Feds Radiating Americans At Internal Checkpoints

Also see: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0929/Feds-radiating-Americans-Mobile-X-ray-vans-hit-US-streets

Federal authorities do not concern themselves about the flood of illegal immigrants and drugs crossing the border every day, they’re more worried about radiating American truck drivers at internal checkpoints with mobile scanners that shoot dangerous x-rays through both vehicles and passengers.

As we reported last month, the federal government has acquired hundreds of backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that they are now using to randomly scan vehicles, passengers and homes in complete violation of the 4th amendment and with wanton disregard for any health consequences.

An example of their expanding use was reported by WSBTV yesterday, after federal agents from several agencies, including Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, and the TSA, set up an internal checkpoint on Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta and detained truck drivers for half an hour or more at a “state-owned inspection station” while they were scanned with a bomb detection device.

Officials admitted there was no specific threat that justified the checkpoint, and although it was labeled a “counter-terror operation,” the scans were also being conducted in the name of “safety”.

Watch the video here.

Backscatter x-ray vision devices mounted on trucks are already being deployed inside the United States to scan passing individuals and vehicles in complete violation of the Fourth Amendment. Similar to naked airport body scanners, the devices fire x-rays outwards which are then absorbed by dense objects or the human body. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can cause cancer and birth defects, according to a report by the Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety.

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War-crimes probe of Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reveals grisly allegations

When Army investigators tried to interrogate Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs in May about the suspected murders of three Afghan civilians, he declined to answer questions. But as he was being fingerprinted, Gibbs lifted up his pant leg to reveal a tattoo.

Engraved on his left calf was a picture of a crossed pair of pistols, framed by six skulls. The tattoo was "his way of keeping count of the kills he had," according to a report filed by a special agent for the Army's Criminal Investigations Command. Three of the skulls, colored in red, represented kills in Iraq, Gibbs told the agent; the others, in blue, were from Afghanistan.

Gibbs said he acted in self-defense each time, but Army officials came to a different conclusion. They have charged him with conspiring with other soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division to murder three unarmed Afghans, allegedly for sport, and dismembering and photographing the corpses.

The war-crimes investigation is the gravest to confront the Army in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. In echoes of the Abu Ghraib scandal that unfolded from Iraq in 2004, the Army is scrambling to locate dozens of digital photographs that soldiers allegedly took of one another posing alongside the corpses of their victims. Military officials worry disclosure of the images could inflame public opinion against the war, both at home and abroad.

In addition to Gibbs, 25, the Army has charged four other soldiers with involvement in the killings, which occurred between January and May in Kandahar province. So far, the Army has released limited information about the case, although a pretrial hearing for one of the accused soldiers began this week at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., home of the Stryker Brigade.

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An alarmed Iran asks for outside help to stop rampaging Stuxnet malworm

Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus.   

None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting specialists the locations where they would need to work. They were not told whether they would be called on to work outside Tehran or given access to affected sites to study how they function and how the malworm managed to disable them. Iran also refuses to give out data on the changes its engineers have made to imported SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, mostly from Germany.
The impression debkafile sources gained Wednesday, Sept. 29 from talking to European computer experts approached for aid was that the Iranians are getting desperate. Not only have their own attempts to defeat the invading worm failed, but they made matters worse: The malworm became more aggressive and returned to the attack on parts of the systems damaged in the initial attack.

One expert said: "The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not 'irritating' the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch."

Looking beyond Iran's predicament, he wondered whether the people responsible for planting Stuxnet in Iran - and apparently continuing to offload information from its sensitive systems - have the technology for stopping its rampage.

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Obama: ‘The Generals Made Me Do It!’

All Washington is atwitter: the grand old man of the Court Historians, Bob Woodward, has come out with yet another “book” – i.e. another long-winded press release on behalf of the Powers That Be – explaining, “reporting,” and rationalizing the war policies of the current regime. Oh, glory be! Drop everything and run to the nearest bookstore – or just go online and download the excerpts at the Washington Post‘s incredibly cumbersome web site, loaded down with so many ads, pop-ups, and pop-outs that one imagines his next book will be out before your computer stops grinding.

Chapter One ought to have been titled “The Generals Made Me Do It.” Poor President Obama: he’s the most powerful man on earth, and yet he can’t get past his own generals. When he asked them for “options” in Afghanistan, they came up with what was essentially a single option: 40,000 more troops and a counterinsurgency that would last until Hell (or Afghanistan) froze over. The President was “frustrated,” and even “impatient” – “I need a plan, a plan, my kingdom for a plan that will get me out of this box!” Okay, so that’s not a direct quote, but you get the idea.

Lacking such a plan, Obama drew up a document resembling a “contract,” which stated the terms and conditions under which he’d go along with the escalation of the war. Key to this was the much-vaunted 2011 “withdrawal” date, i.e. the date we would supposedly start “downsizing” our footprint and begin the “training” phase that would get us the heck out of there, and get Obama out of the hot water he’s increasingly in with his Democratic base. What’s interesting, here, is that our commander-in-chief automatically took one option – a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, followed by withdrawal – off the table. It is not even mentioned as a possibility, however distant. This is not surprising, given the Washington consensus, which is that the Empire never stops expanding, but only pauses once in a while to catch its breath.

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Project Gulf Impact crew poisoned in 'Nazi America'

Each of the filmmaker crew members that have been in the U.S, war zone trenches since May, documenting the Gulf operation crime against humanity, are poisoned. Alex Thomas of The Intel Hub reports on an exclusive interview with film director of Project Gulf Impact, Matt Smith about his condition in the Youtube video below. They discuss the similarities between the Nazi holocaust in Germany and the one underway in the U.S.

Quoting Smith who was interviewed by Intel Hub radio show host, Shepard Ambellas, Thomas writes:

“Everyone down here knows what's going on and the media black out is like calling the oil spill an oil spill when it is a flood. This media blackout is so deep, it’s like the Gestapo, its seriously feels like we are in some sort of Nazi State with the media. The media control is horrifying. It is so horrifying because it is getting WORSE."

Smith says that it feels like a different country down along the Gulf Coast.

He explains that the sick people in the south have no money or health insurance and cannot afford health care.

It has been reported to the Examiner that many South Louisianans do not even have gas money to drive to New Orleans only a couple of hours away.

Smith said that the crew wore respirators the day they fell ill. The respirators did not prevent them from becoming poisoned. He and everyone on the boat are poisoned. They all required hospitalization. Three of them are in the hospital.

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Blair 'knew of torture allegations in 2002'

Lawyers claim secret Government documents show Tony Blair knew as early as January 2002 of allegations of torture involving UK nationals held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. 

A letter from the Foreign Office to the Prime Minister's Office, publicly revealed for the first time today, carries handwritten comments that appear to come from Mr Blair, say solicitors acting for former Guantanamo detainees. 

The US detention centre for terror suspects in Cuba was opened on January 11 2002, just days before the letter was sent on January 18. 

Six detainees, including Bisher Al Rawi and Binyam Mohammed, are suing the Government over its alleged complicity in their ill treatment. 

The letter came to light following a High Court judge's order last July that any documents held by Government departments and the security services on the issue should be disclosed for the legal proceedings, unless disclosure endangered national security.

 The letter is entitled "UK Nationals Held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo" and has one whole paragraph redacted. 

It was sent by the Foreign Office in response to a request from Downing Street for "a round-up of the latest position". It included a chart listing detainees who might be British. 

The person to whom the letter is addressed is blanked out in the released copy, but lawyers for the former detainees say a hand-written comment at the bottom of the letter appears to come from Mr Blair.

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Obama Blames Democratic Voters For His Own Failures

Alicia Hope

The psychological warfare emanating from the White House is dishonest and an insult to our intelligence! Mr. Obama has decided to blame the Democratic voters for his failures as POTUS.

It is Mr. Obama that has failed to fulfill his campaign promises. He claims that he has kept 70 per cent of his promises but I doubt that he has kept any.

He failed to prosecute the telecoms for illegally eavesdropping on American citizens.

He signed off on the Patriot Act.

He bailed out Wall Street. He dropped the public option from his health plan.

He has an assassination program that even targets American citizens.

He increased private contractors in Iraq while leaving in country 50,000 troops.

He sent 30,000 to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

He has backed the official 9/11 fairy tale and based the wars of aggression on the 9/11 lie.

Americans are sick of civilians being killed in their name when 9/11 was an inside job. Tell the OGA(CIA) that hell awaits them and their weak excuses.

Those who assassinate will be assassinated by the Army of the Most High.

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Barack Obama under fire for grossly underestimating Gulf oil spill

The Obama administration lost the public trust and may have sabotaged clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico by grossly underestimating the amount of oil gushing from BP's broken Macondo well, according to a White House commission appointed to investigate the spill.

In a scathing critique of the administration's handling of the disaster, the two co-chairs of the commission yesterday said government officials made a serious blunder by releasing early estimates of the spill that were about 60 times too low.

"It's a little bit like Custer underestimating the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and paying a price for that," Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator from Florida, told reporters.

Government agencies have come under sustained assault from independent scientists for initial estimates that put the size of the spill as low as 1,000 barrels a day – even as footage from the ocean floor showed a huge cloud of oil and gas billowing out of the BP well. A team of scientific experts assembled by the government eventually raised the estimate to more than 60,000 barrels a day.

In testimony yesterday, the coast guard commander Admiral Thad Allen insisted the underestimates had had no effect on the response. "The answer is no," Allen said. "We assumed at the outset this would be a catastrophic event."

But Allen's assertion made little headway with the other co-chair of the commission. "I would assume that it's common sense that a flow rate will determine how many skimmers you think you need, how many thousand feet of boom you bring into the area, what you are going to do with respect to dispersants," said William Reilly, who served as chairman of the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President Bush. "How do you deploy your resources if you don't know how serious the threat is?"

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Army soldier says staff sergeant plotted Afghans' killings

A U.S. Army staff sergeant dreamed up a plan for fellow soldiers to kill three Afghan civilians this year because he was motivated by "pure hatred," another soldier accused in the slayings has told investigators.

In videotaped and written statements to Army investigators, Spec. Jeremy N. Morlock, 22, a member of the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, admitted his involvement in the killings, which took place in Kandahar province between January and May. Morlock sought to shift blame for the plot to his squad's staff sergeant, Calvin R. Gibbs, who he said planted the idea with their unit of killing innocent Afghans for sport.

"Gibbs had pure hatred for all Afghanis and constantly referred to them as savages," Morlock said in one statement, details of which were first reported by the Associated Press.

Morlock, Gibbs and three other U.S. soldiers have been charged with murder in the deaths of the three Afghan civilians. In some of the grisliest allegations against American military personnel since the 2001 invasion of Iraq, they and other soldiers from their platoon also face charges of using hashish, dismembering and photographing corpses, and possessing human bones.

Details of Morlock's statements emerged Monday during a pretrial hearing in a military courtroom at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., home of the 5th Stryker Brigade. The hearing was an initial step to determine whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a court martial against Morlock; the other defendants are scheduled to have similar hearings this fall.

Morlock's defense attorney has sought to toss out his client's statements, arguing that Morlock was under heavy medication when he talked to Army investigators in May. His statements are considered key evidence against other defendants as well.

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Pakistan protests NATO airstrikes on its territory

NATO helicopters based in Afghanistan carried out at least two airstrikes in Pakistan that killed more than 50 militants after the insurgents attacked a small Afghan security outpost near the border, spokesmen said Monday.

NATO justified the strikes based on "the right of self-defense." Pakistan is sensitive about attacks on its territory, but U.S. officials have said they have an agreement that allows aircraft to cross a few miles into Pakistani airspace if they are in hot pursuit of a target.

The first strike took place Saturday after insurgents based in Pakistan attacked an Afghan outpost in Khost province, which is located right across the border from Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, said U.S. Capt. Ryan Donald, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

"The ISAF helicopters did cross into Pakistan territory to engage the insurgents," said Donald. "ISAF maintains the right to self-defense, and that's why they crossed the Pakistan border."

The strike killed 49 militants, said U.S. Maj. Michael Johnson, another ISAF spokesman.

The second attack occurred when helicopters returned to the border area and were attacked by insurgents based in Pakistan, said Donald.

"The helicopters returned to the scene and they received direct small arms fire and, once again operating in self-defense, they engaged the insurgents," said Donald.

The strike killed at least four militants, said Johnson.

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Confession Video: US Soldier Describes Thrill Kill of Innocent Afghans

Dressed in a t-shirt and Army shorts, a 22-year-old corporal from Wasilla, Alaska casually describes on a video tape made by military investigators how his unit's "crazy" sergeant randomly chose three unarmed, innocent victims to be murdered in Afghanistan.

Corporal Jeremy N. Morlock is one of five GI's charged with pre-meditated murder in a case that includes allegations of widespread drug use, the collection of body parts and photos of the U.S. soldiers holding the Afghan bodies like hunter's trophies.

All five soldiers were part of the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, of the 2nd Infantry Division, based at Ft. Lewis-McChord, Washington. In charging documents released by the Army, the military alleges that the five, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, Spec Adam C. Winfield, Spec. Michael S. Wagnon II, Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes and Morlock were involved in one or more of three murders that took place between January and May of this year.

Lawyers and family members of the soldiers say they all intend to fight the charges.

An Article 32 hearing for Morlock, the military equivalent of a grand jury, is scheduled later today at Fort Lewis-McChord, Washington.

On the tape, obtained by ABC News, Morlock admits his role in the deaths of three Afghans but claims the plan was organized by his unit's sergeant, Calvin Gibbs, who is also charged with pre-meditated murder.

"He just really doesn't have any problems with f---ing killing these people," Morlock said on tape as he laid out the scenario he said the sergeant used to make it seem the civilians were killed in action.

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Obama’s Stimulus Plan Made Crisis Worse, Taleb Says

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration weakened the country’s economy by seeking to foster growth instead of paying down the federal debt, said Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan.”

“Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done,” Taleb said yesterday in Montreal in a speech as part of Canada’s Salon Speakers series. “He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse.”

Today, Taleb said, “total debt is higher than it was in 2008 and unemployment is worse.”

Obama this month proposed a package of $180 billion in business tax breaks and infrastructure outlays to boost spending and job growth. That would come on top of the $814 billion stimulus measure enacted last year. The U.S. government’s total outstanding debt is about $13.5 trillion, according to U.S. Treasury Department figures.

Obama, 49, inherited what the National Bureau of Economic Research said this week was the deepest U.S. recession since the Great Depression. Even after the stimulus measure and other government actions, the U.S. unemployment rate is 9.6 percent.

Governments globally need to cut debt and avoid bailing out struggling companies because that’s the only way they can shield their economies from the negative consequences of erroneous budget forecasts, Taleb said.

Errant Forecasts

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Obama argues his assassination program is a "state secret"

Salon

At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record.  In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims.  That's not surprising:  both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality.  But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets":  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality. 

A very intense case of food poisoning in New York on Thursday, combined with my traveling home all night last night, prevents me from writing much about this until tomorrow (and it's what rendered the blog uncharacteristically silent for the last two days).  But I would hope that nobody needs me or anyone else to explain why this assertion of power is so pernicious -- at least as pernicious as any power asserted during the Bush/Cheney years.  If the President has the power to order American citizens killed with no due process, and to do so in such complete secrecy that no courts can even review his decisions, then what doesn't he have the power to do?  Just for the moment, I'll note that The New York Times' Charlie Savage, two weeks ago, wrote about the possibility that Obama might raise this argument, and quoted the far-right, Bush-supporting, executive-power-revering lawyer David Rivkin as follows: 

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U.S. wants to track all foreign money transfers

Editor's Note: The U.S. government is using the false flag attack, 9/11, to continue the destruction of our privacy and freedom. What's next?

The Obama administration wants to require U.S. banks to report all electronic money transfers into and out of the country, a dramatic expansion in efforts to counter terrorist financing and money laundering.

Officials say the information would help them spot the sort of transfers that helped finance the Al-Qaida hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They say the expanded financial data would allow antiterrorist agencies to better understand normal money-flow patterns so they can spot abnormal activity.

Financial institutions are now required to report to the Treasury Department transactions in excess of $10,000 and others they deem suspicious. The new rule would require banks to disclose even the smallest transfers.

Treasury plans to post the proposed regulation on its website Monday and in the Federal Register this week. The public could comment before a final rule is published and the plan takes effect, which officials say will probably not be until 2012.

Financial institutions say that they already feel burdened by antiterrorism rules requiring them to provide data and that they object to new ones.

Each year, financial institutions file with the Treasury Department about 1.3 million suspicious-activity reports and 14 million reports on transactions greater than $10,000.

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Wiretapped phones, now Internet?

Star Tribune

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations of the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is "going dark" as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications -- including encrypted e-mail transmitters such as BlackBerry, social networking websites such as Facebook and software that allows direct "peer-to-peer" messaging such as Skype -- to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The legislation, which the Obama administration plans to submit to Congress next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering technological innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.

James Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had "huge implications" and challenged "fundamental elements of the Internet revolution" -- including its decentralized design.

"They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet," he said. "They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function."

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Barack Obama: the Great Unravelling of a One-Term President?

The first book about a new administration by Bob Woodward, Washington's court chronicler, usually promises to be the high watermark for an incoming commander-in-chief.

Officials are reluctant to dish the dirt because they have the chance of years of employment ahead of them. The cynic might think that a positive portrayal helps position the Watergate scribbler nicely for access next time.

It was the late conservative columnist Robert Novak who divided public figures into sources and targets. Woodward generally treats those who talk to him kindly while those who don't get a more damning verdict.

So it was of little surprise that the biggest problem Woodward must have had with his Obama's Wars was deciding how to cull the herd of White House officials eager to spill the beans.

But the clamour among staffers to present their boss and themselves (not necessarily in that order) in the best possible light has backfired spectacularly.

A president has no more solemn duty than that of being commander-in-chief. And judging from the evidence presented by Woodward, Barack Obama's view of that role is at best disquieting.

Nearly 100,000 American troops are now committed to Afghanistan but Obama's principal war aim is to withdraw and his main preoccupation is how the conflict plays domestically, particularly within his own Democratic party.

"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama says at one stage. At another he declares that "everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint".

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Global Cooling and the New World Order

Telegraph

Bilderberg. Whether you believe it’s part of a sinister conspiracy which will lead inexorably to one world government or whether you think it’s just an innocent high-level talking shop, there’s one thing that can’t be denied: it knows which way the wind is blowing. (Hat tips: Will/NoIdea/Ozboy)

At its June meeting in Sitges, Spain (unreported and held in camera, as is Bilderberg’s way), some of the world’s most powerful CEOs rubbed shoulders with notable academics and leading politicians. They included: the chairman of Fiat, the Irish Attorney General Paul Gallagher, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Dick Perle, the Queen of the Netherlands, the editor of the Economist…. Definitely not Z-list, in other words.

Which is what makes one particular item on the group’s discussion agenda so tremendously significant. See if you can spot the one I mean:

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.

Yep, that’s right. Global Cooling.

Which means one of two things.

Either it was a printing error.

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The Tea Party is now more powerful than President Obama

Telegraph

Who would have predicted this a year ago? Certainly not the complacent army of White House spin doctors who have failed to grasp, let alone acknowledge, the momentous political transformation that is sweeping America. CNN’s latest poll confirms that the Tea Party movement has more political clout than the President of the United States in influencing voters during this November’s mid-terms. While just 37 percent of Americans are more likely to vote for a candidate if backed by Barack Obama, a far larger 50 percent will vote for a Tea-Party endorsed candidate.

As CNN puts it:

A solid majority of all Americans — 56 percent — say that Obama has fallen short of their expectations. As a result, the president is not in a position to help struggling Democratic candidates; only 37 percent of likely voters say they are more likely to vote for a congressional candidate backed by Obama.

In contrast, half of all likely voters now say they are likely to choose a candidate supported by the conservative Tea Party — contributing to the GOP’s 53 to 44 percent lead when such voters are asked which party’s candidate they will choose in November.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll also gives President Obama his lowest approval rating so far – just 42 percent, which will be deeply worrying to the White House. This is nearly three percentage points below the RealClearPolitics average of polls which currently gives the president a 44.9 percent approval rating, and three points lower than the latest Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, which has Obama at 45 percent.

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To Protect State Secrets, Pentagon Buys and Destroys Book

ABC

The Pentagon has purchased and arranged for the destruction of 9,500 copies of a book so it can protect classified information it contains.

Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer's memoir "Operation Dark Heart" had become a headache for the Defense Department which determined after it had gone to print that it contained classified information.  The book recounts the Army Reserve officer's experiences in Afghanistan in 2003 while working for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

An option being explored with the book's publisher was for the Pentagon to purchase the 9,500 copies of the book's first run so they could be destroyed.

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. April Cunningham confirms that is what happened earlier this week.

"DoD decided to purchase copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security," she said.

According to Cunningham, "the approximately 9,500 copies of the book were "disposed on Sept. 20.  DoD observed the destruction of the copies."

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CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

The Register

The CIA is implicated in a court case in which it's claimed it used an illegal, inaccurate software "hack" to direct secret assassination drones in central Asia.

The target of the court action is Netezza, the data warehousing firm that IBM bid $1.7bn for on Monday. The case raises serious questions about the conduct of Netezza executives, and the conduct of CIA's clandestine war against senior jihadis in Afganistan and Pakistan.

The dispute surrounds a location analysis software package - "Geospatial" - developed by a small company called Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi), which like Netezza is based in Massachusetts. IISi alleges that Netezza misled the CIA by saying that it could deliver the software on its new hardware, to a tight deadline.

The Predator B

When the software firm then refused to rush the job, it's claimed, Netezza illegally and hastily reverse-engineered IISi's code to deliver a version that produced locations inaccurate by up to 13 metres. Despite knowing about the miscalculations, the CIA accepted the software, court submissions indicate.

IISi is now seeking an injunction to ban Netezza and the CIA from using the software or any derivative of it, in any context.

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