Who Are We at War With? Sorry, That’s “Classified”
July 26, 2013
You’d think that a nation that has allowed the shredding of the civil liberties enshrined in its founding document might deserve to know who the dastardly enemy is to justify such a dramatic transgression, right? Wrong. Amazingly, Carl Levin (D-Michigan) asked the Pentagon to define who exactly the “Al-Qaeda affiliates” we are at war with are. While Mr. Levin received and answer, guess what he told the public? Yep, you guessed it. It’s classified.
From ProPublica:
In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”
So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.
Read More...
From ProPublica:
In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”
So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.
Read More...
Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash
July 26, 2013
Source: Wired
The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the house voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters.
That’s the upshot of a new analysis by MapLight, a Berkeley-based non-profit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request. The investigation shows that defense cash was a better predictor of a member’s vote on the Amash amendment than party affiliation. House members who voted to continue the massive phone-call-metadata spy program, on average, raked in 122 percent more money from defense contractors than those who voted Wednesday to dismantle it.
Overall, political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others ponied up $12.97 million in donations for a two-year period ending December 31, 2012, according to the analysis, which MapLight performed with financing data from OpenSecrets. Lawmakers who voted to continue the NSA dragnet-surveillance program averaged $41,635 from the pot, whereas House members who voted to repeal authority averaged $18,765.
Of the top 10 money getters, only one House member — Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) — voted to end the program.
Read More...
Hacker dies days before he was to reveal how to remotely kill pacemaker patients
July 26, 2013
Source: RT
Security researcher Barnaby Jack has passed away in San Francisco, only days before a scheduled appearance at a Las Vegas hacker conference where he intended to show how an ordinary pacemaker could be compromised in order to kill a man.
Jack, who previously presented hacks involving ATMs and insulin pumps at the annual Black Hat conference in Vegas, was confirmed dead Friday morning by the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office, Reuters reported. He passed away Thursday this week, but the office declined to offer any more details at this time.
Jack’s death came one week to the day before he was scheduled to detail one of his most recent exploits in a Black Hat talk called “Implantable Medical Devices: Hacking Humans.”
“I was intrigued by the fact that these critical life devices communicate wirelessly. I decided to look at pacemakers and ICDs (implantable cardioverter defibrillators) to see if they communicated securely and if it would be possible for an attacker to remotely control these devices,” Jack told Vice last month.
After around six months of research, Jack said he developed a way to hack one of those devices remotely and send it a high-voltage shock from upwards of 50 feet away.
“If the devices can be accessed remotely, there's always a potential for abuse,” he told Vice tech reporter William Alexander.
In a blog post earlier this year, Jack said he was influenced by a recent episode of the television program "Homeland," in which a terrorist remotely hacked the pacemaker of the United States vice president.
“In my professional opinion, the episode was not too far off the mark,” he wrote.
When Alexander asked Jack if a government official outfitted with a pacemaker would be vulnerable to assassination from a hacker, the researcher remarked, “I wouldn't feel comfortable speculating about such a scenario.”
“Although the threat of a malicious attack to anyone with an implantable device is slim, we want to mitigate these risks no matter how minor,” he wrote on his blog post. At the time, Jack said the vulnerability was being discussed with medical device manufacturers.
“Over the past year, we’ve become increasingly aware of cyber security vulnerabilities in incidents that have been reported to us,” William Maisel, deputy director for science at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, told Reuters. “Hundreds of medical devices have been affected, involving dozens of manufacturers.”
At previous Black Hat talks, Jack detailed how he emulated a stunt found in the movie Terminator 2 that allowed him to remotely hack an automatic teller machine. In addition to being able to read credit card numbers and PINs inputted by another user, Jack also showed how a USB drive could be implanted in an ATM which would override the machine’s firmware and allow a hacker to take control.
In another presentation, Jack said he could hack insulin pumps to order the machines to deliver lethal doses to patients, in turn killing them.
“We notified the manufacturer of the vulnerability and it will be fixed with the next insulin pump revision,” he told Vice.
Jack’s most recent employer, security firm IOActive, said in a statement, “Lost but never forgotten our beloved pirate, Barnaby Jack has passed. He was a master hacker and dear friend. Here’s to you Barnes!”
Black Hat is scheduled to begin Wednesday in Las Vegas, with a presentation by NSA Chief Gen. Keith Alexander. It will be immediately followed by the Def Con hacker conference, which will be taking place just down the road. Researchers at Def Con plan to demonstrate various high-profile hacks, including how modern cars can be compromised.
Source: L.A. Times
Americans believe that government surveillance programs collect far more information than even the widely reported recent leaks of classified data indicate and they increasingly worry that the scope of anti-terror programs has endangered civil liberties.
And yet, despite those concerns, Americans still narrowly approve of the “government’s collection of telephone and Internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts,” with 50% approving and 44% disapproving, according to a newly released Pew Research Center survey.
A key to understanding the public’s seemingly ambivalent attitudes is that among those who believe the programs go beyond their official descriptions, feature excessive secrecy or don’t receive enough oversight by courts, a significant minority nonetheless approves of them. Those who believe the programs perform as advertised support them overwhelmingly.
Read full article
Obama's silence clears the way for shipments of F-16 fighter jets (Photo: REUTERS)In the case of Egypt, the Obama administration has found an easy way to circumvent a US law that limits aid to governments ruled by military coup.
Obama simply will not make up his mind about whether Egypt has undergone such a coup, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns told the Senate and House Thursday.
"The law does not require us to make a formal determination as to whether a coup took place, and it is not in our national interest to make such a determination," an Obama administration official later admitted to Reuters under condition of anonymity.
The silence offers a convenient loophole as the Obama administration struggles to maintain influence in Egypt amid ongoing political upheavals and mass movements.
Obama has been slammed by critics for his cynical support of whatever regime asserts authority in Egypt—whether Mubarak, Morsi, or the Supreme Council of Armed Forces—to cement US power in the region at the expense of the Egyptian people.
"America's primary concern, as always, is how best to preserve its interests in the region,"declared Rachel Shabi last week in the Guardian. "Calling a coup a coup would legally bind the US to withdraw $1.5bn in aid to the army – and it's the army, whose chief attended America's top military academy, that keeps the US and its regional ally Israel happy."
The move comes despite documented military massacres of Morsi supporters by the military and ongoing (many fear growing) political violence and growing tensions.
The $1.55 billion annual payments in US military aid are key provisions of the 1979 Camp David Accords aimed at securing US and Israeli geopolitical power in the Middle East and North Africa. The US has continuously funded the Egyptian military for decades despite their backing of, and participation in, authoritarian regimes and rampant military human rights abuses, including torture and secret military trial of civilians.
As the Obama administration scrambles to build influence with the party in power, an emerging "Third Square" movement in Egypt is opposing both Muslim Brotherhood and SCAF rule. Sarah Carr with Mada Masr reports Friday:
In a leaflet distributed in the protest they describe themselves as "a group of Egyptians who protested on January 25 against the corruption of the [Hosni] Mubarak state... protested against [former head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Field Marshal Hussein] Tantawi's men who gave the army a bad name during the transitional period and protested against Morsi and religious fascism in order to call for early elections."
Americans believe that government surveillance programs collect far more information than even the widely reported recent leaks of classified data indicate and they increasingly worry that the scope of anti-terror programs has endangered civil liberties.
And yet, despite those concerns, Americans still narrowly approve of the “government’s collection of telephone and Internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts,” with 50% approving and 44% disapproving, according to a newly released Pew Research Center survey.
A key to understanding the public’s seemingly ambivalent attitudes is that among those who believe the programs go beyond their official descriptions, feature excessive secrecy or don’t receive enough oversight by courts, a significant minority nonetheless approves of them. Those who believe the programs perform as advertised support them overwhelmingly.
Read full article
Obama's silence clears the way for shipments of F-16 fighter jets (Photo: REUTERS)In the case of Egypt, the Obama administration has found an easy way to circumvent a US law that limits aid to governments ruled by military coup.
Obama simply will not make up his mind about whether Egypt has undergone such a coup, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns told the Senate and House Thursday.
"The law does not require us to make a formal determination as to whether a coup took place, and it is not in our national interest to make such a determination," an Obama administration official later admitted to Reuters under condition of anonymity.
The silence offers a convenient loophole as the Obama administration struggles to maintain influence in Egypt amid ongoing political upheavals and mass movements.
Obama has been slammed by critics for his cynical support of whatever regime asserts authority in Egypt—whether Mubarak, Morsi, or the Supreme Council of Armed Forces—to cement US power in the region at the expense of the Egyptian people.
"America's primary concern, as always, is how best to preserve its interests in the region,"declared Rachel Shabi last week in the Guardian. "Calling a coup a coup would legally bind the US to withdraw $1.5bn in aid to the army – and it's the army, whose chief attended America's top military academy, that keeps the US and its regional ally Israel happy."
The move comes despite documented military massacres of Morsi supporters by the military and ongoing (many fear growing) political violence and growing tensions.
The $1.55 billion annual payments in US military aid are key provisions of the 1979 Camp David Accords aimed at securing US and Israeli geopolitical power in the Middle East and North Africa. The US has continuously funded the Egyptian military for decades despite their backing of, and participation in, authoritarian regimes and rampant military human rights abuses, including torture and secret military trial of civilians.
As the Obama administration scrambles to build influence with the party in power, an emerging "Third Square" movement in Egypt is opposing both Muslim Brotherhood and SCAF rule. Sarah Carr with Mada Masr reports Friday:
In a leaflet distributed in the protest they describe themselves as "a group of Egyptians who protested on January 25 against the corruption of the [Hosni] Mubarak state... protested against [former head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Field Marshal Hussein] Tantawi's men who gave the army a bad name during the transitional period and protested against Morsi and religious fascism in order to call for early elections."
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