In the days after 9/11, as the media tried to assume some kind of normalcy, I remember watching talk shows attempt to dissect the week’s unbelievable events. And I remember one guest who kept popping up night after night: Novelist Tom Clancy, who died Tuesday at 66.
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It’s no secret that the United States and Israel have a very special relationship, but it might come as an unpleasant surprise that the NSA’s intelligence-sharing agreement has so few strings attached. Today’s edition of What-Has-the-NSA-Done-This-Time is brought to you by The Guardian, which revealed that the US government has handed over information intercepted through the agency’s shady surveillance programs with no legally binding limits on how the data could be utilized. While we can’t be sure of the exact nature of the raw intelligence shared with Israel, it’s likely that the information contained phone calls and emails of American citizens. Considering that only yesterday, we learned that the NSA had violated its own privacy protections between 2006 and 2009, blaming confusion about how the system actually worked, today’s development raises a few important questions about what information is being shared across borders and how exactly it’s being used. For more information, check out The Guardian‘s report, linked below.
Filed under: Misc
Source: The Guardian
By now, it’s no secret that the NSA has courted privacy violations, but new documents divulge just how long such incidents have occurred. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released approximately 1,800 pages of declassified files, which reveal that the NSA’s phone record program violations happened between 2006 (when it first came under court supervision) and 2009, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered changes to the operation. During that period, a total of 17,835 phone numbers were listed for checking against Uncle Sam’s database, and only about 1,800 were based on the standard of reasonable suspicion. According to Clapper, congress received the papers we’re seeing now at the time of the incidents, and corrective measures have been put in place. Among the preventative actions are a complete “end-to-end” review of telephony metadata handling, the creation of the Director of Compliance position and a fourfold increase of the compliance department’s personnel.
As it turns out, the missteps are (again) said to have been accidents. “There was nobody at the NSA who had a full understanding of how the program worked,” an intelligence official claims. Sure, the increased transparency is certainly welcome, but a recently-leaked NSA audit from May of 2012 suggests that collection of protected data is still occurring from a combination of human error and technical limits. To pore through the National Security Agency’s fresh load of documents, hit the second source link below.
Filed under: Internet
Via: Wall Street Journal
NSA director Keith Alexander might be the most famous spy in America right now. Everyone wants to know who’s really behind the agency’s widespread snooping. And now, a lengthy profile of Alexander in Foreign Policy invites even more intrigue. It also reveals some of the general’s weird ways.
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San Diego Comic-Con is a white-hot furnace in which projects are made, or destroyed. Some emerge from the flames stronger, with invincible buzz levels, while others are melted down. Here’s our list of the people and projects that gained buzz from Comic-Con, and the ones that lost some of their buzz.
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Not surprisingly, the European Parliament isn’t happy to hear that the NSA and other US agencies are allegedly snooping on communications in Europe and elsewhere. It isn’t just complaining loudly, however — the Parliament just voted 483-98 in favor of a resolution that will investigate US surveillance activities in Europe and report on their impact before the end of the year. The measure also asks EU officials to consider limiting the data they voluntarily provide to American authorities, such as shutting down programs that forward air passenger and bank records. There’s nothing in the resolution that would immediately affect the EU-to-US communication pipeline, but that could change in half a year — US intelligence outlets may not get their European information served on a silver platter for much longer.
[Image credit: JLogan, Wikipedia]
Filed under: Internet
Via: ZDNet
Source: European Parliament
Ethics aside, espionage is an indispensable part of statecraft. The ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance] information gathered helps steer national policy decisions for everything from mundane trade negotiations to the blackest of ops. And nowhere is this more evident than in the development of the US spy satellite fleet during the Cold War. These orbital telescopes granted an unprecedented peek over the Iron Curtain—revealing Soviet military capabilities, supply reserves, industrial sites, and more—that no ground-based spook could hope to provide. More »
Most people know that dolphins are pretty freaking smart. But how smart? Well scientists are now saying that bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated from each other. Aww. Dolphins, they’re just like us! More »
The US Army’s not-so-secret Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) spy blimp is better at staying hidden than we thought… if unintentionally. Although it was due to fly the friendly skies of Lakehurst, New Jersey in mid-June, Northrop Grumman’s usually unmanned surveillance was only just caught floating over the Jersey Shore as part of a maiden flight on August 8th. The conspicuous, delayed test run proved that the LEMV could take off, steer and land smoothly, and started a series of exercises that should culminate in combat trials over Afghanistan at the start of 2013. Northrop’s KC Brown Jr. tells Wired that there’s a possible (if purely coincidental) consolation for missing another deadline — the airship could be used in a pinch for carrying as much as seven tons of supplies without getting into harm’s way, albeit at a fairly glacial 30MPH. The successful first flight won’t be much consolation to Mav6, whose Blue Devil 2 was scuttled at the last minute after technical issues; it’s nonetheless a relief for US troops, who may get weeks at a time of constant intelligence on enemy movements. Catch a short snippet of the early LEMV journey after the break.
Filed under: Robots, Transportation
US Army’s LEMV spy blimp spotted hovering over New Jersey, may take up cargo duties (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 06:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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You might pride yourself on your poker face, but there would be no way to hide from a skull-probing EEG helmet being developed by Veritas Scientific. The device takes advantage of a well-known medical response called P300, which causes your brain‘s voltage to drop a split-second after you put a name to a face or object. Simply by showing you a slideshow of different images, interrogators could tell whether or not you recognize a particular individual — or maybe that LTE-connected railgun hidden in your trunk. The company is pursuing military contracts and hopes to have a prototype ready in time for this year’s war game exercises, but meanwhile you might want to start thinking of a way to install that tinfoil hat inside your skull.
Filed under: Science
EEG headware probes your neurons, shows interrogators your cranial contact list originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Jul 2012 07:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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