does not take the necessary steps to cut government spending, improve
productivity, open up its economy and strengthen the mechanisms of economic policy.
Israel and its government must make the hard decisions." [ii] Shultz wanted to make the
huge American cash transfer conditional on major Israeli economic reforms, but intense
AIPAC lobbying in Congress threatened to make the State Department influence
irrelevant. In the end, Congress delivered aid without Israeli sacrifices, such as selling off
bloated state-owned industries and spending belt-tightening. The proposed privatization
of $5 billion in state enterprises threatened too much bureaucratic "turf" and too many
jobs, so Israel put them on hold. Fischer apologetically characterized the Likud years as a
"wasted opportunity by a government that should have known better."[iii] Not until 1996
were Fischer's proscribed economic remedies adopted by American neoconservative
consultants to Benjamin Netanyahu as minor points in the "Clean Break" manifesto for
Israeli regional hegemony. They remain among the few unimplemented tasks in a plan
that called for military action against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
Despite the absence of any real
economic reforms that would take
Israel off the American taxpayer
dole, Fischer co-wrote a blustering
1986 article for the Wall Street
Journal called "Israel Has Made
Aid Work" that AIPAC circulated
widely as an official memorandum
of its achievements. "Israel is the
largest single recipient of economic
aid from the U.S. This is partly
because the economic stability of Israel is uncertain and is important to U.S. national
interests. Therefore a report on the progress of the Israeli economy is relevant to policy
decisions to be made here." Fischer never bothered to substantiate his premise, that U.S.
national interests were somehow served by the bailout or that any aid given to Israel
produced tangible benefits. Instead Fischer delivered a fusillade of dry and all but
unreadable statistics about Israel's temporary economic performance. Issues of long-term
importance to most Americans, such as returning U.S. aid to the traditional format of
loans to be repaid and the likely impact of the FTA on U.S. jobs went unaddressed by
Fischer. Fischer's core achievement—that the transformation of aid from loans to outright
taxpayer give-aways—has been unchanged since 1986. The premises behind this everincreasing entitlement and one-sided FTA performance are likewise never reexamined by
Congress—despite the fact that a majority of polled Americans have come to oppose aid
increases to Israel. Fischer's rare admonitions that Israel be held to account, unlike the
economies he transformed through biting IMF austerity programs, have remained nothing
more than lip service.
At the end of 2004 Israel's U.N. ambassador recruited Fischer to become the head of
Israel's central bank, asking, "Why not be our governor?"[iv] Fischer accepted and
initially provided endless amusement to reporters by insisting on speaking Hebrew during
press conferences and
refusing to speak English.
Initial concerns that
Fischer's global stature
and experience would
overshadow and chafe the
relevant players in Israel
proved unfounded as
Fischer moved
energetically into his new
role. AIPAC continued to
trumpet Fischer's
accomplishments steering
Israel through the global
financial crisis, though
beneath the surface he was
performing far more
serious tasks for Israel and
its global lobby.
Iran Sanctions
As Bank of Israel
governor, Stanley Fischer
played a central role in
coordinating the implementation of AIPAC-generated sanctions against Iran—ostensibly
over its nuclear program. Stuart Levey, the head of the U.S. Treasury Department's
division for "Terrorism and Financial Intelligence," an office created after heavy AIPAC
lobbying, met often with Fischer in Israel alongside the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister
and chiefs of both the Mossad and Shin Bet to explore how to "supplement" UN sanctions
and end-run Russian and Chinese opposition.[v] The Levey-Fischer strategy was "to work
outside the context of the Security Council to engage the private sector and let it know
about the risks of doing business with Tehran" particularly against European banks that
had only partially drawn back their business dealings with Iran. In 2010, Israel
dispatched Fischer to meet with Chinese and Russian "counterparts" in order to
financially isolate Iran.[vi]
Fischer's final official duties for the Israeli government included drilling for "big crisis"
scenarios—specifically, Fischer told an Israeli television station—the unavoidable
financial fallout of a military attack on Iran.[vii] "We do plans, we do scenarios, we do
exercises about how the central [bank] will work in various situations."[viii] After years
targeting Iran, Fischer became convinced in his final months in Israel that sanctions alone
were not enough to collapse its economy. Fischer reluctantly concluded that even as
Iranian economic prospects "continue to go down" the country would likely "find a way
to continue to keep economic life going." [ix]
Fischer suddenly resigned and left the Bank of Israel on June 30, before completing his
second five-year term.
Israelis into the Fed
and then where?
The last time Fischer's
name was floated to lead
a major organization was
during a rushed Bush
administration attempt at
damage control. In
2007, the controversial
architect of the Iraq
invasion and later World
Bank President Paul
Wolfowitz was engulfed
in an ethics scandal over
his pay and promotion
package for Shaha Ali
Riza. In two short years
leading the institution,
Wolfowitz catalyzed the alienation of most divisions within the bank and the distrust of
economics ministries around the world. Fischer, along with Robert Zoellick and Robert
Kimmitt and a handful of others, was considered as an emergency replacement while the
administration and stakeholders strategized on how to ease Wolfowitz out with a
minimum of scandal.[x] In the end, Fischer stayed put in Israel.
It came as a surprise to many when The Wall Street Journal and Israel's Channel 2 news
simultaneously reported in early December 2013 that the White House was "close to
nominating" Fischer to be appointee Janet Yellen's second-in-command at the U.S. central
bank.[xi] Media reports initially indicated that Fischer's candidacy-to-Senate-confirmation
would proceed on greased skids—with no Senate debate—taking only a week so that the
pair could quickly take over the Fed in January. However, the Senate concluded its 2013
business without taking up the matter. The earliest date the measure could be put up for a
vote is January 6, 2014. Even that date might slip since Senator Rand Paul and Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell plan to delay the vote unless a long-languishing measure to
"Audit the Fed" is also put up for a vote.
This rushed approach has meant relatively little reporting on the deeper implications of
having an openly dual Israeli-American citizen a heartbeat away from Fed chairmanship.
That is unfortunate, since Israel and its U.S. supporters have many hidden reasons for
wanting stronger influence at the Fed that they would likely prefer not to discuss.
That the Fed is a key
player in Iran sanctions
implementation is
certainly no secret. The
Fed has been an equal
partner in levying
hundreds of millions in
fines against foreign banks
such as R.B.S, Barclays,
Standard and Chartered
and H.S.B.C. which were
charged with violating the
Iran sanctions regime.
Although AIPAC never
mentions it, American
exporters have been
seriously hurt by sanctions
on Iran and the punitive secondary boycott. A coalition representing the US Chamber of
Commerce, the Business Roundtable, Coalition for American Trade, the National Foreign
Trade Council and others urged Congress not to enact sanctions provisions they estimated
would cost $25 billion and 210,000 American jobs. (PDF) Keeping such a costly regime
in place despite thawing relations and any hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear
weaponization program has therefore required immense ongoing efforts by Israel
lobbying groups.
An equally important target for Fischer and Israel may be—somewhat ironically given
their pro-boycott programs—anti-boycott activities. In the 1970-80s the Federal Reserve
played an active "moral suasion" role chastising and corralling U.S. banks away from any
activity that Israel construed as compliant with the Arab League economic boycott. An
expert with deep experience enforcing the international boycott of Iran, Fischer is likely
aware of the many active American grass-roots campaigns aimed at ending the Israeli
occupation of Palestinians through targeted boycotts. These boycotts range from efforts
to get retailers to stop carrying manufactured goods produced in the occupied West Bank
(Ahava and Soda Stream), to overturning contracts with firms providing services in
occupied territories (Veolia), to academic boycotts and even efforts to get labor union
pensions to divest from Israel bonds. Working more closely with Israel and AIPAC, the
Fed could become a vital node for reinterpreting and enforcing old or new laws aimed at
outlawing and punishing groups organizing such grass-roots activities by targeting U.S.
bank accounts and freezing their financial flows.
Fischer may also want to launch "exercises" to prepare the U.S. financial system for the
fallout of Israeli military attacks on Iran. New bills in Congress drafted by AIPAC call not
only for additional sanctions aimed at thwarting a fledgling deal on Iran's nuclear program
(favored 2-to-1 by Americans). AIPAC's bill forces the U.S. to "have Israel's back" in the
event of a unilateral Israeli strike. If Israel has already decided to attack Iran, it would
benefit immensely from having Fischer inside the Fed, protecting the financial flows
Israel now regards as all but a birthright from its primary global underwriter. Less wellknown is the Fed's authority to authorize foreign bank acquisitions. Any future Israeli
campaign to further entwine its banks into the U.S. financial system through acquisitions
would likely find a much more welcoming regulator in Fischer.
Whatever the real motivation for
Fischer's sudden, inexplicably
rushed insertion into the Federal
Reserve, it is also worthwhile to
note longstanding Fed policies have
correctly considered U.S.
citizenship to be preferable for at
least one key position, "because of
the special nature of the supervisory
function, the need to ensure
confidentiality of information, and
the delegated nature of the
function." Unfortunately, that
policy preference covers only Fed
bank examiners rather than top
leadership—the Federal Reserve
Act is silent on the wisdom of installing a revolving door for returning U.S. citizens who
took on dual citizenship as a condition of serving a foreign government.
AIPAC, Fischer's co-author of harmful U.S. economic policies on behalf of Israel, likely
sees the Fischer appointment as an important test case to assess American tolerance for
openly dual Israeli-American citizens running key U.S. federal agencies. In 2009 former
AIPAC research director Martin Indyk, who was at the center of AIPAC's research
division during the FTA push, said that "the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement served as a
wedge that opened up the Congress to free trade agreements across the world, including
the NAFTA agreement." Likewise, if Fischer can be "wedged" into the Fed, it begs the
question of why former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and historian Michael Oren could
not someday lead the Near East division of the State Department. From AIPAC's
perspective, having qualified Israelis directly run key divisions of the U.S. Treasury such
as Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, rather than indirectly through AIPAC-vetted
appointees such as Stuart Levey and his hand-picked successor David Cohen, could
probably boost the volume of taxpayer give-aways while improving coordination with
Israel. Given AIPAC and Israel's overly large influence on U.S. military initiatives in the
region, the lobby may now feel the moment is right for appointing Israeli generals into the
Joint Chiefs at the Department of Defense. This, AIPAC may well reason, would be
much more convenient than constantly arranging visiting Israeli military and intelligence
delegations that increasingly serve as sole briefers (rather than DoD or the American
intelligence community) of members of the US Congress.
Soon after word of his Fed nomination spread, Fischer again made uncharacteristically
harsh statements about Israel at an NYU Law School forum. As reported in The Jewish
Week, Fischer told the audience that Israel is not seeking peace "to the extent that it
should" and that it is "divided between those who want to settle the West Bank and those
who seek peace." Fischer—who had every chance to pull U.S. and Israeli financial levers
that could have forced Israel out of occupied territories or forced compliance with
International law—never did. Adding to suspicion that the statement was simply more
empty "lip service" aimed at building popular support among Americans tired of war, was
the reporter of the quote—former AIPAC lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield. In 1986
Bloomfield was grilled as a key suspect (PDF) in the 1985 FBI investigation of AIPAC
for espionage during the FTA negations
If Americans were ever polled on it—and they never are—the majority who now object to
increasing aid to Israel would also likely object to quasi-governmental and governmental
positions being staffed by people who—by citizenship or sheer strength of identity
politics—are primarily occupied with advancing Israeli interests rather than those of the
United States. It is obvious that the real reason AIPAC and its economic luminaries such
as Fischer never substantiate any of the advertised benefits the U.S.-Israel "special
relationship" delivers to America in return for all of the costs is simple—there simply
aren't any. As greater numbers of Americans become aware that the entire "special
relationship" framework is sustained by nothing more than Israel lobby campaign-finance
and propaganda networks, the harder the lobby will have to work to forcibly wedge
operatives like Fischer into positions where they can thwart growing public opposition—
whether it takes the form of boycotts or grassroots opposition to the U.S. fighting more
wars for Israel. In the very short term, Americans can only fight such undue Israel lobby
influence by again—like during the drive to attack Syria—staging a mass action to
demand their senators reject Stanley Fischer's nomination.
[i]
Oberdorfer, Don "Will U.S. Dollars Fix Israel's Economy?" The Washington Post, June 9 1985
Oberdorfer, Don "Will U.S. Dollars Fix Israel's Economy?" The Washington Post, June 9 1985
[iii]
Passell, Peter "Need Zionism Equal Socialism?" The New York Times, July 2, 1992
[iv]
Maital, Shlomo "Stanley Fischer: the man and the plan," The Jerusalem Report, February 7, 2005
[v]
BBC Monitoring Middle East, March 5, 2007
[vi]
Keinon, Herb "Russia won't back crippling sanctions." Comment comes day before high-level US-Israel
meeting on Iran" The Jerusalem Post, February 25, 2010
[vii]
Williams, Dan "Iran Stepping Up Its Atomic Efforts" - The Gazette, August 13, 2012
[viii]
"Bank of Israel governor: Sanctions won't collapse Iran economy. Islamic Republic will likely find way to
'keep economic life going,' says Fischer in interview with CNBC" The Jerusalem Post, October 24, 2012.
[ix]
"Bank of Israel governor: Sanctions won't collapse Iran economy. Islamic Republic will likely find way to
'keep economic life going,' says Fischer in interview with CNBC" The Jerusalem Post, October 24, 2012.
[x]
Weisman, Steven R. "Wolfowitz Said to Push for Deal to Let Him Quit" The New York Times, May 17,
2007
[xi]
"Fischer set to be tapped as vice chair of US Federal Reserve" the Times of Israel, December 11, 2013
[ii]
Craig B Hulet was both speech writer and Special Assistant for Special Projects to Congressman Jack
Metcalf (Retired); he has been a consultant to federal law enforcement DEA, ATF&E of Justice/Homeland
Security for over 25 years; he has written four books on international relations and philosophy, his latest is
The Hydra of Carnage: Bush’s Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law - An Analysis of the Objectives and
Delusions of Empire. He has appeared on over 12,000 hours of TV and Radio: The History Channel “DeCoded”; He is a regular on Coast to Coast AM w/ George Noory and Coffee Talk KBKW; CNN, C-Span ;
European Television "American Dream" and The Arsenio Hall Show; The Carl Nelson Show live in DC
and Trending with Carl Nelson syndicated live; he has written for Soldier of Fortune Magazine,
International Combat Arms, Financial Security Digest, etc.; Hulet served in Vietnam 1969-70, 101st
Airborne, C Troop 2/17th Air Cav and graduated 3rd in his class at Aberdeen Proving Grounds Ordnance
School MOS 45J20 Weapons. He remains a paid analyst and consultant in various areas of
geopolitical, business and security issues: terrorism and military affairs. Hulet lives in the ancient old growth
Quinault Rain Forest.

AIPAC`s Fed Candidate Stanley Fischer on a Warpath

Transcription

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