Manning found guilty on most charges, but not of "aiding the enemy"

From CNN:

Wikileaks on Tuesday said the conviction of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning sets "a dangerous precedent and (is) an example of national security extremism."

"It is a short sighted judgment that can not be tolerated and must be reversed," the group said in a statement. "It can never be that conveying true information to the public is 'espionage'."

I like that phrase -- "national security extremism." Even so, I can see how publicizing secret information might count as espionage in certain instances. For example: If a German sympathizer had found out the date for D-Day and transmitted that information to the general public ahead of time, thereby spoiling Allied plans, that might be construed as espionage, and as aiding the enemy

But I don't think that what Manning did belongs in that category.

A military judge has found Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history, not guilty of aiding the enemy -- a charge that would have carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Manning was also found not guilty of unauthorized possession of information relating to national defense.

He was found guilty of most of the remaining charges against him, with the judge, Col. Denise Lind, accepting only two of the guilty pleas he had made previously to lesser charges. Those two were possession of a video that was marked classified and that he exceeded authority by obtaining a State Department cable.

Though those two counts carry a maximum sentence of two years, the rest of the charges that Manning was found guilty of could lead to a maximum sentence of 136 years in prison.

Norman Solomon's response deserves note:

Days ago, in closing argument, the prosecutor at Fort Meade thundered: "He was not a whistleblower; he was a traitor."

But a "traitor" to what? To the United States... only if the United States is to be a warfare state, where we "cannot make informed decisions as a public." Only if we obey orders to separate ourselves from the humanity of others. Only if authoritative, numbing myths are to trump empathy and hide painful truth.

Just so. It is obvious that Manning released the video not out of hatred or jealousy but empathy, and that any attempt to ascribe baser motive is strained. Just as obviously, the United States government came down hard on the guy not because releasing that video harmed our security, but because that video embarrassed the military. One might even draw a parallel to the Dreyfuss case.

As Amnesty International said:

“The government’s priorities are upside down. The US government has refused to investigate credible allegations of torture and other crimes under international law despite overwhelming evidence.

“Yet they decided to prosecute Manning who it seems was trying to do the right thing – reveal credible evidence of unlawful behaviour by the government. You investigate and prosecute those who destroy the credibility of the government by engaging in acts such as torture which are prohibited under the US Constitution and in international law.

“The government’s pursuit of the ‘aiding the enemy’ charge was a serious overreach of the law, not least because there was no credible evidence of Manning’s intent to harm the USA by releasing classified information to WikiLeaks.

“Since the attacks of September 11, we have seen the US government use the issue of national security to defend a whole range of actions that are unlawful under international and domestic law.

“It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that Manning’s trial was about sending a message: the US government will come after you, no holds barred, if you’re thinking of revealing evidence of its unlawful behaviour.”

Brad Friedman has published some interesting "tweets of reaction":

Ali Abunimah @AliAbunimah

Undeniable fact is that if #BradleyManning had illegally tortured people for the CIA, Obama would’ve protected him from trial. End of story.

Cenk Uygur ✔ @cenkuygur

Does anyone really believe that if Bradley Manning had committed war crimes instead of exposing them that he would be in bigger trouble?

Cenk Uygur ✔ @cenkuygur

What punishment did the commander in charge of Abu Ghraib torture get? $8,000 fine.

It's hard to believe that in 2008, the Barack Obama campaign issued these words:

We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government.

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A new low in religious hypocrisy

Slate has published a story about the brouhaha surrounding a book I've not yet read: Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

I caught Aslan on The Daily Show and disagreed with his take on Jesus. Aslan obviously thinks that Jesus sympathized with the anti-Roman revolutionary movement; I think otherwise.

As noted in an earlier post, my interpretation of the "Jerusalem is doomed" passages in the Gospels differs from the views held by most academics. I think that those passages constitute nothing more -- and nothing less -- than a wise reading of the political situation: Jesus could smell rebellion in the air, and he could guess how that rebellion would end. His "foreknowledge" had nothing to do with ESP and everything to do with common sense. (Josephus seems to have had the same "foreknowledge," although he briefly joined the rebellion anyways.) If Alsan's theory is right, why would Jesus sympathize with a revolution that he knew could only end badly for Israel?

Aslan probably considers the "Jerusalem is doomed" passages to be material added by later writers. And that's the problem with most modern New Testament scholarship: It's possible to create any Jesus you want. The trick is simple: You read the Gospels, you pick out a few bits that you like, you say "These parts are true" -- and then you dismiss everything else as spurious.

This approach has some validity, or at least inevitability, since the Gospels do, in fact, present true (or true-ish) material encrusted with barnacles of fiction. Most modern scholars would, for example, agree with my presumption that the crucifixion accounts have a strong historical basis, while the nativity stories are far more questionable.

But how do you distinguish the rock from the barnacles? Alas, too many scholars pick and choose their "truths" based on their pet theories -- and that's where the problems set in. Thus, James Tabor, in The Jesus Dynasty, takes very seriously the (conflicting) "ancestry of Jesus" lists in Luke and Matthew -- even though Luke's list goes all the way back to Adam! Most other scholars consider those lists dubious; personally, I think they're downright ridiculous. Yet they fit Tabor's pet theory, so he treats the silly things as...well, as Gospel.

As noted above, I haven't read Aslan's book yet, but I fully expect him to play a game similar to Tabor's. That said, such books can be very interesting. You don't have to agree with a work to get something out of it.

Although guys like Ehrman, Crossan and Tabor tend to annoy the religious right, the reaction against Aslan has been very different. Aslan is despised in a way those three are not. Why? Because he is a Muslim. At least, he comes from a Muslim background; I don't know if he is devout.

Right now, the Islamophobes are doubling down on their bigotry. And they are using Aslan as their whipping boy.

Here's how Slate tells the story:

It’s got plenty of competition but this may just be the single most cringe-worthy, embarrassing interview broadcast on Fox News. At least in recent memory. Fox News anchor Lauren Green had religious scholar Reza Aslan on her show Friday to talk about Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, his book that has been stirring up some online controversy recently. And right off the bat, Green gets to what is important: “You’re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?” Aslan seemed a little flabbergasted: “Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim.”

But Green just wouldn’t let it go: “It still begs the question though, why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?” Aslan then starts talking to Green slowly, as if she were a child: “Because it’s my job as an academic. I am a professor of religion, including the New Testament. That’s what I do for a living, actually.” But Green insisted, accusing him of failing to “disclose” that he’s a Muslim and at one point asking him about a stupefying claim on whether a Muslim writing a book on Jesus isn’t sort of like a Democrat writing a book on former president Ronald Reagan.

Aslan has become the target of anti-muslim rhetoric this past week as he’s made numerous media appearances to publicize his book. Author and pastor John Dickerson harshly criticized media outlets on FoxNews.com, saying reporters “have failed to mention [Aslan] is a devout Muslim.” In a piece for WorldNetDaily, Pamela Geller writes that “jihadist operatives like the vicious Reza Aslan are carried on the shoulders of the media and intelligentsia like a football hero at the end of an impossibly fought game.” Many who share these views have taken to Amazon to give the book one-star reviews. Aslan “is a Muslim and not a historian,” reads one of the one-star reviews.

As if Muslims cannot be historians...!

Tellingly, these bigots never dare to address the question of whether Jews may write about Jesus. Many Jews have done so, and they have often had some important and interesting things to say. Maimonides wrote about Jesus in the 12th century. Some of you may know the famous story of Nahmanides and the great dispute in Barcelona. Here's a modern Jew who writes about Jesus -- and in the process, he praises Aslan's book.

Moreover, if the risible Pamela Geller really thinks that no Muslim scholar should write about Jesus, then shouldn't the restrictions also work the other way? Do scholars who hail from a Jewish or Christian heritage have the right to write about Muhammed?

Of course they do. Anyone from any background may write on any topic that he or she considers intriguing. Granted, what you write won't be of much value to others if you refuse to do your homework, or if you lack the talent for original thought.

A year ago, I read a book called Did Muhammed Exist? by Robert Spencer. At the time, I didn't know who Spencer is. I later discovered that he's a Greek Melkite Christian and an anti-jihadist firebrand who often works with Pamela Geller. As you know, I don't like Geller, and thus I'm not likely to admire anyone who pals around with her.

Nevertheless, his book is a fascinating read. Perhaps perversely, I came away from it convinced of Muhammed's historicity -- even though, as with Jesus, barnacles of fiction formed around the facts. Spencer deserves credit for arguing fairly: He gives the reader enough evidence to walk away with a conclusion differing from the one he intends.

For a while now, I've toyed with the notion of writing a Sunday post comparing Spencer's work with that of popular dimwits like "Archaya X" who argue for the nonexistence of Jesus. We've discussed the "mythicist" issue in a previous post. As Bart Ehrman notes in his excellent recent book on the topic, virtually all New Testament scholars (most of whom are agnostics or atheists or not-conventionally-religious) concede the existence of Jesus. Yet "evangelical atheists" of the Richard Dawkins school seem to be under the impression that the "myth" theory represents the scholarly consensus, even though the opposite is true.

Most of the people who think this way are young, arrogant ninnies who would rather poke out their own eyes than read a book with footnotes.

So why do these young, arrogant ninnies want to believe that Jesus was a completely mythical personage? Because -- to put it bluntly -- they've got a bug up their asses about Christianity, and because these smirky twerps like to think that they're smarter than other people. For most of these kids, fundamentalist Protestant Christianity is the only variant they know, and I can certainly understand why they've learned to dislike it. For them, the "myth" theory fulfills a psychological need. It's their way of exacting revenge.

Spencer, I think, has similar motives. He hates Islam passionately, so he has a psychological need to strike it at the core. But unlike the smirky young twerps who dote on Archaya X and the Zeitgeist pseudodocumentary, Spencer is willing to do actual research. Thus, his work is far easier to recommend.

As noted above, I wasn't persuaded by his argument, well-mounted as it is. We know from the history of recently-born religions -- and by "recently," I mean the past two centuries, for which we have good records -- that religions do not make themselves. Religions have founders. Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard were demonstrably real people. Even though their followers have tried to affix "barnacles of fiction" to their histories, those barnacles cannot erase the fact that a new faith always has a father. (Can you name an exception? Even the cargo cults trace back to an historical figure named Tuka.) Such has been the pattern during the past two centuries; such, I believe, was the pattern in antiquity.

Now, I told you all of the above mainly to introduce you to Spencer and his book. My purpose is to ask an obvious question: If Spencer can write about Muhammed, why can't Aslan write about Jesus? Fair is fair.

Believe it or not, instead of avoiding the comparison to Spencer, Geller -- who positively luxuriates in hypocrisy -- is very quick to mention the guy, even as she trashes Aslan:

Robert Spencer is a writer without peer and a nonpareil scholar, the author of 12 books on Islam, jihad and related topics, including two New York Times bestsellers. Yet “Did Muhammad Exist?” was ignored and dismissed by the intelligentsia, the media elite and subversive academia.

Juxtapose that to the recent adulation heaped upon the Islamic supremacist Reza Aslan for his new book. Aslan is an advisory board member of the National Iranian American Council, which has been recently exposed in court as a lobbying group for the Iranian regime. He has smeared and lied about Spencer and me on national television, and responded to Spencer’s reasoned rebuttals with homophobic abuse worthy of a seventh-grader...

Of course, nothing Aslan said resembles homophobia.

You should ask yourself, how did we get here? How can a reasonable, educated and pre-eminent scholar like Robert Spencer be relegated to the very fringe (if that) of the literary world, while jihadist operatives like the vicious Reza Aslan are carried on the shoulders of the media and intelligentsia like a football hero at the end of an impossibly fought game.

See if you can catch the big problem in this next bit:

Clearly, Robert could have entitled his book “Pedophile,” because we know that Muhammad’s favorite wife was taken at the age of 6 and that their “marriage” was consummated when the Muslim prophet was 54 and she was 9. Spencer could also have called his book “Annihilator,” because we know that Muhammad slaughtered an entire Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayza, by beheading. Surely Spencer exercised restraint in not entitling his book “Bloody Warmonger.” Any of these would have been the equivalent of Aslan’s title “Zealot.”

In other words, Pam Geller is stipulating the existence of Muhammed -- thereby contradicting Spencer's thesis. A nonexistent person cannot also be a real-world annihilator. Geller is so caught up in the throes of rage-gasm that she cannot see her contradiction!

By the way: In the first century, the word zealot meant "rebel," not "fanatic." The title of Aslan's book is not an insult; it refers to a theory of Jesus' political motive. Even though I consider that theory wrongheaded, we should note that the same idea has been voiced by many others; it may be considered one of the standard "theories of Jesus." 

If you have seen Aslan's teevee appearances, you're probably asking the same question I'm asking: Geller wants us to think that guy is a jihadi? She must be kidding!

Aslan is a scholar, not an Islamic polemicist. The view of Jesus he has presented (at least on television) conflicts with the view of Jesus one finds in the Koran.

Islam's holy book does not present Jesus as a zealot. Muslims have traditionally regarded Jesus as a great religious prophet, not as a political figure. If Aslan sees Jesus as an insurrectionist, he contradicts the standard Islamic view.

I very strongly doubt that Aslan accepts the beloved (by Muslims) tale of the Virgin Mary and the palm tree. The Koran also says that Jesus started talking shortly after birth; I suspect that Aslan would say that this tale contains, at best, only a poetic truth.

Most importantly: The Daily Show interview gave me the clear impression that Aslan thinks Jesus was, in fact, crucified. The reality of the crucifixion seems to be the crux of this scholar's argument. He thus contradicts the Koran's strange teaching that Jesus was not crucified (a view probably inspired by certain Gnostic sects). 

One should study one's enemies. How can Geller hate Islam so deeply if she doesn't even know the Islamic view of Jesus? How can she argue that Aslan is a Muslim propagandist -- or even a "jihadi" -- when he presents a "theory of Jesus" which (as far as I can tell) has no relation to anything in the Koran? Either Geller is ignorant of these matters, or she is captiously exploiting the ignorance of her readers.

Remember also: Spencer’s book was accurately and forthrightly entitled, “Did Muhammad Exist?” It’s a legitimate question, even though on the BBC recently an interviewer tried to badger Spencer into admitting that there was something wrong, and offensive to Muslims, with even investigating this historical question.

I haven't seen the interview (and would appreciate a link to it, if it's on the net), but I doubt that any BBC interviewer would argue for limiting scholarship. I understand that the BBC itself has, at least glancingly, addressed the historicity question in a documentary about Mohammed.

By the way: One cannot fairly argue that Spencer's book was ignored if the BBC interviewed him.

Geller's outrageous double standard should be obvious: If Spencer has every right to argue that Muhammed is mythical -- and indeed he does -- then Aslan has every right to argue that Jesus was an anti-Roman rebel. Although I don't agree with either proposition, I think that there's a bit more evidence for Aslan's view than for Spencer's.

Some people mainline heroin. Some people mainline hate. Pam Geller has injected a lot of the latter into her veins -- but lately, her drug of choice seems to be hypocrisy.

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That's one dangerous piece of geography

This comes a piece (one of those "list" articles) on allegedly haunted movie shoots. Concerning The Omen:

An animal handler was eaten alive by lions and a set location bombed the IRA.

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Control

1. More on Holder. Although I have received no response from the Russian Ministry of Justice, I am happy to report that A.G. Eric Holder's remarkable letter is getting the kind of attention it deserves. Bill Black:

The idea that the Attorney General of the United States of America would send such a letter to the representative of a foreign government, particularly Russia under the leadership of a former KGB official, was so preposterous that I thought the first news report I read about Attorney General Holder’s letter concerning Edward Snowden was satire. The joke, however, was on me. The Obama and Bush administrations have so disgraced the reputation of the United States’ criminal justice system that we are forced to promise KGB alums that we will not torture our own citizens if Russia extradites them for prosecution.

To be fair, Konovalov has no KGB history that I know of. He's only 44. And a religious fellow never would have gotten into the old KGB.

Holder phrased his explanation in a manner that suggests he was trying to be clever: “Torture is unlawful in the United States.” “Gitmo,” of course, is not “in the United States.” The locations of the many secret prisons the U.S. established in other nations were chosen so that we could torture suspects. The infamous historical parallel for this is that it was unlawful to hold slaves in England – but England could dominate the Atlantic slave trade and hold millions of slaves in the Caribbean islands because slavery was unlawful only “in” England under English law.

More subtly, note that Holder says that torture is “unlawful” – not “illegal.” An act that is merely “unlawful” cannot be prosecuted as a crime. It may provide the basis for a civil suit. An “illegal” act can be prosecuted.

2. Cruise control. Some people still scoff at the notion that Michael Hastings' car (or your car) could be controlled by outside forces. Here's a BBC story in which two DARPA experts demonstrate how the job can be done by laptop.

They filmed themselves in the back of one of the vehicles steering it left and right, activating the brakes and showing the fuel gauge drop to zero, all while the vehicle was under driver control and in motion.
cable used in hack The cable used to connect the devices to the ECUs via the diagnostics port.

A spokesman for Toyota told the BBC that because the hardware had to be physically connected inside the car, he did not consider it to be "hacking".

"Altered control can only be made when the device is connected. After it is disconnected the car functions normally," he said.

"We don't consider that to be 'hacking' in the sense of creating unexpected behaviour, because the device must be connected - ie the control system of the car physically altered.

"The presence of a laptop or other device connected to the OBD [on board diagnostics] II port would be apparent."

The need for an OBD connection does seem to be the difficult part. Still, our spooks are an imaginative and resourceful lot.

I imagine that once a bad guy has slim-jimmed his way into the vehicle, it's simply a matter of slipping a small transmitter into the OBD. Such an alteration might well go unnoticed. This transmitter could send a wireless signal to another device hidden elsewhere. Would you notice if a 7-inch tablet were secreted under your seat?

Also see here.

3. And now...PLANES! A GPS flaw can allow "terrorists" to control a plane or a ship. (Notice how the idea of a spook doing such a thing is unmentionable.)

‘We injected our spoofing signals into its GPS antennas and we’re basically able to control its navigation system with our spoofing signals,’ Todd Humphreys of UT told the news station.

(There are certain conspiracy theorists, fixated on a certain event in 2001, who are now salivating at the chance to get their collective foot into this blog's door. NOT A CHANCE.)

4. Hate control. If you are a connoisseur of fake news, savor this. Normally, Fox wouldn't publish the ravings of a lunatic behind bars -- the lunatic, in this case, being former Army shrink Nidal Hasan, the accused Fort Hood shooter. Normally, the government wouldn't allow said ravings to be recorded.

Conclusion: This whole thing is a set-up designed to rally the Islamophobic right. Check it out:

“My complicity was on behalf of a government that openly acknowledges that it would hate for the law of Almighty Allah to be the supreme law of the land," the 42-year-old Army psychiatrist said.”

"...The supreme law of the land..." This sentiment ties right in with the delusions of our own Christian loonies, who desperately want to believe that Muslims are scheming to establish "the caliphate" in the United States. In reality, not even Osama Bin Laden ever expressed such a desire.

Frankly, I never paid much attention to the Fort Hood shooting -- until now. Perhaps I was wrong to take the news stories about that event at face value, because it sure seems as though Hasan is reading from a script. This guy ain't talking like a real jihadi. He's talking the way a jihadi talks in the imagination of your average Southern Baptist ninny who gets all his news from Fox. He's a jihadi from central casting.

(Sort of like LHO on communism, by way of Kerry Thornley.)

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Open letter to Alexander Konovalov, Russia's Minister of Justice

(This is the text of a letter I have sent via email to the Russian Ministry of Justice. Google provided the Russian translation. If some of the references seem obscure to you, you should know that Mr. Konovalov once considered a life at the Russian monastery on Mount Athos. The "inheritance and garden" quotation -- paraphrased below -- derives from the rich lore surrounding that place, which the Orthodox consider holy. If you want to send a letter of your own, the address is pr@minjust.ru.)

Я не знаю русского языка. Пожалуйста, передайте это письмо Александр Владимирович Коновалов, министр юстиции. Я надеюсь, что кто-то в министерстве может перевести это письмо должным образом. Я буду включать компьютерный перевод, который может быть неисправен.

His Excellency Alexander Vladimirovich Konovalov
Minister of Justice
The Russian Federation
14 Zhitnaya Ulitsa
Moscow 119991

Dear Mr. Minister,

I am an American political writer. I cannot claim to be an important writer, although I do have an audience. I am writing to you to plead on behalf of Edward Snowden, the former employee of our National Security Agency who has asked for your country to provide asylum.

Please help him. Edward Snowden is a man "seeking his inheritance and his garden, his haven of salvation for those seeking to be saved." In his case, the great land of Russia may provide the haven he seeks.

Four days ago, you received a letter from Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States. He assured you that "Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States."

That fact that an Attorney General feels a need to make such a statement indicates how far my country has declined. The United States of America has become infamous for the practice of torture. Although I love my country, I have seen it become far less civilized than it was when I was born.

Holder insulted you by telling you such an obvious falsehood. He also insulted both Russia and the United States of America.

I can disprove Holder's statement by mentioning one name: Yuri Nosenko. I'm sure you know the name. Americans and Russians may always disagree about what he did, but no-one can deny that CIA operatives imprisoned Nosenko without trial. They tortured him continually over the course of five years.

The example of Nosenko, by itself, proves Holder a liar. But I can cite more recent examples.

As I write, Private Bradley Manning is facing trial after years of confinement. Both Amnesty International and Juan E. Mendez, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, have confirmed that he received extremely inhumane treatment, including sleep deprivation, forced nudity and solitary confinement.

John Walker Lindh, accused of various terrorism-related offenses, was tortured harshly and repeatedly. His confession was obtained under duress. He entered into a plea bargain arrangement, the terms of which specify that he is not to discuss the torture he underwent. The fact that the U.S. government made such an arrangement constitutes a confession that the government does, in fact, conduct torture.

Jose Padilla was tortured while imprisoned. He underwent sleep deprivation, shackling, unbreathable fumes and enforced stress positions. He was forced to take LSD and other drugs.

The Bush administration admitted that it tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani. Charges against him were dropped because evidence had been obtained via torture.

The world knows about the torture undergone by other prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

The world saw the photographic evidence proving that Americans conducted torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The world knows that the CIA has tortured prisoners at "black sites" around the world.

The world knows that the conditions in many American prisons are unnecessarily harsh and dehumanizing.

I have no doubt that many of the individuals mentioned above committed serious crimes. Unfortunately, many of my fellow Americans have forgotten that the laws against torture must apply to all prisoners, even to the ones accused of terrorism.

Bradley Manning's only real crime was releasing to the public a classified video that showed an atrocious act committed by the American military. This video, in my opinion, should not have been labeled "secret" in the first place.

Edward Snowden did not compromise the security of the United States. He strengthened it, by telling the American public that the United States has implemented a horrifying system of mass surveillance -- a system which contradicts the fourth amendment of our Constitution.

Saint Silouan the Athonite is said to have possessed the power to know the most secret thoughts of anyone who met him. Only a holy man should have such an ability. It is a blasphemy and a horror for my country's National Security Agency to attempt to learn all the secrets of all the world's inhabitants.

Perhaps Mr. Snowden was trying to make this very point.

I've always admired Russian culture and the Russian people. I hope you can give Edward Snowden a new home in your country.

Joseph Cannon
Editor of the website "Cannonfire"
http:cannonfire.blogspot.com
Maryland, United States of America


Его Превосходительство Александр Владимирович Коновалов
Министр юстиции
Русская Федерация
14 улица Житная
119991, г. Москва

Уважаемый господин министр,

Я американский политический писатель. Я не могу утверждать, что важным писателем, хотя у меня есть аудитория. Я пишу Вам, чтобы просить от имени Эдварда Сноудена, бывший сотрудник нашего Агентства национальной безопасности, который попросил для своей страны предоставить убежище.

Пожалуйста, помогите ему. Эдвард Сноудена это человек "ищет свое наследство и его сад, его гаванью спасения для тех, кто хочет спастись". В его случае, великая земля Россия может предоставить убежище он стремится.

Четыре дня назад вы получили письмо от Эрик Холдер, генеральный прокурор Соединенных Штатов. Он заверил, что "г-н Сноуден не будут пытать. Пыток является незаконным в США."

Тот факт, что генеральный прокурор чувствует необходимость сделать такое заявление, указывает, как далеко моей стране снизилась. Соединенных Штатов Америки стал позорный для практики пыток. Хотя я люблю свою страну, я видел это гораздо менее цивилизованным, чем это было, когда я родился.

Держатель оскорбил вас, говорю вам, такая очевидная ложь. Кроме того, он оскорбил и Россия, и Соединенные Штаты Америки.

Я могу опровергнуть заявления Держателя, упоминая одно имя: Юрий Носенко. Я уверен, что вы знаете имя. Американцы и русские всегда расходятся во мнениях относительно того, что он сделал, но никто не может отрицать, что сотрудники ЦРУ Носенко тюрьму без суда и следствия. Они пытали его постоянно в течение пяти лет.

Примером Носенко, сам по себе, доказывает Держатель лжецом. Я могу назвать недавних примеров.

Как я писал, частный Брэдли Мэннинг предстает перед судом после нескольких лет заключения. Оба Amnesty International и Хуан Э. Мендес Специальный докладчик ООН по вопросу о пытках, подтвердили, что он получил крайне бесчеловечное обращение, включая лишение сна, принудительный наготы и одиночной камере.

Джон Уокер Линд, обвиняемых в различных, связанных с терроризмом преступлений, пытали жестко и неоднократно. Его признание было получено под давлением. Он заключил сделку о признании вины расположение, условия, которые указывают, что он не обсуждать пытки он прошел. Тот факт, что правительство США сделали такое устройство представляет собой признание того, что делает правительство, по сути, проводят пытки.

Хосе Падилья был подвергнут пыткам, находясь в заключении. Он прошел лишение сна, кандалов, непригодным для дыхания паров и насильственные позиций стресса. Он был вынужден принять ЛСД и другие наркотики.

Администрация Буша признала, что пытали Мохаммед аль-Катани. Обвинения против него были сняты, потому что доказательства были получены с помощью пыток.

Весь мир знает о пытках претерпела со стороны других заключенных в Гуантанамо.

Мир увидел фотографические доказательства того, что американцы проводили пытки в тюрьме Абу-Грейб в Ираке.

Мир знает, что ЦРУ пытать заключенных в «черных дырах» по всему миру.

Мир знает, что условия во многих американских тюрьмах излишне жесткой и бесчеловечной.

Я не сомневаюсь, что многие из упомянутых выше лиц совершивших тяжкие преступления. К сожалению, многие из моих коллег-американцев забыли, что законы против пыток должен применяются ко всем заключенным, даже на те, обвиняемых в терроризме.

Брэдли Мэннинга только реальные преступления предании огласке объявление видео, которое показали гнусное действие, совершенное американскими военными. Это видео, на мой взгляд, не должны были помечены "секретно", в первую очередь.

Эдвард Сноудена не поставить под угрозу безопасность Соединенных Штатов. Он укрепил ее, рассказывая американской общественности, что Соединенные Штаты осуществили ужасающая система массовых охранные системы - системы, которая противоречит четвертой поправки к нашей Конституции.

Преподобного Силуана Афонского, как говорят, обладал властью, чтобы узнать самые сокровенные мысли каждого, кто встречался с ним. Только святой человек должен иметь такую ​​возможность. Это кощунство и ужасом для Агентства национальной безопасности моей страны, чтобы попытаться узнать все секреты всех жителей планеты.

Возможно, г-н Сноуден пытался сделать этот самый момент.

Я всегда восхищался русской культуры и русского народа. Я надеюсь, что вы можете дать Эдварду Сноудена нового дома в вашей стране.

Джозеф Кэннон
Редактор сайта "Cannonfire"
http:cannonfire.blogspot.com
Мэриленд, Соединенные Штаты Америки

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They're not even TRYING to hide it any more

Back in the 1960s, when the spooks killed highly visible people, they came up with elaborate schemes involving red herrings and patsies and controlled investigations and fake documents and big steaming buckets of disinfo. But nowadays, they're not even trying to hide what they're up to. American intel wants the world to get the message loud and clear: "Yeah, it's true. We kill people who annoy us. What are you gonna do about it?"

Case in point: The strange death (at 35) of superhacker Barnaby Jack, the man who made ATMs spew out cash the way Linda Blair spewed pea soup.

A computer hacker who gained cult status across the internet after revealing how to hack cash machines has been found a week before he was due to demonstrate how to kill someone by hacking their pacemaker.

The body of Barnaby Jack was found in San Francisco yesterday. The city's medical examiner's office would not give any further details.

We're talking about a guy who, to judge from his photos, seemed quite young and fit. If a coroner says anything about natural causes or suicide -- well, just remember the case of CIA man John Paisley, who was fished out of Chesapeake Bay in 1978; his body was tied up and he had a bullet hole behind his left ear. The coroner ruled that one a suicide as well -- even though Paisley was right-handed.

Back to Jack:

He was due to appear at the Black Hat hacking convention in San Francisco next week, demonstrating how he could attack heart devices.

He had claimed he had developed techniques for attacking implanted heart devices that could kill a man from 30 feet away.

It should be understood that Jack did not himself seek to kill people. He sought to warn the world that such things were very real.

Here's more, via Reuters:

The New Zealand-born Jack, 35, was found dead on Thursday evening by "a loved one" at an apartment in San Francisco's Nob Hill neighborhood, according to a police spokesman. He would not say what caused Jack's death but said police had ruled out foul play.

Looks like we have another Paisley. Or maybe this one will be more Ferrie-esque, complete with suicide note(s). Here's one final squib, from the San Jose Mercury-News:

Barnaby Jack died on Thursday, although the cause of death is still under investigation, San Francisco Deputy Coroner Kris Barbrich said. Craig Brophy, a spokesman for computer security firm IOActive, Inc., where Jack worked, confirmed his death and said the company would be issuing a statement.

Cynics may suggest that Kris is sending a message to Uncle: "You'll get your suicide verdict just as soon as the checks clear."

Michael Hastings. Barnaby Jack. Barrett Brown. Bradley Manning. Julian Assange. Ed Snowden. The members of Anonymous. 

There's a war going on. It's the cyber version of Prince John's armies versus the men of Sherwood Forest.

Remember what I've always said: Although anyone who loves peace must despise the very idea of revolution, the threat of revolution is the only thing that has ever kept any government honest. Therefore, any technology that makes rebellion impossible also makes tyranny inevitable.

Quite obviously, the government has declared war on anyone who hopes to warn the public that this technology is coming. Is here.

Added note: In a comment, a reader chides me for leaving out Aaron Swartz -- "prosecuted to death." Just so.

Back to Barnaby: Ya think they're going to try to sell the public on an auto-erotic asphixiation narrative? That would allow the Breitbarters to fill the internet with stories about sexaholic Dems...

Side note: If you Google the terms IOActive and NSA, you'll be directed to this IOActive blog entry, which details a Windows vulnerability that allows intelligence agencies to gain elevated privileges on your computer.

I don’t know why Microsoft continues using MD5; it has been banned by Microsoft SDL since 2005 and it seems there has been some component oversight or these components have been built without following SDL guidance. Who knows on what other functionality MD5 continues to be used by Microsoft, allowing abuse by intelligence agencies.

Perhaps Barnaby Jack also planned to talk about that stuff during his "heart stopping" demonstration.

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My questions

A Summers day. Here's Robert Reich on reports that Obama will choose either Larry Summers or Janet Yellen to be the new Federal Reserve Chairman.

So who would be best -- Yellen or Summers? I know both fairly well. Janet Yellen has impeccable credentials. She's now vice-chairman of the Fed, after having been head of the San Francisco branch of the Fed, and before that, an economics professor at Berkeley. In 2007 she was one of the very few voices sounding the alarm about the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Not incidentally, she's also a delightful person. Those who have worked with her tell me she listens carefully to all views, and is respectful of her employees. If selected, she'd be the first woman to head the Fed.

I worked with Larry Summers in the Clinton administration, where he eventually became Treasury Secretary. Under Obama, he ran the National Economic Council. Personally, I like Larry. He's very bright, and able to see the nub of most policy problems very quickly. But he has the tact and personality of a bull in a China shop, and he's been notoriously wrong about a few big things. In the late 1990s, he urged Clinton to sign off on legislation killing off Glass-Steagall, and was also part of the Rubin-Greenspan cabal that rejected the arguments of Brooksley Born, then chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for why the CFTC should regulate financial derivatives. Summers' subsequent tenure as president of Harvard came to an end after he suggested one reason women were not well-represented in the sciences is they don't have the mind for it. As chair of the National Economic Council under Obama, he and Tim Geithner, then Treasury Secretary, bailed out Wall Street while refusing to impose tough conditions on the banks.

My question: Why is Reich even asking? Yellen is obviously the better choice. Thus, you can bet the rent money that Obama will pick Summers.

2. Holder and Snowden. AG Eric Holder has written a letter to Russian Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov, assuring the Russians that the United States will happily issue a passport allowing Ed Snowden to go home. Moreover,

Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States.

My questions: Doesn't the fact that Holder feels obligated to offer this assurance say a lot about how low this country has fallen? Holder's letter reminds me of that old Monty Python routine: "And I can assure you that there is no cannibalism in the modern British Navy!" Or maybe I'm thinking of that old movie (I forget the title) in which John Candy, proffering his services as babysitter, assures the anxious parents that there will be no Satanism "or anything like that"...

Would Bradley Manning agree with Holder's "no torture" assessment?

Will Holder's creepy we-promise-not-to-hurt-him letter -- a letter best read aloud while doing an imitation of Wednesday Addams -- finally make the "Snowden's secretly working for Obama" conspiracy theorists shut the eff up?

3. NSA's big oops. The NSA gave a cybersecurity award to for the Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper of 2012 to Dr. Joseph Bonneau of the University of Cambridge. Bonneau's response:

In accepting the award I don’t condone the NSA’s surveillance. Simply put, I don’t think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.

In an interview, Bonneau took the gloves off. Question:

"You’ve been pretty vocal in your criticism of the NSA after winning the award. On Twitter you said you “want it abolished.” Is that true?"

The answer:

I’d rather have it abolished than persist in its current form. I think there’s a question about whether it’s possible to reform the NSA into something that’s more reasonable.

I don’t really do politics for my day job. I don’t feel like I follow the situation as closely as a lot of people who are writing about what kinds of reforms are needed, or how things might need to change. But my feeling based on what I’ve read is that I don’t want to live in a country with an organization like the NSA is right now.

My question: Is this how the NSA's cyber-totalitarianism will end -- with the refusal of the wonks to participate in the system?

Another question: The average citizens and the congressfolk who defend the NSA's practices -- do they really think that they know more about the situation than Bonneau does?

Yet another question: It's all well and good to propose dismantling the NSA, but how do we bell that cat?

Still another question: Isn't this Eric Holder's cue to write Bonneau a letter reminding him that the U.S. does not practice torture and therefore he has nothing to worry about? Nothing at all. Sleep tight, Professor...

I just thought of another movie that Holder's letter brings to mind: Mars Attacks. Remember that one? The Martian armies -- even as they were laying waste to cities -- would broadcast this message: "Don't run! We are your friends!"

4. Man of Steel. As I recall, the old Superman comics presented Krypton as a planet with technology not much more advanced than that of Earth in the 1950s. We saw scenes of suburban Kryptonians mowing the lawns and so forth. But the new movie depicts a Krypton filled with incredibly advanced technology -- plus some really cool flying monsters.

My question: If Krypton has all of this groovy ultra-advanced tech, why don't Jor-El, Lara and the kid all hop into a spaceship? Or why don't they send themselves into the Phantom Zone and leave the kid instructions on how to de-Phantomize them?

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Once again -- the Hastings accident

The second video contains an interview with an ignored witness. Unfortunately, you have to wade through a great deal of other stuff -- including selections from the Inception soundtrack -- before you get to that part.

In a previous post on this subject, I indicated (in a comment) that I did not want to involve this blog in a debate over the accident details. For me, it was enough to know that a man with a rep for driving like someone's grandma was suddenly speeding nearly a hundred miles an hour down a busy street that no-one in his right mind would confuse with a raceway.

The incident occurred on a lovely stretch of Highland Blvd. just south of Melrose. As I recall, there are lots of fancy-schmancy homes on that block. It's usually busy, busy, busy.

At first, I presumed that Hastings hit the gas pedal because he thought he was being chased. Then I saw a video featuring a DARPA expert who warned her colleagues about the possibility of outsiders commandeering a vehicle's computer controls.

That video -- coupled with the established fact that Hastings told associates that he was in fearful of the FBI and about to take a lower profile -- was all I needed. Ever since, I have operated under the presumption that this "accident" was probably not an accident.

Even so, my first instinct was not to mire this blog in the gritty, gruesome details of how car crashes occur and what we should and should not expect to see after such an event. Lots of other blogs went down that trail -- and some of those blogs cater to the Paultards and Alex Jonesians. I don't like to link to those guys. The analysis here is more...

Hm. I was going to say "up my alley," but that phrase may be inappropriate.

What intrigues me is not so much the CSI stuff but the links between Hastings and the mysterious tech firm called Endgame. (Similarly, while doing JFK research, I got bored with the forensics of Dealey Plaza, preferring to concentrate on Oswald's history and associations.) We'll have another Endgame post soon.

This post exists to prove that rules are meant to be broken. Let's play the CSI game, just this once.

Not long ago, a reader who knows a lot about cars sent me his take on what happened. On the same day, another reader in my beloved L.A. sent me photos from the accident scene.

Reader "Dan" supplied the words, while reader "Hal" supplied the images that pepper this post (except for the first one, which came from here).

Here's Dan:

MH was in the car, so the car did did not have to be steered remotely.

At 100 mph he would either be panicked to the point of inaction, or doing his best to keep it between the ditches.

In other words, all "they" had to do was take over 4 systems at most: the fly-by-wire gas pedal, the Start/Off button, the brakes, and the transmission.

They would then accelerate the car and let speed, time, and the odd all engulfing fire, IMO, do the rest.

I've run Slaloms, wheel to wheel, and driven like a maniac on the street for years. (But only late at night so I could see cars coming from a long ways off and in blind curves, and only way out in the country on isolated roads I knew like the back of my hand. Damn, is one sign of getting old feeling the need to apologize for stupid stuff I did years ago?) I know that it doesn't matter where you are, or who you are -- if your car starts to accelerate, and you can't turn it off, can't stop it, and can't knock it out of gear, you will eventually crash at a high rate of speed.

MH appeared to be going 50 to 60 mph when he ran the red light.

The street MH went down at what they guess to be 100 mph had a bump in it which would cause a car going that fast to lose grip. At 100 mph it doesn't take much to upset a vehicle's suspension, the bump alone could cause an out of control situation.

Any driver input into the steering wheel in a loose condition, such as after a bump, could result in losing the backend, and due to the confined space the car would most likely slam nose first into the nearest object.

If the driver was a world class driver, he would most likely slam one side of the car flat into the nearest object because he would have corrected the slide, but he would still hit the "wall".

Anyone who works on modern cars knows computers control these type of systems, and more I can't think of:

Ignition; Starting the car; Making it run; Turning it off; Timing; Lifters - am I a V8 or a V4?; Cam timing; AC and heating systems; Air Bags; Brakes; Throttle; Air/Fuel ratio; Automatic transmission shift points and overdrive; Steering if the car has a self-parking app; Stereo volume as related to speed; Automatic headlight dimmers; Door locks; Seatbelt tensioners; Warning buzzers of all kinds

All this is done through pulsed square waves, low voltage signals, and other double E mumbo jumbo I don't understand, and these waves tells one of your car's computers to turn on the Peltire thermoelectric seat modules to heat, or cool.. start your car, make it accelerate, etc...

Most all computers can be hacked because most computers are dumb, and the dumb ones always do what exactly they are told to do.

Computers: Every Authoritarian's dream...thing.

Okay, I know that computers run everything in new-ish cars. But what nobody (not even that nice lady from DARPA) has yet explained to me is why the system allows outsider access. I happen to have have a small, antiquated netbook: If the internet on that device has been disabled and the USB ports are empty, the only way to get into the thing is through the keyboard. And the computers in cars don't have keyboards. Why on earth do they have to put Bluetooth technology into a freakin' car?

A simple piece of legislation could solve this problem once and for all.

The video below was produced by Mark Dice. I really hate to promote this guy's work, because he believes in the existence of a secret society called the Illuminati, which is pure myth -- "a scarecrow to frighten the gullible," as researcher Morris Kominski once put it. But -- dammit, there really is some good stuff in this one:

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Twelve bucks an hour: What would happen?

We know that Walmart gets away with paying its employees so little because Uncle Sam picks up the slack. Taxpayers pay for the workers' health care (via the emergency room, usually) and for food stamps. Basically, your money is being used to make the Walton family rich. What would happen if Walmart workers received enough money to make it on their own?

Twelve bucks an hour should do it. That's a living wage.

Now, a new study by UC Berkeley has proven that, if they were to implement a $12 minimum wage and passed on the entire cost to customers, it would only cost them a measly extra $.46 per trip. Would YOU be willing to pay an extra 46 cents if it meant that America’s largest employer would finally pay their employees enough to live a dignified life?

By the way: If you go to the story on the other end of that link, you'll see an interesting dialog about unions. One reader opined that unions were the reason why the American auto industry (almost) went under. The response:

sorry to burst your bubble your living in, but the auto makers problems were caused by executive greed and mismanagement. Working in the auto industry for 35 years I have seen the mismanagement first hand. and after the union didn't take raises for 12 years did you see the price of the vehicles come down? nope. but you did see fired CEO's get millions in bonuses.

The Randroids simply cannot argue away the fact that America's most prosperous years occurred when unions thrived. Why? Because well-paid workers buy things, and the buying of things keeps the economic engine humming. Walmart is starting to struggle because underpaid American workers can't even afford to buy the cheap crap made by underpaid Chinese workers.

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"We don't need no education..."

State Senator Aaron Osmond wants to end compulsory education in Utah.

Some parents completely disengage themselves from their obligation to oversee and ensure the successful education of their children. Some parents act as if the responsibility to educate, and even care for their child, is primarily the responsibility of the public school system. As a result, our teachers and schools have been forced to become surrogate parents, expected to do everything from behavioral counseling, to providing adequate nutrition, to teaching sex education, as well as ensuring full college and career readiness.

The first sentence of this paragraph contains a split infinitive; "to oversee and to ensure" is preferable. The second sentence contains another split infinitive ("and even to care" is preferable) and two wrongly-placed commas. The third sentence contains an awkward attempt at parallelism. Suggested revision: "...everything from behavioral counseling to providing adequate nutrition, as well as..."

Later, we get this remarkable sentence:

Instead of requiring that teachers and students must be in class for 990 hours a year, lets enable our local school boards to determine the best use of a teacher’s time and focus student and parent expectations on educational outcomes such as completing assignments and passage of exams as the measurement of success for the opportunity to progress in public school.

The word "must" is not necessary. The contraction "let's" is missing an apostrophe. Because the sentence structure is so clumsy, the reader cannot determine which noun goes with the verb "focus." Does the writer mean "let's focus" or does he mean "let's enable our school boards to focus"? The rest is so problematic, I'm not sure how to proceed. Does the phrase "as the measurement of success for the opportunity to progress" mean anything?

Based on Mr. Osmond's performance, I would say that compulsory education remains desirable. However, I do agree with Osmond on one point: Some students may need to repeat grades.

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Congress vs. NSA

It's starting. Representatives Justin Amish and John Conyers are fixin' to offer an amendment to defund the NSA's outrageous domestic surveillance state. Here's how to support their efforts.

From the Politico story:

“The Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act” or LIBERT-E Act, the legislation also requires the secret court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make opinions available to Congress as well as summaries of those decisions to the public.

“We accept that free countries must engage in secret operations from time to time to protect their citizens. Free countries must not, however, operate under secret laws. Secret court opinions obscure the law. They prevent public debate on critical policy issues and they stop Congress from fulfilling its duty to enact sound laws and fix broken ones,” Amash and Conyers said in a joint statement.

And they have some support in the Senate. Here's an op-ed by Al Franken:

I'm working on legislation that will require the federal government to annually report how it uses key authorities under the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including the authorities underlying the phone metadata and the PRISM electronic surveillance programs that recently came to light. For each of these authorities, the government must disclose how many Americans' information is being collected and how many Americans' information is being queried and actually seen by federal officers or agents.

My legislation would also allow companies to publicly report on how many Patriot and FISA orders they're getting and how many of their customers these orders affect. There's a way to do this that protects national security.

Do these efforts go far enough? Probably not. Franken's approach is far too squishy. I would prefer something along the lines of a bill that would direct Obama to blow up that new NSA data collection center in Utah.

And I don't see anything here about legislation that would force cell phone providers to give consumers the option to turn off GPS.

But before you sneer, let me ask you: When was the last time defeatism solved anything? Getting halfway there is better than not starting out -- unless your last name is Wallenda.

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Bella update

Enough with the NSA stories and the royal birth; let's discuss a matter of true significance.

My dog Bella had surgery yesterday to remove two growths -- one large, one small -- and I'm overjoyed to report that she is doing fine and sleeping here at home. (The shot to your left was snapped just minutes ago.) Even her appetite has returned.

However, she did piddle on my bedding no less than three times. As any James Bond fan can tell you, three times is enemy action. No doubt this was her way of warning me never to make her go through something so traumatic again.

The scars are massive and hideous, but they will heal. A biopsy will reveal whether the growths were malignant. Frankly, if malignancy is found, I'm not sure what further steps are available. I understand that some people have put together gluten-free canine diets which supposedly fight cancer. Heretofore, I've mostly fed her either chicken or ground beef, mixed with rice and oatmeal.

I owe my readers more than words can express.

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Uncle Sam's hackers: A new theory of the death of Michael Hastings

(Yes, this is a long and discursive post. Bear with me. At the end, I'm going to introduce a new theory of the death of Michael Hastings.)
 
Barack Obama falsely called Ed Snowden a "hacker," even though Snowden's whistleblowing has nothing to do with hacking. If our beloved President really wants to meet a hacker, he should visit CIA headquarters. Policymic has the story:

In a detailed account on Foreign Policy, the Central intelligence Agency, in concert with the National Security Agency, has been demonstrated to conduct what is referred to as "black bag" operations, or the manual hacking of a target's computer by uploading spyware onto anything ranging from personal laptops to large-scale servers. When a specific target is out of the NSA's reach, it calls on the CIA to do, in its own parlance, a "surreptitious entry."

In such an operation, a crack CIA team breaks into the place of interest and does one of the following, depending on the situation: install spy-ware, bug phones, hack data switching centers, and copy backup files and disks. It is a procedure often used when hacking remotely is not possible.

Having already conducted over 100 such operations, it is a rate that, according to Matthew Aid, has not been seen since the Cold War. And the targets are not as narrow as one might think; in addition to foreign governments and militaries, multinational corporations and individuals with terrorist ties have been hacked as well.

Uploading spyware? Hm. I'm thinking Stuxnet and Flame. Remember those two ultra-fun pieces of malware? They may be on your computer right now. Or how about Magenta, a new-generation malware brought into this world by HBGary?

At any rate, I think the CIA's hacking capabilities go way beyond the sort of stuff indicated in the article referenced above. By the time you finish reading this post, you may agree.

In short and in sum: I think that Michael Hastings may have been killed because he had discovered a network of hackers lurking within the American intelligence community.

As noted in an earlier post, Hastings was looking into a mysterious spooked-up company called Endgame. The same company was also on the radar of Hastings' friend Barrett Brown, an expert in the realm of hacking. Brown was tossed into the pokey on charges that, to my nostrils, reek of bullshit.

Endgame is run by one Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine whose story formed the basis for the HBO series Generation Kill. My earlier piece on Endgame quoted from an excellent article by Patrick Maguire.

Brown began looking into Endgame Systems, an information security firm that seemed particularly concerned about staying in the shadows. “Please let HBGary know we don’t ever want to see our name in a press release,” one leaked e-mail read. One of its products, available for a $2.5 million annual subscription, gave customers access to “zero-day exploits”—security vulnerabilities unknown to software companies—for computer systems all over the world. Business Week published a story on Endgame in 2011, reporting that “Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems.” For Brown, this raised the question of whether Endgame was selling these exploits to foreign actors and whether they would be used against computer systems in the United States. Shortly thereafter, the hammer came down.

HBGary? Oh-ho. Why was Endgame in communication with HBGary?

In case you've forgotten, HBGary is yet another mysterious cyber company. Nowadays, it's run by a "former" CIA guy.

In fact, it's fair to say that HBGary is spookier than the Winchester Mystery House. The company is now owned by ManTech, an intel-linked firm with ties to MZM. Remember MZM? It was run by Mitchell Wade, who made a plea bargain arrangement in 2006 after he was caught bribing congressman Duke Cunningham. I had Wade pegged as a spook early on.

ManTech employs Amit Yoran, the former Director of National Cyber Security (part of Homeland Security); he also ran In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment firm. The Yoran connection should give you a pretty clear idea of just what kind of company we're dealing with.

Not long ago, HBGary was run by Aaron Barr. Remember him? He was the target of the Anonymous hackers collective.

Odd thing about Aaron: The Breitbart crowd always loved the guy. For more on the HBGary/Breitbart connection, see here.

The Breitbart bloggers also despise Barrett Brown.

The Economic Policy Journal has published an interesting piece on Hastings, Endgame, and HBGary. I want to fixate on one interesting detail in that article.

Just before he died, Hastings offered this tweet:

@ronbryn @BarrettBrownLOL working on it. there was an election, and still a few wars going on. but get ready for your mind to be blown.
— Michael Hastings (@mmhastings) January 24, 2013

The tag "ronbryn" refers to former Raw Story editor Ron Brynaert, who used to contribute the occasional friendly comment to this very blog. He was a very good journalist. Then he got involved with the Anthony Weiner story and...

Well. How to put it? He kind of went off the deep end -- as did a number of other people.

Long after the rest of the world stopped caring about Anthony Weiner and his famous peepee, a small group of right-wingers and left-wingers remained fixated on certain unsolved aspects of that scandal. We've talked about this group in previous posts. The die-hard "Weinergaters" engaged in a very weird twilight war, forever accusing each other of hacking and identity theft and impersonation and sockpuppetry and worse sins. They often claimed that the FBI was going to arrest their enemies any day now -- on God-only-knows what charge.

Ron Brynaert took part in that twilight war. He was deep into the Weinergate subculture -- and yes, I think "subculture" is the appropriate word. Brynaert seemed convinced that one could find a much more important story lurking just below the surface of the (ultimately rather silly) Weinergate scandal.

This earlier Cannonfire post tells the long, strange tale of my own unhappy interactions with Ron Brynaert. Those interactions occurred months after Weiner left office. Here are a couple of samples from that earlier piece:

But a couple of weeks ago, I had my own unsettling run-in with this Ron Brynaert character, who fancies himself to be the expert on Weinergate. He also loves to make wild, paranoid claims about everyone who ever had more than ten words to say about the matter. Brynaert has gone beyond left and right; he's off the map and zooming through the fourth dimension.

Brynaert's obvious psychological pain helped me to keep my composure. I politely told him that I couldn't really follow what he was going on about, but that he might do better if he stepped back and took some time off. The message was simple: "Time to chill, dude." Sweartagod, that was all.

That was enough.

Ron Brynaert became convinced that I was part of the Great Conspiracy Against Ron Brynaert. This, despite the fact that he originally wrote me; I had wanted nothing to do with the guy or with any of the "twilight warriors." According to Brynaert, other members of the Great Conspiracy Against Ron include the Breitbart crew, Neal Rauhauser, blogger Brad Friedman, Brett Kimberlin, maybe Glinda the Good Witch -- and, oh, hell, just everyone.

Brynaert sent me an email warning that "You're definitely going to be contacted by NYPD detectives and lawyers." Needless to say, I have not heard from anyone connected with law enforcement or the legal profession.

Naturally, I walked away from this odd email exchange convinced that Ron Brynaert was something of a...well, "kook" is such a strong word, so let's not use it. But you take my point.

And yet. And yet...

Months later, Michael Hastings had latched onto what he claimed was the big story of his career. It seems to have involved Endgame and HBGary. And who were his ultimate confidantes? Barrett Brown and Ron Brynaert.

Frankly, I was surprised to learn that a heavy hitter like Hastings took Brynaert seriously.

And now I'm thinking: Maybe Brynaert was really on to something. True, the guy had acted pretty wacky during our email exchange -- but once upon a time, he had been a good writer. The Breitbarters seemed to consider him a genuine threat. Maybe he had retained enough of his old journalistic skills to dredge up something truly important.

But if so, what did he find?

At this point, I can only engage in surmise. As I've said on many previous occasions, I don't mind the occasional bit of speculation, as long as it comes clearly labeled as such. And now that I've posted that label where everyone can see it, let me jot down a few scattered thoughts -- thoughts which may congeal into a full-fledged theory:

1. I presume that Brynaert is still completely obsessed with Weinergate and all of its ramifications.

2. Although the right scoffs at my quaint belief that Weiner's Twitter and Facebook accounts really were hacked (yes, I still hold to that theory, for reasons we can get to in another post), the "twilight warriors" all lived in Hackerland. That is to say: They seemed to know a lot about the subject, and they were forever accusing each other of being "black hat" hackers. Some of you may recall that Mike Stack (one of the guys who went after Weiner) bragged that he was an expert "cyber detective" who had the ability to "find out anything about anyone." Moreover, he said that he was working with other experts -- and with unnamed tech firms.

3. The Breitbart-related bloggers who went after Weiner so zealously -- and who created a sockpuppet army to whip up hysteria all across blogland -- were also staunch defenders of Aaron Barr and HBGary. I never understood why HBGary mattered to those guys so much. They also hate-hate-hate Barrett Brown.

4. HBGary and Endgame worked together. Both firms are strongly linked to the intelligence community. These companies know a thing or two about sockpuppetry.

5. Ed Snowden has repeatedly said it is easier than you might think for lower-level NSA guys to access private emails, chats and other data -- even if the target is a politician. Russ Tice (another NSA whistleblower) has said that, back in 2004, he did that kind of cyber-spying on an up-and-comer named Barack Obama.

6. To repeat a point made in previous Cannonfire posts: If Snowden is right, the NSA now has the ability to gather blackmail information on the very congressfolk who supposedly oversee the intel community.

Hm. Yes. A theory does indeed begin to congeal.

Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Here are a few more clues. Then I'll spell it all out.

We know that Breitbart got the Anthony Weiner "dick photos" long before the scandal broke. We know that Breitbart's accomplices only pretended to be shocked when one of those photos showed up in Weiner's Twitterstream, which broadcast the image to the world. (And yes, Weiner did know how the system worked; he had never made such a mistake before.) And we know that, as part of the "Get Weiner" project, there was a very sophisticated deception operation directed against Tommy Christopher of Mediaite. I refer, of course, to the ultra-bizarre "Betty and Veronica" affair. That elaborate imposture is one of the main reasons why I continue to believe that Weiner really was hacked.

Now let's put it all together. Again: What I'm about to say is speculative. But what if....what if...

What if someone at the NSA got Weiner's passwords? What if this same "someone" found out about the guy's naughty online activities?

(After Tice revealed what he revealed, the notion doesn't seem as outlandish as it once might have.)

And what if that same NSA guy gave the incriminating data to Breitbart (or to folks around Breitbart) in order to set a sting into motion?

What if Barrett Brown, Ron Brynaert and Michael Hastings got wind of what really happened to Anthony Weiner? (In this context, you may want to scan the comment from Starroute here.)

Only one of those three men had credibility: Barrett Brown is in jail, and Ron Brynaert is -- well, he's Ron Brynaert. But Hastings was dangerous. He had a killer resume, he wrote well, and he looked good on teevee.

What if that same unknown NSA guy knew how easy it is to take over the controls of a modern car?

Maybe the person who got the goods on Weiner was not precisely an "NSA guy." HBGary does contract work for NSA. And HBGary keeps showing up in this story.

Am I saying that this is all about Weiner? No. If I'm right, then Weinergate was simply a proof-of-concept operation. I am suggesting that ideologues working within the intelligence community have come up with a new way to control the American government.

I am convinced that every human being -- and certainly every politician -- has a secret weakness. The intelligence community has developed new ways of discovering those secrets. Once the dirt is found, the intelligence community (in order to maintain deniability) must work through cut-outs in order to make the secrets public. That's where the right-wing's "alternative" media infrastructure comes into play.

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A bill that everyone should support

It doesn't go far enough. Still, it is welcome.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pushing to fast-track legislation that would require police to obtain a warrant before accessing emails and other private online messages.

Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-Vt.) goal is for the Senate to unanimously approve his bill before the August recess, according to one of his committee aides. Any opposition could delay a vote until after Congress returns in the fall.

Leahy's bill would not affect the NSA programs, but it would curb the ability of local and federal law enforcement officials to access private online messages.

Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, police only need a subpoena, issued without a judge's approval, to force Internet companies to turn over emails that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old.

When lawmakers passed ECPA more than 25 years ago, they failed to anticipate that email providers would offer massive online storage. They assumed that if a person hadn't downloaded and deleted an email within six months, it could be considered abandoned and wouldn't require strict privacy protections.

Leahy and privacy advocates argue that ECPA is woefully out of date and that police should need a warrant, based on probable cause and approved by a judge, to read a person's emails.

Again: This bill does not address the topic of the NSA's cyber-totalitarianism. Still, if Ed Snowden's revelations have done anything to aid the progress of this legislation, he has performed a useful function.

By the way: Please notice that the threatened filibuster of the Leahy bill is a Republican thang. Keep that fact in mind the next time you hear a conservative squawking about the dangers of Big Gubmint. Conservatives love big government -- why else would they object to a law that says cops should get a damn warrant before reading your mail?

And keep this Republican filibuster in mind the next time some pseudo-liberal ratfucker tries to beguile you with the Standard Issue "Both Parties Are the Same" Speech.

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We may have a solution...!

Sorry for the light posting. In brief:

No less a figure than Jimmy Carter has said that the monstrously obtrusive technology wielded by the NSA means that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy. Moreover, Carter says that Snowden's whistleblowing activities have been helpful, and have done nothing to harm national security.

After all, how can there be effective congressional oversight on the NSA when the NSA can scoop up every email and phone conversation involving your congressional representatives? The blackmailed are "overseeing" the blackmailers.

We have further indications that Michael Hastings' mysterious death may be related to the NSA scandal -- specifically, to Barrett Brown, Endgame, and HB Gary. More on this later.

Fortunately, a pro-privacy organization has sprung up, and it is devoted to fixing the NSA mess. The groups is called the Constitutional Rights Association. I like the name and the website imagery: These people obviously hope to appeal to Americans all across the political spectrum. This issue is one on which Ron Paul libertarians and old school liberals like myself can, should and must work together.

In other areas, I can't stand the Paulies, and I'm sure they have no high regard for Big Gubmint, Ayn-hating "socialists" like me. But privacy gives us a common issue.

Only a mass movement can bring about the necessary laws.

(For starters: How about a law which forces all cell phones to include a way to turn off the freakin' GPS? We need to end horrors like this. And puh-leeze don't give me any bullshit stories about how GPS tracking can save lost hikers. If there's an on/off switch on all phones manufactured in the future, hikers can flip the swtich to "on." Simple-dimple.)

If we need a Constitutional amendment, then by God, that's what we should go for.

You don't build a mass movement by excluding millions of people, even if they are the kinds of people you might not want to invite to your next brie-and-tofu party.

You also don't build a movement by trafficking in defeatism.

Many people will tell you: "Don't bother trying; the game's already over and the bad guys won." The people who say these words may be mere cynics -- or maybe they are lazy bastards using a haughty cynicism to disguise laziness. But they could also be infiltrators and sock puppets.

(We need a new term for "agent provocateur." The term should include those who provoke inaction.)

Here is the press release for the Constitutional Rights Association:

Grandville, Mich. (MMD Newswire) July 17, 2013 -- The Constitutional Rights Association, Inc. a new nonprofit corporation, announced today that it has been formed for the purpose of engaging the public in a campaign to end mass surveillance of the American public by the NSA and other governmental agencies. These mass surveillance campaigns, which are being coordinated by the NSA, were partly revealed and disclosed by former NSA systems administrator, Edward Snowden.

The mass surveillance and long term storage of surveillance data is known to include the cell phone Meta data for every phone call made or received by US citizens. This information about our phone calls is being uploaded on a daily basis from the phone companies to the NSA. While these programs are classified, reports in the media indicate that the NSA may also be collecting and storing, without a search warrant, all emails, twitter, facsimile and other electronic communications of all Americans,.

These domestic spying programs are conducted without a warrant or probable cause and therefore violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution. The NSA domestic spying programs are unconstitutional.

These programs have the potential to destroy our nation by changing the way we view ourselves and our relationship to government.

The Association intends to file for 501(c)4 status and plans to engage and reproach political candidates who support unconstitutional domestic spying programs, by informing the public of their positions and the potential consequences for our democracy.

Our Association was formed because there is an absence of leadership on this critical issue. This absence is the result of leading figures in both major political parties having been complicit in the creation and continuation of these secret mass surveillance programs. As a result, the normal checks and balances which have traditionally kept this kind of government abuse at bay, are breaking down.

The Constitutional Rights Association is preparing to launch a public awareness campaign to inform the public of the danger posed by the NSA's violation of the US Constitution.

Two facts will slowly sink in: 1) We are all under continuous surveillance by our government and, 2) the surveillance is being recorded and stored so that it can be accessed later by keyword. These two facts will change our view of ourselves. This will no longer be the land of the free and the home of the brave. We will become a land where we are afraid of our own shadows.

These mass surveillance and domestic spying programs are like a leak in the face of a very large dam; If not quickly repaired, it will destroy the dam.

Already some people are becoming afraid to engage in political speech because the government is watching and keeping records. That view may be a bit paranoid now. .. But in the next couple of years as it really sinks in that everything that we do and say may be kept on electronic file by the NSA: every phone call, email, text message, photograph, this now irrational fear will spread. We will slowly lose our right of free speech to fear. This will happen even if the government never uses the data.

What if, in a few of those keyword indexed phone calls or emails, you had expressed some significant disagreement with a government official? Think for a moment what the leader of North Korea could do with this technology. Through keyword indexing he could have his NSA round up everyone who had ever said anything bad about him.

People in third world countries try to stay out of politics, and they try to never express an opinion that could be "misinterpreted." Are we going to live that way too in a few years?

Let us use the strength of our voices now while we can. Let us speak up now while the danger is at its weakest.

This press release and the formation of the Constitutional Rights Association is a call to action. We are calling on the American people to learn more about this critical issue to use our voices to say the most important word that a free people can say to their government: "No!"

If readers know of any other organizations doing this kind of work, please send links. I'm going to advertise these groups on this humble blog.

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More on the Michael Hastings mystery

The above video features an interview with Joe Biggs, a friend to Michael Hastings. Biggs, who strikes me as a calm and rational observer, feels that the famed reporter's death was not an accident. On the morning of the crash, Hastings sent his friend an uncharacteristically strange and panicky email.

Kimberly Dvorak, also interviewed in this video, is an investigative reporter who decided to take a closer look at the Hastings mystery. She has interviewed witnesses who insist that the car exploded well before it struck the palm tree. Dvorak's work strikes me as very credible.



I may get in trouble for posting this one. Mark Dice is a somewhat over-the-top conspiracy buff who has seriously annoyed me in the past. But here he discusses -- rather intelligently -- the possibility of a modern car's electronics being commandeered by a hacker. We have talked about this technology in a previous post, which published a talk by Dr. Kathleen Fisher of DARPA. If she says it's possible -- it's possible.

Moreover, in the first video above, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke expresses his view that Hastings' car may have been hacked by a cyber-attack.

There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers -- including the U.S. -- know how to remotely seize control of a car.

Even if you don't accept any conspiratorial scenarios of the Hastings incident, you simply have to be concerned about these new electronic attack capabilities.

Another mystery: Why was Hastings' body cremated -- against the wishes of his family? I've never heard of such a thing previously! (So far, the story has not been confirmed by Hastings' wife.)

Here is another interview with Dvorak in which she discusses the mystery cremation (and threats against her own person)...



We're not sure which story Hastings was working on. Apparently he did not even tell his wife, although he let people know that he was onto something big.

Here's one takeaway: If you are an investigator looking into something large and nasty, don't keep your mouth shut -- at least, not completely shut. Keep a friend informed, and hide a file in a secure location.

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