Category Archives: Homeland Security

The Unchallenged Man Of The Year

Constitution, Fascism, Homeland Security, Technology, Terrorism, The State, Uncategorized

Those who are not suspended in the moral abyss with mainstream media already know that Edward Joseph Snowden is the best of America. (Included in the septic mainstream are the interchangeable females on a Fox News idiot’s extravaganza called ‘The Five.’ Said a nimble mind by the name of Andrea Tarantula: ‘If the [National Security Agency] are competent with my information; they can have it.'”)

“At 29, Snowden upended the National Security Agency on its own turf,” heroically bringing to light how—contrary to the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, in particular—the NSA had instituted “a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations.”.

One of the positive outcomes of Snowden’s actions is that “U.S. technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo,” are taking “extraordinary steps to block the collection of data by their government”:

Led by Google and then Yahoo, one company after another announced expensive plans to encrypt its data traffic over tens of thousands of miles of cable. It was a direct — in some cases, explicit — blow to NSA collection of user data in bulk. If the NSA wanted the information, it would have to request it or circumvent the encryption one target at a time.
As these projects are completed, the Internet will become a less friendly place for the NSA to work. The agency can still collect data from virtually anyone, but collecting from everyone will be harder.
The industry’s response, Smith acknowledged, was driven by a business threat. U.S. companies could not afford to be seen as candy stores for U.S. intelligence. But the principle of the thing, Smith said, “is fundamentally about ensuring that customer data is turned over to governments pursuant to valid legal orders and in accordance with constitutional principles.”

It is to a heroic young man such as this that we should all say: “Thank you for your service, Mr. Snowden.”

Have a happy New Year.
ilana

UPDATED: The TAO Of Tyranny (The Israeli Difference)

Government, Homeland Security, Israel, Technology, Terrorism, The State

The TAO of tyranny was devised in 1997. In the USA.

The German weekly Der Spiegel has performed the service the British Guardian performed before it. Once again it falls to the serious foreign press to expose the machinations of the U.S. state apparatus; in this case, the works of The Office of Tailored Access Operations, or Tao.

“… TAO … is the National Security Agency’s top operative unit — something like a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked.” So writes Der Spiegel.

According to internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL, these on-call digital plumbers are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies. TAO’s area of operations ranges from counterterrorism to cyber attacks to traditional espionage. The documents reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO’s disposal have become — and also how it exploits the technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its discreet and efficient attacks. …

… one former TAO chief wrote … that TAO “needs to continue to grow and must lay the foundation for integrated Computer Network Operations,” and that it must “support Computer Network Attacks as an integrated part of military operations.” To succeed in this, she wrote, TAO would have to acquire “pervasive, persistent access on the global network.” An internal description of TAO’s responsibilities makes clear that aggressive attacks are an explicit part of the unit’s tasks. In other words, the NSA’s hackers have been given a government mandate for their work. During the middle part of the last decade, the special unit succeeded in gaining access to 258 targets in 89 countries — nearly everywhere in the world. In 2010, it conducted 279 operations worldwide.

Indeed, TAO specialists have directly accessed the protected networks of democratically elected leaders of countries. They infiltrated networks of European telecommunications companies and gained access to and read mails sent over Blackberry’s BES email servers, which until then were believed to be securely encrypted. Achieving this last goal required a “sustained TAO operation,” one document states.

This TAO unit is born of the Internet — created in 1997, a time when not even 2 percent of the world’s population had Internet access and no one had yet thought of Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. From the time the first TAO employees moved into offices at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, the unit was housed in a separate wing, set apart from the rest of the agency. Their task was clear from the beginning — to work around the clock to find ways to hack into global communications traffic.

… The TAO workers authorized to access the special, secure floor on which the unit is located are for the most part considerably younger than the average NSA staff member. Their job is breaking into, manipulating and exploiting computer networks, making them hackers and civil servants in one. Many resemble geeks — and act the part, too.

Their leader: the dangerous NSA Director, Keith Alexander.

Read on about “‘Computer Network Exploitation’ (CNE), the goal [of which] is to “subvert endpoint devices,” according to an internal NSA presentation that SPIEGEL has viewed. The presentation goes on to list nearly all the types of devices that run our digital lives — ‘servers, workstations, firewalls, routers, handsets, phone switches, SCADA systems, etc.’ SCADAs are industrial control systems used in factories, as well as in power plants. Anyone who can bring these systems under their control has the potential to knock out parts of a country’s critical infrastructure.”

The most well-known and notorious use of this type of attack was the development of Stuxnet, the computer worm whose existence was discovered in June 2010. The virus was developed jointly by American and Israeli intelligence agencies to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, and successfully so.

AND READ HOW TAO techies are “Having Fun at Microsoft’s Expense”—and at ours, since so many of us use Microsoft’s Windows.

UPDATED (12/31): The Israeli Difference, in reply to the Facebook Thread:

Israel possesses this capability, Don Darkes. But Israel seems far more prone to using these “tools” to do what they believe, and most of Israelis believe, is in the interest of national survival. The US state, however, turns on its own people, seldom acting in their interest. I mean, if Uncle Sam is so smart, and is spying on Mexico, why give drug dealers weapons to kill Americans and innocent Mexicans? A lot of people hate Israel. But a lot of what the state does (and I do not necessarily support these intrusions) is executed by a leadership that perceives its interest to be one with the people it represents. In other words, when Israelis release a cyber-virus on Iran, it is b/c Mosad members are not emigrating (they can’t; no one will have them). They want to secure the future of their own kind.

UPDATED: JFK’s America (Not Yet A Police State)

America, Democrats, English, History, Homeland Security, Pop-Culture

On Friday, November 22, it will be 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. CNN has used the upcoming commemoration to avoid covering Obamacare, filling every spare moment of the last week or so with documentary footage of the 1963 events. (The Jonestown massacre’s 30th anniversary was also put to the same use by the nitwork.)

The footage shows an America that is so much more united in mannerisms, grief; better spoken, more refined, reserved, and appropriately attired. It is an endearing and innocent America that is revealed in these records. What was so bad about that bourgeoisie society? Not much when compared to today’s America.

JFK and his stunning wife were rather conservative individuals. Jacky was certainly very proper. She also despised Martin Luther King and Linden Johnson.

Jacqueline Kennedy, as revealed from audio recordings of her historic 1964 conversations with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., held a low opinion of Martin Luther King. America’s most engaging first lady called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “terrible,” “tricky” and “a phony.”

“His associations with communists” is why Jacky’s husband ordered the wiretaps on King. Mrs. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy—recounts Patrick J. Buchanan in “Suicide of a Superpower”—”saw to it that the FBI carried out the order.”

Stark too is the contrast between this erudite, educated, exquisite Renaissance woman and Michelle Obama, our current, generally disgruntled First Lady.

UPDATE: (11/18): Not Yet A Police State. In light of the police state that the USA has become, it is quite illuminating to see a different America reflected in CNN’s documentary about the JFK assassination. Reporters form scrums around the individuals they follow. Streets are not cordoned off in deference to power. Like the press, “commoners” have access to the politicians who serve them. And so it should be.

UPDATE II: TSA Blowback: Terrorism Begets Terrorism

Fascism, Government, Homeland Security, Terrorism

When you make a living by terrorizing and intimidating innocents, it is but a matter of time before one of your victims retaliates. This is not a normative statement, just a factual one.

It’s hard to know how else to frame the actions of Paul Anthony Ciancia, aged 23. Murder is wrong. Wrong! But can it be said that Ciancia’s shooting to death of a Transportation Security Administration agent at the Los Angeles International Airport, today, was without motive?

Chicago Tribune:

… a law enforcement official told The Times that a note was found on the gunman expressing “disappointment in the government” and noting that he had no interest in hurting “innocent people.” Ciancia also sent a sibling a text message last week suggesting that he was prepared to die, officials said.
It appears the gunman targeted Transportation Security Administration agents, who are not armed. Authorities said he approached several people cowering in the airport terminal, pointed his gun at them, asked if they “were TSA” and then moved on without pulling the trigger if the answer was no. A witness said the gunman cursed the TSA repeatedly as he moved through the terminal.
J. David Cox Sr., president of the union that represents 45,000 TSA flight screeners, called the shooting a “heinous act.” The gunman was not a TSA officer and “never had been,” according to the union, the American Federation of Government Employees.

From “‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp'”:

… As a mother—as a human being with a heart—it was particularly hard seeing children subjected to the cruelty of strangers. Watching footage of the kids down whose miniature trousers TSA goons have been reaching (including the heroic, iconic little Mandy Smith and her father in his reprehensible abdication)—I could not help but wonder: Where in all this has the FLOTUS been?

Never-ever could I condone such state sadism. Not against innocent adults. And most certainly not against children—not even against the president’s kids. Yes, it occurred to me, if only fleetingly, that the thought of Malia being mauled or Sasha scanned might make their mother speak up. The girls’ only flaw, however, is to have been born to a dreadful cur.

Make that two.

If Michelle Obama had experienced a gut reaction to the ordeal inflicted by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) on travelers and their tots—she was not letting on. The First Lady, as you know, is in touch with her gut—and the gut of every kid in the country. The FLOTUS of the fat-based initiatives “cares” enough to decide what America’s bloated babes will ingest, but not enough to weigh-in when their bodies are being invaded by state workers.

WHERE ARE THE MEN in all this? This is no country for men. Emasculate them, feminize them, make them over in the image of woman—and they’ll sacrifice their own children to the state. Having been “liberated” from the natural instinct to protect their own, one can hardly blame men. Women most certainly don’t have a case against their compliant partners. The state as parent and protector: Is this not what most modern women have strived for?

It’s safe to say that the moms of the Fox News Blond Squad were with The FLOTUS. One of these interchangeable females implied that the interminable complainers at the terminals were no more than an insignificant group of noise-makers. Kirsten Powers, a liberal member of that squadron, expressed her satisfaction with the porn protocol. Her sympathies, she said, go out to TSA workers.

Yes, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”

From “Congress: Call Off Your TSA Attack Dogs!”:

When the large African-American woman ? in the employ of the American taxpayer to torment the same subjects at the Miami International Airport ? summoned me with a crooked finger for a pat down, I thought of the film “Midnight Express.” And in particular, the scene where Billy Hayes’ far-from-delightful Turkish jailer schemes to enjoy some time alone with the young American. My tormentor wore the same sadistic, atavistic expression. Her giant digits were soon upon my chest and between my legs.

In front of me, a frail woman was struggling to stand upright as the same goons, brows furrowed, studied her walking stick for traces of semtex. Once I had reached the safety of a privately operated cafe, I watched the agents of the Transportation Security Administration lunge at a middle-aged man’s groin.

Most recently ? and to banshee yelps of, “We have an Opt Out!”, “Opt Out!” ? the TSA attack dogs swarmed a young woman by the name of Meg McLain, who had declined the ostensibly optional full-body scan. The TSA’s website describes its scanners as consisting of “two types of imaging technology, millimeter wave and backscatter.” With the aid of stimulus loot, this rogue agency has acquired an additional “450 advanced imaging technology units,” which, of course, are “safe for all passengers,” tiny and tall. “The technology meets national health and safety standards,” we are assured.

A cursory perusal of the literature on the cumulative effects of ionizing radiation confirms that there is no consensus about this modality’s safety. However, truth in the TSA universe is adjudicated by coercion ? by forcing a captive audience to choose between the Scylla of the scan and the Charybdis of the “enhanced pat down.”

Properly cornered, Ms. McLain was escorted to a cordoned-off area. “This girl here has all kinds of opinion on how we’re doing our job, y’all,” boomed one of McLain’s TSA masters. Heeding the call of the wild, this employee’s manager left, only to return with a dozen cops to backup the seven pack animals already snarling at the young woman. As the malicious, out-and-out assault on her person and property continued, Ms. McLain soon found herself cuffed, her belongings confiscated, and her ticket ripped to shreds in malicious spite. She knows not how close she came to being seriously hurt for her defiant speech. (Ask the grieving family of Carol Anne Gotbaum, who met her demise not in a Pakistani or Saudi airport, but in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor.) …

So many atrocities, so little time. Search under TSA, here and here.

UPDATED I (Nov. 3): Some sources on TSA terrorism:

* “Congress: Call Off Your TSA Attack Dogs!”

* “TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism)”

* “‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp'”

* “The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge”

* “Boston (And America) Betrayed”

* “The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia”

* “Rational Profiling: Cabbies Do It Too”

* “WHOSE PROPERTY IS IT ANYWAY?”

UPDATE II (11/3): Paul Ciancia’s motive and purpose, via USA Today:

Investigators recovered a rambling note from the bag the shooter allegedly was carrying, which detailed an intent to “kill” TSA officers, said two federal law enforcement officials familiar with the message’s contents.

Bowdich said the handwritten note made it clear that the suspect intended to kill “multiple” TSA employees and to “instill fear into their traitorous minds.”