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Informing the American people about how their government spies on them can be risky business for journalists.
Rajiv Pant, chief technology officer at The New York Times, thought he could be killed for it.
It was the IT help request from hell.
British newspaper The Guardian provided the Times with top-secret electronic documents exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Pant oversaw the handoff between the Guardian and the New York Times.
At the recent AppSec USA cybersecurity conference, the Times' chief technology officer described those tense initial moments.
© Ramin Talate/Getty ImagesThe New York Times has partnered with other media outlets to release top-secret documents detailing the extent of unwarranted government surveillance. It's a frightening task.
It was the IT help request from hell.
British newspaper The Guardian provided the Times with top-secret electronic documents exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Pant oversaw the handoff between the Guardian and the New York Times.
At the recent AppSec USA cybersecurity conference, the Times' chief technology officer described those tense initial moments.
© ProPublica
Security contractor SAIC produced the 66-page report "Games: A look at emerging trends, users, threats and opportunities in influence activities" in early 2007, and the document gives a rare window into how the US intelligence community views interactive games as a potential tool to be used by foreign actors. While parts of the report seem pretty realistic about gaming's potential use as a propaganda and planning tool, other sections provide a more fantastical take on how video games can be used as potential weapons by America's enemies.
Comment: The aforementioned report is trying hard, but unsuccessfully, to give credence to the unlawful infiltration of online gaming by military intelligence, whose actual purpose seems to be spying, the collection of data from the private lives of American citizens and their recruitment as cannon fodder or informants. IF there is any group out there plotting against the US empire, they must have better communication means than hiding behind a fantasy-creature avatar and trying to get their message through the busy battlegrounds of online gaming.
So, with the above in mind, it makes one wonder what kind of a "leak" this was, since it agrees with the propaganda agenda of our times.
Read also: U.S. and UK military intelligence 'planted agents' into World of Warcraft, Second Life to spy on gamers
Voters across America are heading to the polls today for state and local elections, and just like in federal elections, big business has been writing big checks to campaigns across the country. To follow the money in your state, see which industry topped the list of campaign contributions in the last election cycle:
© Bohdan Burmich/Noun Project
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke has suggested that she is open to the possibility of raising taxes on the wealthy - at least by changing the deductions.
"I believe in people paying their fair share," Burke told The Capital Times.
But Republicans are asking if Burke has always paid her fair share. Specifically, Burke - now a Madison millionaire - paid no state income taxes for three full years during the 1990s and only a minimal amount in another year. She lived outside Wisconsin for most of that time.
Records show the one-time Trek Bicycle executive paid no taxes to the state in 1990 and 1992-'93. She paid $2,807 in 1991. Numerous stories and her Facebook page say she went to work for Trek, a Waterloo-based company founded by her father, as director of European operations in 1990.
By comparison, she has paid more than $100,000 in state income taxes in three of the past four years.
"It is deeply concerning that Millionaire Mary Burke didn't pay taxes at several points in her career, and she owes the people of Wisconsin a serious explanation - not excuses," said Joe Fadness, executive director of the state Republican Party.
Burke spokesman Joe Zepecki said there is no issue here. Burke plans to challenge Republican Gov. Scott Walker during his 2014 re-election bid.
© The Guardian/AFP/Getty ImagesIn May Edward Snowden flew to Hong Kong where he gave journalists the material which blew the lid on the extent of US digital spying
For the second year in a row, a young American whistleblower alarmed at the unfettered and at times cynical deployment of power by the world's foremost superpower has been voted the Guardian's person of the year.
Edward Snowden, who leaked an estimated 200,000 files that exposed the extensive and intrusive nature of phone and internet surveillance and intelligence gathering by the US and its western allies, was the overwhelming choice of more than 2,000 people who voted.
© Truthout.org/Flickr
If all you've got is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail. And if police and prosecutors are your only tool, sooner or later everything and everyone will be treated as criminal. This is increasingly the American way of life, a path that involves "solving" social problems (and even some non-problems) by throwing cops at them, with generally disastrous results. Wall-to-wall criminal law encroaches ever more on everyday life as police power is applied in ways that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago.
By now, the militarization of the police has advanced to the point where "the War on Crime" and "the War on Drugs" are no longer metaphors but bland understatements. There is the proliferation of heavily armed SWAT teams, even in small towns; the use of shock-and-awe tactics to bust small-time bookies; the no-knock raids to recover trace amounts of drugs that often result in the killing of family dogs, if not family members; and in communities where drug treatment programs once were key, the waging of a drug version of counterinsurgency war. (All of this is ably reported on journalist Radley Balko's blog and in his book, The Rise of the Warrior Cop.) But American over-policing involves far more than the widely reported up-armoring of your local precinct. It's also the way police power has entered the DNA of social policy, turning just about every sphere of American life into a police matter.
© UnknownClose to 100 legislators from 32 states met in Mount Vernon, VA., Saturday to discuss the possibility of adding amendments to the U.S. Constitution through a convention of the states. Such a convention, as outlined in article five of the Constitution, would allow state legislatures to vote on amendments to add.
Such a convention, as outlined in article five of the Constitution, would allow state legislatures to vote on amendments to add.
Opened & closed with prayer...#MountVernonAssembly pic.twitter.com/WRg9EZscF3
- KevinJones (@kevinicolejones) December 7, 2013
The proposed resolution at the #MountVernonAssembly #ArticleV pic.twitter.com/8YGlnupPiONo constitutional amendment has been added this way, but some say the Constitution specifically allows for states to use the convention as a means to push back against the federal government.
- Brett Hildabrand (@Brett4ks) December 7, 2013
Two-thirds of the state legislatures, or 34, must approve an application for a convention to occur, according to the Constitution's article five. State legislatures would then send delegates to the convention, each state getting one vote on proposed amendments. For an amendment to pass and become a part of the Constitution, it would have to be approved by three-fourths, or 38, of the state legislatures.
The vertical axis of the pyramid is often described as power, wealth, knowledge, etc. The shape of the pyramid describes the population distribution as measured by the vertical axis. The great bulk of humanity (us) inhabits the lower levels near the base, and the Controllers/Powers That Be/Elites inhabit the lofty levels near the peak.
Control of events at the macro level is administered from the top down by inducing divisions through particular areas in the pyramid. These divisions are made through the use of lies that are designed to achieve particular ends such as war, population reduction, strengthened control, wealth redistribution, etc, right down to plain misery and suffering of the masses.
What do Edward Snowden, the former Yugoslavia, Alexander Berkman and the logistical and legislative mess known as Obamacare have to do with one another? Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges connects these figures and concepts in conversation with The Real News Network's Paul Jay about how "organic" and "invisible" revolutions take hold as the credibility and solidity of powerful institutions and ideas start to erode.
Watch Hedges and Jay lay it out in the video clip below
Watch Hedges and Jay lay it out in the video clip below
Comment: Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year 2013