IRS Targeting: Round Two

WSJ

President Obama keeps claiming that he had no knowledge of the Internal Revenue Service's abusive muzzling of conservative groups. That line is hard to swallow given that his Treasury and IRS are back at it—this time in broad daylight.

In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program—only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law.

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By cracking cellphone code, NSA has capacity for decoding private conversations

The cellphone encryption technology used most widely across the world can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows, giving the agency the means to decode most of the billions of calls and texts that travel over public airwaves every day.

While the military and law enforcement agencies long have been able to hack into individual cellphones, the NSA’s capability appears to be far more sweeping because of the agency’s global signals collection operation. The agency’s ability to crack encryption used by the majority of cellphones in the world offers it wide-ranging powers to listen in on private conversations.

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The new mortgage rules that are likely to affect your next home purchase

WASH POST

If you’re planning to buy a house next year — and unless you’re in a position to make an all-cash offer — chances are you’ll be affected by some significant changes occurring in the mortgage application process beginning in January. 

Several federal agencies are implementing new policies aimed at addressing lax underwriting standards that led to the housing market crash more than five years ago.

The new policies could play a role in how much house you can afford.

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NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.

The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.

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Stunning Hypocrisy: Obama Slams Leaders Who “Do Not Tolerate Dissent From Their Own People”

During a memorial service for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg today, President Barack Obama challenged leaders who supported Mandela’s struggle for freedom but “do not tolerate dissent from their own people,” a stunning piece of hypocrisy given that the Obama administration has aggressively pursued dissenters at every turn, from punitive targeting of Tea Party groups via the IRS to the unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers.

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Obama accused of LYING about intelligence which he said proved Assad was behind sarin gas attacks in Syria

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has accused President Obama of lying to the American people earlier this year when he blamed President Bashar al-Assad for a sarin-gas attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians in August.

Seymour Hersh, 76, who had previously described the official account of the 2011 raid which killed Osama Bin Laden as ‘one big lie,’ claims the current administration ‘cherry-picked intelligence’ on Syria.

Hersh first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

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The DOJ Flat Out Lied In Court

TECH DIRT

On Friday the case against the US government, brought by Rahinah Ibrahim over her being placed on the "no fly list," officially concluded with closing arguments, but that may have been the least interesting part of everything. Apparently, the day got off to a rocky start, after Ibrahim's lawyers informed the DOJ that they intended to file bar complaints against some of the DOJ legal team for their actions in court, specifically concerning "misrepresentations" made to the court.

It seems clear that this was mainly about the DOJ denying that the US government (mainly DHS) had done anything to prevent Ibrahim's daughter, Raihan Mustafa Kamal, an American citizen, from coming to the US to be a witness in the trial.

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Budget negotiators looking at military pensions

Can savings from military pensions be part of the solution to avoid deeper cuts from defense next month?

That’s an important question facing House-Senate negotiators as they try to close out a deal this week to avoid another round of sequestration in January and restore some certainty to the appropriations process for the remainder of this Congress.

The two sides appear close but Democrats are anxious about the level of savings being sought by Republicans from civilian federal workers. Finding some money on the military side of the equation could lessen this burden and make the package more equitable too from a political standpoint.

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NSA spying stretched into online gaming: report

To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.

That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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Obamacare Architect: If You Like Your Doctor, You Can Pay More

The host, Chris Wallace, said: "President Obama famously promised, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Doesn't that turn out to be just as false, just as misleading, as his promise about if you like your plan, you can keep your plan? Isn't it a fact, sir, that a number, most, in fact, of the Obamacare health plans that are being offered on the exchanges exclude a number of doctors and hospitals to lower costs?"

"The president never said you were going to have unlimited choice of any doctor in the country you want to go to," said the Obamacare architect.

"No. He asked a question. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Did he not say that, sir?"

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New Affordable Care US health plans will exclude top hospitals

FT

Americans who are buying insurance plans over online exchanges, under what is known as Obamacare, will have limited access to some of the nation’s leading hospitals, including two world-renowned cancer centres.

Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.

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Consumers Face Higher Deductibles Under Obamacare Plans

Now that more individuals are able to enroll in plans through the improved Obamacare website, they are discovering that the lower insurance premiums mean more out-of-pocket costs that many may not be able to afford.

The deductibles are averaging $5,081 per year for the minimal coverage Bronze plans on the HealthCare.gov website in 34 of the 36 states on the federal exchange. That's 42 percent higher than the $3,589 deductible individual plans in 2013. For a couple or a family, deductibles may be as high as $12,700, The Wall Street Journal reports.

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A CIA agent fingered Mandela for the apartheid regime’s secret police

NEWSWEEK

One of the great things about the late great Nelson Mandela is that he didn’t hold grudges.

How else could he have accepted normal relations with the CIA, which tipped off the white-supremacy regime to his whereabouts in 1962?

According to a 1990 Johannesburg Sunday Times newspaper account, a CIA agent by the name of Millard Shirley fingered Mandela for the apartheid regime’s secret police, allowing them to throw up a roadblock and capture him.

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Reagan administration, CIA complicit in DEA agent’s murder, say former insiders

Two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency contract pilot are claiming that the Reagan Administration was complicit in the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena at the hands of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero.

The administration’s alleged effort to cover up a U.S. government relationship with the Mexican drug lord to provide for the arming and the training of Nicaraguan Contra rebels, at a time when official assistance to the Contras was banned by the congressional Boland Amendment, led to Camarena’s kidnap, torture and murder, according to Phil Jordon, former head of the DEA’s El Paso office, Hector Berrellez, the DEA’s lead investigator into Camarena’s kidnapping, torture and murder, and CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee.

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Florida cop, Marine vet, arrested for wearing ‘Anonymous’ mask warns of ‘a war coming’

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Mandela, the man once branded a 'terrorist' by the US

In 2008 just before his 90th birthday, the United States gave Nelson Mandela a special present, striking him from a decades-old terror watch list and ending what US officials called "a rather embarrassing matter."

By then the anti-apartheid icon had long left behind the jail cells where he was incarcerated for 27 years, and was already enjoying retirement and his status as one of the most revered statesmen of the 20th century after becoming South Africa's first black president.

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Operation Legacy: When Britain burned the paper trail of its imperial crimes

Britain tries to maintain the myth that it was more benign than other imperial powers. It managed this largely by hiding the evidence of what it did.

It could claim that there had been no “elimination” of political enemies by British forces in Malaya or torture at concentration camps in Kenya because there were no records.

The project to fillet the records as British forces withdrew was known as Operation Legacy. In most colonies a three person committee was set up to oversee the process.

What was not clear until the latest release of documents was the degree to which documents were burned rather than hidden in secret archives.

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The IRS And SEC Want To Snoop Through Your Email Without A Warrant

We've talked a lot about ECPA reform -- which is the incredibly outdated "electronic communications privacy act" which actually makes sure that you have less privacy than other forms of communication. This isn't necessarily on purpose, but because the law was written in the mid-1980s when email itself was a relatively new concept. It includes some bizarre distinctions between opened and unopened emails and if a message has been "left on a server" for more than 180 days (at which point it's considered "abandoned" and not subject to a warrant). Obviously it never anticipated the kind of internet we have today. It also goes against basic 4th Amendment principles and treats electronic messages differently from physical messages.

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Sweden key partner for U.S. spying on Russia

(Reuters) - Sweden has been a key partner for the United States in spying on Russia and its leadership, Swedish television said on Thursday, citing leaked documents from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

Earlier this year, former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden passed to media details of a global spying programme by the NSA, stirring international criticism. The U.S. has said much of the information was a result of cooperation with other intelligence services.

Swedish television cited a document dated Apr. 18 this year saying Sweden's National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA), which conducts electronic communications surveillance, had helped in providing the United States with information on Russia.

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NSA gathers data on cellphone locations globally: report

(Reuters) - The National Security Agency gathers nearly 5 billion records a day on the location of mobile telephones worldwide, including those of some Americans, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing sources including documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The records feed a database that stores information about the locations of "at least hundreds of millions of devices," the newspaper said, according to the top-secret documents and interviews with intelligence officials.

The report said the NSA does not target Americans' location data intentionally, but acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellular telephones "incidentally."

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