Government snooping, backdoors and #necessaryhashtags

[Nick]

Terror trial collapses after security services 'refuse to disclose material'

Gildo was arrested while transiting through Heathrow airport. He had not crossed the UK border and had not intended to enter Britain. He was charged with receiving terrorist training and weapons training in 2012 and 2013 and of possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.
The decision to drop the charges – the third time in a Syria-related case in the past six months – is embarrassing for the security and intelligence agencies. It seems they did not want to reveal their activities in Syria and Iraq and their role in helping opponents of the Assad regime.

Press article: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...-bherlin-gildo

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Nick

Terror trial collapses after security services 'refuse to disclose material'



Press article: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...-bherlin-gildo

It seems the UK still has some sense of justice under law. In the US, such niceties have been ignored where classified material is concerned.

[LaurV]

Is that photo for real? It looks like from a movie, and I have the feeling I recognize some actors, the one with the gun, and the fat guy in the back, this one especially I associate in my mind with a funny support actor from action movies...

[Nick]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Is that photo for real? It looks like from a movie, and I have the feeling I recognize some actors, the one with the gun, and the fat guy in the back, this one especially I associate in my mind with a funny support actor from action movies...

http://widerimage.reuters.com/photog...uzaffar-salman

[ewmayer]

Frustrated NSA Now Forced To Rely On Mass Surveillance Programs That Haven’t Come To Light Yet | Der Zwiebel, Amerika's Tollste Zeitung

(Re. the comment-easter-egg at top of the page source ... it's so cute it brings tears to my eyes.)

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Nick

60 years ago, the Bilderberg Group was founded by the late Dutch Prince Bernhard.
It is an annual meeting of more than 100 of the most powerful people from North America and Europe, both in the public and private sectors, and its meetings are private - until recently even their existence was secret. Up to now, journalists wanting to know who is attending had to try and spot people as they arrived. This year's meeting is taking place now, this time in Copenhagen, and the list of participants has been published:
http://bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html
A curious mix!

It's that time of year again, the venue this time is Telfs-Buchen (Austria) and the new participants are:
http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants2015.html

Bilderberg 2015 has an extremely high-powered participant list, featuring a large number of senior politicians and public figures. With participants this powerful, and an agenda containing this many hot topics, the Telfs policy conference is sure to be covered in depth by the world’s press. And by “sure to be”, I mean probably won’t be. For reasons that, as ever, escape me.

Press article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-forget-the-g7

[LaurV]

No romanian on that list, time for me to go there to ask what the hack are they thinking...

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by LaurV

No romanian on that list, time for me to go there to ask what the hack are they thinking...

Originally Posted by LaurV

No romanian on that list, time for me to go there to ask what the hack are they thinking...

Lot of bloodsuckers, though. "Honorary Romanians," perhaps?

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
-- Dorothy Parker

[Nick]

Here is a list of links on mathematics and mass surveillance from Tom Leinster in the n-Category Cafe blog:
https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category...lance_a_r.html

It's not new, but I have not come across it before, so maybe that's the case for others here as well.

[ewmayer]

SPIEGEL Interview with WikiLeaks Head Julian Assange - SPIEGEL ONLINE

A few regrettable typos ['Chomski' instead of Chomsky, 'cannon' in place of 'canon'], but otherwise excellent.

[ewmayer]

Note to U.S. 'cybersecurity' (ha, ha, ha) deciderers: If you want to keep your Top Secrets secret, consider spending a tiny fraction of what you do to conduct unconstitutional surveillance of your own citizenry on some actual security-cleared IT people, and stop handing out root access like Halloween candy to IT contractors, especially foreign-based ones, especially^n foreign-based ones from nations who would love such data and whose own intelligence services would love to have such data and who would otherwise have to spend $billions to obtain even a miniscule fraction of what y'all just HANDED OVER FOR FREE:

Encryption “would not have helped” at OPM, says DHS official: Attackers had valid user credentials and run of network, bypassing security.

Especially rich is the 'Congressional outrage' cited, because at the Ars piee goes on to note:

But some of the security issues at OPM fall on Congress' shoulders—the breaches of contractors in particular. Until recently, federal agents carried out background investigations for OPM. Then Congress cut the budget for investigations, and they were outsourced to USIS, which, as one person familiar with OPM's investigation process told Ars, was essentially a company made up of "some OPM people who quit the agency and started up USIS on a shoestring." When USIS was breached and most of its data (if not all of it) was stolen, the company lost its government contracts and was replaced by KeyPoint—"a bunch of people on an even thinner shoestring. Now if you get investigated, it's by a person with a personal Gmail account because the company that does the investigation literally has no IT infrastructure. And this Gmail account is not one of those where a company contracts with Google for business services. It is a personal Gmail account."

Ah, a personal e-mail account - you mean like the one Hillary Clinton used to conduct classified state department business during her tenure as Secretart of State? Well, with 'leadership' like that...