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Fallout in Luxembourg from their own spying scandal.
Luxembourg PM Juncker to resign over spy scandal
Luxembourg will hold new elections after Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced he would resign following a secret service scandal.
Mr Juncker, Europe's longest-serving head of government, told parliament he would step down on Thursday.
The move came as his junior coalition partner called for the dissolution of parliament and early elections.
It follows claims he failed to stop illegal security agency activity such as phone-taps and corruption.
Mr Juncker has been prime minister since 1995 and was head of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers between 2005 and January 2013.
[...]
It included claims of illegal bugging of politicians, the purchase of cars for private use and payments in exchange for access to local officials.
Oliver Stone has done a really stunning video ad, urging people to call Congress and to sign the ACLU petition. I know that calls and petitions seem futile sometimes, but they are things that take very little time and effort and ACLU is an effective organization, and it's a way of putting the objections to the massive surveillance state on the record, for influencing Congress now, and for posterity it shows that many, many people did fight this. It's easy to be cynical but cynicism doesn't do us much good right now. What we need is solidarity. The Quinnipiac poll that showed that a majority of Americans see Snowden as a whistleblower also showed another really important thing. The results were not partisan, they were across the board. When we see results like that, it's a real opportunity for the kind of solidarity that scares and might move politicians.
Oliver Stone: Don’t Stand By While the NSA’s Surveillance Machine Eats Our Civil Liberties
Now is a critical time in our nation's history for all Americans to stand up for our civil liberties, Stone says – by asking representatives in Congress to roll back the surveillance state.
[...]
"I won't stand idly by while our civil liberties are eaten by the NSA surveillance machine," Stone says. "You shouldn't either." You can join Stone and the ACLU in demanding an end to the surveillance state, by signing a petition calling on Congress to repeal these problematic sections of the Patriot Act and the FAA. The time to act is now.
It's a national emergency. Planes transporting heads of state have to be forced down to get Snowden. Congress members are shouting "traitor!" on national TV, two Senators are gagged from telling the nation about the Leviathan so they jump through hoops for two years trying to find a way to send up the smoke signals, the Director of National Intelligence is caught lying to a Senate committee, and everybody is saying hey, maybe having 5 million people with top secret clearance and millions of gravy train private contractors is not such a good idea and... hold on, hold on. This was just a bad apple. It's cool, it's cool. No problem, Booz. We know you didn't mean it. Carry on! Let those billions flow. Let's not wreck a good thing or interrupt this massive wealth machine that is the Leviathan intel contractor community, or as it is affectionately known, the IC. In fact, US govt, how about you give us even more billions and we'll beef up that security for you? Yeah, yeah, maybe this can be turned into a profit opportunity.
Hmm, profit... while we're at it, we can put together a proposal to build you an "insider threat" predictor or something. Every day, the managers can receive a report about which employees (and contractors) had an argument with their spouse the night before, and whose utility bills were not paid on time or whose credit card balances are too high, whose kids are smoking marijuana and who was whispering mild grievances over lunch with co-workers, and who is having a hard time while trying to hold down a career, raise a family and care for a sick and elderly parent. We'll help you identify those insider threats, US govt. The report could provide the managers with lists of names that have red, yellow and green indicators next to them for each of the people under their charge. And it could be a tiered report where managers get the lists for employees, and the next level manager can get a list of his/her managers, and the director can get a list of mid level managers, and so on, right to the top.
There are still trillions unaccounted for in the too huge to even truly fathom how huge it is, DoD budget. Don't forget that they still can't make it through an audit or account for their own spending. In 2001 there were trillions unaccounted for. Since 9/11 their yearly budget has doubled. Even with sequesters, it's still double what it was before Cheney. So how many trillions do you think are unaccounted for now?
Exclusive: U.S. Air Force sees no wrongdoing by Booz Allen in Snowden matter
(Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force said it sees no evidence that a defense contractor that employed Edward Snowden is responsible for his disclosure of classified U.S. information, a finding that allows the company to continue doing business with the Pentagon.
[...]
In 2012, the Air Force proposed banning the San Antonio office of Booz Allen and several current and former employees from bidding for new government work after an incident in which a new employee hired from the Air Force shared sensitive data about a pending government procurement.
[...]
In the 12-page agreement, the company acknowledged that the incident had revealed "ethical deficiencies and questionable business practices that may be systemic in nature" and outlined a series of measures aimed at shoring up its compliance.
Any further ethics violations could allow the Air Force to invalidate the agreement and ban Booz Allen from further government contracts, but such action appears unlikely, Air Force officials said.
Crisis of confidence in government handling of corruption, survey shows
The "Global Corruption Barometer" is the biggest ever conducted by the Berlin-based watchdog, with 114,000 people responding in 107 countries in the survey of opinions on corruption and which institutions are considered most corrupt.
The survey found that on a worldwide basis political parties are considered to be the most corrupt institution, scoring 3.8 on a scale of 5 where 1 means "not at all corrupt" and 5 means "extremely corrupt."
[...]
The second most corrupt institution on a global scale is the police with a score of 3.7. Three categories of institutions - public officials/civil servants, parliament/legislature and judiciary - followed with equal scores of 3.6.
"It is the actors that are supposed to be running countries and upholding the rule of law that are seen as the most corrupt, judged to be abusing their positions of power and acting in their own interests rather than for the citizens they are there to represent and serve," Transparency International wrote.
Red 2 Barack Obama : NSA Code RED
The intel community squads on Twitter -- they know that Snowden is lying but they aren't free to tell you why or how they know it.
Nothing to see here.
You have to watch this. When I heard the statements by Hayden, I was speechless. I didn't know whether to laugh, or what.
FBI training video focuses on new insider threat to intelligence agencies
(CBS News) Recent intelligence leaks - most notably cases like that of NSA leaker Edward Snowden and Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks - have raised questions about how to guard against insider threats to U.S. national security.
In an interview with The Guardian, Snowden shared his justification for the leak, explaining he wanted to "expose what the government was doing wrong."
Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, acknowledges the growing risk but categorically rejects Snowden's moral grounds in an interview with CBS News.
Here's Marcy Wheeler on that CBS segment. One of the things revealed in Snowden's documents (the NSA inspector general report) is that Hayden decided to continue the dragnet even after it was found to be illegal and Bush was going to just keep going with it and asked Hayden if he'd do it and he said yes. Blatantly illegal and unconstitutional at that point, but Hayden used his own moral superiority to decide to do it anyway. And yet he slams Snowden for his moral superiority. The irony is just too much sometimes.
“Is This the New Espionage?” CBS Asks of Leaking Government Files, While Airing Leaked Government Video
But did you notice what else CBS did in this clip?
They aired a leaked CIA/FBI film produced as part of Obama’s Insider Threat program, the program that also pushes government employees to spy on their coworkers.
[...]
By the way, when Hayden claims “the American court system” sides with him? He forgets Vaughn Walker’s ruling that, in fact, the government had illegally wiretapped al-Haramain during that window when Hayden agreed to continue the program even though the Acting Attorney General Jim Comey had deemed it illegal.
CBS decided to invite a criminal, Michael Hayden, on to attack the actions of a man who had provided the public additional evidence of his crimes. The clip ends with Hayden warning about how much more empowered insider threats are.
This is Keith Alexander's presentation at the DefCon hacker conference last year. As Marcy Wheeler puts it, he dressed up in a hacker costume and went there to give a presentation. During the Q&A session, the first question was about whether or not the NSA spies on Americans, wherein he flat out lies about it. It starts at the 33 minute mark. Listen to this if you haven't before. It's quite interesting now. He seems like such a harmless, friendly guy, doesn't he?
DEF CON 20 Hacking Conference Presentation By General Keith B Alexander
So this year, guess what happened?
Citing a Culture of “Verified Trust,” DefCon Asks Feds Not to Come
Even after I wrote this post, few people following the NSA story seem to get that James Clapper’s lie to Ron Wyden was just the culmination of a seven month effort on Wyden’s part to get Keith Alexander to correct two misleading statements he made in an unclassified forum at DefCon last year.
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So I’m not surprised that — a year after Alexander made lies that have now been exposed as such — DefCon has asked the Feds not to come. (h/t Brian Krebs)
FEDS, WE NEED SOME TIME APART.
POSTED 7.10.13
For over two decades DEF CON has been an open nexus of hacker culture, a place where seasoned pros, hackers, academics, and feds can meet, share ideas and party on neutral territory. Our community operates in the spirit of openness, verified trust, and mutual respect.
When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about this relationship. Therefore, I think it would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a “time-out” and not attend DEF CON this year.
This will give everybody time to think about how we got here, and what comes next. [my emphasis]
An 80-year old ban lifted. How lucky for us. Thank you, Mary Jo White! It makes it easier for crooks to defraud and swindle vulnerable people, but she's such a job creator! Well, there are fewer and fewer people to defraud these days anyway since everyone except the 1% is going broke, but hey, I'm sure there are still a good number of people out there looking for ways to earn more than a fraction of a percent interest rate on their savings and that huge group of boomers are getting older and more senile and maybe they can be tricked out of some of their retirement money, so why not?
S.E.C. Lifts Advertising Ban on Private Investments
Federal regulators on Wednesday lifted an 80-year-old ban on advertising by hedge funds, buyout firms and start-up companies seeking capital, a move that will fundamentally change the way that many issuers raise money in the private marketplace.
The Securities and Exchange Commission voted to approve a rule that Congress included in last year’s Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, a law meant to help bolster small businesses and create jobs after the financial crisis.
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Some regulators, lawmakers and consumer protection groups faulted the S.E.C.’s decision. Luis A. Aguilar, the lone dissenter among the S.E.C.’s five commissioners, called the adoption of the rule reckless. He said it was being approved without appropriate investor safeguards and worried that it would lead to abuse. “The record is clear that general solicitation will make fraud easier by allowing fraudsters to cast a wider net for victims,” Mr. Aguilar said.
Must watch.
Action
GET INVOLVED
Tell Congress To Act Now To End The Surveillance State
ACT NOW (ACLU petition)
PETITION WRITTEN BY DANIEL ELLSBERG, THE WHISTLEBLOWER BEHIND THE PENTAGON PAPERS
We need a new Church Committee that is fully empowered to investigate the abuses of the NSA and make public its findings, and that is charged with recommending new laws to ensure the U.S. government does not violate our constitutional rights.
[Credo]
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
Massive Spying Program Exposed
Demand Answers Now (EFF petition)
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Better Together- Jack Johnson