'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington

THE GUARDIAN

The US Department of Justice and embattled mayor Rahm Emanuel are under mounting pressure to investigate allegations of what one politician called “CIA or Gestapo tactics” at a secretive Chicago police facility exposed by the Guardian.

Politicians and civil-rights groups across the US expressed shock upon hearing descriptions of off-the-books interrogation at Homan Square, the Chicago warehouse that multiple lawyers and one shackled-up protester likened to a US counter-terrorist black site in a Guardian investigation published this week.

As three more people came forward detailing their stories of being “held hostage” and “strapped” inside Homan Square...

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Held for hours at secret Chicago 'black site': 'You're a hostage. It's kidnapping'

A woman who says she was shackled to a bench within Chicago’s secretive interrogation facility for 18 hours before being permitted access to a lawyer described the ordeal as being “held hostage’’ in the police compound that has been likened to a CIA black site.

Vic Suter, a protester arrested before the 2012 Nato summit in Chicago, has told the Guardian about her experience of being detained inside Homan Square, a warehouse where multiple detainees allege they have been unable to contact legal counsel.

Suter described a situation in which she was neither booked nor permitted a phone call – in defiance both of Chicago police procedures and a statement by police on Tuesday attempting to deny the Guardian’s reporting.

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The Government Refuses to Prove Snowden Damaged National Security

GIZMODO

Did Edward Snowden actually damage national security? There's no way in hell to tell from official documents released to the press—they've been thoroughly redacted to the point of uselessness.

Well, that's not true: They're useful in showing that the government isn't exactly eager to reveal concrete proof that the revelations about its surveillance abuses have harmed America.

The idea that Snowden has jeopardized national security and the lives of troops is the linchpin for arguments that the ex-NSA contractor is a treasonous villain, not a whistleblower.

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Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?

by Glenn Greenwald

The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency’s latest counterterrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain ably documents, “it appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI informant.”

One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following through on the FBI’s plot: his mom had taken away his passport.

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Chicago’s “Black Site” Detainees Speak Out

THE INTERCEPT

On Tuesday, The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman reported on the “equivalent of a CIA black site” operated by police in Chicago.

When computer program analyst Kory Wright opened the story, he told me, “I immediately recognized the building” — because, the Chicago resident says, he was zip-tied to a bench there for hours in an intentionally overheated room without access to water or a bathroom, eventually giving false statements to try and end his ordeal.

A friend of Wright’s swept up in the same police raid described his own brutal treatment at the facility, known as Homan Square, including attacks to his face and genitals.

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FCC approves sweeping Internet regulation plan, Obama accused of meddling

Editor's note: Listen to what this FCC Commissioner says about the new regulation plan!

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday adopted sweeping new regulations sought by President Obama for how Americans use and do business on the Internet, in a party-line vote that is sure to be challenged by the broadband industry. 

The commission, following a contentious meeting, voted 3-2 to adopt its so-called net neutrality plan -- a proposal that remained secret in the run-up to the final vote. 

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Obama to ban bullets by executive action, threatens top-selling AR-15 rifle

Washington Examiner

It’s starting.

As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives this month revealed that it is proposing to put the ban on 5.56mm ammo on a fast track, immediately driving up the price of the bullets and prompting retailers, including the huge outdoors company Cabela’s, to urge sportsmen to urge Congress to stop the president.

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Exclusive - CSE monitors millions of Canadian emails to government

CBC

Canada’s electronic spy agency collects millions of emails from Canadians and stores them for “days to months” while trying to filter out malware and other attacks on government computer networks, CBC News has learned.

A top-secret document written by Communications Security Establishment (CSE) analysts sheds new light on the scope of the agency’s domestic email collection as part of its mandate to protect government computers.

CBC analyzed the document in collaboration with U.S. news site The Intercept, which obtained it from U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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Gemalto presents the findings of its investigations into the alleged hacking of SIM card encryption keys by GCHQ and the NSA

GEMALTO

Amsterdam, February 25, 2015 - Following the release of a report by a news website on February 19, 2015, Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), has conducted a thorough investigation, based in particular on two elements: the purported NSA and GCHQ documents which were made public by this website, and our internal monitoring tools and their past records of attempts of attacks.

All comments in this publication assume that the published documents are real and refer accurately to events that occurred during 2010 and 2011.

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Spy Cables: Trying to suppress the Goldstone Report

Leaked secret South Africa intelligence reports – dubbed the Spy Cables - include an account of the head of Israeli intelligence, Meir Dagan, lobbying on behalf of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in an effort to suppress the Goldstone Report.

The Spy Cables which have been obtained by news organisation Al Jazeera, span a period from 2006 to the end of 2014, and include detailed briefings and analyses written by the operatives. The broadcaster began breaking details of the documents on Monday.

Jurist Richard Goldstone had led a UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission that established war crimes were committed by both sides during Israel's 2008-2009 assault on Gaza which killed 1400 Palestinians.

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Spy Cables expose 'desperate' US approach to Hamas

A CIA agent "desperate" to make contact with Hamas in Gaza pleaded for help from a South African spy in the summer of 2012, according to intelligence files leaked to Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit. The US lists Hamas as a terrorist organisation and, officially at least, has no contact with the group.

That was just one of the revelations of extensive back-channel politicking involving the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority as they navigate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amid a stalled peace process.

Classified South African documents obtained by Al Jazeera also reveal an approach by Israel's then-secret service chief, Meir Dagan, seeking Pretoria's help in its efforts to scupper a landmark UN-authorised probe into alleged war crimes in Gaza, which was headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone.

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SA spooks red-faced from latest spy data leak

NEWS 24

A mass leak of South African espionage secrets will cause many foreign agencies to think twice before sharing information with Pretoria, hampering its efforts to walk a delicate diplomatic tightrope between East and West, experts said on Tuesday. 

Britain's The Guardian paper and news organisation Al Jazeera said they had obtained hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world's top spy agencies to and from South Africa, dubbing it "one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times".

The biggest revelation so far is an assessment by Mossad that counters Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - backed by a cartoon picture of a bomb - asserting at the UN in 2012 that Iran was a year away from making a nuclear device.

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The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'

The Guardian

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units.

Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

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States predict inmates' future crimes with secretive surveys

AP

 States are trying to reduce prison populations with secretive, new psychological assessments to predict which inmates will commit future crimes and who might be safe to release, despite serious problems and high-profile failures, an Associated Press investigation found.

These programs are part of a national, data-driven movement to drive down prison populations, reduce recidivism and save billions. They include questionnaires often with more than 100 questions about an offender's education, family, income, job status, history of moving, parents' arrest history — or whether he or she has a phone. A score is affixed to each answer and the result helps shape how the offender will be supervised in the system — or released from custody.

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Ex-FCC chief shocked by Obama net rules meddling

CNBC

The net neutrality rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission and expected to be voted on this week are a "sad example of unreasoned decision-making," former FCC Chairman Michael Powell told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Tuesday. 

"Watching the president of the United States come on a YouTube video and direct the FCC to adopt a very specific regulatory result, I think … was shocking and put the commission in an untenable position," said Powell, who served under President George W. Bush.

In November, President Barack Obama urged the FCC to take up the "strongest possible rules" to make sure all Internet traffic is treated equally.

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Obama's regs will make Internet slow as in Europe, warn FCC, FEC commissioners

As the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission toy with regulating aspects of the Internet, critics on those agencies are warning that speed and freedom of speech are in jeopardy.

In a joint column, Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai and Federal Election Commission member Lee Goodman, leveled the boom on the Obama-favored regulations, essentially charging that it will muck up the freedom the nation has come to expect from the Internet.

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Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad

Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document.

It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world’s major intelligence services – one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times.

Brandishing a cartoon of a bomb with a red line to illustrate his point, the Israeli prime minister warned the UN in New York that Iran would be able to build nuclear weapons the following year and called for action to halt the process.

But in a secret report shared with South Africa a few weeks later, Israel’s intelligence agency concluded that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”.

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DHS staff would remain on job with no pay if Congress does not fund agency

Once again, it is federal employees who could take a hit because Uncle Sam can’t get his budget act together.

Temporary funding for the Department of Homeland Security expires Friday. If Congress and President Obama can’t agree on an appropriations bill by then, it will drape the agency in confusion.

But it won’t shut down, as DHS says, because about 85 percent of its employees would stay on the job.

What would shut down is the pay for all DHS staffers — more than 200,000 of them. Those who remain on the job would get paid eventually, but who knows when? The 15 percent facing furlough might get paid, but they can’t take “might” to the bank.

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Google Blasts DOJ's Request For Expanded Search Powers; Calls Proposal A Threat To The Fourth Amendment

TECH DIRT

The DOJ wants to amend Rule 41 (Search and Seizure) to grant its agencies unilateral powers to hack any computer in the world. This would expand its reach beyond the US, using warrants granted by magistrate judges to facilitate searches and seizures of remote data. This would obviously open up a whole diplomatic can of worms, what with the FBI hacking into computers whose locations it can't ascertain until after the fact.

Not that the DOJ is bothered by the implications of the amendment it's pushing. It argues that the law already has determined searches in known jurisdictions legal.

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Police secretly spy on phones

WASHINGTON POST

The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns.

Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.

But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns.

In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.

Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.

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