Western Spy Agencies Secretly Rely on Hackers for Intel and Expertise

The U.S., U.K. and Canadian governments characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents.

In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets… by collecting the hackers’ ‘take,’ we . . . get access to the emails themselves,” reads one top secret 2010 National Security Agency document.

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Making money as the Fed raises rates won't be easy

CNN

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rate later this year, perhaps as early as June. The Fed tried to jumpstart the economy during the Great Recession by cutting rates down near zero in December 2008. It hasn't touched rates since.

The stimulus fueled a stock market surge. The S&P 500 has risen about 200% since bottoming out in March 2009. A rising tide lifted all boats. But that rising tide -- the Fed's stimulus -- will soon fade.

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One Year Later, Obama Failing on Promise to Rein in NSA

A year ago, President Obama made tepid promises to reform the NSA (check out our analysis of those commitments). Today, he followed up with more specifics.

What do you need to know? His reform plan:

• Fails to fix the problem of unconstitutional National Security Letters The President's reform proposes a three-year limit on the gag order that accompanies each NSL, but even a three-year limit fails to cure the constitutional problem. Only a prompt and fully considered decision by a judge that a provider should remain gagged is sufficient.

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Whistleblower John Kiriakou, only person jailed over CIA torture program, is out of prison

Former CIA official John Kiriakou was today released after two and a half years in prison. He exposed the Bush-era war-on-terror torture program, and for that act of bravery became the only American to serve time in connection with it.

He was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013, after he pled guilty to confirming the identity of a covert officer to a reporter. The reporter did not publish the leaked information.

His supporters say the Obama administration sought to make Kiriakou an example in its crackdown on whistleblowers, and that the father of five children was unfairly punished.

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What you need to know about ECB’s Greek collateral decision

(MarketWatch) — The European Central Bank just cranked up the pressure on Greece’s new antiausterity government as it attempts to renegotiate the terms of its bailout, telling Athens that Greek banks can no longer use the country’s sovereign debt as collateral for ECB-provided liquidity.

U.S. stocks fell in late trade after the headlines hit and the euro EURUSD, -0.07%  extended a drop versus the U.S. dollar.

Here’s what you need to know:

What did the ECB just do?

The ECB’s Governing Council suspended a waiver that had allowed Greek banks to use the country’s junk-rated government bonds as collateral for central bank loans.

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Americans continue to lose money while corporate profits soar

The first data on 2013 incomes show continuing bad news for Americans, my analysis of a new Internal Revenue Service report shows.

Average income fell 2.6 percent in 2013, even though the economy grew 3.2 percent in real terms over 2012.

Average inflation-adjusted income in 2013 was 8 percent lower than in 2007, the last peak economic year, and 6.9 percent less than in 2000, the year President George W. Bush set as the standard to evaluate the effect of his tax cuts and regulatory policies.

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FCC proposal on net neutrality is a big win for open Internet advocates

Not long ago, net neutrality was little more than a buzzword to most Americans, an arcane concept within an equally arcane sector of telecommunications law. But fierce resistance to a plan proposed last spring by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler that Internet advocates said would have undermined net neutrality — the principle that all data traversing the Net should be treated equally by Internet service providers (ISPs) — has pushed the once obscure concept into the spotlight in Washington.

And today, as Wheeler prepares to deliver his latest proposal on net neutrality, advocates for an open Internet seem to have won.

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Prosecutor Drafted Arrest Warrant for Argentine President Right Before His Mysterious Death

NY MAG

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman drafted a warrant for the arrest of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner shortly before being found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment, the New York Times reports. Nisman had been investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, the Argentina Israelite Mutual Association, in which 85 people were killed. His body was found on the day he was scheduled to reveal evidence indicating that de Kirchner had refused to blame Iranian officials for the attack, apparently because Argentina wanted to preserve a trade relationship with Iran.

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Congressman Bill Pascrell Vows to look into Urban Moving Systems

I was listening to C-SPAN early this morning and the congressman was doing a good job discussing the budget and other issues until a caller called in about 9/11.

The bold caller stated that he could not trust what the congressman was saying because of 9/11.

The caller went on to mention the explosive residue that was found inside Urban Moving Systems. The residue was actually found inside the white van that the dancing Israelis (Mossad) were driving. The caller was intimating to the congressman that since 9/11 was an inside job... how can we as Americans believe or trust politicians that are covering up the most heinous crime of our generation?!

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Former CIA & NSA Boss: September 11th Gave Me Permission To Reinterpret The 4th Amendment

Michael Hayden, the former CIA and NSA director, has revealed what most people already suspected -- to him, the Constitution is a document that he can rewrite based on his personal beliefs at any particular time, as noted by Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic.

Specifically, he admits that after September 11th, 2001, he was able to totally reinterpret the 4th Amendment to mean something entirely different:

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CHARLIE HEBDO, FALSE FLAG, HOAX X 2

On January 7, 2015 a False Flag was staged in Paris France, this is just one of many false flags that have been staged across the globe in the never ending war against terror.

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Interest Costs Poised to Surpass Defense and Nondefense Discretionary Spending

WSJ

The U.S. has come a long way since the days of trillion-dollar deficits, just a few years ago. The White House projects 2016 will have the smallest budget deficit in eight years. Yet the budgetary impact of the debt that’s been accumulated–$18 trillion in total, $13 trillion of that owed to the public–will reassert itself.

Currently, the government’s interest costs are around $200 billion a year, a sum that’s low due to the era of low interest rates.

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House Benghazi committee to review secret Hillary tapes on Libya

The chairman of a special House committee created to investigate the 2012 Benghazi tragedy on Monday instructed his staff to review secretly recorded tapes and intelligence reports that detail Hillary Rodham Clinton’s role in advocating and executing the war in Libya, opening the door for a possible expansion of his probe.

Rep. Trey Gowdy’s decision to seek a review of the materials, first highlighted in a series of Washington Times stories last week, carries consequences for the 2016 election in which Mrs. Clinton is expected to seek the presidency. It could also move the committee to examine the strained relationship between the State Department and Pentagon, which sharply disagreed over the 2011 war in Libya and the response to the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi a year later.

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Secret Benghazi report reveals Hillary’s Libya war push armed al Qaeda-tied terrorists

Libyan officials were deeply concerned in 2011, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was trying to remove Moammar Gadhafi from power, that weapons were being funneled to NATO-backed rebels with ties to al Qaeda, fearing that well-armed insurgents could create a safe haven for terrorists, according to secret intelligence reports obtained by The Washington Times.

The reports included a 16-page list of weapons that Libyans supposedly tracked to the rebels from Western sources or their allies in the region. The memos were corroborated by a U.S. intelligence asset familiar with the documents as well as former top Gadhafi regime official Mohammed Ismael.

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Retroactively Authorizing War

NY Times

They went largely unnoticed, four words President Obama ad-libbed during the State of the Union address last month as he asked lawmakers to provide legal cover for America’s military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

“We need that authority,” the president said, adding a line to the prepared remarks on his teleprompter that seemed to acknowledge a reality about which his administration has been inexcusably dishonest.

As the new Congress gets settled in, the debate over the scope and legal authority of Washington’s new war in the Middle East has resurfaced amid strikingly disparate views.

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Under Suspicious Circumstances, FBI Places Brother of No-Fly Litigant on Most Wanted Terrorist List

In January 2012, 18-year-old Somali-American Gulet Mohamed was detained in Kuwait without charges and tortured, almost certainly at the behest of U.S. officials. Through a cellphone smuggled into the detention camp by another inmate, Gulet was able to call me and New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti and recount what happened; that morning, we both published articles reporting on the detention, and (with Gulet’s consent) I published the recording of the 50-minute call I had with him, showing him in extreme distress as he described his ordeal.

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Privacy Board Says NSA Doesn't Know How Effective Its Collection Programs Are, Doesn't Much Care Either

TECH DIRT

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has just released its assessment [pdf link] of the NSA's ability to follow instructions. One year ago, it assessed the Section 215 bulk records collection.

Six months later, it assessed the Section 702 program, which hoovers up email communications. Now, it has followed up on its recommendations and found the NSA surprisingly cooperative.

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Pete Carroll admired by '9/11 Truth' movement

Pete Carroll is a conspiracy theorist, at least that is how the conspiracy theory goes. And it is one that has gained the Seattle Seahawks coach an unlikely following from the "9/11 Truth" movement in the lead-up to his attempt to win back-to-back Super Bowls.

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Mutating Ebola Could Become More Contagious

SKY NEWS

Scientists have confirmed that the Ebola virus is mutating - and could become more contagious.

Researchers at the Institute Pasteur in France say they have detected substantial changes to the genetic code of the virus.

Although they don't yet know what effect that will have on the epidemic, they fear the virus could spread from person to person more easily.

In previous Ebola outbreaks, the virus has only infected a few dozen people and died out within weeks.

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U.S. Senate banking chair says he's interested in Fed audit

(Reuters) - The new Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee said on Thursday he was "very interested" in requiring a government audit of the Federal Reserve and its portfolio.

U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that Congress should not function as an extra Fed governor, but it should have some oversight of monetary policy decisions.

The subject of auditing the Fed re-emerged this week after U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate, introduced an "Audit The Fed" bill with 30 co-sponsors.

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