NSA Blows Its Own Top Secret Program in Order to Propagandize

By Glenn Greenwald

Over the last 40 years, the U.S. government has relied on extreme fear-mongering to demonize transparency.

In sum, every time an unwanted whistleblower steps forward, we are treated to the same messaging: You’re all going to die because of these leakers and the journalists who publish their disclosures! Lest you think that’s hyperbole, consider this headline from last week based on an interview with outgoing NSA chief Keith Alexander.

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Chris Hedges | Fighting the Militarized State

The Barack Obama administration, determined to thwart the attempt by other plaintiffs and myself to have the courts void a law that permits the military to arrest U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and indefinitely detain them, has filed a detailed brief with the Supreme Court asking the justices to refuse to accept our petition to hear our appeal. We will respond within 10 days.

“The administration’s unstated goal appears to be to get court to agree that [the administration] has the authority to use the military to detain U.S. citizens,” Bruce Afran, one of two attorneys handling the case, said when I spoke with him Sunday. “It appears to be asking the court to go against nearly 150 years of repeated decisions in which the court has refused to give the military such power.

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Report: Obama Admin Released Tens of Thousands of Illegal Immigrant Criminals

The report, provided to Breitbart News ahead of its late Sunday evening release, reviews internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) metrics to conclude that the Obama administration released 35 percent—or 68,000—convicted criminal aliens back into the U.S. general population when they could have been deported. “The criminal alien releases typically occur without formal notice to local law enforcement agencies and victims,” CIS’s Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author, added.

By “criminal,” ICE means people who have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony that is not a traffic violation. For instance, traffic violations like Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol or even vehicular manslaughter do not count toward this description of “criminal alien.”

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Exclusive - NSA infiltrated RSA security more deeply than thought: Study

(Reuters) - Security industry pioneer RSA adopted not just one but two encryption tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agency's ability to eavesdrop on some Internet communications, according to a team of academic researchers.

Reuters reported in December that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to make a now-discredited cryptography system the default in software used by a wide range of Internet and computer security programs. The system, called Dual Elliptic Curve, was a random number generator, but it had a deliberate flaw - or "back door" - that allowed the NSA to crack the encryption.

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Lewis: Rigged stock market is "bigger than a scam"

Billions have been spent by Wall Street firms and stock exchanges to gain the advantage of a millisecond. "Is it a scam?" 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asks. Bigger, Lewis says.

Lewis further explains, video below, how ordinary investors are affected and argues that high-frequency traders have created instability in the stock market -- for everyone.

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'A' for Angela Merkel: GCHQ and NSA Targeted Private German Companies

The headquarters of Stellar, a company based in the town of Hürth near Cologne, are visible from a distance. Seventy-five white antennas dominate the landscape. The biggest are 16 meters (52 feet) tall and kept in place by steel anchors. It is an impressive sight and serves as a popular backdrop for scenes in TV shows, including the German action series "Cobra 11."

Stellar operates a satellite ground station in Hürth, a so-called "teleport." Its services are used by companies and institutions; Stellar's customers include Internet providers, telecommunications companies and even a few governments. "The world is our market," is the high-tech company's slogan.

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Turkey blocks YouTube days after Leaked False Flag Revelation

(CNN) -- The Turkish government banned YouTube on Thursday, less than a week after Ankara made a similar blackout of the social networking site Twitter, which is estimated to have more than 10 million Turkish users.

Neither website can be reached on Turkish Internet networks.

The crackdown comes just days before Turks are expected to go to the polls in nationwide municipal elections.

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Ukraine parliament passes austerity bill required by IMF

The Ukrainian parliament has adopted an anti-crisis bill proposed by the IMF to secure an international financial aid package. Ordinary Ukrainians will have to tighten their belts to help the coup-installed government keep the collapsing economy afloat.

It took two readings of the bill for 246 MPs out of 321 registered to approve the austerity measures outlined in the legislation dubbed “On prevention of financial catastrophe and creation of prerequisites for economic growth.”

Ahead of the vote, Ukrainian self-imposed Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk told the Parliament that it had “no other choice but to accept the IMF offer,” as country fiscal gap in 2014 is projected to reach $26 billion. Ukraine's Finance Ministry says it needs $35 billion over the next two years to avoid default.

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Autism rates now 1 in 68 U.S. children: CDC

(CNN) -- One in 68 U.S. children has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a 30% increase from 1 in 88 two years ago, according to a new report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This newest estimate is based on the CDC's evaluation of health and educational records of all 8-year-old children in 11 states: Alabama, Wisconsin, Colorado, Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Arizona, Maryland, North Carolina, Utah and New Jersey.

The incidence of autism ranged from a low of 1 in 175 children in Alabama to a high of 1 in 45 in New Jersey, according to the CDC.

Children with autism continue to be overwhelmingly male. According to the new report, the CDC estimates 1 in 42 boys has autism, 4.5 times as many as girls (1 in 189).

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Anti-Anxiety Drugs Tied to Higher Mortality

A large study has linked several common anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills to an increased risk of death, although it’s not certain the drugs were the cause.

For more than seven years, researchers followed 34,727 people who filled prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications like Valium and Xanax, or sleep aids like Ambien, Sonata and Lunesta, comparing them with 69,418 controls who did not.

After adjusting for a wide variety of factors, the researchers found that people who took the drugs had more than double the risk of death. The study appears online in BMJ.

The researchers tried to account for the use of other prescribed drugs, age, smoking, alcohol use, socioeconomic status, and other health and behavioral characteristics. Most important, the investigators also controlled for sleep disorders, anxiety disorders and other psychiatric illnesses, all of which are risk factors for mortality.

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U.S. Gives Russia Free Military Equipment Used By Army, Marines

JUDICIAL WATCH

Behind closed doors the U.S. government is giving Russia free military equipment—also used to train American troops—even after President Obama announced punitive sanctions against Moscow and, more importantly, a suspension in military engagement over the invasion and occupation of Ukraine.

The secret operation was exposed this week by members of Congress that discovered it in the process of reviewing the Fiscal Year 2014 budget and the proposed Fiscal Year 2015 budget request. It turns out that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has been providing the Russian Federation with the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES), the federal legislators say.

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Mystery Aircraft Over Texas

Aviation experts and UFO conspirators have been perplexed by photographs of a mysterious flying object in US air space.

Grainy images showed a triangular blob with a long vapour trail flying through the clear blue skies above Amarillo, Texas next to another contrail left before it.

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Media Buries Bombshell Admission of Turkish Government Planning False Flag Attack

Turkish government officials were caught red-handed in a leaked audio tape planning a false flag terror attack as a pretext to invade Syria, but the mainstream media completely buried the key aspect of the story and made it all about Prime Minister Erdogan blocking YouTube.

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Here Is The YouTube "Start A False Flag War With Syria" Leaked Recording That Erdogan Wanted Banned

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Obama Still Asking FISA Court To Renew Bulk Phone Collection

After President Obama announced his willingness to really end the bulk collection of phone records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, Senator Patrick Leahy pointed out that the easiest way to do that was to simply not ask the FISA Court to renew that authority this Friday when it expired. The NY Times editorial board picked up that ball and ran with it, publishing an editorial saying that if the President wants us to believe he's serious about ending bulk phone surveillance he should end the program on Friday.

No such luck.

While plenty of people are still waiting for the actual "legislative package" the administration claims it's putting together to accomplish its plan to end bulk phone record collection (but not other bulk collections), the White House has now released a "fact sheet" about its plans that concludes at the bottom by saying that the President has still asked the DOJ to renew the authority:

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Why Did FBI Monitor Occupy Houston, and Then Hide Sniper Plot Against Protest Leaders?

Transparency activist Ryan Shapiro discusses a growing controversy over the FBI's monitoring of Occupy Houston in 2011. The case centers on what the FBI knew about an alleged assassination plot against Occupy leaders and why it failed to share this information. The plot was first revealed in a heavily redacted document obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund through a FOIA request. The document mentioned an individual "planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas." When Shapiro asked for more details, the FBI said it found 17 pages of pertinent records and gave him five of them, with some information redacted. Shapiro sued, alleging the FBI had improperly invoked FOIA exemptions.

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NSA critics express 'deep concern' over route change for House reform bill

GUARDIAN

Congressional critics of the bulk collection of telephone records by the National Security Agency fear that its allies are circumventing them in the House of Representatives.

The House parliamentarian, who oversees procedural matters, has determined that a new bill that substantially modifies the seminal 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will go through the intelligence committee rather than the judiciary committee, a move that two congressional aides consider “highly unusual.”

Seemingly an arcane parliamentary issue, the jurisdiction question reveals a subterranean and intense fight within the House about the future course of US surveillance in the post-Edward Snowden era.

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Ted Cruz needs to STFU!!!

I'm so tired of the partisan bullshit that I'm about to lose my effing mind! I don't hear Ted Cruz talking about what Bush did in Iraq or Afghanistan! Noooooooooooooooo ... he wants to blame Obama for the US's failures. I don't hear Cruz talking about Cheney's stand down order on 9/11. I don't hear Cruz blaming Rummy the Dummy for torturing God knows how many innocent people in Abu Ghraib! Has Cruz lost his mind? Does he think the American people are as dumb as he is?

The Republicans make me sick and the Democrats make me sick!

I've been sick for a very long time, now!

Putin did what he had to do to protect vital interests in his own backyard! Putin said the US has been anally raping everyone and now the US is outraged! That was a great analogy! How can anyone argue with that assessment?

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NSA bill could allow more spying than ever. You call this reform?

The White House and the House Intelligence Committee leaked dueling proposals last night that are supposedly aimed at ending the mass collection of all Americans’ phone records. But the devil is in the details, and when it comes to the National Security Agency’s unique ability to twist and distort the English language, the devil tends to wrap his horns around every word.

The House proposal, to be unveiled this morning by Reps Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger, is the more worrying of the two. Rogers has been the NSA’s most ardent defender in Congress and has a long history of distorting the truth and practicing in outright fabrication, whether in touting his committee’s alleged “oversight” or by way of his attempts to impugn the motives of the once again vindicated whistleblower who started this whole reform debate, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

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Leaked documents reveal plan to counter online dissent during martial law

Leaked Homeland Security documents obtained by Infowars reveal details of a joint DHS/FEMA national exercise set to take place this week, one of the components of which revolves around an effort to counter online dissent by a group called “Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny,” which is disgruntled at the imposition of martial law after an earthquake in Alaska.

The document again underscores the federal government’s obsession with characterizing libertarians and conservatives as some kind of extremist radical threat.

The document (PDF) was leaked by an individual affiliated with Stewart Rhodes’ Oathkeepers organization and passed on to Infowars.

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