Bottom line: At this point, the only clear result of the Snowden leaks is that the Senate is about to pass a bill legalizing the logging of the phone calls of all Americans. Further, who knows what amendments will be added in the mark up stage. Don‘t for a minute think the mark ups are going to advance privacy. It will be all about complex paragraphs that will allow even greater surveillance.

Officials with Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command say the shift involves all three Marine special operations battalions, or MSOBs, and entails new training and missions. First MSOB, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., will align with Special Operations Command Pacific, while 2nd MSOB and 3rd MSOB, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., will partner respectively with Special Operations Command Central and Special Operations Command Africa.

At yesterday‘s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on FISA legislation, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) asked NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, whether his spy agency should be collecting all Americans‘ phone records. Gen. Alexander, in a shockingly forthcoming response, admitted that he „believe[s] it is in the nation‘s best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we can search when the nation needs it.“ He also explained that „there is no upper limit“ to the number of Americans‘ phone records that the NSA can collect.

The Dallas County deputies didn’t indicate in the memo why their department required a vehicle designed to withstand “ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IED’s, and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical environments” in order to execute warrants.

“The connections between war and surveillance are clear. I don‘t want to give too much away but Glenn and I are working on a project right now that has at its center how the National Security Agency plays a significant, central role in the US assassination program,” Scahill said in Rio de Janeiro, as cited by Associated Press.

But while Saudi Arabia, tremendous diplomatic manipulator that it is, will behave rationally, it is far less certain what Israel will do and how it will respond to the sudden and very much unexpected US detente in the middle-east: an unpalatable peaceful outcome to the two nations, and one where Israel and Saudi bellicose interests are very much aligned.

Trotz weltweiter Proteste und Solidaritätskundgebungen: Am Sonntag wurde in Murmansk eine zweimonatige Untersuchungshaft für die acht Arctic Sunrise-Aktivisten angeordnet, über die das Amtsgericht vor drei Tagen noch keine Entscheidung getroffen hatte. Damit sind nunmehr alle dreißig Besatzungsmitglieder der Arctic Sunrise von der Untersuchungshaft betroffen.

Investment in defence company Ultra Electronics to be withdrawn after pressure from students and campaigners

Kenya on Sunday asked the U.S. government to lift an advisory warning U.S. citizens over travel to the east African country after the September 21 Nairobi mall attack, calling it „unnecessary“ and „unfriendly“.

Indictment described Joseph Hunter, 48, as a contract killer and leader of a trio of former soldiers trained as snipers

He was told: ‘You were planning to attack a supermarket… an Israeli supermarket.’ After four days, he was allowed to return to the UK, where he was met and questioned by MI5.

NIS officers told the Star on Wednesday that the NIS had warned the police last week that an attack on the Westgate shopping mall was imminent and that it was not their fault.

An unnamed senior intelligence official told the AFP news agency that the government had been casual in its approach to the briefings it received.

„There is no way one can say there was no intelligence on this attack because those reports started trickling in from late last year. And they were specific with targets including Westgate.“

The Star and Daily Nation both reported that a pregnant woman was warned by her brother, an intelligence officer, not to visit the mall because it would be attacked. She usually shopped there on Saturdays.

Blutiges Geiseldrama in Kenia: Planten Deutsche den Überfall?

Gezinkte Karten: Pentagon entlässt im Juni 2013 Stratcom-Kommandeur und Befürworter der Aufrüstung mit Atomwaffen, General Kehler. Revanchiert sich dieser mit der Entsorgung seines Stellvertreters als eine seiner letzten Amtshandlungen oder wurde er gezwungen, die folgende Show im Einvernehmen mitzuspielen?

(26.09.) President Uhuru Kenyatta is quoted as blaming the United States and Israel, in conversation with his confidants, for the failure of their undercover agencies to prevent the large-scale terrorist attack launched on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi on Sept. 21, DEBKA file reports. He said he had counted on them for a heads-up to thwart an attack, instead of which both the Americans and Israelis were as much in the dark as his own security agencies.