Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms
by F. William Engdahl
If we are to believe what our trusted international media report, the world is on the brink of a global pandemic outbreak of a new deadly strain of flu, H1N1 as it has been labelled, or more popularly, Swine Flu. As the story goes, the outbreak of the deadly flu was first discovered in Mexico. According to press reports, after several days, headlines reported as many as perhaps 150 deaths in Mexico were believed caused by this virulent people-killing pig virus that has spread to humans and now is allegedly being further spread from human to human. Cases were being reported hourly from Canada to Spain and beyond. The only thing wrong with this story is that it is largely based on lies, hype and coverup of possible real causes of Mexican deaths...
Spies in the Pentagon?
by Karen Kwiatkowski
When I think of spies in the Defense Department, I think of the pitiful debt-ridden Ron Pelton, who worked for 14 years at the National Security Agency, quit in 1979, and began selling secrets to the Soviets until he was arrested in 1986. I heard it was to complete construction on a home he had been building for years and years. Construction projects can be like that.
I think of Jonathan Pollard, a case study in poor hiring practices within the federal government and the Defense Department’s even poorer supervisory habits. Pollard was also a case study in the delusional and incompetent ideologue who becomes a traitor in the Department of Defense.
More recently, I think of the high clearances granted to publicly and at times, rabidly, pro-Likud past and present political appointees with names like Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, and a host of younger Likudniks who march through the halls of the five-sided asylum to a composition unfamiliar to most Americans.
I don’t think of Larry Franklin, a guy I like and respect. When I was there in 2002 and 2003, Larry was the Iran desk officer with the Defense Under Secretary for Policy, Near East South Asia, moving later to the Office of Special Plans, where ostensibly Iraq policy was made...
Republicans in Florida Eliminates State Funding For Libraries
This makes no sense, unless you live in a right-wing wackadoodle fantasyland where things like reading and libraries are “elitist” and the free hand of the market is supposed to somehow come in and provide the services of a not-for-profit....On April 30, an appropriations conference committee for the House and Senate agreed to eliminate all funding for Florida’s State Aid to Public Libraries program. This devastating action will result in some Florida library branches closing and will seriously cripple libraries’ ability to serve Floridians. It will be especially damaging to libraries in Florida’s rural communities, as these libraries rely heavily on provisions in the program that help communities with lower tax bases....
Late Night Jokes Of The Week: Joe Biden, Wal-Mart And Bush's First 100 Days Out Of Office (VIDEO)
This was quite a week for late night with Jon Stewart praising Rick Sanchez on the "Daily Show" after years of mocking the CNN anchor for, among other things, having himself tasered. Joe Biden also made late-night headlines this week by telling people to keep away public transportation and air travel to avoid swine flu. Stephen Colbert responded by comparing Biden to Samuel L. Jackson's character from "Snakes on a Plane."
THROW THE BUMS OUT - ALL OF THEM Senate Millionaires
Kill Mortgage Assistance for Citizens
The United States Senate took a swipe at the spirit of May Day in a spectacular show of callous indifference when it voted down a bill to provide limited assistance to citizens at risk for losing their homes. The final vote was 45 in favor, 51 opposed to Senator Richard Durbin's (D-IL) mortgage assistance bill. The original version of the bill covered some but not all of those requiring assistance. The final version was even more restricted. It applied to only homeowners currently in foreclosure as a result of actions prior to the start of 2009.....
Bush Secretary of State Rice may have admitted to conspiracy, former Nixon counsel says (Video)
In little-noticed comments Thursday, the former White House counsel for President Richard Nixon John Dean said Thursday that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have unwittingly admitted to a criminal conspiracy when questioned about torture by a group of student videographers at Stanford.
Rice told students at Stanford that she didn’t authorize torture, she merely forwarded the authorization for it. Dean, who became a poster child for whisteblowing after aiding the prosecution of the Watergate affair, told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that Rice may have admitted to a criminal conspiracy.....
12 Stocks to Watch in the Swine Flu Crisis
Here is a look at the stocks that could be impacted by the epidemic -- and a few that could come out of it on the winning side....
CDC Recommends Tamiflu, Researchers Have Reservations
The CDC recommends Tamiflu for prevention and treatment of swine flu, as they did with the avian flu several years ago. Yet at the height of the avian flu scare, European researchers conducted a review of numerous studies of of anti-viral medications, which was then published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet on Jan. 19, 2006. According to this review of 51 randomized controlled trials, Tamiflu was useless against the avian flu and many other flus. Contrary to the CDC, their recommendation was not to use Tamiflu. What about now?...
On the 99th day a Filibuster Proof Senate, and on the 101st day a New Supreme Court Justice to pick...
NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term. The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction.....
EFF urges Congress to shine light on FBI data mining
Here's the gist of today's message from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Congress regarding privacy oversight of the FBI's massive and mysterious Investigative Data Warehouse: We've done all we can do through the Freedom of Information Act; the Obama Administration has abandoned the cause; now, it's up to you to ensure that the rights of law-abiding Americans are protected......"Nearly two years ago, Senator Leahy noted that the IDW was a system that was 'ripe for abuse,'" said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. "We could not agree more. The congressional judiciary committees should examine the IDW and provide the public with needed information about its impact on privacy rights."...
Obama’s 100 Days: High Marks for Science, Low for Privacy
As President Barack Obama marks his 100th day in office today, we’ve set out to grade the 44th president’s performance on the bread-and-butter issues near and dear to Wired.com: copyright, cyber security, science, net neutrality, transparency and privacy. Obama scored high marks in some, but in others he may have to go to summer school......
The First 100 Days Of Obama Jokes (VIDEO)
When President Obama took office media outlets and comedians alike wondered whether political comedy was dead. George W. Bush was bad for America in many many ways, but was very good for the comedy world. He couldn't open doors, couldn't bounce basketballs, couldn't really speak or process basic ideas: Jon Stewart became one of the most liked men on television by tearing him down....
Obama's First 100 Days and the Politics of Transformation
By Gary Hart
Last June I urged then-candidate Barack Obama to use his presidency to transform the country for the 21st century world, not simply to repair the damage to our economy, foreign policy, and defenses done by the Bush administration. By that standard, his first three months have been a remarkable success.
Using stimulus investments, President Obama is repairing an aging infrastructure, investing in education, stimulating new technologies and inventions, and starting us toward the post-carbon economy. Instead of trying to prop up a failing 20th century economy, he is investing in the new model...
GM to force up to 1,200 dealers out
General Motors Corp. told its dealers Tuesday that it will force 1,000 to 1,200 underperforming sites to close as the automaker tries to thin dealer ranks to make the remaining outlets more profitable. GM told the dealers about the plan in a video conference, an anonymous dealer said. It is part of the firm's plan announced Monday to cut more than 2,600 dealers by 2010. The dealership cuts will eliminate 137,330 jobs nationally, the National Automobile Dealers Association said.
Florida Governor Christ uses Food Stamps to Create Jobs in India
(I can't figure out why Republicans are losing Elections)
Michele Brown has seen Americans' struggles with jobs first hand. She lives in hard-hit Florida, spent 20 years in the real estate business and recently had her days as a nanny cut back after her boss had his own hours reduced.
But nothing prepared her for what happened one day when she called a toll-free line to inquire about her food stamps. "The woman who answered the phone -- it's not like she wasn't nice or anything -- but it was kind of evident that she wasn't in the States," Brown said. It turns out the woman was at a JP Morgan Chase call center in India. "That really put me over the edge," said Brown, 52, of Jupiter, Fla. "It's not right because we need the work here. People are in a bad way here."......
Swine Flu Scare: Stock Market Bonanza for "Politically Connected"
BioTech Companies ? by Michel Chossudovsky
The Swine Flu scare has boosted the stock market values of Big Pharma. Following initial reports from Mexico on the influenza outbreak, the demand for anti-flu drugs has skyrocketed.
Supported by media disinformation, an atmosphere of fear and intimidation has unfolded. Health “emergencies” have been declared in various parts of the US.
The most sought after influenza drugs are Tamiflu and Relenza. Treatment courses by the US government have been released from the national stockpile “to make sure health care providers are ready for any escalation in cases.”
Tamiflu is produced by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche on behalf of a US based biotech company Gilead Sciences, Inc. While the drug is produced by Roche, it was developed by Gilead Sciences Inc. which owns the intellectual property rights.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was one of the major shareholders of Gilead Sciences. In 1997, Rumsfeld was appointed Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc., a position which he held until becoming Secretary of Defence in the Bush administration in 2001. Rumsfeld was on the Board of Directors from the establishment of Gilead in 1987.
Fortune Magazine in a report published at the height of 2005 bird flu crisis, described Gilead as one of the most politically connected companies in the biotech industry. Rumsfeld’s interests and/or holdings in Gilead following his resignation in 2006 are not known.
The Continuing Mystery
Virtually every article about the swine flu notes epidemiologists' and public health experts' struggle to find out why the same virus seems so much more virulent in Mexico than it has been, at least to date, in other countries. Frustratingly, though, we never hear that they've made much progress in coming up with a clear answer -- though it's frequently suggested that the quality of the data coming out of Mexico is poor....
Experts puzzle over flu mystery
.....It's possible swine flu has been circulating in Mexico for weeks, if not months, with thousands of people suffering from mild symptoms and never diagnosed with anything other than seasonal influenza. If that's the case, swine flu may turn out to be no more dangerous than the viral infections humans regularly contract. Seasonal flu alone kills about 36,000 people a year in the United States.
"One of the helpful analogies is the tip of the iceberg: A lot of infected people may be under water, in a sense, and we haven't identified them," said Corry Dekker, an infectious disease expert at Stanford School of Medicine. "Quite normally one pays attention to the sick people first. (Swine flu) might have been simmering in Mexico for a long time without getting noticed."....
CDC to mix avian, human flu viruses in pandemic study (From 2004)
One of the worst fears of infectious disease experts is that the H5N1 avian influenza virus now circulating in parts of Asia will combine with a human-adapted flu virus to create a deadly new flu virus that could spread around the world.
That could happen, scientists predict, if someone who is already infected with an ordinary flu virus contracts the avian virus at the same time. The avian virus has already caused at least 48 confirmed human illness cases in Asia, of which 35 have been fatal. The virus has shown little ability to spread from person to person, but the fear is that a hybrid could combine the killing power of the avian virus with the transmissibility of human flu viruses.
Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves—in the name of preparedness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a "reassortant" virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be......
Homeland Security preps flu quarantine guidelines
The Department of Homeland Security is preparing to quarantine people with confirmed swine flu infections, according to a newly released memo obtained by CBS News.....
[The memo] says: "The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines."
McGaw appears to have been referring to the section of federal law that allows the Surgeon General to detain and quarantine Americans "reasonably believed to be infected" with a communicable disease. A Centers for Disease Control official said on Tuesday that swine flu deaths in the U.S. are likely. Federal quarantine authority is limited to diseases listed in presidential executive orders; President Bush added "novel" forms of influenza with the potential to create pandemics in Executive Order 13375. Anyone violating a quarantine order can be punished by a $250,000 fine and a one-year prison term.
A Homeland Security spokesman on Tuesday did not have an immediate response to followup questions about the memo, which said "DHS is consulting closely with the CDC to determine appropriate public health measures.".....
Senator Arlen Spector switching to Democratic Party, Giving Democrats 60 Senators once Sleazy Norn Coleman's appeal to the Federation of Planets to Overturn Senator Al Franken's Election Vctory is Denied
( Senator Spector's claim to fame is that he came up with the "Magic Bullet Conspiracy Theroy" in the JFK Coup 11-22-1963)
Specter switching parties, Dems will gain filibuster proof Senate
“This was a straight up survival decision,” according to NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
The Washington Post reports, “Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.”
“Specter’s decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota,” Chris Cillizza writes for the paper’s online The Fix column......
GOP Stripped Flu Pandemic Preparedness From Stimulus
Remember way back in the day, President Obama delivered his Not Really The State Of The Union address, and the GOP trotted out Future Of The Republican Party Supra-Genius Bobbly Jindal to provide a rebuttal? Well, we all had some laughs, didn't we? Mainly because Jindal was all: "They want to spend stimulus money on volcano monitoring? Why everyone knows that the Hill Witch keeps tabs on our volcanoes by floating chicken bones in her own intestinal ichor!" And then Alaska's Mount Redoubt erupted, suggesting there might be something to this "let's monitor volcanoes with government-funded science" idea.
Well, as it turns out, volcano monitoring wasn't the only worthwhile public safety program that was deemed extravagant in the stimulus package, funding for pandemic preparation was axed as well. And playing a critical role was Susan Collins -- for whom the necessity of obtaining her vote is in inverse proportion to the intelligence she shows in policy making:
Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: "Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not.
Rove mocked spending on flu preparedness
Bush’s Brain doesn’t appear to be quite so prescient in the face of a potential global flu epidemic.
Writing in a column in the Wall Street Journal in February, Rove attacked Democrats for what he dubbed as reckless spending — stimulus money being doled out to industries “that added jobs last year.”
Among them? Education and healthcare. What nefarious programs were Democrats trying to insert? Among other things, Rove cited $900 million for “pandemic flu preparations.” “There’s also $4 billion for health programs like obesity control and smoking cessation, $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations,” Rove wrote.
Reagan's DOJ Prosecuted Texas Sheriff for Waterboarding Prisoners
George W. Bush's Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn't even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan's Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.
Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case - which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later - was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week.
The Banality of Bush White House Evil By Frank Rich
........In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk....
Torturing detainee may have produced false terror alerts
.....As the nation struggles to make sense of a wave of new revelations regarding the "harsh interrogation techniques" brought to bear on detainees by the CIA, two very different narratives are shaping up to describe the treatment of captured al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in April and May of 2002.
On one hand, there is what might be called the "official" version, as presented in a timeline released by the Senate Intelligence Committee and summarized by the Washington Post. According to this version, Abu Zubaydah was subjected only to traditional interrogation methods until an August 1 memo from Justice Department lawyer Jay Bybee gave a green light for the use of waterboarding and other aggressive techniques.
On the other, there is a far more incriminating narrative that has been pieced together by various observers over the last several years. In this version, harsher methods were being applied to Abu Zubaydah as early as mid-April, and by mid-May he had been subjected to virtually every aggressive technique short of waterboarding.
This second version appears to be supported by a number of external facts. One is that in 2005, the CIA destroyed all videotapes of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation from prior to August 1, even though taping had begun in April.
There were also two peculiar episodes of heightened security alerts in the US in April and May, which were said at the time to have been based on information obtained from Abu Zubaydah. These vague and ultimately implausible threats gave a strong impression that Abu Zubaydah might have been inventing al Qaeda plots simply to satisfy his interrogators....
United States Declares an Emergency over "20 Cases of Swine Flu" ?...
Many questions surround the current outbreak of swine flu, which caused the United States government on Sunday to declare a public health emergency after confirming 20 cases in this country. American officials stressed that the cases here were all mild, with only one person hospitalized......
Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson and Bernanke Threatened to Fire B of A Board if it did not approve Merril buy out and pay bonuses....
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. threatened to remove the management and board of Bank of America if it backed out of its deal to acquire ailing investment house Merrill Lynch late last year, according to documents released yesterday by New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo.
Kenneth Lewis, Bank of America's chief executive, told investigators he wanted to stop the merger because "devastating losses" at Merrill would be detrimental to his company, the documents show. But the threat from Paulson changed his mind, he told the attorney general's office....
Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson Kept SEC Out Of The Loop On B Of A Bonuses
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has just released documents from his investigation into Bank of America, its receipt of government money, and those billions in bonuses that went to Merrill Lynch executives.
Here's one quick nugget we found: It looks like then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson didn't keep the SEC -- whose role, of course, is to protect investors -- informed on the government's intense December 2008 discussions with B of A about Merrill's losses, and possible government assistance for B of A.....
Goldman Sachs Shook Tens of Billions Out of Tax-Payers -- Now They're Whining All the Way to the Bank
Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, is very upset with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Last fall, Mr. Blankfein borrowed $10 billion through the TARP at below market interest rates. Now, the government is starting to tie some real conditions to this money, for example, by limiting what Goldman can pay its executives. Mr. Blankfein argues that such conditions are making it impossible to run his business and is now anxious to return the TARP money.....
Madoff is behind bars and isn't talking. But a Fortune investigation uncovers secrets of his massive swindle
The employees were transfixed. Standing on the mid-Manhattan trading floor of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities in late 2007, a half-dozen staffers stared up at the ceiling-mounted TV as CNBC aired a report on the mysterious Palm Beach death of a hedge fund manager who had been leading a double life. The police, it appeared, were even considering the possibility that he had been murdered. "Bernie," someone casually asked as Madoff happened to walk by, "have you heard of this guy?"
Madoff glanced at the screen, blanched, and exploded: "Why the fuck would I be interested in some shit like that?" The employees recoiled. "I never saw him react like that before," says a Madoff trader who witnessed the outburst. "It obviously hit a nerve.
Once the masters of evil politics, Republicans have been reduced to half-assed buffoonery, providing comic relief for desperate times
Following the Republican Party of late has been a movingly depressing experience, sort of like watching Old Yeller die — if Old Yeller were a worm-infested feral bitch who spent the past eight years biting children at bus stops and shitting in neighborhood swimming pools. As a useful force in American politics, the Republicans have been dead for a while now. But in the seven months since Sarah Palin's nomination, they have taken on an intriguing new role: providing much-needed comic relief during dark times, serving as the unofficial rodeo clowns of the Financial Crisis Era.
If there were any doubts about the once-mighty party's hilarious new role in American society, they vanished in recent weeks, as the Republican leadership's attempt to stop the passage of Barack Obama's budget turned into one of the most half-assed public-relations campaigns in congressional history....
Obama skates while Right Wingnuts fumes
A Democratic president thrills a French audience by telling it that America has been “arrogant.” He brushes aside 50 years of anti-communist orthodoxy by relaxing restrictions against Fidel Castro’s Cuba. He directs his attorney general to ease a crackdown on medical marijuana and even plays host to the Grateful Dead in the Oval Office......
Bush-Era Rule Grants FBI Unprecedented Investigative Powers
FBI authority extends even to those not suspected of criminal activity.
Veterans groups and conservatives roared last week when news broke that the FBI was targeting veterans in a broad probe of extremist groups. But little noise was made in December, when the Bush administration quietly granted the FBI wide-ranging authority to investigate individuals or groups, regardless of whether they are suspected of criminal activity.
The Attorney General Guidelines, proposed last summer and adopted by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, appear to be particularly problematic......
U.S. Border Screening Under Fire
Civil liberties groups are renewing calls for the Obama administration to change screening at border posts by limiting questions about Americans' political beliefs and religious practices and establishing a process for U.S. citizens and residents who are mistakenly included on terrorist watch lists to clear their names.....
A Pentagon Cyber-Command Is in the Works
The Obama administration is finalizing plans for a new Pentagon command to coordinate the security of military computer networks and to develop new offensive cyber-weapons, sources said last night. Planning for the reorganization of Defense Department and intelligence agencies is underway, and a decision is imminent, according to a person familiar with the White House plans.....
Cheney pushed torture techniques to find Iraq, Al Qaeda tie: report
At the urging of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush administration used torture techniques against suspected terrorists in part of an effort to establish a tie between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, according to a report Wednesday.
"The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist," McClatchy Newspaper'....
Cheney and Rice Approved Torture Methods
Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice verbally OK'd the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week....As McClatchy notes, Cheney attended a meeting in 2003 to discuss the continuation of the interrogation program:
The Director of Central Intelligence in the spring of 2003 sought a reaffirmation of the legality of the interrogation methods. Cheney, Rice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were among those at a meeting where it was decided that the policies would continue. Rumsfeld and Powell weren't....
Tuesday's Late Night Round-Up: Cheney's Cuteness, Obama's Handshake And Torture's Official Sponsor (VIDEO)
Jay Leno poked fun at old and new media last night saying:
"So many newspapers all across the country going out of business, it's pretty scary. So congratulations to the 'New York Times' this week, they won five Pulitzer Prizes this week...I read about it online on Google News."
David Letterman, on the other hand, ran yet another fake political ad for the now-defunct Bush administration. In last night's, Cheney was deemed "American's Cutest Vice President." More from Jon Stewart on Obama's meeting with Chavez and Colbert on torture's official sponsor below.
Obama Open to Prosecution of Bush Officials (Video)
(Perhaps Dick Cheney will shut up now, and go fly fishing on the Bulkley River in Smithers BC, Canada)
President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost "our moral bearings" with use of the tactics.
The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said...
FBI/NSA Placing FTP programs on suspects computers?
"Editors Note: The following story describes an expansion of the governments Warrantless Wiretapping program that goes far beyond Carnivore or pen registers and what websites you have visited. It implies that a judge or a court might allow an FTP program like Cyberduck to be installed on someones computer to gain access to all file directories and allow the ability for the government to upload any file, or search any file, via your broadband connection or electrical grid connection. While I see nothing wrong with this tool in "Terrorism, or Espionge cases" the potentual for abuse of this tool demands that strict guidlines be in place for the government employees or private contractors working for the Inteligence community who have access to these tools. FISA court oversite would seem to be appropiate in this area. This has far greater privacy issues than warantless wiretapping, and digitally transcribing peoples phone conversations. This gives the government access to Americans most personal information. Congressional hearings need to examine placing an FTP tool on Americans computers, outside of "Terrorism or Espinage cases". I have linked a few stories about the governments actions in these areas. It is time for Americans to demand answears from their elected leaders about how the 4th admendment applies to personal computers, and Cell phone/computers." Willy Bova
.....The FBI's Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit, CEAU, responded with two options. One of them was redacted from the released document as a sensitive investigative technique. The other is described this way: "CEAU advised Pittsburgh that they could assist with a wireless hack to obtain a file tree, but not the hard drive content."
Wi-fi hacking has featured prominently in some big cybercrimes, including the attack on TJ Maxx that exposed at least 45 million customer credit card numbers and other data. In that case, Albert "Segvec" Gonzalez and associates allegedly cracked the retailer's WEP key and used it to gain entry to the corporate network, where he planted packet sniffers to scoop up the data.
But this is the first evidence that the FBI is using the same tactics. Presumably, suspects using one of the better encryption options — like WPA-2 — are immune.
It's not clear why the FBI said it could only obtain a file tree — a hierarchical list of directories and files. It could be to avoid the risk of a judge later ruling that the search warrant was unconstitutionally over-broad, and consequently throwing out the evidence. Or maybe the bureau's hackers don't want to consume all of a target's bandwidth while copying his entire porn directory into the FBI van on the street.
'A Ton More People Were Wiretapped Than We've Been Led to Believe': FBI Whistleblower Thomas Tamm
...."Everyone knew that the FISA bill, which congressional Democrats passed -- and which George Bush and Dick Cheney celebrated -- would enable these surveillance abuses," Glenn Greenwald wrote after the story broke.
Nevertheless, for many people it may come as a shock that nearly 4 1/2 years after the illegal program was uncovered, not only has the government continued to spy on Americans with total impunity, most of the details of Bush's warrantless wiretapping scheme remain a mystery.
"What really concerns me is that we still don't know the truth," Thomas Tamm, a former FBI official told me. "We do not know what they did."
Tamm should know. He is the person who blew the whistle on the NSA spying program, a former employee of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, a highly sensitive unit of the Justice Department. He remained anonymous for years, until his identity was revealed in a front-page story by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff late last year.....
Spying on Americans: "Business as Usual" under Obama NSA "engaged in 'overcollection' of domestic communications"
.......The Times points out that "classified government briefings have been held in recent weeks in response to a brewing controversy that some officials worry could damage the credibility of legitimate intelligence-gathering efforts."
But as The Wall Street Journal reported last year, "the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records."
Acting in concert with private corporations, "transactional data" such as credit card purchases, bank transactions and travel itineraries are sold to NSA by corporate freebooters. Once this information is obtained, it is then fed into data mining programs, including NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program or the FBI's Digital Collection System formerly known as Carnivore in a quixotic search for "suspicious patterns." As the Journal revealed:
The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions. (Siobhan Gorman, "NSA Domestic Spying Grows as Agency Sweeps Up Data," The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2008)
As investigative journalist Christopher Ketchum reported last year in the now-defunct Radar Magazine, one such "black program" may be its ultra top secret Main Core database, "a secret enemies list of citizens who could face detention under martial law."
Ketchum revealed that as many as "8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect" and, in the event of a national emergency, "could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and even detention."
According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the author of the essential Spies for Hire, Main Core "reportedly collects and stores--without warrants or court orders--the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security." A creature of so-called Continuity of Government programs that came on-line during the 1980s Iran-Contra affair, Main Core evolved from Inslaw's Prosecutors' Management Information System or PROMIS, a software program that can quickly sift through multiple databases......
Whistleblower Levels Shocking Allegations at Bush's Spying Programs
....Under the Bush administration's notorious warrantless spying program, not only did the NSA eavesdrop on millions of Americans, it turns out it specifically targeted "U.S. news organizations, reporters and journalists."
As Olbermannn put it, "non-terrorist Americans, if you will."
"It has taken less than 24 hours after the Bush presidency ended for a former analyst with the National Security Agency to come forward to reveal new allegations about how this nation was spied on by its by its own government," Olbermannn said on Wednesday night.
"Russell Tice has already stood up for truth before this evening as one source for the revelation in 2005 by the New York Times that President Bush was eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants … tonight, the next chapter for Mr. Tice -- a chapter he feared to reveal while George Bush occupied the Oval Office."
The contents of the exclusive interview, if not surprising, were chilling nonetheless. Tice, who was fired from the NSA in May 2005, discussed how part of his job had been to monitor information flow among organizations that were expressly not of interest, for the ostensible purpose of flagging and filtering them out.
"… In the world that I was in," he said, "(so) as to not harpoon the wrong people … we looked at organizations, supposedly, so that we would not target them. So that we knew where they were so as not to have a problem with them." But, "what I was finding out, though, is that collection on those organizations was 24/7, you know, 365 days a year -- and it made no sense."
Turns out it was a bait and switch, in Olbermann's words, in which the "discard" pile was actually the "save" pile....