Whistleblower Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he should receive it.

No individual has done more to push back against what Martin Luther King Jr. called „the madness of militarism“ than Bradley Manning. And right now, remaining in prison and facing relentless prosecution by the U.S. government, no one is more in need of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ägyptens Junta begann noch am Tag der Machtergreifung mit einer Razzia gegen Sinai und behauptete, seit damals mindestens 60 „Terroristen” in der Region getötet zu haben. Die Offensive wurde offiziell von Israel unterstützt, was viele dazu brachte, sich über die von Anfang an kuschelige Beziehung der neuen Junta zu ihrem Nachbarn zu beschweren.

„Washington muss begreifen, dass Russland schon aufgehört hat, eine politische Kolonie der USA zu sein“, twitterte Puschkow am Samstag. Auch die jetzige Krise in den bilateralen Beziehungen sei nicht von Russland ausgelöst worden.

Source: The provisions of Executive Order 12333 of Dec. 4, 1981

If you don‘t recall, about a year ago, under pressure from Senator Wyden, the US government admitted (late on a Friday evening) that, indeed, the FISA court had „on one occasion“ ruled that certain activities concerning Section 702 „minimization“ (i.e., trying to avoid searches on US persons) were „unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.“ And yet, that very same day, the NSA announced that the rules had changed and it could do searches on US persons, following a certain (undisclosed) „oversight process.

In einer siebenseitigen Stellungnahme, die die NSA am 9. August 2013 auf ihrer Internetseite veröffentlichte, heißt es: „Nach Angaben eines großen Netzbetreibers werden im Internet täglich 1.826 Petabyte an Daten übertragen. Bei ihrer Auslandsaufklärung kommt die NSA mit 1,6 Prozent davon in Berührung.“ Das entspricht einem täglichen Datenvolumen von 29.126 Terabyte.

Allerdings werden nach NSA-Angaben davon nur 0,025 Prozent für eine Überprüfung bestimmt.

The more research I‘ve done on security, the more worried I‘ve become about our ability to keep up with the bad guys

Following our post on the NSA‘s document defending its surveillance programs, let‘s look more closely at the Justice Department‘s „white paper“ explaining the legal rationale for scooping up all of the metadata on every phone call under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, also known as the „business records“ or „tangible things“ section.

As President Obama was laying out his „plan“ in response to the public‘s concerns over NSA spying, both the DOJ and the NSA released some documents defending the various programs. I would imagine it will surprise none of you that these documents are chock full of hilarious and misleading claims. Let‘s highlight a few, starting with the NSA‘s document, which is shorter, more general and covers all the various programs more broadly. It‘s also a complete joke. We‘ll get to the DOJ one in another post.

„Gezielte Tötungen sind außerhalb von bewaffneten Konflikten völkerrechtswidrig“, erklärte Oppermann, der im Wahlkampfteam von SPD-Kanzlerkandidat Peer Steinbrück für die Innenpolitik zuständig ist. Die Regierung werde das in der Sitzung des Kontrollgremiums klären müssen, das am Montag tagt.

U.S.-Präsident setzt “hochrangige Gruppe externer Experten” zur Überprüfung der eigenen Spionage-Kapazitäten ein.

Da gibt es National Security Letters, die zwingen einen zur Herausgabe von Daten, und man darf niemandem darüber was sagen, und nicht mal die Existenz erwähnen. Was tut man da also?

Erstens ist es unglaublich, dass die bisher noch kein STARTTLS hatten. Das RFC dazu ist 14 Jahre alt! Soll das ein Witz sein?! JETZT rollen die das aus? Und tun auch noch so, als sei das ein bewerbenswertes Feature?!? Das ist wie wenn VW damit Werbung machen würde, dass sie jetzt auch Sicherheitsgurte mitliefern. WTF?

Der Chaos Computer Club (CCC) begrüßt die Absicht dieser Unternehmen, den E-Mailverkehr ihrer Kunden auf dem Transportweg künftig zu verschlüsseln. Warum die zugrundeliegende Technologie, die immerhin seit Ende der 1990er Jahre existiert, nicht schon seit Jahren Anwendung findet, verraten die Anbieter allerdings nicht. Was bei Konkurrenten schon seit Jahren zum Standard gehört – eine erzwungene Verschlüsselung beim Zugriff auf das eigene E-Mail-Konto –, wird nun werbewirksam als technologischer Vorstoß und Novum verkauft.

The President also stated that he would support reforms to section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which is the provision of the law that has been secretly interpreted to allow the government to engage in the bulk collection of Americans‘ records. I have seen absolutely zero evidence that the bulk collection of Americans‘ phone records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act has provided any unique value to intelligence gathering or actually made Americans any safer, so I believe that these reforms should ensure that bulk collection is ended.

This white paper explains the Government’s legal basis for an intelligence collection program under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) obtains court orders directing certain telecommunications service providers to produce telephony metadata in bulk. The bulk metadata is stored, queried and analyzed by the National Security Agency (NSA) for counterterrorism purposes. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (“the FISC” or “the Court”) authorizes this program under the “business records” provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), 50 U.S.C. § 1861, enacted as section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Section 215). The Court first authorized the program in 2006, and it has since been renewed thirty-four times under orders issued by fourteen different FISC judges. This paper explains why the telephony metadata collection program, subject to the restrictions imposed by the Court, is consistent with the Constitution and the standards set forth by Congress in Section 215. Because aspects of this program remain classified, there are limits to what can be said publicly about the facts underlying its legal authorization. This paper is an effort to provide as much information as possible to the public concerning the legal authority for this program, consistent with the need to protect national security, including intelligence sources and methods. While this paper summarizes the legal basis for the program, it is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of the program or the legal arguments or authorities in support of it.

Specifically, he laid out four steps his Administration will take:

(1) The Administration will work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. (..)
(2) The Administration will work with Congress to improve the public’s confidence in the oversight conducted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). (..)
(3) The President directed the Intelligence Community to make public as much information about these programs as possible. (..)
(4) The President called for a high-level group of outside experts to review our intelligence and communications technologies. (..)

(17.07.) Section 215 requires the government to certify that its information requests are relevant to an ongoing terrorist investigation. But Sensenbrenner notes that the government claims that records of every phone call in America is relevant to a terrorism investigation. He asked: “Doesn’t that make a mockery of the legal standard, because you’re trying to have it both ways?”

If, as we believe, the supranational global power elites are embedded deep inside the public and private power structures of key nations – notably the United States and the United Kingdom – then clearly their Achilles Heel is any and all disclosure of their crimes, their meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, their direct or indirect involvement in false-flag attacks, their support of genocidal regimes when it serves their purpose, their murderous invasions and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Libya, and their obscene funding and support of terrorists, guerrillas and mafias in Syria and elsewhere, under the PsyOps cover of ‘Arab Spring’.