Former CIA agent John Kiriakou pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to crimes related to blowing the whistle on the US government’s torture of suspected terrorists and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Kiriakou, 48, agreed to admit to one count of disclosing information identifying a covert agent early Tuesday, just hours after his attorney entered a change of plea in an Alexandria, Virginia courtroom outside of Washington, DC.
Kiriakou was originally charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 after he went public with the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of waterboarding on captured insurgents in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. On Monday morning, though, legal counsel for the accused former CIA agent informed the court that Kiriakou was willing to plead guilty to a lesser crime.
Initially, Kiriakou pleaded not guilty to the charge that he had outted two intelligence agents directly tied to the drowning-simulation method by going to the press with their identities.
As RT reported last week, defense attorneys had hoped that the government would be tasked with having to prove that Kiriakou had intent to harm America when he went to the media. Instead, however, prosecutors were told they’d only need to prove that the former government employee was aware that his consequences had the potential to put the country in danger.
Had Kiriakou been convicted under the initial charges filed in court, he could have been sentenced to upwards of five decades behind bars.
“Let’s be clear, there is one reason, and one reason only, that John Kiriakou is taking this plea: for the certainty that he’ll be out of jail in 2 1/2 years to see his five children grow up,” Jesselyn Raddack, a former Justice Department official who blew the whistle on Bush administration’s mishandling in the case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, wrote Tuesday.
Kiriakou, Raddack wrote, was all but certain to enter the Alexandria courthouse on Tuesday and plead guilty to the lesser charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), explaining, “there are no reported cases interpreting it because it’s nearly impossible to prove–for “outing” a torturer.”
“’Outing’ is in quotes because the charge is not that Kiriakou’s actions resulted in a public disclosure of the name, but that through a Kevin Bacon-style chain of causation, GITMO torture victims learned the name of one of their possible torturers,” Raddack wrote. “Regardless, how does outing a torturer hurt the national security of the U.S.? It’s like arguing that outing a Nazi guarding a concentration camp would hurt the national security of Germany.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former government official told Firedoglake recently that the CIA was “totally ticked at Kiriakou for acknowledging the use of torture as state policy” and allegedly outing the identity of a covert CIA official “responsible for ensuring the execution” of the water-boarding program.
Kiriakou “outted” to the reporters the identities of the CIA’s “prime torturer” under its Bush-era interrogations, Firedoglake wrote. “For that, the CIA is counting on the Justice Department to, at minimum, convict Kiriakou on the charge of leaking an agent’s identity to not only send a message to other agents but also to continue to protect one of their own.”
Former National Security Agency staffer Thomas Drake suffered a similar fate in recent years after the government went after him for blowing the whistle on the NSA’s poorly handled collection of public intelligence. A grand jury indicted Drake on five counts tied to 1917’s Espionage Act as well as other crimes, but prosecutors eventually agreed to let him off with a misdemeanor computer violation that warranted zero jail time.
Together, Drake and Kirakou are two of six persons charged under the Espionage Act during the administration of US President Barack Obama. The current White House has indicted more people under the antiquated World War 1-era legislation than all previous presidents combined.
Your iPhone, I’m sad to say, is not like Las Vegas: What happens there often does not stay there.
Much of your iPhone activity — including your web browsing, app store downloads and more — is transmitted to advertisers through various channels so that they can serve up relevant advertisements and offers for you. Although these services have mechanisms in place to ensure that you can’t be identified, you still might be a little uneasy about all of that information getting sent off to unclear dimensions (regardless of whether you’re doing anything — ahem — naughty on your iPhone).
Luckily for you and your privacy concerns, Apple has provided users with several ways, especially on iOS 6, to limit the amount of information that gets transmitted to third parties. Unluckily, they are buried deep within the bowels of the iPhone, opaquely worded, and not located where you might think they are.
Consider this, then, to be your privacy itinerary. Here are three settings you should tweak if you want to limit the activity tracking that occurs by default on your iPhone. While the settings won’t completely eliminate the transmission of your iPhone data to often-mysterious parties, they will greatly reduce it.
1. Limit Ad Tracking
The subject of a brief controversy stirred up by Business Insider, Apple recently changed the way it identifies your device, starting with iOS 6, for advertisers that serve you well-aimed ads. To which you might reasonably reply: “Wait a minute — Apple is identifying my advice for advertisers so that they can serve me well-aimed ads?!?!”
Welcome to 2012, where pretty much everything with a battery is tracking you, and every site that prompts you to enter a login and password is trying to provide you with relevant ads.
Though Apple insists the Advertising Identifier is non-permanent and cannot be used to determine your identity — and by all indications, the new system is far better than the old one, which really did identify you to an odd extent — it still allows you to opt out of the program. To do so, go into Settings, then General, then About, then Advertising. You want to turn Limit Ad Tracking to the “On” position.
(Which is a little confusing, by the way: In order to turn ad tracking off, you have to flick the switch to “On”? How about, next time, if you want to shut something off, you select “Off”? If I want to mute my phone, I don’t have to switch “Turn Volume Off” to the “On” position, do I? Who’s on first?)
No matter: Turn “Limit Ad Tracking” on. You will still see ads on your phone, but they won’t be “targeted” to you based on your activity.
2. Opt Out Of Targeted iAds
To more thoroughly block targeted ads, you can specifically prevent Apple’s own iAd system from tracking your behavior and presenting ads based on that activity.
To do so, open Safari on your iPhone and visit http://oo.apple.com. There you’ll see a screen asking if you want to opt out of Interest Based iAds. If you flip the switch to “Off,” the ads you see will not be based on your history. Instead, they will be general, non-targeted advertisements. (See? Flip the switch to “Off” when you want to turn something off. How hard was that?)
And, as our friends at TUAW helpfully point out, this is not a final decision: If you find yourself yearning for targeted ads, you can bring them back any time you please, by clicking to the site above and turning them back on. Thomas Wolfe was wrong: You can go home again! (If by “home” you mean “digital advertisements conjured by an automated analysis of your smartphone activity.”)
While you’re tweaking your iAds, you might also shut off location-based iAds, or advertisements based on your current location. Go into Settings, then Privacy, then Location Services, then System Settings (at the bottom), then switch “Location-Based iAds” to the “Off” position.
3. Do Not Track
With the Safari browser in iOS 6, Apple also introduces a “Do Not Track” feature, which denies websites you visit the ability to track you both on their page and on other websites you visit when you leave.
I know, I know, it’s a radical concept: Once you leave a website, that website no longer tracks your behavior. It’s like, when I leave my friend’s apartment, do I expect him to secretly embed a spy camera on my backpack so that he can keep an eye on my every movement outside of his home?
Well, maybe. There’s no “Off” switch for my creepy friend William.
Unlike William’s creepiness, however, there is an “Off” switch for website tracking! To enable Do Not Track on your iPhone, you need to turn on “Private Browsing.” Open up Settings, and then go into the Settings for Safari. Switch Private Browsing to “On” and your phone will start sending a Do Not Track message to any website you visit.
You can learn more about the Do Not Track movement by visiting the official website (which will also tell you whether you have Do Not Track enabled on your browser).
These three tips should put your mind at ease about the extent to which your iPhone behavior is being tracked. Again, it’s not a wholesale solution to your iPhone-tracking concerns, but it will greatly reduce the more suspect, easily-preventable data-collecting activity.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check my backpack for spy cameras.
Whonix is an anonymous general purpose operating system based on Virtual Box, Ubuntu GNU/Linux and Tor. By Whonix design, IP and DNS leaks are impossible. Not even malware with root rights can find out the user’s real IP/location.
Whonix consists of two machines, which are connected through an isolated network. One machine acts as the client or Whonix-Workstation, the other as a proxy or Whonix-Gateway, which will route all of the Whonix-Workstation’s traffic through Tor. This setup can be implemented either through virtualization and/or Physical Isolation.
Whonix advantages:
All applications, including those, which do not support proxy settings, will automatically be routed through Tor.
Installation of any software package possible.
Safe hosting of Hidden services possible.
Protection against side channel attacks, no IP or DNS leaks possible^3^ To test for leaks, see LeakTests.
Advantage over Live CD’s: Tor’s data directory is still available after reboot, due to persistent storage. Tor requires persistent storage to save it’s Entry Guards.
Java / JavaScript / flash / Browser Plugins / misconfigured applications cannot leak your real external IP.
Whonix does even protect against root exploits (Malware with root rights) on the Workstation.
Uses only Free Software.
Building Whonix from source is easy.
Tor+Vidalia and Tor Browser are not running inside the same machine. That means that for example an exploit in the browser can’t affect the integrity of the Tor process.
It is possible to use Whonix setup in conjunction with VPNs, ssh and other proxies. But see Tor plus VPN/proxies Warning. Everything possible, as first chain or last chain, or both.
Loads of Optional Configurations (additional features / Add-Ons) available.
Best possible Protocol-Leak-Protection and Fingerprinting-Protection.
Ex-Marine who threw back his medals, Jon Michael Turner, speaks the raw hard truth about merciless & indiscriminate killing PROMOTED by Staff Sgts and other Top Military Brass during modern war and middle eastern conflict.
Powerful Steven Segal speech from movie ‘On Deady Ground’. Exposes the corruption and suppression of advanced renewable ‘free-energy’ technologies that have been withheld from the public, and weaponized by the Military Industrial Complex. Theft of Native American Lands, and the Agenda of Enslavement by Corporate Greed.
Following recent developments where the FBI released documents recording supposed UFO crashes in the Roswell area this amazing footage allegedly showing a UFO crash survivor has been leaked onto the internet. The individual who released the footage has remained anonymous, reportedly for their own protection. The footage came to light on All News Web, a well known paranormal and UFO website. According to Michael Cohen, the renowned Australian ufologist and psychic, the humanoid alien visitor is from the Zeta Reticuli star system.
A former United States marine has described Queen Elizabeth II as a “mad woman”.
political analyst and former U.S. marine has described Queen Elizabeth II of Britain as a “mad woman” after her intervention in the case of Abu Hamza’s extradition.
Ken O’Keefe, said in an interview on a Press TV evening program, the British Queen holds a very powerful position in the world and is not just “a little old grandma”.
O’Keefe said, “I think any person with any kind of sanity and any kind of intuitive skills can simply take a look at the queen. There are plenty of pictures of her where you can see her for what she is, she is a mad woman. This is not a sane and healthy human being, this is a mad woman”.
The former US marine also mentioned that the Queen’s real estate holding is as much as a fifth of the world, while being the biggest land owner “on the planet”.
O’Keefe’s comments come after he was asked about the Queen’s recent involvement in the arrest and extradition of Muslim cleric, Abu Hamza al-Masri to the U.S. The Guardian reported on September 25 that Elizabeth II lobbied for Hamza’s arrest to be secured, and be extradited to the United States along with four other suspects over allegations of promoting terrorism.
Last week, British MP George Galloway denounced the state-run BBC’s apology for the queen’s comments being exposed regarding Hamza. Galloway insisted that it was the British Queen’s responsibility to make the apology for interfering in UK politics.
via PressTV.ir
The Supreme Court refused to hear a case on Tuesday that holds telecom companies accountable for letting the National Security Agency spy on unknowing Americans without a warrant. Dating back to 2006 when the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation first filed the class-action lawsuit, the case accuses AT&T of providing the NSA with customers’ personal information — phone calls, emails and web browsing history — without seeking a court order. Verizon and Sprint are also mentioned. The plaintiff, former AT&T technician Mark Klein, even provided internal documentation that showed evidence of the NSA surveilling Americans’ Internet traffic from a secret room in San Francisco. That case, Hepting v. AT&T, has now been thrown out, and the Supreme Court didn’t even comment on why.
This sound very important! After all, doesn’t the Constitution protect American citizens from being spied on by their government without their knowledge or consent? Well, yes and no. Warrantless wiretapping sounds invasive and terrible, sure, but it’s actually technically legal under a 2008 law that retroactively granted immunity to all of the telecom companies that were spying on Americans at the government’s behest. Unsurprisingly, the practice can be traced back to President George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism program following the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Once things calmed down and people actually started suing the government for eavesdropping on everyday Americans, Congress passed the FISA Amendements Act. (FISA stands for the original law, the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act.) That law is currently up for renewal in Congress.
As Wired points out, neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has confirmed or denied allegations of warrantless wiretapping. They’ve both argued that the surveillance program is a state secret and any sort of disclosure would endanger national security. The EFF doesn’t buy this argument. “The government still claims that this massive program of surveillance of Americans is a state secret, but after eleven years and multiple Congressional reports, public admissions and media coverage, the only place that this program hasn’t been seriously considered is in the courts — to determine whether it’s legal or constitutional,” said Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director. “We look forward to rectifying that.”
Indeed, Heptig v. AT&T is not the civil liberties advocates’ last hope at gaining some clarity on the warrantless wiretapping issue. In a separate case, the EFF sued the government directly, rather than going after the telecom companies. The case was tossed out by a district court judge only to be picked up by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where Judge Margaret McKeown ruled that the EFF’s arguments “are not abstract, generalized grievances and instead meet the constitutional standing requirement of concrete injury.”
That case will be heard in December. Until then, be careful what you say on the phone. You know who is listening.
Former New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald’s new book, published last week, provides yet more details about how the the NSA’s unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program came about, and confirms that even top Bush Administration lawyers felt there was a “strong argument” that the program violated the law. “Officials might be slammed for violating the Fourth Amendment as a result of having listened in on calls to people inside the country and collecting so much personal data,” Eichenwald wrote, and “in the future, others may question the legality” of their actions.
Yet even today, eleven years later, the government continues to claim that no court can judge the program’s legality. In the next month, the government will argue—in EFF’s case in federal district court and ACLU’s case in the Supreme Court—that courts must dismiss the legal challenges without ever coming to a ruling on the merits.
Eichenwald’s book, 500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars, describes how the NSA’s illegal program—what he calls “the most dramatic expansion of NSA’s power and authority in the agency’s 49 year history”— was devised just days after 9/11 to disregard requirements in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Instead of getting individualized warrants to monitor Americans communicating overseas, the Bush administration unilaterally gave the NSA the power to sweep up millions of emails and phone calls into a database for analysis without court approval:
Connections between a suspect e-mail address and others—accounts that both sent and received messages there, whether in the United States or not—would be examined. At that point, a more detailed level of analysis would be applied creating something of a ripple effect. The suspect e-mail address would lead to a second, the second to the accounts it contacted.
In other words, the NSA was given the green light to warrantlessly spy of Americans communications on American soil—a power that was illegal under FISA. And the government—instead of finding probable cause for surveillance like the Constitution requires—started using a burden of proof akin to the game Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon.
Eichenwald’s reporting, focused on the immediate aftermath of 9/11, unfortunately overlooks the NSA’s longstanding desire to live “on the network” reflected in its presentations to the incoming Bush Administration officials in December, 2000. The idea that the NSA only came up with this idea after 9/11 isn’t really accurate.1 But regardless, Eichenwald’s reporting makes clear that Bush administration officials were terrified that this program would become public.
Of course, after several years, much of the NSA’s program did become public when the New York Times exposed its existence in their 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning investigation. Virtually every major news organization in the US subsequently reported on the NSA and its mass spying programs, which led to congressional investigations and a multitude of lawsuits—two which will be argued in the coming month.
In EFF’s lawsuit, in addition to a mountain of public information including many governmental admissions, the court will see evidence from AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein showing blueprints and photographs of the NSA’s secret room in AT&T’s facility in San Francisco. Three more NSA whistleblowers, including William Binney a former high ranking official involved with the program during its infancy, also submitted affidavits laying out how the NSA illegally spied on Americans in the aftermath of 9/11.
Despite this all of this, the government recently filed a motion in the Northern District of California invoking the controversial “state secrets” privilege. Essentially, the government argues that—even if all of the allegations are true—the case should be dismissed entirely because admitting or denying any fact would potentially endanger national security, even in the face of the government’s own craftily wordsmithed “denials” before Congress and elsewhere.
In the ACLU’s case going before the Supreme Court this term, a group of journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists has sued over surveillance conducted after the passage of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). The FAA was passed in 2008 and formalized some of the admitted portions of NSA’s program, allowing emails and phone calls to and from from overseas to continue to be acquired without a warrant. The government only needs one general court order to target large groups of people—even entire countries—communicating to Americans for an entire year.
The plaintiffs, given that their professions, regularly talk to people who are almost certainly spied on. They argue that surveillance of them without warrants renders the statute unconstitutional. But the government contends the case must be dismissed on “standing” grounds because the plaintiffs can’t prove with certainty they have been surveilled, because, in a perfectly circular argument, the government won’t “admit” they have been surveilled, as if public admissions by the government is the only way to prove illegal wiretapping.
As the ACLU writes, “The government theory of standing would render real injuries nonjusticiable and insulate the government’s surveillance activities from meaningful judicial review.” The same can be said of the ‘state secrets’ privilege in EFF’s case. The government is contending they can use government secrecy as a sword to terminate judicial accountability. It doesn’t matter how much evidence is in the public domain, just by telling the Court that the information implicates “national security,” they can wall off entire subject matters from judicial oversight, effectively hiding illegality, unconstitutionality along with embarrassing or overreaching acts by NSA spooks and others.
Eichenwald is just the latest in a long line of journalists to discuss and organize details about the NSA’s unconstitutional program. At this point the American people are well aware of the NSA’s actions – only the courts have been kept in the dark. And if the courts go along with blinding themselves, the government will have been given a license to violate the law and constitution long into the future.
A law professor at Notre Dame leads a lonely campaign to stop the targeted killings in Pakistan and elsewhere, insisting they violate international law.
Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell is a leading critic of the U.S. targeted-killing program against Al Qaeda militants. (Los Angeles Times, Ken Dilanian / October 9, 2012)
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell was in her office last month when Imran Khan, a former cricket star who could be Pakistan’s next prime minister, phoned to ask for help.
Pakistanis are furious about the CIA‘s covert campaign of drone missile strikes, Khan told her. Was she aware that the CIA often doesn’t know who it is killing?
“Yes, of all Americans, I think I have a pretty good handle on the facts,” she replied, recounting the call.
O’Connell, a fierce critic of America’s drone attacks outside a war zone, insists the targeted killings are illegal under international law.
“We wouldn’t accept or want a world in which Russia or China or Iran is claiming authority to kill alleged enemies of the state based on secret evidence of the executive branch alone,” O’Connell said. “And yet that’s the authority we’re asserting.”
O’Connell, 54, has led a lonely campaign to stop the drones since she wrote a paper branding the first CIA drone strike, in 2002, as unlawful. She rejected claims by the George W. Bush administration that the attack, which killed several Al Qaeda militants and a U.S. citizen, was a legitimate act of self-defense in the war on terrorism.
Since then, President Obama has sharply increased drone attacks, and O’Connell has jousted with government officials, debated other academics and outlined her critique in scholarly publications.
“Her views are definitely taken seriously,” said Sean Murphy, a former State Department lawyer who argues the drone strikes are permitted under the law. “She’s on the leading edge of this argument.”
She remains in a small minority of U.S. legal scholars, but her views are gaining currency as targeted killings continue.
A report issued last month by researchers at the law schools of New York University and Stanford University argued that many U.S. drone strikes appear unlawful because they don’t meet the strict legal test for killing outside a war zone — to stop an imminent threat to life when no other means is available.
In June, Christof Heyns, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, told a conference in Geneva that “double tap” drone strikes, in which a second missile is fired at people coming to aid the wounded, could constitute a war crime. Pakistan claims several such attacks have occurred in its tribal areas.
O’Connell and her intellectual allies agree the United States is fighting a lawful war in Afghanistan because it gave shelter to terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001. But they argue that killing militants in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia is not a legitimate part of that conflict, and thus violates laws of war intended to protect noncombatants.
If the U.S. government has a case against an Al Qaeda militant in Yemen or Somalia, they argue, it must try to arrest him and give him a chance to surrender unless lives are in immediate danger.
That view strikes O’Connell’s many critics as a naive reading of international law that fails to account for modern stateless terrorists. But the U.S. government held a similar view until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
U.S. officials criticized Israel for killing Palestinian militants on the West Bank in the 1990s, for example, and CIA officials believed they lacked the authority to kill Osama bin Laden even after he was indicted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment for this article, but he noted that White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan publicly explained the administration’s view on targeted killings in April.
“As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense,” Brennan said.
Under Obama, the United States has launched 284 drone missile strikes in Pakistan and 49 in Yemen, according to independent groups that track reported attacks. That’s up from 46 in Pakistan and one in Yemen under Bush. Strikes have also been reported in Somalia.
So-called high-value targets typically are named on a classified “kill list,” which is reviewed by lawyers from the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies. Many others are killed in “signature strikes” that target unidentified militants based on activities deemed suspicious.
In September, Obama sought to explain who gets targeted and why.
“It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative,” Obama told CNN. “It has to be a situation in which we can’t capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.”
O’Connell and other critics say no evidence suggests that all those killed met Obama’s standard. Drone strikes have killed up to 3,000 people, according to the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington.
O’Connell sees her effort as an exercise in moral suasion, similar to the public outcry that erupted after news reports detailed how the CIA had used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques against several Al Qaeda detainees after Sept. 11.
A trim woman with brown hair, O’Connell isn’t a pacifist. Her husband is a former Army interrogator who served in the first Gulf War. They met while she was working for the Defense Department, teaching soldiers about international law.
O’Connell praises the Navy SEAL mission that killed Bin Laden, and supports using drones to target enemy fighters in Afghanistan. “I do think drones can be a more accurate weapon, and I’m all in favor of saving our troops’ lives,” she said.
Benjamin Wittes, a Brookings Institution fellow who supports the drone strikes, put O’Connell on the defensive in a debate two years ago by challenging her to take her position to its logical conclusion — as he put it, “that President Obama is a serial killer.”
She fumbled her response. But upon reflection, she sees some parallels to the abortion debate. One can believe, as she does strongly, that abortion is deeply immoral, without labeling women who have abortions as murderers.
“I feel the same way about targeted killing,” she said. “I understand that Americans don’t … see it, but we want the practice to end. I don’t think President Obama should go to jail for it.”
[Intro:]
This one is dedicated to the suit-wearing arms dealers
To the champagne-sipping depleted uranium droppers[Hook:]
Keep your hand on your gun
Don’t you trust anyone
Keep your hand on your gun
Don’t you trust anyone
[Verse 1:]
First in my scope is BAE Systems
Specialize in killing people from a distance
Power is a drug and they feed the addiction
Immediate deletion of people’s existence
Who says what is and what isn’t legitimate resistance
To push these buttons you don’t need a brave heart
State of the art darts leave more than your face scarred
You might impress an A&R with your fake bars
Cause you probably think Rolls Royce only make cars
This is for the colonizers turned bomb-providers
Take this beef all the way back to Oppenheimer
They call it warfare but your wars aren’t fair
If they were there’d be suicide bombers in Arms Fairs
On a scam for the funds, they will mangle your son
If you try to speak out they will stamp on your tongue
To your land they will come till you stand up as one
It’s begun
[Hook:]
Keep your hand on your gun
Don’t you trust anyone
Keep your hand on your gun
Don’t you trust anyone
[Verse 2:]
Next in my scope is Lockheed Martin
They will tell you when the bombs need blastin’
Don’t think, just listen to the songs, keep dancin’
Do they really want us to have our own brains
Who do you think is really running Guantanamo Bay
And it might be sensitive but I’ll mention it
Who do you think has got us filling out the censuses
Who do you think is handing out the sentences
This ain’t the BBC so there’s no censorship
Heard of many mercenaries gettin’ with the clever pimp
Not a gun seller but none’s better than Erik Prince
Make money off many things, mainly it’s crime
This one is dedicated to the Raytheon 9
On a scam for the funds, they will mangle your son
If you try to speak out they will stamp on your tongue
To your land they will come till you stand up as one
It’s begun
[Hook:]
Keep your hand on your gun
Don’t you trust anyone
Keep your hand on your gun
Don’t you trust anyone
As we move forward
Anytime you come closer to something
Your vision should get clearer
Am I right?
[K-Rino]
You are a tool and the hidden hand is using you
Please don’t be delusional
The rulers of this world practice confusing me
The people and the Priest and the Imam’s
Have been jammed by government scams
Mind systematically programmed
Blatant black hatred and racism
The way they laced the whole world and nation with traces of Satanism
Misplaces of paganism
The Founding Fathers enslaving
And tensions were no different then Bushes and Reagan’s vision
1776 they took action
This Illuminati took form and was spawn from a Colombian faction
Just flip your one dollar bill over
And if you want me to expose the true code of deception, I will show ya
We live in a designed wicked system
The number 13 is consistent in Masonic symbolism
It represents transformation, 12 completes the cycle
So 13 is rebirth and regeneration
The meanings of this symbol are strategically hid
On the left side you see a 13 layered pyramid
Over that, sits the The All-Seeing Eye where the light shines
A sign of the Devil watching over you at all times
With the words “Annuit cptis”
13 letters meaning “He has favored our undertakings”
Will you accept this?
Or will you learn the science and ignore ’em
Under the pyramid you see “Novus ordo seclorum”
Translated: “New Order of the World, or the New World Order”
Authors and Satanic fathers of mass slaughter
The Eagle that you see on the right
Sits below 13 stars with a shield that has 13 stripes
And an Olive branch in its claws with 13 leaves
Which is suppose to be in its talon to represent peace
But peace was always on a decrease
His other claw holds 13 arrows of war set to be released
And the letters at the bottom of the pyramid are fixed
With the Roman Numerals that equal 1776
The United States of America exists
In a deep devilish abyss with truth and paganism mixed
Every President that ever lived was foul
They gather at Bohemian Grove where they bow down before the Owl
See the Owl is wise and sees through the darkest of night
And there’s a small one on the dollar near the one on the top right
It ain’t hard to understand this government was never for us
The Eagle was based off the Egyptian god Horus
The 13 colonies grew into wicked sovereignty
And made no apology for the obvious idolatry
Subconsciously we follow the ways of the BEAST
And pay homage to pagan gods when we say the days of the week
Like Sunday, they worship the Sun
Monday, is Moon’s Day
Tr the god of war was worshipped on Tuesday
Odin the Chief god is who Wednesday is named for
Thursday is Thor’s Day, god of thunder, the mighty Thor
Friday was named after Frigga notice the pattern
Saturday is the Roman god of agriculture Saturn
Frigga was the goddess of love the wife of Odin
The polytheistic theology needed decoding
The rituals like trips across the sand this man takes
The skull and bones fraternity, the secret handshakes
But understand he receives only 33 degrees
He secretly believes in Lucifer and other deities
Many powerful and rich people are controlled by these
They even hold the soul of several of your favorite emcees
Politicians thinning lies, tongues whittled with thorns
And use hand gestures shaped in the form of Devil horns
You don’t feel the city home cuz you don’t know what it entails
Satan tampers with stem cells and sprays chemtrails
The so-called holidays are hypocrisy
Established to use religious doctrines to commit annual robbery
Christmas split in half is Christ Mas
The so-called birth of Jesus where every home has glowing lights cast
Christ the anointed One, mass the birth celebration
But Jesus’ birth was kept secret due to the situation
The King initiated a death plot
Cuz a Messiah was prophesied to rule so Jesus’ murder was authorized
No one knows the actual date
That’s why sometimes you see ‘Xmas’
X means unknown but ignorance affects us
A fraud that was purposely flawed
December 25th is the birthday of the wicked ruler Nimrod
This whole disguise is part of Satan’s universal wise
A Holy Prophet’s life being pimped and commercialized
Traditions like lights on trees
Rooted in the Nicaea Council in 325 AD by Constantine
These matters would decreed
The concept of a virgin birth was actually conceived and then agreed
With graven images in the temple
The fish on your car is called Oannes, a Babylonian symbol
It’s visibly contradictory, telling your children lies
You need to make them study Santa Clause’s sick history
But yet we go wherever Satan leads us
The falsehoods we practice in his name ain’t got nothing to do with Jesus
Find Out If You Are Doing Things Which Might Be Considered Suspicious
There have been so many anti-terrorism laws passed since 9/11 that it is hard to keep up on what kinds of things might get one on a “list” of suspected bad guys.
We’ve prepared this quick checklist so you can see if you might be doing something which might get hassled.
The following actions may get an American citizen living on U.S. soil labeled as a “suspected terrorist” today:
Bitcoin Gavin Andresen announced today on the Bitcoin Talk forums that he has launched a non-profit, modeled on the Linux Foundation, that will seek to “help people exchange resources and ideas [about Bitcoin] more freely.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the Linux Foundation, it’s a non-profit aimed at promoting the growth and advancement of Linux, an open-source operating system. David Perry, author of Coding in My Sleep, describes the foundation as:
A non-profit entity explicitly designed to help Linux succeed. It does this by acting as a neutral spokesperson, building networks of Linux users and developers, promoting the use of standards to make developers’ lives easier and so on. They also sponsor a number of key developers financially, turning what would otherwise be a hobby into an actual pays-the-bills job, thus allowing the developers to remain independent and work full time on improving Linux.
Mr. Andresen has similar hopes for the Bitcoin Foundation, which will help to standardize and fund Bitcoin infrastructure, keep the currency secure, and work to correct false interpretations and misinformation about Bitcoin. Bitcoin developers and aficionados can pay for membership status, which ranges from a 2.5BTC annual membership (about $30, according to Preev) all the way up to 10,000BTC/year (about $123,000–which, whoa).
“I think Linux is a great ‘role model’ for Bitcoin,” he wrote in the announcement. “It is a very successful open source project that really embraced the notion of ‘open,’ encouraging the use of the core technology for a wide range of applications. I hope that the Bitcoin Foundation will help do the same for Bitcoin.”
Of course, the Linux Foundation is about promoting an operating system that only accounts for 1.55% of the OS market share, whereas the Bitcoin Foundation will work to promote a cryptocurrency sometimes used for blackmarket activity. Bitcoin has seen its own share of PR nightmares in recent months, from an exchange-paralyzing heist to talk of Bitcoin ponzi schemes. Perhaps the Bitcoin Foundation is just what the currency needs to clean up its image.
The Foundation itself even plainly states the need for an organization that can help break Bitcoin out of its cyberdungeon:
As the Bitcoin economy has evolved, we have all noticed barriers to its widespread adoption—botnets that attempt to undermine the network, hackers that threaten wallets, and an undeserved reputation stirred by ignorance and inaccurate reporting.
To us, it became clear that something had to be done. We see this foundation as critical for bringing legitimacy to the Bitcoin currency. Only then can we increase its adoption and positive impact on the world’s finance.
The Bitcoin Foundation has stacked its board with well-known, high-profile people active in the Bitcoin community so that users feel safe donating. Still, as Mr. Perry points out, “according to the dissenting voices, it’s representative only of the ‘big business’ side of Bitcoin, not the actual users.” Indeed, some users have expressed dissent on the boards, but for the most part they seem supportive of a unified effort to legitimize Bitcoin.
Plus, Mr. Andresen stresses that these decisions aren’t set in stone.
“The structure of the Foundation can be changed by a vote of its members,” he wrote, “and exactly what the Foundation does will largely depend on who is willing to step up do the work to make things happen.”
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Neo: The Matrix.
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
Neo:Yes.
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.
This is the official video for Lowkey’s single Tears to Laughter which has been supported by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Viva Palestine and others. The song has been a huge hit amongst supporters of the Palestinian cause and Lowkey has toured extensively through Europe, Israel and Palestine to promote the song and its message.
You can now buy Lowkey’s album Soundtrack To The Struggle on double disc from www.soundtracktothestruggle.com! All profits made from the single are being donated to the DEC Gaza Appeal.
Indefinite detention, targeted killing and warrantless wiretapping are hot issues in the courts this week. Here’s the latest:
INDEFINITE DETENTION // The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 provision that allows the government to indefinitely detain US citizens without charge or trial is once again in effect, after a Second Circuit Court overturned Judge Katherine Forrest’s permanent injunction against Section 1021 (b)(2). The fight over the widely-despised authority appears to be far from over. Read more.
UPDATE: Chris Hedges, one of the plaintiffs in the NDAA indefinite detention lawsuit, spoke with live stream journalist Tim Pool at Occupy Wall Street on Monday, September 17 about his case and the Obama administration’s appeal. Hedges put forward the thesis that the Obama administration may already be holding US citizens without due process — otherwise they wouldn’t have acted so quickly to overturn Forrest’s permanent injunction. The administration doesn’t want to be held in contempt, Hedges said, and so immediately moved to appeal her verdict. Note: This was filmed before the court overturned Forrest’s injunction, so it’s obsolete in that sense.
Watch:
TARGETED KILLING // Can the federal government talk publicly about its targeted killing drone program on television, in interviews with journalists, and before audiences of hundreds, and then turn around and deny the existence of the program in court to ensure that the public remains in the dark about its legal justifications for pursuing it? The ACLU says ‘no’:
The American Civil Liberties Union will be in federal appeals court Thursday to argue that the CIA cannot deny the existence of the government’s targeted killing program and refuse to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about the program while officials continue to make public statements about it.
The ACLU’s FOIA request, filed in January 2010, seeks to learn when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how the U.S. ensures compliance with international laws relating to extrajudicial killings.
“The notion that the CIA’s targeted killing program is a secret is nothing short of absurd,” said ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer, who will argue the case before a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Appeals Court. “For more than two years, senior officials have been making claims about the program both on the record and off. They’ve claimed that the program is effective, lawful and closely supervised. If they can make these claims, there is no reason why they should not be required to respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.”
WARRANTLESS SPYING // A 2005 class action lawsuit brought by AT&T customers who say the NSA illegally spied on their communications is slowly winding itself through the court system. In 2008, Congress immunized AT&T and other telecoms from lawsuits related to companies turning over customer information to the NSA, but the government still faces a number of challenges to the warrantless spying program, among them the AT&T class action suit. A judge first threw the case out in 2010, claiming that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to bring the lawsuit because they couldn’t prove they were spied on. Another court reversed that decision a year later, instructing the court to look at whether the state secrets privilege bars the court from considering the case at all — regardless of whether there’s evidence of spying or not. As a result, the main plaintiff in the case, Carolyn Jewel, filed for summary judgment in July, providing the court with testimony from NSA whistleblowers and former AT&T employees to prove the existence of vacuum style, dragnet surveillance. The NSA makes some contradictory and utterly confusing arguments about why the plaintiffs shouldn’t have a right to challenge its spying programs. From Courthouse News:
The government has amply demonstrated in the DNI and NSA public and classified declarations that disclosure of the privileged information reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security,” a 48-page memorandum states. “The disclosure of information concerning whether plaintiffs have been subject to alleged NSA intelligence activity would necessarily reveal NSA intelligence sources and methods, including whether certain intelligence collection activities existed and the nature of any such activity. The disclosure of whether specific individuals were targets of alleged NSA activities would also reveal who is subject to investigative interest – helping that person to evade surveillance – or who is not – thereby revealing the scope of intelligence activities as well as the existence of secure channels for communication.
But those statements thoroughly contradict something else the government says:
The DNI explains that, as the government has previously indicated, the NSA’s collection of content of communications under the now inoperative TSP was directed at international communications in which a participant is reasonably believed to be associated with al Qaeda or an affiliate terrorist organization, and thus plaintiffs’ allegation that the NSA has indiscriminately collected the content of millions of communications sent or received by people inside the United States after 9/11 under the TSP is false.
The national security establishment first tells the public that it cannot disclose who is and who is not a target of its surveillance programs because doing so would tip off the bad guys, and then goes on to say that the program “was directed at…al Qaeda[.]” In other words, the government will readily admit that al Qaeda and “affiliate terrorist organization[s]” are targets of its surveillance programs, but it can’t acknowledge whether or not non-terrorist US citizens are also targets of that program because disclosure of whether non-terrorist US citizens are being spied on without constitutional protections would “cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.” As BoingBoing observed: the NSA says it can’t tell us if it is spying on us because “REASONS.”
WARRANTLESS SPYING // The ACLU has its own warrantless wiretapping lawsuit in the works to challenge the constitutionality of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, and the government has thrown up similar roadblocks to prevent the case from being heard on the merits. Here’s the ACLU answer to the government’s claims that our clients — journalists, human rights workers and academics — don’t have a right to bring the lawsuit:
The government’s insistence that plaintiffs cannot establish standing without proving the certainty of surveillance is at bottom not a standing argument but a bid for a kind of immunity. This is because its proposed standard is one that neither plaintiffs nor anyone else will ever be able to meet—not because the surveillance they fear will never take place but because they will be unaware of it when it does…
The government theory of standing would render real injuries nonjusticiable and insulate the government’s surveillance activities from meaningful judicial review.
…
More than forty years ago, when surveillance technology was comparatively primitive, this Court recognized that “few threats to liberty exist which are greater than that posed by the use of eavesdropping devices” … and it cautioned that the threat to core democratic rights was especially pronounced where surveillance authority was exercised in the service of national security…. To accept the government’s theory of standing would be to accept that the courts are powerless to address the threat presented by surveillance authorities exercised in secret, and powerless to protect Americans’ most fundamental rights against the encroachment of increasingly sophisticated and intrusive forms of government power.
Read more about the ACLU’s challenge, which will go before the Supreme Court in late October to decide the standing issue once and for all. Just last week the House passed a reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act, which would extend the law through December 31, 2017. Read the brief in the ACLU’s challenge, Clapper v. Amnesty, et al., here.
Newly released internal emails from the U.S. private security firm Stratfor state that in 2007 the Bush Administration and CIA ordered the Drug Enforcement Agency to back off a major drug trafficking investigation of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s half brother.
Ahmed Wali Karzai was an influential power broker in Afghanistan before he was assassinated in July 2011.
The brother of President Karzai of Afghanistan is under investigation by DEA as a major narcotics trafficker. For political reasons, DEA has beentold to backoff [sic] by the White House and CIA.DEA is seeing a direct nexus between terrorism and narcotics in Afghanistan with narcotics sales being used to fund jihadist operations.
After a Stratfor analyst asks “how close is karzai to this brother?” Burton replies:
Was described to me as close. Karzai will end up being another Noreiga.
Off the record — DEA will proceed and take ’em (both?) down anyway, once this White House disappears.
As I’ve said before, every country we have touched, turns to shit.
WikiLeaks has published 2,694 out of what it says is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails (dated between July 2004 and December 2011) obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas.
UPDATE: As redditor WhoShotJR notes, current and former American officials told the New York Times in 2009 that Ahmed Karzai received regular payments from the CIA since 2001.
It is hard for me to express how much I appreciate your letter, which is the first I have received here, along with the support I’ve reportedly gotten from others so far. Before I forget, let me request that you also send a tweet of support to Jenna, @ElviraXMontana on Twitter; as my girlfriend, she had to watch as the FBI crushed my ribs (which I believe will be healed in time even if I’ve had trouble acquiring medical attention due to me under Geneva; put in formal request for X-ray last night here at Mansfield, whereas last week at Lew Sterrett I was sent to medic by an officer Tamer before being instead re-directed to what is intended as a temporary holding cell for those about to be released on bond, this change of plan being instigated by an officer Roeun (sic?) whom I have since reported to the proper authorities. Despite my having explained her mistake politely twice over the course of the next seven hours, and despite my condition having been serious enough to have prompted other inmates to suggest I check for internal bleeding, I was screamed at and then later simply ordered to lay down, all of which was witnessed by two other inmates, one of whom promised to inform Tim Rogers of D Magazine that I was potentially dying and needed intervention ASAP as soon as he himself was released a few minutes hence (again, this was the temporary outgoing holding cell, not meant for housing inmates for anything longer than an hour or so as their bond is processed; as such, I was not fed, either, much less given my medication, suboxone. Note that none of the treatment I received at Lou Sterrit had anything to do with who I am or what I am accused of, – it is simply the natural result of the inhumane and degenerate mentality found within the Texas “corrections” system, something I first described in a 2005 article for Towards Freedom. It is something we will have to address more firmly over the coming years, just as we have addressed North Africa and the intelligence contracting industry since late 2010. And I note all of this not merely to complain—although to complain is among the few vices I have been left aside from bragging to my fellow inmates – but to illustrate the fundamental problem that so many of us have sacrificed or risked to combat. This problem, which even Richard Nixon recognized and spoke about on that famed evening at the Lincoln Memorial, is that a republic built with the blood of giants has since become a “wild animal.” – one that now feeds upon us all.
I try to avoid metaphors, which can illuminate but in practice are too often used to obscure. Like many aspects of language, the false metaphor kills and enslaves. And at any rate, there will be time to discuss these broader issues later. For now, I must ask you to publish this on pastebin, Anonpaste, piratepad.de, and all other available venues, and that you also send it to some of the journalists that have been kind enough to follow my work as well as the consequences thereof, particularly my friend Michael Hastings, Barry Eisler, Michael Riley (Bloomberg), Ryan Gallagher (Guardian), and Josh at Daily Caller (forgot his last name) – plus the former editor of The Yemen Times who’s now at Global Times or some such and who, along with a certain Washington Times correspondent known to Gregg Housh, plus one or two others that I know of, who are now looking into Romas/COIN due in part to my release of the NYT e-mails earlier this month. Along with others in both the mainstream and independent media, these are most likely to report accurately on this matter. Having been mischaracterized at least a hundred times by “professional” journalists since I first appeared on Fox News in January 2009 to denounce Obama’s association with the goofy fascist Rick Warren – and was introduced as being spokesman for the non-existent “American Atheist Society” rather than GAMPAC. This would be a good time to note, particularly for the benefit of certain journalists, that I am not and never have been the spokesman for Anonymous, nor its “public face” or, worse, “self-proclaimed” “face” or “spokesperson” or “leader” (as the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe called me last year when I felt compelled to “quit” the non-group that I’d never technically joined in the first place, but rather gradually attached myself to as Wikileaks and Tunisia went down in December of 2010). Anyone who cares to learn what happens to a person who decides to help deal with such issues at the request and with the knowledge of active Anons can search my name in conjunction with those terms, and then see the article “Barrett Brown is Anonymous” from April 2011 in which I explain clearly, as I have countless times since, that no one has the authority to designate me as such. It is known to some of those who worked out of Anonops or were otherwise particularly active in the beginning of 2011 that I wrote or edited a number of the press releases of that time, and that the al-Jazeera article written in the first few days of January and which appeared later that month under the title “Anonymous and the Global Correction” was also my work – something I revealed privately to the brilliant cyberpunk essayist Bruce Sterling after he openly speculated as to the author’s background in Wired, noting the sentiments to be that of a true revolutionary. Among those who now agree with him are the FBI, which has since responded accordingly – and unethically.
Contrary to the countless claims to the effect that I hold some official role in Anonymous, I can think of only one occasion in which any Anon has come close to actually deeming me as such, that being the day on which HBGary was hacked in retaliation for HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Baar’s claim – shown to be entirely false – that he had identified Anon’s “lieutenants” and “co-founder” and that he had been contacted by the FBI about this. In fact, he had conflated three different people including a professional gardener and, as shown in the notes Anon released along with the e-mails taken from HBGary Federal, had made a huge number of additional mistakes – something since confirmed by everyone concerned including Barr himself. (That the Financial Times writer who had bought Barr’s self-promotion would again essay to write about Anonymous months later, this time taking the claims of a Dutch kid at face value in the course of “reporting” various negative things about how the movement operates, is only one of numerous bizarre and depressing twists to this story; I myself would later encounter him on Canada television as a panelist during a discussion in which he accused Anon of being particularly anti-“American interest”, to which I responded that it is difficult to avoid stepping on the empire’s toes when one assists North Africans in fighting off dictatorships that the US has supported for years.) (Oh snap!) On that day, as recorded on pastebin from the discussion on the #OPHBGary channel at Anonops, I was referred to in passing as “our public face” to a journalist. I was on the phone to HBGary President Penny Hoglund at the time, apologizing that HBGary’s e-mails had been seized by Sabu in addition to HBGary Federal’s, instructing her on how to get on IRC in order to make her case directly to the hackers, and promising to remove the link I had put up to the 70,000 e-mails acquired in the operation, a link I had placed upon a Daily Kos post put up to explain the situation to the great many who would miss the “makeover” done to HBGary.com. Had I known that Penny was lying to me about what she and husband Greg Hoglund had known about Barr’s irresponsible attempt to save his own career at the expense of the innocent and heroic alike, I would have simply hung up. Instead, I was polite – but I recorded the call, just as I recorded the next call with Barr, the next call with HBGary exec Jim Butterworth, and finally the drunken call I received months later from Greg Hoglund himself. “Trust but verify,” as Reagan said in the context of a different set of villains.
With the exception of the ten minute convo I released between myself and Aaron Barr, all of the other recordings – and plenty of others – are in the possession of the FBI, which raided my apartment as well as my mother’s home on March 6th. For more on those events, as well as the criminal conspiracy to which I have been subjected by elements of the FBI, HBGary, and paid informant/contractor Jennifer Emick (among other parties both known and undiscovered), please see the last 3 videos I uploaded to my YouTube account, as well as documents I linked to on my Twitter account @BarrettBrownLOL in the final days before my most recent (and dramatic!) arrest. Not everything is released; I was interrupted by armed, mediocre federal agents and DPD officers (“No complicity in assassination of a chief executive since 1963!”) before I could finish making my case, which was to be done over several days before the entirety would be sent to the FBI and the judge who signed my March search warrant. This was to be followed by the instigation of a civil suit against HBGary and other parties to be named in the next 2 months. My plan has been disrupted – plans often are, as history tells us – but it has not been rendered obsolete. It will evolve, just as ProjectPM itself has evolved steadily since 2009, when this war became evident to me, when I first realized that my future as a political satirist would have to be abandoned in favor of this dirty, grueling struggle.
But why was I arrested this time? I would love to tell you. But the prosecution wouldn’t like that. I, and everyone else in the court room, were ordered to refrain from discussing the complaint, affidavits, and warrant, all of which are sealed at the request of the author, one FBI special agent whom I shall not name lest I give him cause for fright (or pretend fright – I am allegedly a danger to one especially skittish special agent whom I shall be careful not to name again until such time as I am prepared to list him in the civil suit I’ve been preparing for weeks now). Frankly, I do not blame this other special agent for requesting that the document be sealed – if I had written something of such low quality and demonstrable untruth, I would burn it and ask forgiveness of every deity invented by man and the higher apes/dolphins/whales. Likewise, if I were the US attorney who signed the Motion for Detention dated September 13 2012 – the document that, after having been approved by Judge Paul D. Stickney, ensured I would not only be prevented from discussing what I’m being accused of but also made a prisoner of the state until such time as a trial or some such can be concocted out of the jurisprudential magick I struggle to follow, in my innocence. Apparently I am not just a danger to the fragile FBI agents who have taken to threatening my mother and fracturing my ribs in the course of heavily-armed raids on my uptown Dallas apartment, but must be prevented from explaining to my associates, followers, and even enemies why I have again been subjected to violence and indignity.
I explained the first raid against me (March 6th, 6:30 a.m. CST) and the second against my mother (about six hours later) in several pastebin messages at that time. It was not until 2 months ago that I learned how a judge had been tricked into permitting this raid on me – how the disgraced contracting firm HBGary hired the paid FBI informant Jennifer Emick to, in their words, “find something to get [me] picked up on,” even as this bizarre former Anon made public accusations against me under both her real name and her adopted contractor persona: “FakeGreggHoush” on Twitter (now “AsherahResearch”) and Asherah on IRC – particularly the 2600 server where she frequented the #jester channel alongside various ex-military men and current “security’ contractors who all found themselves inclined to associate with the admitted criminal hacker th3J35T3R, one of several parties who have taken credit for DoS attacks on Wikileaks. I should not have to remind anyone that 40 U.S. homes were raided in January 2011 due to a similar but less effective series of DDoS attacks on Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Amazon which were clearly an act of protest against an unprecedented economic blockade ordered by the U.S. regime. 14 of the “criminals” in question are being charged such that they face up to 15 years in prison. Thanks largely to Jay Leiderman the California attorney and John Penley the NYC activist and veteran, many of them are being represented for free. Likewise, I will seek and accept only pro bono assistance from this point on, though with the stipulation that I will pay any such lawyers what I can from the defense funds that have been set up for me thus far by well-wishers. As of this writing I dismiss Tom Mills, whom I retained for $3,500 after receiving bad advice from a well-meaning person. I will also expect that money returned within 60 days of the publication of this missive online (ProjectPM participants, please ensure that he receives this message, which I have also delivered through my mother – whom he falsely claimed to be representing on the matter of the FBI threats against her despite having been paid by me, not her). And as I had noted both publicly and privately earlier this month, I am still seeking additional attorneys with skill in civil litigation to pursue at least two suits I’ll be filing by the end of the year. Those interested may write to me at my new home, Some Jail in Texas. I am able to arrange for phone conversations with any applicants (or anyone else who is either especially interesting or who is able to accept a collect call or contribute $5 to my commissary/phone fund, that being the cost of a 15-minute call instigated by me). Anyone who writes me without us having been formerly introduced, I will guarantee a response if you send self-addressed stamped envelope. Also I believe that only mail with a return address will be delivered to me, though I’m not sure.
I hate that I have spent so much time in conflict over the past two years, and that so much of this has involved my fellow American citizens rather than the Middle Eastern dictators that I got involved in this to combat. I feel sorrow at the lost opportunities, and as for the way it has changed me as a person… I like to think that I am wiser and less naïve than I was, but I know too well how foolish and unsophisticated I was to begin with. I cannot excuse the mistakes I myself have made on both the strategic and tactical levels in my short career. I shudder when I look back on some of the things I wrote or said when I got my first real taste of power at the dawn of 2011, and I continue to bring shame upon myself and upon my family and work by some of the things I say even lately. In particular I have made comments about the U.S. military that I do not mean and which are obviously not entirely accurate. Along with other nonsense I have said, felt, written throughout my life, many of these things originate from my own fears and weaknesses. I am humiliated at not being able to protect my own mother from the FBI, or to shield my own girlfriend from watching heavily-armed men step on my spine as I scream in pain. I cannot forget how my mom cried on March 6th after the FBI had left with my equipment and hers, and how she whispered through tears that she wanted to be able to protect me from prison but couldn’t; I will never forget the look on Jenna’s face as the federal thugs swept through my efficiency apartment with guns drawn and safeties off, in search of hidden assailants and non-existent weapons. That these things are unjust and increasingly insane does not change the fact that they are the result of my own behavior, my own miscalculations, my own choices.
Having said that, I regret nothing. For the last week I was denied opiates and thus forced to feel not just rage, hatred, all the primal things, but forced to endure them while sicker than most humans can imagine and in a jail that is overcrowded and filled with common criminals. I have gained something extraordinary in that process, which ended this morning when I was given the first of 30 days of suboxone. I will personally thank everyone on the outside who has helped me and this movement particularly at this critical time, when I have regained the freedom that I did nothing to lose. For now, and until that time, it is war, on paper as always, but war.
Barrett Brown Founder ProjectPM Prisoner #35047177 Mansfield Law Enforcement Center 1601 Heritage Parkway Mansfield, TX 76063
Postscript-
[redacted], if you are able to relay this message to the Anons, my ProjectPM people, journalists, etc, you will have done me a finer deed than most men ever have occasion to do for another. I am transmitting a copy of this to another individual to ensure that the FBI does not manage to silence me on this (incidentally, the local jail here in Mansfield has proven to be run by honorable, trustworthy, even friendly people, but it is nonetheless subject to the Yankee boot (no offense)). Tell journalists, etc that they may contact [redacted]. My future and that of ProjectPM depends on you and a handful of others. Thank you for your loyalty at this time. Finally, please include this PS when forwarding and ask people to see my original search warrant as published on Buzzfeed a few months back. Echelon2.org is part of the key to this affair, but not all. More to be revealed when all is prepared. Good luck to you.
Obama lawyers file a breathless, angry appeal against the court ruling that invalidated the NDAA’s chilling 2011 detention law
Bagram airbase was used by the US to detain its ‘high-value’ targets during the ‘war on terror’ and is still Afghanistan’s main military prison. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP
In May, something extremely rare happened: a federal court applied the US constitution to impose some limits on the powers of the president. That happened when federal district court judge Katherine Forrest of the southern district of New York, an Obama appointee, preliminarily barred enforcement of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the statute enacted by Congress in December 2011 with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by President Obama (after he had threatened to veto it).
That 2011 law expressly grants the president the power to indefinitely detain in military custody not only accused terrorists, but also their supporters, all without charges or trial. It does so by empowering the president to indefinitely detain not only al-Qaida members, but also members of so-called “associated forces”, as well as anyone found to “substantially support” such forces – whatever those terms might mean. I wrote about that decision and the background to this case when it was issued.
What made Judge Forrest’s ruling particularly remarkable is that the lawsuit was brought by eight journalists and activists, such as former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who argued that their work, which involves interactions with accused terrorists, could subject them to indefinite detention under the law’s broad and vague authority, even for US citizens on US soil. The court agreed, noting that the plaintiffs presented “evidence of concrete – non-hypothetical – ways in which the presence of the legislation has already impacted those expressive and associational activities”. The court was particularly disturbed by the Obama DOJ’s adamant refusal to say, in response to being asked multiple times, that the law could not be used to indefinitely detain the plaintiffs due to their journalistic and political activities.
Last week, Judge Forrest made her preliminary ruling permanent, issuing a 112-page decision explaining it. Noting that the plaintiffs “testified credibly to having an actual and reasonable fear that their activities will subject them to indefinite military detention”, she emphasized how dangerous this new law is given the extremely broad discretion it vests in the president to order people detained in military custody with no charges:
The court also brushed aside the Obama DOJ’s prime argument, echoing the theories of John Yoo: namely, that courts have no business “interfering” in the president’s conduct of war. After acknowledging that the president is entitled to deference in the national security realm, Judge Forrest dispensed with the Obama DOJ’s claim with this vital observation: one that should be unnecessary but, in the 9/11 era, is all too commonly ignored:
In other words: while the president is entitled to deference in his conduct of war, he’s not entitled to wield the power to order people, including American citizens, indefinitely imprisoned in military detention. Regardless of how he claims he intends to exercise this power, the mere act of vesting it in him so chills the exercise of first amendment and other protected rights that the constitution can have no meaning if courts permit it to stand.
In response to this ruling, the Obama administration not only filed an immediate appeal, but they filed an emergency motion asking the appeals court to lift the injunction pending the appeal. Obama lawyers wrote a breathless attack on the court’s ruling, denouncing it as “vastly troubling” and claiming that it “threatens tangible and dangerous consequences in the conduct of an active military conflict” and “threatens irreparable harm to national security”.
The Obama DOJ also objected that the decision “was entered against the president as commander-in-chief in his conduct of ongoing military operations, is unprecedented and exceeded the court’s authority”: how irreverent. And they argued that the broad detention power claimed by President Obama “has been endorsed by two presidents [meaning him and George W Bush], by the [rightwing] DC circuit in habeas litigation brought by Guantánamo detainees, and by the Congress in Section 1021(b)(2).”
I’ve written at length before about why indefinite detention is so dangerous, and why a statute such as the NDAA – which purposely (as the court here found) leaves open the question of whether it applies to US citizens – is one of the most pernicious laws enacted in some time. I won’t rehash that here, but I do want to make two points about the Obama administration’s new fight in defense of this law.
First, the Obama administration’s unhinged claim that Judge Forrest’s ruling imperils national security gives the lie to the central excuse for the NDAA: namely, that it does not expand the president’s detention powers beyond what is already vested by the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). Judge Forrest’s ruling leaves the 2001 AUMF in place and did not purport to nullify any prior decisions applying it. Therefore, if the NDAA does nothing that the 2001 AUMF did not already do – as Obama defenders relentlessly claimed to justify his signing of this odious bill – then it cannot possibly be the case that Judge Forrest’s ruling harms national security, since Obama already has all the detention power he claims he needs under the 2001 AUMF.
The reality is that the NDAA did indeed wildly expand the president’s detention powers beyond what the 2001 AUMF provided. In contrast to the 2001 AUMF – which empowered the president to act against a relatively narrow category: those “he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons” – the NDAA empowers him to act against a much broader range of people: not only those who perpetrated 9/11, but also “associated forces”, and not only those who are members of such groups, but those who “substantially support” them.
While the Bush and Obama DOJs have long absurdly interpreted the 2001 AUMF to apply to this broader range, and while some courts have accepted that interpretation, the law itself vested no such power. The NDAA did. That is why civil liberties groups such as the ACLU denounced Obama’s signing of it so vociferously, and it is why the Obama DOJ is so horrified, obviously, by the prospect that it will be invalidated: precisely because it so drastically expands their detention power. Both the court’s ruling and the Obama DOJ’s reaction to that ruling prove that the NDAA does indeed provide the president with significantly enhanced authority of indefinite detention.
Second, to see the sorry and wretched state of liberties in the US under President Obama, let us look to Afghanistan. The US is currently attempting to turn over to the Afghan government control of the lawless prison system the US has long maintained in Bagram and other parts of that country. But that effort is running into a serious problem: namely, the US wants the prisoners to remain there in cages without charges, but the Afghans are insisting that indefinite detention violates their belief in due process. From an Associated Press article Monday headlined “Afghans reject US-favored administrative detention”:
“An Afghan judicial panel ruled Monday that administrative detention violates Afghan law, potentially thwarting a US plan to hand over Afghan detainees that American officials believe should continue to be held without a trial.
“President Hamid Karzai’s office announced in a statement that a top-level judicial panel met earlier in the day and decided that the detention of Afghan citizens without a court trial ‘has not been foreseen in Afghan laws’ and therefore could not be used.
“The US government has long held Afghans captured in operations inside the country without trial, arguing that they are enemy combatants and therefore can be detained for as long as their release might pose a danger to the international coalition …
“A US official confirmed that the transfer of detainees had paused because of the dispute.”
Is that not amazing? On the very same day that the Obama DOJ fights vigorously in US courts for the right to imprison people without charges, the Afghan government fights just as vigorously for basic due process.
Remember: the US, we’re frequently told, is in Afghanistan to bring democracy to the Afghan people and to teach them about freedom. But the Afghan government is refusing the US demand to imprison people without charges on the ground that such lawless detention violates their conceptions of basic freedom. Maybe Afghanistan should invade the US in order to teach Americans about freedom.
This is not the first time this has happened. In 2009, the Obama administration decided that it wanted to target certain Afghan citizens for due process-free assassinations on the ground that the targets to be executed were drug “kingpins”. They were to be killed based solely on US accusations, with no trial, just as the Obama administration does with its own citizens. But again, that plan ran into a roadblock: Afghan leaders were horrified by the notion that their citizens would be extrajudicially executed based on unproven suspicions [my emphasis]:
“A US military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops.
“The US military and Nato officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of Nato’s new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban …
“General Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts, praised US and British special forces for their help recently in destroying drug labs and stashes of opium. But he said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial.
“‘They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes,’ Daud said. ‘We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own’ …
“There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty,” [former Afghan interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali] said. “If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?”
In other words, the Obama administration has received far more resistance to its due process-free imprisonments and assassinations from Afghans than it has from its own citizens in the US. If only more Americans, including progressives, were willing to point out the most basic truths in response to these Obama power seizures, such as: “If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?”
Instead, many Americans, particularly in the age of Obama, are content to assume that anyone whom the US government accuses of being a terrorist should, for that reason alone, be assumed to be guilty, and as a result, any punishment the president decides to dole out – indefinite imprisonment, summary execution – is warranted and just; no bothersome, obsolete procedures such as “trials” or “indictments” are necessary.
It is that mindset that will ensure that Obama’s vigorous fight to preserve the power of indefinite detention will provoke so little objection: among Americans, that is – though obviously not among Afghans, who seem to have an actual understanding of, and appreciation for, the value of due process.
Smartphones can be a cop’s best friend. They are packed with private information like emails, text messages, photos, and calling history. Unsurprisingly, law enforcement agencies now routinely seize and search phones. This occurs at traffic stops, during raids of a target’s home or office, and during interrogations and stops at the U.S. border. These searches are frequently conducted without any court order.
Several courts around the country have blessed such searches, and so as a practical matter, if the police seize your phone, there isn’t much you can do after the fact to keep your data out of their hands.
However, just because the courts have permitted law enforcement agencies to search seized smartphones, doesn’t mean that you—the person whose data is sitting on that device—have any obligation to make it easy for them.
Screen unlock patterns are not your friend
The Android mobile operating system includes the capability to lock the screen of the device when it isn’t being used. Android supports three unlock authentication methods: a visual pattern, a numeric PIN, and an alphanumeric password.
The pattern-based screen unlock is probably good enough to keep a sibling or inquisitive spouse out of your phone (providing they haven’t seen you enter the pattern, and there isn’t a smudge trail from a previous unlock that has been left behind). However, the pattern-based unlock method is by no means sufficient to stop law enforcement agencies.
After five incorrect attempts to enter the screen unlock pattern, Android will reveal a “forgot pattern?” button, which provides the user with an alternate way method of gaining access: By entering the Google account email address and password that is already associated with the device (for email and the App Market, for example). After the user has incorrectly attempted to unlock the screen unlock pattern 20 times, the device will lock itself until the user enters a correct username/password.
What this means is that if provided a valid username/password pair by Google, law enforcement agencies can gain access to an Android device that is protected with a screen unlock pattern. As I understand it, this assistance takes the form of two password changes: one to a new password that Google shares with law enforcement, followed by another that Google does not share with the police. This second password change takes place sometime after law enforcement agents have bypassed the screen unlock, which prevents the government from having ongoing access to new email messages and other Google account-protected content that would otherwise automatically sync to the device.
Anticipatory warrants
As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google was served with a search warrant earlier this year compelling the company to assist agents from the FBI in unlocking an Android phone seized from a pimp. According to the Journal, Google refused to comply with the warrant. The Journal did not reveal why Google refused, merely that the warrant had been filed with the court with a handwritten note by a FBI agent stating, “no property was obtained as Google Legal refused to provide the requested information.”
It is my understanding, based on discussions with individuals who are familiar with Google’s law enforcement procedures, that the company will provide assistance to law enforcement agencies seeking to bypass screen unlock patterns, provided that the cops get the right kind of court order. The company insists on an anticipatory warrant, which the Supreme Court has defined as “a warrant based upon an affidavit showing probable cause that at some future time, but not presently, certain evidence of crime will be located at a specific place.”
Although a regular search warrant might be sufficient to authorize the police to search a laptop or other computer, the always-connected nature of smartphones means that they will continue to receive new email messages and other communications after they have been seized and searched by the police. It is my understanding that Google insists on an anticipatory warrant in order to cover emails or other communications that might sync during the period between when the phone is unlocked by the police and the completion of the imaging process (which is when the police copy all of the data off of the phone onto another storage medium).
Presumably, had the FBI obtained an anticipatory warrant in the case that the Wall Street Journal wrote about, the company would have assisted the government in its attempts to unlock the target’s phone.
Praise for Google
The fact that Google can, in some circumstances, provide the government access to data on a locked Android phone should not be taken as evidence that Google is designing government backdoors into its software. If anything, it is a solid example of the fact that when presented with a choice between usability and security, most large companies offering services to the general public tend to lean towards usability (for example, Apple and Dropbox can provide law enforcement agencies access to users’ data stored with their respective cloud storage services).
The existence of the screen unlock pattern bypass is likely there because a large number of consumers forget their screen unlock patterns. Many of those users are probably glad that Google lets them restore access to their device (and any data on it), rather than forcing them to perform a factory reset whenever they forget their password.
However, as soon as Google provides a feature to consumers to restore access to their locked devices, the company can be forced to provide law enforcement agencies access to that same functionality. As the old saying goes, “If you build it, they will come.”
In spite of the fact that Google has prioritized usability over security, Google’s legal team has clearly put their customers’ privacy first.
First, the company has insisted on a stricter form of court order than a plain-vanilla search warrant, and then refused to provide assistance to law enforcement agencies that seek assistance without the right kind of order.
Second, by providing the government access to the Android device via a (temporary) change to the users’ Gmail password, Google has ensured that the target of the surveillance receives an automatic email notice that their password has been changed. Although the email they receive won’t make it explicit that the government has been granted access to their mobile device, it will still serve as a hint to the target that something fishy has happened.
Third, by changing the user’s password a second time, Google has prevented the government from having ongoing, real-time access to the surveillance target’s emails. There is, I believe, no law requiring Google to take this last step—Google has done it to protect the privacy of the user, and to deny the government what would otherwise be an indefinite email wiretap not approved by the courts.
For real protection you need full-disk encryption
Of the three screen lock methods available on Android (pattern, PIN, password), Google only offers a username/password based bypass for the pattern lock. If you’d rather that the police not be able to gain access to your device this way (and are comfortable with the risk of losing your data if you are locked out of your phone), I recommend not using a pattern-based screen lock, and instead using a PIN or password.
However, it’s important to understand that while locking the screen of your device with a PIN or password is a good first step towards security, it is not sufficient to protect your data. Commercially available forensic analysis tools can be used to directly copy all data off of a device and onto external media. To prevent against such forensic imaging, it is important to encrypt data stored on a device.
Since version 3.0 (Honeycomb) of the OS, Android has included support for full disk encryption, but it is not enabled by default. If you want to keep your data safe, enabling this feature is a must.
Unfortunately, Android currently uses the same PIN or password for both the screen unlock and to decrypt the disk. This design decision makes it extremely likely that users will pick a short PIN or password, since they will probably have to enter their screen unlock dozens of time each day. Entering a 16-character password before making a phone call or obtaining GPS directions is too great of a usability burden to place on most users.
Using a shorter letter/number PIN or password might be good enough for a screen unlock, but disk encryption passwords must be much, much longer to be able to withstand brute force attacks. Case in point: A tool released at the Defcon hacker conference this summer can crack the disk encryption of Android devices that are protected with 4-6 digit numeric PINs in a matter of seconds.
Hopefully, Google’s engineers will at some point add new functionality to Android to let you use a different PIN/password for the screen unlock and full disk encryption. In the meantime, users who have rooted their device can download a third-party app that will allow you to choose a different (and hopefully much longer) password for disk encryption.
What about Apple?
The recent Wall Street Journal story on Google also raises important questions about the phone unlocking assistance Apple can provide to law enforcement agencies. An Apple spokesperson told the Journal that the company “won’t release any personal information without a search warrant, and we never share anyone’s passcode. If a court orders us to retrieve data from an iPhone, we do it ourselves. We never let anyone else unlock a customer’s iPhone.”
The quote from Apple’s spokesperson confirms what others have hinted at for some time: that the company will unlock phones and extract data from them for the police. For example, an anonymous law enforcement source told CNET earlier this year that Apple has for at least three years helped police to bypass the lock code on iPhones seized during criminal investigations.
Unfortunately, we do not know the technical specifics of how Apple retrieves data from locked iPhones. It isn’t clear if they are brute-forcing short numeric lock codes, or if there exists a backdoor in iOS that the company can use to bypass the encryption. Until more is known, the only useful advice I can offer is to disable the “Simple Passcode” feature in iOS and instead use a long, alpha-numeric passcode.
By Chris Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:48am
Former CIA agent John Kiriakou pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to crimes related to blowing the whistle on the US government’s torture of suspected terrorists and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.
The court also brushed aside the Obama DOJ’s prime argument, echoing the 
In other words: while the president is entitled to deference in his conduct of war, he’s not entitled to wield the power to order people, including American citizens, indefinitely imprisoned in military detention. Regardless of how he claims he intends to exercise this power, the mere act of vesting it in him so chills the exercise of first amendment and other protected rights that the constitution can have no meaning if courts permit it to stand.
