Are they fucking serious?

 

Somebody actually thought that was worthy of a secret assessment by our intel agencies?  Or was it maybe ordered by a court?  That might make sense.

The National Intelligence Council, using findings from the 18 intelligence agencies, found in a secret assessment earlier this month that the Venezuelan government isn’t sending members of the prison gang Tren de Aragua to the U.S., according to The Washington Post.

[...]

Using the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump administration sent planes filled with alleged gang members to El Salvador’s infamous megaprison in the face of a judge’s order to turn the planes around to give the detainees due process.

[...]

Invoking the legislation last month, Trump said - without providing evidence - that the prison gang was conducting an “invasion” of the U.S. “at the direction” of the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

[...]

The assessment of the intelligence community ascertained that there are some contacts between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government at the lower levels, but the gang doesn’t follow orders from Maduro. Similarly, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence found in February that the Venezuelan government doesn’t control the gang.

[...]

The National Intelligence Council, the nucleus of the U.S. intelligence community, reports to the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

  UK Independent

So Trump's DNI has had that assessment since at least February, before Trump sent a plane load of people to El Salvador.

Leaking EVERYBODY'S Secrets

The Home Secretary has criticised the US after confidential details about the Manchester Arena attack appeared to have been leaked to the media by American intelligence officers.

[...]

A number of details about the Manchester Arena attack appeared in the US media – most notably on networks NBC and CBS – before British police had publicly released them to the UK media.

The initial death tolls, the fact the attack appeared to be a suicide bombing, and the name of the attacker, were all released through US outlets, apparently via leaky US intelligence sources.

[...]

Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about the US leaks, [Secretary Amber] Rudd said: "The British police have been very clear that they want to control the flow of information in order to protect operational integrity, the element of surprise.

"So it is irritating when it gets released from other sources and I have been very clear with our friends that that should not happen again."

  UK Independent

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

From the Snowden Files

For several years, British human rights campaigners and lawmakers have been pressuring the government to provide information about whether it has had any role aiding U.S. targeted killing operations, yet they have been met with silence. In particular, there has been an attempt to establish whether the U.K. has aided U.S. drone bombings outside of declared war zones — in countries including Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia — which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and are in some cases considered by United Nations officials to possibly constitute war crimes and violations of international law.

Though the Snowden documents analyzed by The Intercept state that Menwith Hill has aided “a significant number” of “capture-kill” operations, they do not reveal specific details about all of the incidents that resulted in fatalities. What is clear, however, is that the base has targeted countries such as Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia as part of location-tracking programs like GHOSTHUNTER and GHOSTWOLF — which were created to help pinpoint individuals so they could be captured or killed — suggesting it has played a part in drone strikes in these countries.

[...]

“If the U.K. government knows that it is transferring data that may be used for drone strikes against non-combatants … that transfer is probably unlawful,” Stratford told the members of Parliament. “An individual involved in passing that information is likely to be an accessory to murder.”

  The Intercept

Which may be why there are only a few British citizens in the compound. The majority are Americans, whose own lawless government absolves them of any international or moral responsibility.

Read about it here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another Example of How All That Surveillance Is Working

[Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State terrorist known as “Jihadi John,” ] was a computer programming graduate of the University of Westminster and lived in Queen’s Park, West London, [and] is thought to have killed American journalist James Foley. The killing was shown in a video released last August.

He is further believed to have featured in the videos of the beheadings of US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines, British taxi driver Alan Henning, and US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter.

[...]

Emwazi was a “person of interest” for MI5 as he was a member of a London based jihadi cell that had been set up to recruit militants.

[...]

Despite clearly being on the radar of the British intelligence services, Emwazi, who was born in Kuwait and travelled to the UK as a child with his family was able to avoid detection and eventually escape to Syria in 2013.

“Given the numbers who appear to have ‘slipped through the net’, it is legitimate to ask, how many more people must die before we start to look more closely at the strategy of our intelligence services?” said the former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, writing in the Guardian on Friday.

  RT

Another case to which the punch line could be: are the Five Eyes intelligence/security agencies incompetent or complicit?

But Wait! There's More!

And wow. Much more of this and every Guardian reporter will be within rights to request round-the-clock protection. Although it will have to be obtained from a private organization.

The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.

The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. "GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight," a GCHQ strategy briefing said.

[...]

In one revealing document from 2010, GCHQ acknowledged that the US had "raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA's minimum expectations". It said GCHQ "still remains short of the full NSA ask".

[...]

The papers show the NSA pays half the costs of one of the UK's main eavesdropping capabilities in Cyprus. In turn, GCHQ has to take the American view into account when deciding what to prioritise.

[...]

Ministers have denied that GCHQ does the NSA's "dirty work.”

  Guardian

Of course they have. Hey, you’re OUR b*tch now.

The papers are the latest to emerge from the cache leaked by the American whistleblower Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who has railed at the reach of the US and UK intelligence agencies.

But not necessarily the last. In fact, highly unlikely to be, since this report wasn’t authored by Glenn Greenwald. He must have his hands full.

When GCHQ does supply the US with valuable intelligence, the agency boasts about it. In one review, GCHQ boasted that it had supplied "unique contributions" to the NSA during its investigation of the American citizen responsible for an attempted car bomb attack in Times Square, New York City, in 2010.

No other detail is provided – but it raises the possibility that GCHQ might have been spying on an American living in the US. The NSA is prohibited from doing this by US law.

So, technically, the US was not spying on its own citizen, eh? Oh how we love our technicalities.

As well as the payments, the documents seen by the Guardian reveal:

• GCHQ is pouring money into efforts to gather personal information from mobile phones and apps, and has said it wants to be able to "exploit any phone, anywhere, any time".

• Some GCHQ staff working on one sensitive programme expressed concern about "the morality and ethics of their operational work, particularly given the level of deception involved".

• The amount of personal data available to GCHQ from internet and mobile traffic has increased by 7,000% in the past five years – but 60% of all Britain's refined intelligence still appears to come from the NSA.

• GCHQ blames China and Russia for the vast majority of cyber-attacks against the UK and is now working with the NSA to provide the British and US militaries with a cyberwarfare capability.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Likely to Lead to"

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.

[...]

The evidence is contained in documents – classified as top secret – which were uncovered by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian. They reveal that during G20 meetings in April and September 2009 GCHQ used what one document calls “ground-breaking intelligence capabilities” to intercept the communications of visiting delegations.

This included:

• Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates’ use of computers;

• Penetrating the security on delegates’ BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;

• Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;

• Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;

• Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: As you might expect…

Turkey, South Africa and Russia have reacted angrily to the British government demanding an explanation for the revelations that their politicians and senior officials were spied on and bugged during the 2009 G20 summit in London.

The ministry summoned the UK's ambassador to Ankara to hear Turkey's furious reaction in person.

[...]

Igor Morozov, a senator in Russia's Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, suggested that the Obama administration's attempts to improve relations were clearly insincere: "2009 was the year the Russian-American 'reset' was announced. At the same time US special services were listening to Dmitry Medvedev's phonecalls."

[...]

Nikolai Kovalev, the former head of the FSB, Russia's powerful domestic spy agency, [...] added however: "To avoid diplomatic and international scandal, security agencies are forbidden from doing this. And usually they don't do it."

  UK Guardian

Usually. But somehow, I’m not convinced. Spies exist to spy. I am guessing all governments spy on anyone and anything they have the capability to spy on.

New Meaning for the Term "War Games"

According to a story leaked to the Daily Telegraph, the CIA warned Britain’s security and intelligence agencies that al-Qaida was planning an attack 18 months ago but withheld detailed information. It quoted security sources saying the US move was in retaliation for a decision by UK courts more than two years ago to disclose a brief summary of CIA information.

That information confirmed that Binyam Mohamed, a British resident secretly flown to Guantánamo Bay, had been brutally treated. The CIA information was passed to MI5 and MI6, who fought unsuccessfully to suppress it.

The Telegraph on Thursday described MI6 as being particularly “frustrated” after receiving “only the tip not the intelligence” about an alleged plot in which armed terrorists dressed as civilians were planning an indiscriminate attack on British soil.

[...]

Government officials talk of the US withholding “little pieces” of intelligence information. They suggest the US move led to unnecessary use of British counter-terrorism resources but concede that the US would never withhold life-threatening intelligence.

  Raw Story

You sure about that?

Sickening, but not at all surprising.