A few notes as this story evolves:
You should read the NYT’s story about PRISM. It makes everything consistent: Greenwald’s original report, the tech companies denial and the reports we’ve been hearing off and on for the last seven years. Money quote:
Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to
This is all kinds of wrong:
Obama administration officials said Thursday that they have asked YouTube to review the video [that reportedly set off the embassy attacks] and determine whether it violates the site’s terms of service, according to people close to the situation but not authorized to comment.
This is just plain wrong, especially given that YouTube had already said the video didn’t violate their terms. It’s one thing for citizens to call on … Read more
You know that scene in every mediocre spy movie where the surveillance team finally busts the bad guys only to find out the bad guys were really a surveillance team for another agency? Yeah, that just happened:
He saw something. He said something. And he inadvertently uncovered a secret spying operation that the New York Police Department was running outside its jurisdiction.
In June 2009, a building superintendent at an apartment complex near the
You ever get the feeling that the TSA is trying to piss us off?
A few readers have pointed to a story on Facebook, posted by a Montana mom who was flying home from Kansas with her two young children and their grandmother.
According to the poster, she and her kids got through the checkpoint without trouble but grandma had triggered the alarm. She went through the scanner again, but the screener could not firmly
Wikileaks latest has indicated that DHS was keeping tabs on the Occupy Movement as a potential danger. Naturally, of course, the Left has freaked about “oppression”, a freak-out which includes this laughable quote:
On Current TV last night, host Cenk Uygur blasted the agency for focusing exclusively on Occupy Wall Street. “The Tea Party… that happens to be pro-corporate America is not anywhere to be found here [but] when Occupy Wall Street is not pro-corporate
Hmmm. The TSA blog had a proud post up about their successes in 2011. Let’s go through the list and see how many involve terrorists, shall we?
#10 was live animals caught in MIA and LAX. These were, um, not even weapons. And the smugglers were not terrorists.
#9 was a science project that looked like an explosive. So, um, not weapons. And not a terrorist.
#8 was a metallic martial arms spike. It was … Read more
God damn it, I just knew something like this was going to happen:
WikiLeaks on Thursday confirmed reports that it has lost control of a cache of U.S. diplomatic cables that it has been publishing in recent months, saying a security breach has led to the public disclosure of hundreds of thousands of the unredacted documents.
The website quickly sought to deflect blame for the leak of the leaked classified cables. It accused the U.K.
I am sure the LSM would have gone bonkers, the left would have been furious, the accusations of racism, sexism, and profiling would have been all over the place, and the practice would have ended up dead. Oh, wait a second, that idea was floated when GWB was president, right after 9-11 if I recall, and it was killed immediately with precisely the above accusations – the language used however was far more colorful than … Read more
Oh, come on. You’re not surprised at this, are you?
As part of the TSA’s request for FY 2012 funding, TSA Administrator John Pistole told Congress last week that the TSA conducts 8,000 unannounced security screenings every year. These screenings, conducted with local law enforcement agencies as well as immigration, can be as simple as checking out cargo at a busy seaport. But more and more, they seem to involve giving airport-style pat-downs and
Remember WikiLeaks? You have to unless you have been off world. They put out all that embarrassing information that was supposed to make the US look bad, but instead made the Obama team look that way? All that hubbub about the need to keep secrets by the aggrieved and embarrassed governments, and all the pap about the freedom of information and all that from the WikiLeaks people? Well, seems like the universe has a sense … Read more
