News You Can Use

[Joel]

FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites

WASHINGTON Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say.

Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.

The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bot attacks are part of an FBI-led investigation into a multifaceted Russian operation to influence last year’s elections.

Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia’s operatives. Their participation, however, wasn’t necessary for the bots to amplify their news through Twitter and Facebook.

The investigation of the bot-engineered traffic, which appears to be in its early stages, is being driven by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, whose inquiries rarely result in criminal charges and whose main task has been to reconstruct the nature of the Kremlin’s cyber attack and determine ways to prevent another.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the inquiry into the use of bots.

Russia-generated bots are one piece of a cyber puzzle that counterintelligence agents have sought to solve for nearly a year to determine the extent of the Moscow government’s electronic broadside.

“This may be one of the most highly impactful information operations in the history of intelligence,” said one former U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Bureau director James Comey confirmed Monday at a House Intelligence Committee hearing what long has been reported: that the FBI is investigating possible links between individuals in the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian campaign to influence the election and whether there was any coordination between the two.

The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, one of multiple congressional panels examining Russia’s intervention, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that there was “circumstantial evidence of collusion.” There also is “direct evidence . . . of deception, and that’s where we begin the investigation,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California.

U.S. intelligence agencies charged in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the offensive, in which cyber operatives also hacked tens of thousands of emails from Democratic National Committee staff, Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta and other Democrats.

A top priority of investigators is to determine who delivered those hacked emails to WikiLeaks, a London-based transparency site that published them online, the sources said. News stories about the emails embarrassed Clinton at key points in the campaign. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied that the Russian government was the source of the email dump.

As for the bots, they carried links not only to news stories but also to Democratic emails posted on WikiLeaks, especially those hacked from Podesta and made public in October, said Philip Howard, a professor at the Oxford University Internet Institute who has researched the bot attacks.

Howard said that, as an example, bots had spread links to fictional stories that accused Clinton of involvement in running a child-sex ring in the basement of a Washington pizza parlor. The posts inspired a North Carolina man to drive to Washington and fire an assault weapon in the restaurant, according to police reports.

Howard’s study of bot-generated Twitter traffic during last fall’s Trump-Clinton campaign debates showed that bot messages favorable to Trump significantly outnumbered those sympathetic to Clinton.

He said his research showed that Americans who call themselves “patriotic programmers” also activated bots to aid Trump. In interviews, they described coding the computer commands in their spare time, Howard said.

Unlike counterintelligence investigators with more cyber-sleuthing capabilities, Howard has not established that Russia was the source of the bot attacks he studied.

Russia also used “trolls,” hundreds of computer operatives who pretended to be Trump supporters and posted stories or comments on the internet complimentary to Trump or disparaging to Clinton. Sources close to the inquiry said those operatives likely worked from a facility in St. Petersburg, Russia, dedicated to that tactic.

“Russian bots and internet trolls sought to propagate stories underground,” said Mike Carpenter, a former senior Pentagon official during the Obama administration whose job focused on Russia. “Those stories got amplified by fringe elements of our media like Breitbart.”


“They very carefully timed release of information to shift the news cycle away from stories that clearly hurt Mr. Trump, such as his inappropriate conduct over the years,” he said, referring to the October release of a video in which Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. That event corresponded with a surge in bot-related traffic spreading anti-Clinton stories.

An additional Russian tool was the news from its prime propaganda machine, Russia Today, with a global television and digital media operation and a U.S. arm, RT America.

Last Nov. 19, Breitbart announced that its website traffic had set a record the previous 31 days with 300 million page views, driven substantially by social media.

Breitbart, which has drawn criticism for pursuing a white nationalist agenda, was formerly led by Stephen Bannon, who became chief executive officer of Trump’s election campaign last August and now serves as Trump’s strategic adviser in the White House. The news site’s former national security editor, Sebastian Gorka, was a national security adviser to Trump’s campaign and presidential transition team. He now works as a key Trump counterterrorism adviser.

Breitbart’s chief executive officer, Larry Solov, did not respond to phone and email requests seeking comment.

Bannon and Gorka have controversial profiles. Bannon has been accused of taking anti-immigrant and racist positions. Last week, the Jewish newspaper Forward reported that Gorka had taken a lifelong loyalty oath to a Hungarian far-right group that for decades was allied with the Nazi Party.

The White House declined to respond to questions about Gorka.

Breitbart is partially owned by Robert Mercer, the wealthy co-chief executive of a New York hedge fund and a co-owner of Cambridge Analytica, a small, London-based firm credited with giving Trump a significant advantage in gauging voter priorities last year by providing his campaign with at least 5,000 data points on each of 220 million Americans.

InfoWars is published by Alex Jones, a Texas-based conservative talk show host known for embracing conspiracy theories such as one asserting that the U.S. government was involved in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. During the 2016 campaign, InfoWars.com was a loyal Trump public relations tool. Trump was on Jones’ show and praised his reporting.

“It’s the major source of everything,” Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and campaign adviser, said last fall. Stone, who has regularly appeared on Jones’ show and was on Monday, has said he invites an FBI investigation into his campaign role. The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked Stone to preserve documents in connection with the Russian election inquiry.

Jones responded to questions from McClatchy on his talk show.

“I’m not gonna sit here and say, ‘I’m not a Russian stooge,’ because it’s a (expletive) lie,” he said, denying any contact with the Kremlin operatives about bots. He said this issue stemmed from “this whole ridiculous narrative of the &!@$#%$@ left.”

“It’s as if we didn’t build InfoWars,” he said. “It’s as if we don’t have a huge audience.”

Noting he had appeared on RT “probably 100 times or more,” he said sarcastically, “There’s my Russian connection.”

Boosted by bots, the surge in readership for such websites amplified Clinton’s negatives. Some stories falsely described her health problems as dire. Jones said Monday that people gravitated to his website “because we were the first to report Hillary Clinton falling down.” He referred to Clinton appearing to collapse last Sept. 11 after visiting the World Trade Center memorial. She was diagnosed with pneumonia.

“The full impact of the bots was subterranean and corrosive,” Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, told McClatchy in an interview. “The distribution channels were being flooded with this information. . . . We perhaps underestimated the strategy of pushing fake news out through social media and how it impacted the race.”

Donna Brazile, the former interim director of the DNC, said that neither the party committee nor the Clinton campaign had used bots to widen the reach of their anti-Trump messages.

At least one of the congressional committees investigating the Russian meddling is looking into the bots.

The Senate Intelligence Committee “intends to look actively at ‘fake’ news and the ways that Russian bots and trolls were used to influence the election,” said Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s ranking Democrat.

Russia’s offensive might have been anticipated from a speech a top Kremlin official made in February 2016.

In the speech in Moscow, Andrey Krutskikh told a conference of Russian computer security officials that the Putin government would be unleashing a cyber nuclear attack reminiscent of Russia’s 1949 development of the atom bomb. Krutskikh, whose speech was first reported by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius and independently confirmed by McClatchy, also reportedly said the offensive would cause U.S. officials to gain respect for Russia’s cyber capabilities.

“Russia has again figured out from its old Soviet playbook that its greatest weapon in the world is information,” said Lauren Goodrich, senior Eurasia analyst at the Stratfor Corp., a global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas. “Its information and disinformation campaigns have skyrocketed.”

She said the Kremlin’s budget for “public information” had quadrupled this year as it mounted similar cyber attacks on behalf of right-wing candidates in France, Germany and other European countries.

Breitbart and InfoWars have a credibility issues but so does the FBI.

[mes5464]

Fort Collins fights to keep topless ban

Fort Collins plans to appeal a federal judge’s decision to temporarily halt enforcement of the city’s ban on women appearing topless in public.

Attorneys representing the city on Tuesday notified the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that they will appeal a preliminary injunction granted in February by U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson that blocks a section of the city’s public nudity law.

In granting the preliminary injunction, Brooke stated he would likely rule in favor of members of the group Free the Nipple who sued the city claiming the ordinance violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution by discriminating against women.

Brit Hoagland and Sam Six are seeking a permanent injunction against the city’s topless ban.

[mes5464]

Renters Now Rule Half of U.S. Cities - Bloomberg

Detroit was once known as a city where a working-class family could afford to own a home. Now it’s a city of renters.

Just 49 percent of Motor City households were homeowners in 2015, down from 55 percent in 2009 and the lowest percentage in more than 50 years. Detroit isn’t alone, of course: The rate of U.S. home ownership fell steadily for a decade as the foreclosure crisis turned millions of owners into renters and tight housing markets made it hard for renters to buy homes. Demographic shifts—millennials (finally) moving out of their parents basements, for instance, or a rising Hispanic population—further fed the renter pool.

Fifty-two of the 100 largest U.S. cities were majority-renter in 2015, according to U.S. Census Bureau data compiled for Bloomberg by real estate brokerage Redfin. Twenty-one of those cities have shifted to renter-domination since 2009. These include such hot housing markets as Denver and San Diego and lukewarm locales, such as Detroit and Baltimore, better known for vacant homes than residential development. 

[mes5464]

Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore Lead Nation in Population Loss; Maricopa County Has Biggest Gain

(CNSNews.com) - The counties containing Chicago, Detroit and the independent city of Baltimore were the biggest population losers in the United States from 2015 to 2016, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is the county seat, had the largest population loss of any county in the country from 2015 and 2016.

Between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016, Cook County lost a net of 21,324 people to hit 5,203,499, according to the Census Bureau.

Even while it was experiencing the largest net population loss of any county in the country, Cook Count was seeing an influx of migrants from foreign countries and more births than deaths.

[mes5464]

Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore Lead Nation in Population Loss; Maricopa County Has Biggest Gain

(CNSNews.com) - The counties containing Chicago, Detroit and the independent city of Baltimore were the biggest population losers in the United States from 2015 to 2016, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is the county seat, had the largest population loss of any county in the country from 2015 and 2016.

Between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016, Cook County lost a net of 21,324 people to hit 5,203,499, according to the Census Bureau.

Even while it was experiencing the largest net population loss of any county in the country, Cook Count was seeing an influx of migrants from foreign countries and more births than deaths.

[Joel]

#QuestionWikiLeaks … Because No One Is Above Questioning

#IntelGroup has always prided itself on its continuous pursuit of truth and justice . Regardless of where that road for truth and justice has lead us or who it has habitually pissed off.

“We think for ourselves . We aren’t waiting for someone to give us our opinion . And we don’t coast along with popular opinions . “

That was a comment from the founder of IntelGroup @88blackhatss . He went on to say that “people always seem to have a problem with whatever doesn’t fit the narrative they are pushing”

Our Group has been and will continue to cement itself as proud InfoSec counmnity members . As members of the collective of Anonymous we value the numerous relationships we have built thru the years . As of late , some of those relationships have become strained . Mainly because we started to call into question wikileak’s actions .
By no means are we bashing or trying to discredit wikileaks and the extraordinary work they have done . Only a fool would or could ignore Wikileaks’s contributions to the world. But we believe no one man or group should be above questioning .
And well … we started asking questions .

We started using the hashtag #QuestionWikileaks , as a way to call into question some very odd things wikileaks has been doing lately . We’ve all come to know and love. wikileaks as our go to source for groundbreaking leaks from all over the globe . They have been nearly 100 percent accurate in the thousands of leaks they have released . Which needless to say buys you a lot of loyalty and respect .

And while we respect wikileaks , we are forced to call into account their actions going back to the 2016 elections . Some thing’s don’t add up and we have reason to believe wikileaks which is the creation of Julian Assange , selectively used information to help persuade the American people of the United States Of America to vote Trump .

It is of no secret that the very theatrical leak of the the Podesta emails damaged the Hillary Clinton Campign . We call it theatrical because wikileaks released leak after leak , day after day delivering a slow knife thru Clinton that resembled that of a person exacting revenge on someone at the height of their enemies career .

READ MORE HERE

[mes5464]

Graham: ‘I Wonder If My Meetings Are Being Surveilled by the Intelligence Community’

(CNSNews.com) - Hours after House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced he has new information about the incidental, but legal, collection of information on members of the Trump transition team, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the revelation is “disturbing.”

“I meet with foreign leaders all the time as a senator,” Graham told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Wednesday evening. “I wonder if my meetings are being surveilled by the intelligence community. If so, I think when I'm involved, that would be inappropriate, because I may be talking of things of policy that I don't want the executive branch to know about.”

[Joel]

[mes5464]

Maduro's awkward TV shows raise hackles amid Venezuela crisis

CARACAS (Reuters) - A single mom tells Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, on live television that she cannot afford to adequately feed her four kids, and he quickly changes the subject to joke about her foreign-sounding name, Joandry Smith.

A girl complains that hungry classmates are fainting at school, and Maduro chides her for not doing more for them. A boy says he missed a big soccer game because he was hospitalized, and Maduro recommends he find it on YouTube.

The unpopular leftist president's hours-long televised visits to clinics or schools are meant to soften his image, but foes say they instead highlight his disconnect from a national economic crisis in which millions of people are missing meals.

"As much as they try and hide reality, it always gets out and hits them 'live on TV,'" opposition leader Henrique Capriles said in a recent speech to a local community.

[Joel]

Air strikes on Isis-held Mosul 'leave 230 civilians dead', reports local media

US Central Command says it is researching reports of extensive loss of civilian life in third such alleged incident in recent weeks

Approximately 230 people are reported to have been killed in what is thought to have been a US-led coalition air strike on an Isis-held neighbourhood in Mosul.

A correspondent for Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency operating in northern Iraq, said that 137 people – most believed to be civilians – died when a bomb hit a single building in al-Jadida, in the western side of the city on Thursday. Another 100 were killed nearby.

“Some of the dead were taking shelter inside the homes,” Hevidar Ahmed said from the scene.

A spokesperson for Central Command, which coordinates US military action in Iraq, told The Independent they were aware of the loss of civilian life as reported by Rudaw and the information had been passed on to the civilian casualty team for “further investigation”.

“[The US-led coalition] takes all reports of civilian casualties very seriously and assesses all incidents as thoroughly as possible. Coalition forces work diligently to be precise in our air strikes and ensure that all strikes comply with the [internationally agreed] Law of Armed Conflict,” Captain Timothy Irish said.

A daily assessment report from Central Command stated that five strikes near Mosul on Thursday had destroyed five Isis units and a sniper team, as well as 11 fighting positions, vehicles and artillery equipment.

No other fighting force in the country has the capability to launch an aerial attack of the scale reported.

Iraqi coalition ground forces, backed by a US-led coalition bombing campaign, began the gruelling Operation Inherent Resolve to remove Isis from Mosul in October 2016.

The jihadi fighters now hold onto approximately a quarter of the city on the western bank of the River Tigris that cuts through Mosul from north to south.

An estimated 400,000 Iraqis are trapped in the remaining Isis-held areas, the UN’s refugee agency said on Thursday. Those caught up in the fighting face growing food shortages or being hit by crossfire if they try to leave.

Isis has used civilian homes to shelter fighters and weapons throughout the battle for the city, rigging buildings and streets with explosives to impede Iraqi troops’ progress.

The fighting has come at a heavy price for both Mosul’s residents and Iraqi soldiers: thousands of Iraqi civilians have died in the fighting, and a cumulative total of more than 200,000 displaced from their homes.

At least 6,878 civilians were killed in violence mainly inflicted by Isis around the country last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) has said.

Many Mosul residents report their loved ones have died as a result of “friendly fire” rather than Isis’s warfare tactics.

AirWars, a UK-based non-profit monitoring the effect of anti-Isis air strikes on civilians, said last week that they believed 370 civilians died in US-led coalition bombing in the first week of March alone.

Over the border in Syria in the last week, the US has been accused of killing civilians in two separate bombing incidents: 33 died in a strike near Raqqa which was supposed to target Isis positions, and more than 50 after a strike hit a mosque in Aleppo province rather than an al-Qaeda meeting point.

Removing Isis from Mosul, which is Iraq’s second largest city, will effectively spell the end of Isis as a land-holding force in the country, driving the remnants of the group back to their de facto capital of Raqqa.

While losing the city will be a decisive blow, the jihadi organisation is expected to pose a renewed threat in the form of an insurgency war against Iraqi forces.

[mes5464]

Senate Republicans Just Sold You Out to Advertisers

IN A 50-TO-48 VOTE along party lines, the U.S. Senate decided to kill FCC rules blocking your ISP from selling your browsing history to the advertising industry without permission. Should the change pass the House, as is expected, the likes of Comcast and Verizon will be able to make money disclosing what you buy, where you browse, and what you search from your own home, all without asking permission.

In an immediate signal that the vote will only benefit monied corporate interests and not the roughly 70 percent of Americans with a home broadband connection, the Internet & Television Association trade group gloated over their congressional victory

[Joel]

With appeals ruling, the United States has effectively outlawed file encryption

An appeals court has denied the appeal of a person who is jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt files. The man has not been charged with anything, but was ordered to hand over the unencrypted contents on police assertion of what the contents were. When this can result in lifetime imprisonment under “contempt of court”, the United States has effectively outlawed file-level encryption – without even going through Congress.

Yesterday, a US Appeals Court ruled against the person now detained for almost 18 months for refusing to decrypt a hard drive. The man has not been charged with anything, but authorities assert that the drive contains child pornography, and they want to charge him for it. As this is a toxic subject that easily spins off into threads of its own, for the sake of argument here and for sticking to the 10,000-foot principles, let’s say the authorities instead claim there are documents showing tax evasion on the drive. The principles would be the same.

Authorities are justifying the continued detention of this person – this uncharged person – with two arguments that are seemingly contradictory: First, they say they already know in detail what documents are on the drive, so the person’s guilt is a “foregone conclusion”, and second, they refuse to charge him until they have said documents decrypted. This does not make sense: either they have enough evidence to charge, in which case they should, or they don’t have enough evidence, in which case there’s also not enough evidence to claim with this kind of certainty there are illegal documents on the drive.

In any case, this loss in the Appeals Court effectively means that file- and volume-level encryption is now illegal in the United States.

Without going through Congress, without public debate, without anything, the fuzzy “contempt of court” has been used to outlaw encryption of files. When authorities can jail you indefinitely – indefinitely! – for encrypting files out of their reach, the net effect of this is that file level encryption has been outlawed. (Encryption of transmissions, like with a VPN, has never been threatened this way – transmissions are transient in nature and therefore can’t be seized.)

So were there illegal documents on the drive? We don’t know. That’s the whole point. But we do know that you can be sent to prison on a mere assertion of what’s on your drive, without even a charge – effectively for life, even worse than the UK law which will jail you for up to five years for refusing to decrypt and which at least has some semblance of due process.

The point here isn’t that the man “was probably a monster”. The point is that the authorities claimed that there was something on his encrypted drive, and used that assertion as justification to send him to prison for life (unless he complies), with no charges filed. There’s absolutely nothing saying the same US authorities won’t claim the same thing about your drive tomorrow. Falsely, most likely. The point is that, with this ruling, it doesn’t matter.

Privacy remains your own responsibility.

[Joel]

The Government Is 'Incidentally' Sucking up Tens of Millions of Americans’ Communications a Year, And It’s a Privacy Nightmare

There’s currently a lot in the news about “incidental” surveillance of American citizens, and even more confusion on what “incidental” means. During a hearing earlier this week on Russian interference in the recent presidential election, several members of the House Intelligence Committee questioned FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogerson whether existing national security surveillance authorities adequately protect Americans.

Director Comey and Admiral Rogers may have sounded reassuring to Americans worried about basic privacy, but there is a lot of reason to worry. The government potentially collects tens of millions of communications of Americans, even in cases where it is supposedly targeting foreign persons. These incidental communications can be disseminated and used by government officials for a wide variety of purposes.

At the hearing this week, Director Comey and Admiral Rogers strongly defended Section 702 of FISA and other authorities, and they asserted that there were strong protections for Americans. But their responses only told half the story. Here are three key issues that were missing from the hearing and help explain how the NSA and FBI end up surveilling Americans.

1. The NSA often knows and intends to capture the communications of Americans when they are “targeting” individuals abroad.

“Incidental collection is when we are targeting a valid foreign target, for example, in the course of that targeting we either get a reference to a U.S. person or suddenly a U.S. person appears as part of the conversation. That's what we call incidental collecting.”
- Admiral Rogers
“702 is about targeting non-U.S. persons overseas.”
- Director Comey
The term “incidental” as it is used in the surveillance context is misleading. The term suggests that the NSA accidentally or inadvertently collects the information of Americans. The opposite is often true.

For instance, under Section 702, the government often knows at the time of collection that it is likely to sweep up Americans’ communications, such as when it intercepts a phone call with one end in the United States. In fact, mapping the connection between foreign targets and individuals in the U.S. is a primary purpose of the program. Nevertheless, the government performs a legal sleight of hand, defending its warrantless Section 702 surveillance under the theory that Americans are not the “target” of the spying. Regardless of the government’s intent, the Constitution protects Americans from unreasonable searches and searches, raising concerns regarding its practices under Section 702.

2. The vast majority of Americans’ private information is not “masked.”

“In our reporting then we will mask the identity of the individual. We use a phrase like U.S. person one or U.S. person two."
- Admiral Rogers
In response to questions about whether Americans’ information collected for national security purposes could be disseminated, Admiral Rogers emphasized that Americans’ information is generally “masked” in intelligence reports. Some might infer from this statement that it would be rare for federal agencies to have access to personal information of Americans that is collected, including names, phone numbers, or e-mail addresses. Not true.

Rogers’s statements did not reflect two additional key facts. One, the masking procedures he referenced apply primarily to intelligence reports that are created by analyzing the information collected — not to the raw data itself. Thus raw data that is disseminated may still contain the personal details of Americans, including potentially the information of political officials. Two, agencies outside the NSA routinely access raw data collected for intelligence purposes. For example, in the case of Section 702, the FBI routinely searches through raw data using terms associated with Americans, even when investigating ordinary crimes with no connection to foreign intelligence. Also new NSA procedures allow over 15 other federal agencies to apply for access to data collected under Executive Oder 12333, which has been used by the NSA to collect information about millions of individuals with no court oversight.

3. Americans information is not automatically purged if it is “incidentally” collected.

“In some case, we will just purge the collect, make no reporting on it, not retain the data. It's incidental collection, it has no intelligence value and it wasn't the purpose of what we were doing.”
- Admiral Rogers
Some might assume that the government automatically purges Americans’ information, if those individuals were not the “target” of the surveillance. However, information about Americans is not automatically purged when it is collected. The sheer number of communications collected by the NSA makes reviewing them in real-time impossible. Thus many communications remain in the government’s databases for five years by default. During this time period, it can be used for purposes that are unrelated to national security or the purpose for which it was collected.

The timing of the current debate is critical. At the end of the year, Congress must vote on whether to extend Section 702, a surveillance authority reportedly used to collect hundreds of millions of communications per year, over half of which may contain information regarding a US resident. Regardless of whether the allegations of improper surveillance of the Trump transition team prove to be true, members of Congress should be concerned about surveillance abuse and take steps to reform our surveillance laws accordingly.

[Joel]

Senate Republicans Just Sold You Out to Advertisers

IN A 50-TO-48 VOTE along party lines, the U.S. Senate decided to kill FCC rules blocking your ISP from selling your browsing history to the advertising industry without permission. Should the change pass the House, as is expected, the likes of Comcast and Verizon will be able to make money disclosing what you buy, where you browse, and what you search from your own home, all without asking permission.

In an immediate signal that the vote will only benefit monied corporate interests and not the roughly 70 percent of Americans with a home broadband connection, the Internet & Television Association trade group gloated over their congressional victory

The 50 Senators that voted for S.J.Res 34 are (thanks to happyxpenguin):
Senator Roberts (R-KS)
Senator Lee (R-UT)
Senator Boozman (R-AR)
Senator Blunt (R-MO)
Senator Crapo (R-ID)
Senator Scott (R-SC)
Senator Cotton (R-AR)
Senator Hatch (R-UT)
Senator Capito (R-WV)
Senator Alexander (R-TN)
Senator Toomey (R-PA)
Senator Perdue (R-GA)
Senator Cochran (R-MS)
Senator Inhofe (R-OK)
Senator Ernst (R-IA)
Senator Lankford (R-OK)
Senator Collins (R-ME)
Senator Sullivan (R-AK)
Senator Thune (R-SD)
Senator McCain (R-AZ)
Senator Graham (R-SC)
Senator Wicker (R-MS)
Senator Grassley (R-IA)
Senator Burr (R-NC)
Senator Hoeven (R-ND)
Senator Tillis (R-NC)
Senator McConnell (R-KY)
Senator Heller (R-NV)
Senator Cruz (R-TX)
Senator Daines (R-MT)
Senator Portman (R-OH)
Senator Murkowsky (R-AK)
Senator Cassidy (R-LA)
Senator Flake (R-AZ)
Senator Johnson (R-WI)
Senator Rubio (R-FL)
Senator Corker (R-TN)
Senator Risch (R-ID)
Senator Gardner (R-CO)
Senator Young (R-IN)
Senator Barasso (R-WY)
Senator Moran (R-KS)
Senator Cornyn (R-TX)
Senator Enzi (R-WY)
Senator Kennedy (R-LA)
Senator Shelby (R-AL)
Senator Rounds (R-SD)

Absent:
Senator Paul (R-KY)
Senator Isakson (R-GA)


The EFF put it concisely: Senate Puts ISP Profits Over Your Privacy. Now, the only chance to maintain the hard earned FCC broadband privacy rules lies in defeating H.J.Res 86, the House version of this resolution, which will likely be voted on in the House of Representatives within the next month. It’s up to us to Save Broadband Privacy and make sure that we Don’t Let Congress Undermine Our Privacy.

[mes5464]

Constitution is BANNED in Federal Courthouse - Redoubt News

Witnesses have told me that the US Marshals have decided that they will no longer allow copies of the US Constitution to be brought into the courthouse. They have even gone so far as to remove them from ladies’ purses to be discarded into the trash. It is not limited to just those that are showing from shirt pockets.

[mes5464]

We have to pass the bill to see what's in the bill.

GOP rep: Once healthcare bill passes, lawmakers can 'really explain it' | TheHill

Voter opposition to the Republican healthcare bill is the result of misunderstanding, and lawmakers will be able to "really explain it" once it becomes law, Rep. Chris Collins said Thursday.

"In my district, right now there's a lot of misunderstanding as to what it is we're doing," the New York Republican said on MSNBC. "And once we get it done, and then we can have the chance to really explain it."

[mes5464]

Intelligence Reports Reveal Improper Political Surveillance of Trump, Transition Team

A House intelligence committee investigation took a dramatic shift this week after newly disclosed intelligence reports suggested the Obama administration improperly gathered and disseminated secret electronic communications from President Trump and his transition team prior to inauguration.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, indicated that the administration used its foreign intelligence gathering authority to spy on the discussions of Trump and his transition team by improperly unmasking the identity of Americans who were swept up in foreign electronic spying.

"What I've read seems to be some level of surveillance activity, perhaps legal, but I don't know that it's right and I don't know if the American people would be comfortable with what I've read," said Nunes, who uncovered the reports.

[mes5464]

'Hunt & Kill All White Women' Facebook Post Deemed Not Hate Speech » Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

The way in which Facebook polices content on its network is under scrutiny again after it was revealed that a post in which a user called for white women to be “hunted and killed” was deemed to not be a violation of community standards.
“White women should be hunted and killed then we won’t get white babies who think the(y) own the world,” the user posted.

[mes5464]

Robots could take over 38% of U.S. jobs within about 15 years, report says - LA Times

More than a third of U.S. jobs could be at “high risk” of automation by the early 2030s, a percentage that’s greater than in Britain, Germany and Japan, according to a report released Friday.

The analysis by accounting and consulting firm PwC focused primarily on the economic outlook in Britain, but it included a section on automation in Britain and elsewhere.

[mes5464]

Living the lie.

Associated Press issues new guidance on sex, gender: 'avoid' referring to 'both' or 'either' sexes - Washington Times

In a Friday email to subscribers listing updated entries for its style manual, the Associated Press is urging journalists to avoid making references in news stories that suggest there are only two sexes in the human race.
The term “gender,” the AP Stylebook says, is “[n]ot synonymous with sex.”
“Gender refers to a person’s social identity while sex refers to biological characteristics,” the style guide explains.
“Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid references to both, either or opposite sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people. When needed for clarity or in certain stories about scientific studies, alternatives include men and women, boys and girls, males and females.”
The Stylebook issued further guidance for use of pronouns under an entry named “they, them, their.” Those third-person plural pronouns are preferred by some transgender or gender fluid individuals who say they are not comfortable with traditional male or female personal pronouns.

[lundbaek]

I do not trust Infowars. Mr. Griffin, can you tell me the truth about Infowars?

REPLY FROM G. EDWARD GRIFFIN
We link to reports from many sources, and our primary requirement is that we believe the information is accurate. We do this by a combination of fact checking with other sources that we have found to be depndable in the past and by applying the test of continuity. In other words, Is there continuity between the new fact being reported and old facts that have been proven to be accurate by the passage of time. For example, if a political figure has devoted his life to supporting the fiat-money system and fractional-reserve banking, we are likely to question a report that this person now is promoting banking reform.

It is not uncommon to receive accurate information from unreliable sources. When that happens, and there is no better source for the information, we will use the story regardless of the source. Russia Today is an example of a source that cannot be trusted to report accurately on deeds of the Russian government or of other Leninist countries such as China, Cuba, and Venezuela but, unfortunately, their reports on what is happening inside the US often are are more accurate than those from our mainstream media. That is why we sometimes use RT as a source.

Regarding Infowars. I have worked with Alex Jones since about 2005 and have found his information to be amazingly accurate, especially on what is happening inside the US. I see things a bit differently than he does on matters of US foreign policy, but lack of agreement on these issues is no reason to reject everything else he puts into the news stream. Because of Alex, there now are millions of people who are aware of the forces of global tyranny at work within our own borders. I am grateful that he and his staff continue to deliver accurate news stories on this. Those are the stories we pass along. Those that we question, we skip over.

That’s our policy. If we relied only on sources with which we agree 100% of the time, we would have a very skinny news report. Heck, we even source articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post.


And BtW, G. Edward Griffin is the author of THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

[mes5464]

China Vice Premier Sees `Unstoppable Momentum' of Globalization - Bloomberg

Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli told a gathering of Asian leaders that the world must commit to multilateral free trade under the World Trade Organization and needs to reform global economic governance.

Negotiations on the 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, an Asia-wide agreement that’s favored by China, should be concluded soon and regional cooperation such as with the Association of South East Asian Nations should be advanced, Zhang said Saturday in a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual conference on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.

[Joel]

A whistleblower from President Obama's drone assassination campaigns tells us whether U.S. drones catalyse the kind of terror we saw in London.

for war contractors it is very profitable to keep the death cycle going

[mes5464]

Uber Self-Driving Vehicle Involved in Arizona Crash - Bloomberg

A self-driving car operated by Uber Technologies Inc. was involved in a crash in Tempe, Arizona, the latest setback for a company reeling from multiple crises.

In a photo posted on Twitter, one of Uber’s Volvo self-driving SUVs is pictured on its side next to another car with dents and smashed windows. An Uber spokeswoman confirmed the incident, and the veracity of the photo, in an email to Bloomberg News.

[mes5464]

Atlanta family battling state over right to name daughter Allah

ATLANTA — The toddler daughter of Elizabeth Handy and Bilal Walk has everything you would expect: a sweet smile, curious nature and finicky tastes.

But, in the eyes of the state of Georgia, the 22-month-old child has no name.

According to Handy and Walk, the Georgia Department of Public Health refused to issue the infant a birth certificate with the last name the couple chose for their daughter: Allah.

The ACLU of Georgia has filed suit on behalf of the couple, who say they can't get a Social Security number for their daughter because they don't have a birth certificate. They also anticipate problems with access to health care, schools and travel. Already, they said, they had to cancel a trip to Mexico.

"We have to make sure that the state isn't overstepping their boundaries," Walk said. "It is just plainly unfair and a violation of our rights."

State officials, however, said the child's name — ZalyKha Graceful Lorraina Allah — does not fit the naming conventions set up by state law. They say that ZalyKha's last name should either be Handy, Walk or a combination of the two.