Puppet MastersS


HAL9000

Every text you make.... Snowden documents show NSA gathering 5bn cell phone records daily

nsa spying
© Alex Milan Tracy/NurPhoto/CorbisThe data can also be used to study patterns of behaviour to reveal personal information
The National Security Agency is reportedly collecting almost 5 billion cell phone records a day under a program that monitors and analyses highly personal data about the precise whereabouts of individuals, wherever they travel in the world.

Details of the giant database of location-tracking information, and the sophisticated ways in which the NSA uses the data to establish relationships between people, have been revealed by the Washington Post, which cited documents supplied by whistleblower Edward Snowden and intelligence officials.

Comment: There's no question that the American public should be outraged that their rights to privacy are being violated, but the question stands whether the NSA program has the capabilities to perform all that is alleged above. After all, if people are convinced that they are being monitored all the time, they will be more willing to accept the lines that the PTB have drawn against their freedoms.


Padlock

Muzzling the voice of people: Japan enacts strict state secrets law despite protests

state secret law
© Yuya Shino/ReutersNakagawa, chairman of the Upper House Special Committee on National Security, is surrounded by lawmakers during a vote on a state secrets act at the parliament in Tokyo
Japan enacted a state-secrets law toughening penalties for leaks on Friday, despite public protests and criticism that it will muzzle the media and help cover up official misdeeds.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, keen to beef up Japan's security amid rising concerns about China's military assertiveness, has said the law is needed to the smooth operation of a new National Securities Council and to persuade foreign countries such as close ally the United States to share intelligence.

Gold Coins

One BIG problem with Bitcoin...

bitcoin
At this point, you'd pretty much have to be living under a rock to have not heard of Bitcoin.

I actually asked this question ('have you been living under a rock?) to someone recently who proudly proclaimed that he had never heard of Bitcoin, almost expressing gratification in his ignorance of a game-changing model.

Bitcoin is on fire. Mainstream media coverage is everywhere.

Comment: SOTT Talk Radio - Bitcoin, Gold and the Cashless Society


Gear

Japan's Abe secures passage of secrecy law as opposition revolts

Shinzo Abe
© Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty ImagesShinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe secured final passage of a bill granting Japan's government sweeping powers to declare state secrets, a measure aimed at shoring up defense ties with the U.S. that prompted a public backlash and revolt by the opposition.

The upper house of the Diet gave final approval of the measures in Tokyo late yesterday after opposition parties first forced a no-confidence vote in Abe's government in the lower house. The wrangling over the bill forced the government to extend the parliamentary session, due to end yesterday, for two more days.

The bill, which forms part of Abe's broader push to strengthen Japan's defense policy in the face of China's military assertiveness, stiffens penalties for bureaucrats who leak secrets and journalists who publish them. It gives government officials the power to define what constitutes a state secret under categories from defense to diplomacy, terrorism and safety threats.

"There is rationale in the secrecy bill, but the government has been too hasty and has lacked efforts to provide a framework for information disclosure which is the flip side of secrecy," said Hidenori Suezawa, a financial market and fiscal analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc.

Better Earth

Nelson Mandela: Timeline of his life

Mandela
© Unknown
A look at the key dates in the life of the revered statesman, who led the fight against apartheid and united his troubled nation.

July 18, 1918: Born Rolihlahla Mandela in a small village in the eastern Cape of South Africa.

1944: Joins the African National Congress (ANC).

1944: Marries first wife Evelyn Mase.

1948: South African government introduces the racial segregation policy of apartheid.

December 1952: Sentenced to nine months hard labour, suspended for two years, for civil disobedience campaign. Opens first black law firm with Oliver Tambo.

1956: Charged with high treason as part of a round-up of 156 activists.

Vader

US Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: "We're turning into a country that knows only one way to achieve its purpose and that is to kill people"

US Army colonel, former War College instructor and former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell Lawrence Wilkerson tells Real News: "I don't know if our grandchildren will live in a democratic republic."


Eye 2

Best of the Web: Hersh: Obama administration lied about gas attack in Syria

hersh
Prominent American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says US President Barack Obama did not tell the whole story about a chemical weapons attack near the Syrian capital of Damascus in August.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in a new report published in the London Review of Books, wrote that the administration of President Obama was aware of the fact that the militants fighting against the Syrian government had the ability to make chemical weapons but did not inform the public about it.

"Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts," he wrote in the article.

Comment: Syria, Chemical Weapons and the Britam Defence emails
BBC and doctors in Syria: shilling for Western Psychopaths in Power?
Top 45 lies in Obama's speech at UN


Bug

Best of the Web: Patriot Act author: Obama's intel czar should be prosecuted

The clapper
© Greg NashJames Clapper
Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress.

"Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it," the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill.

He said the Justice Department should prosecute Clapper for giving false testimony during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.

During that hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not - or at least does "not wittingly" - collect information on Americans in bulk.

Che Guevara

12 Mandela quotes you won't see in the corporate media as they sanitize the legacy of this anti-apartheid leader

Nelson Mandela
On "sanitizing" the legacy of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela, who died yesterday at age 95, was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary who served as President of South Africa from 1994-1999.

During the 1950's, while working as an anti-apartheid lawyer, Mandela was repeatedly arrested for 'seditious activities' and 'treason.' In 1963 he was convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela served 27 years in prison before an international lobbying campaign finally won his release in 1990.

In 1994, Mandela was elected President and formed a Government of National Unity in an attempt to defuse ethnic tensions. As President, he established a new constitution and initiated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses and to uncover the truth about crimes of the South African government, using amnesty as a mechanism.

Nelson Mandela was a powerful and inspirational leader who eloquently and forcefully spoke truth to power. As tributes are published over the coming days, the corporate media will paint a sanitized portrait of Mandela that leaves out much of who he was. We expect to see 'safe' Mandela quotes such as "education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world" or "after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb."

Eye 1

FBI's powerful surveillance software can covertly download files, photographs, stored e-mails and activate computer cameras

internet surveillance
© Shutterstock.com
The man who called himself "Mo" had dark hair, a foreign accent and - if the pictures he e-mailed to federal investigators could be believed - an Iranian military uniform. When he made a series of threats to detonate bombs at universities and airports across a wide swath of the United States last year, police had to scramble every time.

Mo remained elusive for months, communicating via ­e-mail, video chat and an ­Internet-based phone service without revealing his true identity or location, court documents show. So with no house to search or telephone to tap, investigators turned to a new kind of surveillance tool delivered over the Internet.

The FBI's elite hacker team designed a piece of malicious software that was to be delivered secretly when Mo signed on to his Yahoo e-mail account, from any computer anywhere in the world, according to the documents. The goal of the software was to gather a range of information - Web sites he had visited and indicators of the location of the computer - that would allow investigators to find Mo and tie him to the bomb threats.

Such high-tech search tools, which the FBI calls "network investigative techniques," have been used when authorities struggle to track suspects who are adept at covering their tracks online. The most powerful FBI surveillance software can covertly download files, photographs and stored e-mails, or even gather real-time images by activating cameras connected to computers, say court documents and people familiar with this technology.

Online surveillance pushes the boundaries of the constitution's limits on searches and seizures by gathering a broad range of information, some of it without direct connection to any crime. Critics compare it to a physical search in which the entire contents of a home are seized, not just those items suspected to offer evidence of a particular offense.