CourageFound.org

A new organization to support whistleblowers.

https://couragefound.org/

And Him, Helpless

President Obama slammed members of Congress for being “terrified” of offending the National Rifle Association on Tuesday, just hours after two young people died in a shooting at an Oregon high school in suburban Portland.

[...]

. “We're the only developed country on Earth where this happens,” the president said. “And it happens now once a week. And it's a one-day story. There's no place else like this.”

  alJazeera

USA! USA! We’re number one!

So where’s that executive power and signing statements, eh? Seems to work for droning and targeted killings, spying and trading prisoners. ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The NSA Beyond Control

In a remarkable legal filing on Friday afternoon, the NSA told a federal court that its spying operations are too massive and technically complex to comply with an order to preserve evidence [for a lawsuit brought by Electronic Frontier Foundation]. The NSA, in other words, now says that it cannot comply with the rules that apply to any other party before a court — the very rules that ensure legal accountability — because it is too big.

[...]

For an agency whose motto is "Collect It All," the NSA's claim that its mission could be endangered by a court order to preserve evidence is a remarkable one. That is especially true given the immense amount of data the NSA is known to process and warehouse for its own future use.

The NSA also argued that retaining evidence for EFF's privacy lawsuit would put it in violation of other rules designed to protect privacy.

  ACLU

Meanwhile, In the American-Freed Country of Iraq

Iraq’s prime minister has declared a state of emergency after armed fighters believed to be part of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh and freed hundreds of prisoners.

Overnight, hundreds of rebels launched an assault on the provincial capital Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, engaging in combat with troops and police, officials said on Tuesday.

“The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants,” an Interior Ministry official told news agency AFP, making it the second city to fall to anti-government forces this year.

  alJazeera

9/11 Cover Up

BBC talks to ex-counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke (the only government official to apologize to the public in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks) and ex-NSA agent Thomas Drake.

They Don't Need No Steenkeen Dollars?

Russia will start settling more contracts in Asian currencies, especially the yuan, in order to lessen its dependence on the dollar market, and because of Western-led sanctions that could freeze funds at any moment.

  RT

NSA Not Welcome Here

Developers of secure server Protonet asked for some $136,000 on a local crowdfunding website – and were rewarded with $1 million in an hour and a half. The record campaign, one year after Snowden’s NSA leaks, ended with more than $2 million raised.

[...]

[T]he funders were not looking for entertainment, but instead lined up to buy small orange storage and communication devices, which they hope will protect their enterprises from the prying eyes of the spy agencies. Actually, Snowden’s revelations on the activities of the NSA and GCHQ were actively used in Protonet’s marketing campaign.

  RT

New Billboard Outside State Department

FBI Harming the Nation

The FBI apparently is not only responsible for many (if not most) of the terrorist attempts they foil by funding, enabling and entrapping the would-be terrorists.

[Jeremy] Hammond is currently serving the remainder of a 10-year prison sentence in part for his role in one of the most high-profile cyberattacks of the early 21st century. His 2011 breach of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor) left tens of thousands of Americans vulnerable to identity theft and irrevocably damaged the Texas-based intelligence firm's global reputation. He was also indicted for his role in the June 2011 hack of an Arizona state law enforcement agency's computer servers.

[...]

Sealed court documents obtained by the Daily Dot and Motherboard, however, reveal that the attack was instigated and orchestrated not by Hammond, but by an informant, with the full knowledge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In addition to directly facilitating the breach, the FBI left Stratfor and its customers—which included defense contractors, police chiefs, and National Security Agency employees—vulnerable to future attacks and fraud, and it requested knowledge of the data theft to be withheld from affected customers. This decision would ultimately allow for millions of dollars in damages.

  Daily Dot

I’m beginning to think that without the FBI, we’d be a lot safer.

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

Bergdahl Footnote

The Obama administration has told senators it didn't notify Congress about the pending swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban officials because the Taliban had threatened to kill him if the deal was made public, three congressional officials have told The Associated Press.

  alJazeera

And they didn’t trust Dianne to keep her mouth shut?

Meanwhile on Thursday, Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, said of the situation prior to the exchange: "They had intelligence that, had even the fact of these discussions leaked out, there was a reasonable chance Bowe Bergdahl would have been killed."

Sure they did.

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