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.

Click to read more...

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.

Click to read more...

CIA Tried to Plant Fake Nuke Evidence in Iran for the IAEA to Find

(Bloomberg) -- Details of a 15-year-old Central Intelligence Agency sting emerging from a court case in the U.S. may prompt United Nations monitors to reassess some evidence related to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons work, two western diplomats said.

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Vienna will probably review intelligence they received about Iran as a result of the revelations, said the two diplomats who are familiar with the IAEA’s Iran file and asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

The CIA passed doctored blueprints for nuclear-weapon components to Iran in February 2000, trial documents have shown.

Click to read more...

ISIS' army of 7-footers? Experts say video of Copt beheadings IS FAKE

FOX NEWS

Video of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians being marched along a Libyan beach before being beheaded by black-clad members of ISIS is hard for any civilized person to watch, but experts who made it through the sickening, five-minute clip told FoxNews.com Friday they came to the same conclusion: The footage was faked.

No one holds out hope the victims, mostly poor fishermen who had gone to Libya to scratch out a living, are still alive.

But several anomalies in the video, which was posted online Feb. 15, indicated to trained eyes that at least some of the production was done on "green screen" with background added later, perhaps to disguise the real location of the atrocity.

Click to read more...

Against the odds by Blooded the Brave

The album features 14 new songs and it's available on itunes.

Click to read more ...

Iranian VP: CIA Behind Islamic State

“Well, I think there’s a lot of skepticism about the role of the United States in dealing with ISIS, because the support they initially provided for ISIS in Syria strengthened this group at that time, and then also other reasons to believe this is not a genuine group, it somehow instigated or created by, I don’t know, a certain intelligence agency,” Ebtekar said when asked about IS during an interview conducted by ABC News.

Click to read more...

ISIS Leader: We Are Being Funded By The United States

Law enforcing agencies on January 22 claimed that they arrested al Salafi, along with his two companions, during a joint raid in Lahore. However, sources revealed that al Salafi was actually arrested sometime in December last year and it was only disclosed on January 22.

Click to read more...

Iran has stopped questionable nuclear centrifuge testing: IAEA

(Reuters) - Iran has refrained from expanding tests of more efficient models of a machine used to refine uranium under a nuclear agreement with six world powers, a U.N. report shows, allaying concerns it might be violating the accord.

Tehran's development of advanced centrifuges is sensitive because, if successful, it could enable it to produce potential nuclear bomb material at a rate several times that of the decades-old version of the machine now in use.

An interim accord in 2013 between Iran and the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia stipulated Tehran could continue its "current enrichment R&D (research and development) practices", implying they should not be stepped up.

Click to read more...

False Flag Weekly News with Kevin Barrett and Jim Fetzer

False flag weekly news is uploaded every Thursday!

Don't miss it!

Click to read more ...

How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle

The Intercept

AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.

Click to read more...

Who Caused The Financial Crisis? Prosecutors Face 3-Month Deadline For Bringing Charges In The Subprime Mortgage Mess

Ninety days: That’s how long U.S. federal prosecutors have to tell Attorney General Eric Holder whether they have enough material to bring cases against individuals for wrongdoing in the 2008 financial crisis. It’s likely the last such appeal from the outgoing Holder, who made the announcement during a speech earlier this week.

Though many view Holder's unusual announcement as political face-saving, it raises a serious question: Are financial felons going to get away?

Click to read more...

Ron Paul: “Good News” That Secession Is Happening

Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says secession is happening and it’s “good news.” Paul later predicted the states would stop listening to federal laws.

Click to read more...

Judicial Watch Forces Obama Administration to Release Pentagon Benghazi Attack Documents

Judicial Watch announced today that the Obama administration finally turned over hundreds of pages of documents about the military response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound and other facilities in Benghazi. The documents, which are heavily blacked out (redacted), confirm that the U.S. Military, through its U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) drafted orders for a military response to the attack, specifically “to protect vital naval and national assets.” Other documents suggest that the military, hours after the attack, tied the assault to a group supporting “an Islamic state” that wanted to attack U.S. interests in Libya in retaliation for a drone strike on an al-Qaeda leader.

Click to read more...

Eric Holder Says Putting Reporter James Risen Through Hell Is A Good 'Example' Of DOJ Process For Leak Investigations

TECH DIRT

Attorney General Holder raised some eyebrows earlier this week when answering a question about his Justice Department's notorious crackdown on leaks, and by extension the press, most notably saying this about its notorious pursuit of New York Times reporter James Risen, while claiming the DOJ did nothing wrong:

If you look at the last case involving Mr. Risen, the way in which that case was handled after the new policies were put in place [is] an example of how the Justice Department can proceed.

Click to read more...

Anonymous Companies Fighting National Security Letters Back Twitter’s NSL Battle

EFF

Two companies who must remain anonymous about their fight against secret government demands for information known as national security letters (NSLs) are backing Twitter's lawsuit over its rights to publish information about NSLs it may have received. The companies—a telecom and an Internet company—are represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Twitter filed its suit in October, saying users deserved to know certain basic facts about NSLs that the government did or did not serve on the social media company. NSLs—issued by the federal government but not approved by a judge—almost always contain a gag order barring the companies from notifying their customers or the public that any demands have been made.

Click to read more...

Elizabeth Warren And Sherrod Brown Fight Fed Audit, Foreclosure Transparency

EDITOR'S NOTE: They need to be voted out of office. Warren calls it congressional meddling! WTF? The Constitution states: Congress has the duty to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures. Where is the meddling? The creature from Jekyll Island is on its death bed! 70 to 80 percent of Americans want an audit!

WASHINGTON -- Top progressive senators are running away from a bill authored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to audit both the Federal Reserve's monetary policy operations and millions of foreclosures.

Click to read more...

NSA Has Planted Surveillance Software Deep Within Hard Drives Since 2001

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been planting surveillance software deep within hard drives made by top manufacturers, allowing it to eavesdrop on almost every computer in the world, according to Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based software security company that announced its findings Monday.

Kaspersky did not explicitly name from which country or intelligence agency the spying software was found, but former operatives from the NSA confirmed that the findings correlated with NSA activity, Reuters reported.

The NSA’s spyware lies within drives manufactured by Western Digital and Seagate, who deny that they had any knowledge of such programs.

Click to read more...

Hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years—and were found at last

Arstechnica

In 2009, one or more prestigious researchers received a CD by mail that contained pictures and other materials from a recent scientific conference they attended in Houston. The scientists didn't know it then, but the disc also delivered a malicious payload developed by a highly advanced hacking operation that had been active since at least 2001.

The CD, it seems, was tampered with on its way through the mail.

It wasn't the first time the operators—dubbed the "Equation Group" by researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab—had secretly intercepted a package in transit, booby-trapped its contents, and sent it to its intended destination.

Click to read more...

How Science Died at the World Trade Center

by Kevin Ryan

Science has been misused for political purposes many times in history. However, the most glaring example of politically motivated pseudoscience—that employed by U.S. government scientists to explain the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC)—continues to be ignored by many scientists.

As we pass the 10^th anniversary of the introduction of that account, it is useful to review historic examples of fake science used for political purposes and the pattern that defines that abuse.

An early example of pseudoscience used to promote a political agenda was the concerted Soviet effort to contradict evolutionary theory and Mendelian inheritance.

Click to read more...

U.S. Embedded Spyware Overseas, Report Claims

The United States has found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in computers and networks it has targeted in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and other countries closely watched by American intelligence agencies, according to a Russian cybersecurity firm.

In a presentation of its findings at a conference in Mexico on Monday, Kaspersky Lab, the Russian firm, said that the implants had been placed by what it called the “Equation Group,” which appears to be a veiled reference to the National Security Agency and its military counterpart, United States Cyber Command.

It linked the techniques to those used in Stuxnet, the computer worm that disabled about 1,000 centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

Click to read more...