Russia Is Reportedly Set To Release Clinton's Intercepted Emails | OilPrice.com

Russia Is Reportedly Set To Release Clinton's Intercepted Emails

Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.

The reports indicated that the decision as to whether to reveal the intercepts would be made by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, and it was possible that the release would, if made, be through a third party, such as Wikileaks. The apparent message from Moscow, through the intelligence community, seemed to indicate frustration with the pace of the official U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the so-called server scandal, which seemed to offer prima facie evidence that U.S. law had been violated by Mrs Clinton’s decision to use a private server through which to conduct official and often highly-secret communications during her time as Secretary of State. U.S. sources indicated that the extensive Deptartment of Justice probe was more focused on the possibility that the private server was used to protect messaging in which Secretary Clinton allegedly discussed quid pro quo transactions with private donors to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for influence on U.S. policy.

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Believe It or Not, the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Priorities Haven’t Changed in a Decade — War Is Boring

Believe It or Not, the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Priorities Haven’t Changed in a Decade

That’s good — and bad

by JOSEPH TREVITHICK

A recently-released document highlights how little the Pentagon’s concerns and responses to threats in cyberspace have changed in the past decade. As American legislators debate the future of the military’s top cybersecurity headquarters, experts say that’s both good and bad.

In 2006, the Pentagon organized a first-of-its-kind exercise involving a “directed professional attack” across military computer networks. The “Bulwark Defender” cyber war game was supposed to help military planners determine how well troops from different units communicated with each other while enemy agents hacked their computers.

The exercise would “confirm [the] importance of defending networks,” according to an official review. War Is Boring obtained the report — previously labeled “for official use only” — via the Freedom of Information Act.

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Congress’ Treachery, the FBI’s Double-Crossing and the American Citizenry’s Cluelessness: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies? « The Burning Platform

Congress’ Treachery, the FBI’s Double-Crossing and the American Citizenry’s Cluelessness: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

As the grandfather of three young ones, ages 5 to 9, I get to see my fair share of kid movies: plenty of hijinks, lots of bathroom humor, and an endless stream of slapstick gags. Yet even among the worst of the lot, there’s something to be learned, some message being conveyed, or some aspect of our reality being reflected in celluloid.

So it was that I found myself sitting through The Angry Birds Movie on a recent Sunday afternoon, doling out popcorn, candy and drinks and trying to make sense of a 90-minute movie based on a cell phone video game that has been downloaded more than 3 billion times.

The storyline is simple enough: an island nation of well-meaning, feel-good, flightless birds gets seduced by a charismatic green pig and his cohort who comes bearing food, wine and entertainment spectacles(the Roman equivalent of bread circuses). Ignoring the warnings of one solitary, suspicious “angry” bird that the pigs are up to no good, the clueless birds eventually discover that the pigs have stolen their most precious possessions: their eggs, the future of their entire society. It takes the “angry bird” to motivate the normally unflappable Bird Nation to get outraged enough to do something about the violation of their trust by the pigs and the theft of their personal property.

While one would be hard-pressed to call The Angry Birds Movie overly insightful, it is, as The Atlanticconcludes, a “feather-light metaphor for our times… The film functions, effectively, as a fairy tale: It uses its status as fantasy to impart lessons about reality.”

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Facebook EAVESDROPPING? « The Burning Platform

Facebook EAVESDROPPING?

Guest Post by Karl Denninger

How is this legal?

Facebook is not just looking at user’s personal information, interests, and online habits but also to your private conversations, revealed a new report. According to NBC report, this may be the case as Kelli Burns, a professor at University of South Florida states, “I don’t think that people realize how much Facebook is tracking every move we’re making online. Anything that you’re doing on your phone, Facebook is watching.” the professor said.

Later in the article Facebook appears to confirm that it does indeed use your microphone — which means it listens to and uploads the contents of speech and other sound around you when you are using the app.

Explain to me, if you would, why you’d ever allow such a device in your pocket?  Further, please explain to me exactly why you believe Facebook would only use this for “ad targeting”….. when there is literally nothing to prevent them from doing otherwise.

And finally, please explain why this is legal and Facebook and its officers are not under criminal indictment, particularly when you consider that people other than you may well speak within the listening range of your microphone, and while you may have given consent they did not and further, they had no idea they were being recorded!

So you want to have a conversation with me, eh?  Well I don’t consent to being recorded, and in many states (including Florida) unless said recorder is either openly and notoriously present and thus obvious (giving me the clear option to refuse to talk to you in its presence) or you have my consent it’s a felony to make that recording in any situation where I reasonably believe I’m not being taped or overheard.

Oh by the way, the use to which you put the recording is immaterial; it is not legal in this state to do so for “purely” advertising purposes; any such use is unlawful and in fact it is a felony in this state.

Heh Zuckerpig — your ass ought to be indicted for this crap, and Florida is not alone in criminalizing this activity.

Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents, by Nicole Perlroth | STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Governments Turn to Commercial Spyware to Intimidate Dissidents, by Nicole Perlroth

If you were worried that there might be some isolated, backward country somewhere in which its citizens still had civil liberties, worry no more. Thanks to a booming international trade in spyware, governments everywhere have access to tools that allow them to monitor and record everything their citizens do. From Nicole Perlroth at nytimes.com:

SAN FRANCISCO — In the last five years, Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates, has been jailed and fired from his job, along with having his passport confiscated, his car stolen, his email hacked, his location tracked and his bank account robbed of $140,000. He has also been beaten, twice, in the same week.

Mr. Mansoor’s experience has become a cautionary tale for dissidents, journalists and human rights activists. It used to be that only a handful of countries had access to sophisticated hacking and spying tools. But these days, nearly all kinds of countries, be they small, oil-rich nations like the Emirates, or poor but populous countries like Ethiopia, are buying commercial spyware or hiring and training programmers to develop their own hacking and surveillance tools.

The barriers to join the global surveillance apparatus have never been lower. Dozens of companies, ranging from NSO Group and Cellebrite in Israel to Finfisher in Germany and Hacking Team in Italy, sell digital spy tools to governments.

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Edward Snowden Demonstrates How To "Go Black" | Zero Hedge

Edward Snowden Demonstrates How To "Go Black"

When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden first exposed the world to just how easily the government could compromise their technology and spy on them, many immediately sought ways to secure their data and protect their gadgets.

But, as Wired.com reports, Snowden is here to help. "'Going Black' is a pretty big ask," he tells VICE's Shane Smith, but not impossible, as Snowden shows how to "make sure your phone works for you... instead of working for someone else."