AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance
An AT&T research paper published in 2001 and unearthed today by Andrew Appel at Freedom to Tinker shows how the phone company uses Hancock-coded software to crunch through tens of millions of long distance phone records a night to draw up what AT&T calls "communities of interest" i.e., calling circles that show who is talking to whom.
But it's of interest to Threat Level because of recent revelations that the FBI has been requesting "communities of interest" records from phone companies under the USA PATRIOT Act without a warrant. Where the bureau got the idea that phone companies collect such data has, until now, been a mystery.
N.H. Man Offers NBC $1 Million to Let Gravel Debate
Gregory Chase, a 27-year-old hedge fund manager from Nashua, N.H., placed an ad in a dozen newspapers offering NBC $1 million if the network lets former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel participate in Tuesday night's Democratic presidential primary debate.
Burma army 'recruiting children'
The Burmese army is forcibly recruiting children to cover gaps left by a lack of adult recruits, says a report by a US-based human rights organisation.
UN Director General: Food Riots Would Not Be A Surprise
The FAO’s food price index has risen to its highest level since it began in 1990. Wheat and milk prices reached a record high this summer while other agricultural commodities, such as corn and meat, are trading well above 1990s averages.
Anti-Clinton Video Draws Web Audience (With Video)
First came the Orwellian mash up YouTube video that portrayed Hillary Rodham Clinton as Big Brother. Then came a clip of her off-key rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Now, a stinging 13-minute video by a bitter Clinton foe is finding its own Internet audience.
The clip, a preview of a longer film by one-time Clinton donor Peter Paul, has scored more than 1.4 million hits on Google Video and about 350,000 on YouTube during the past week. Its popularity has driven it to the top spot on Google Video over the past two weeks.
US said Waterboarding was a War Crime in 1947
But after World War II, the United States government was quite clear about the fact that waterboarding was torture, at least when it was done to U.S. citizens:
[In] 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.
Gen. Petraeus' Spokesman Denies Sending Angry Email -- Plot Thickens
A critical email allegedly sent by a top U.S. military spokesman to a leading blogger this past weekend is starting to draw mainstream attention. But the colonel had sent an equally hot note to E&P in May defending the general without reading the report in question.
Ron Paul + Tom Cruise + Sex Pistols on Leno Tonight
Somehow "The Tonight Show" scored a trifecta of controversy tonight as they were able to book the most punk rock of punk rock bands, the most conservative member of Congress, and the wackiest Scientologist all to appear on its air in the same hour.
Strangely, whatever wire service the LA Daily News used to announce this story, threw in some heavy editorializing in the lede of the story.
Bush Fundraiser Linked to CIA Drug Plane
A MadCowMorningNews investigation has uncovered links between the ownership of the drug-running Gulfstream (Cocaine Two) and the other American-registered plane busted carrying a multi-ton load of cocaine in Mexico recently, the DC9 (Cocaine One) airliner caught with 5.5 tons of cocaine in Mexico 18 months ago.
Recently-released FAA records from the Gulfstream II business jet that went down in Mexico a month ago with four tons of cocaine reveal that before it was “parked” in the name of a New York real estate developer with ties to the Russian Mob, the plane was owned by a secretive Midwestern media baron and Republican fund-raiser, who had a business partner who, incredibly, owned the other American drug plane, the DC9, recently busted in Mexico.
Secret move to upgrade air base for Iran attack plans
The US is secretly upgrading special stealth bomber hangars on the British island protectorate of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, according to military sources.
1 in 10 Schools Are 'Dropout Factories'
It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That dubious distinction applies to more than one in 10 high schools across America.
UN rights expert urges US to prosecute or release Guantanamo prisoners
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Martin Scheinin [official website] called on the US in a report [press release] released Monday to quickly prosecute or release terror suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay so that the US can close the detention center.
Turkey: Relations with Iraq Become Explosive
By Jacques N. Couvas
Clashes between Turkish army units and Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas intensified during the weekend along Turkey's borders with northern Iraq and in the country's eastern province of Tunceli. Twenty suspected Kurdish rebels were killed, according to Turkish NTV network.
Fighting in the district of Pulumur began Sunday morning, involving 8,000 Turkish security troops, backed by helicopter gunships, who surrounded rural Dokuzkaya, Sariyayla, Kizilmescit and Zagge areas located in the Pulumur and Nazimiye districts of Tunceli. The highway that gives access to the rest of the province was cut off.
The 'Orwellian' Bush administration
By Nat Hentoff
In its report, the Constitution Project gets to the dangerous core of the government's claim that it alone can and should decide how to define "state secrets." The answer from these constitutionalists is: "Unless claims about state secrets evidence are subjected to independent judicial scrutiny, the executive branch is at liberty to violate legal and constitutional rights with impunity. By accepting these claims as valid on their face, courts undermine the principle of judicial independence, the adversary process, fairness in the courtroom, and our constitutional system of checks and balances." Since this particular administration has violated so many legal and constitutional rights, its assurance that we must "trust" it to close courtrooms requires a suspension of disbelief that responsible American citizens should not provide.
2007 Biden Crime Bill
Renewing the Assault Weapons Ban and Closing the Gun Show Loophole. The Biden Crime Bill provides for a straight-forward reauthorization of the assault weapons ban that became law in 1994 and it closes the so-called gun show loophole by requiring all gun show sales submit to federal background checks, just like any store-based firearm sale.
Business Leaders Warn Of Congressional Power Grab Over Water Control
Legislation quietly moving forward in the U.S. Congress would expand the federal government's control over U.S. waters to such an extent that even periodically wet ground would come under federal hegemony, a group of business leaders is warning.
Pent Up Housing Supply
A record 17.9 million U.S. homes stood empty in the third quarter.
A mere 2.07 million empty homes were for sale.
Let's do the math.
There are 15.83 million vacant homes just sitting there. How long can that last?
10 tribal sheiks kidnapped in Baghdad
Gunmen in Baghdad snatched 10 Sunni and Shiite tribal sheiks from their cars Sunday as they were heading home to Diyala province after talks with the government on fighting al-Qaida, and at least one was later found shot to death.
The bold daylight kidnapping came as the top U.S. commander in Iraq said the threat from the terror network has been "significantly reduced" in the capital.
Israel's legal advisor halts Gaza power cuts
Israel's state prosecutor said Monday that planned punitive cuts in the electricity supply to the Gaza Strip cannot go ahead without taking full account of the possible humanitarian consequences.
Menahem Mazouz said in a statement that "security chiefs must carry out supplementary examinations to take account of the humanitarian obligations before ordering electricity cuts."
Immunity Deal Hampers Blackwater Inquiry
The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month's deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.
Israel’s power cuts to Gaza: Collective punishment with tacit US approval
By Chris Marsden
Israel’s decision to begin cutting power to the Gaza Strip is a collective act of punishment that violates international law. It brings to a new stage the efforts made to starve the Palestinian population into submission since Israel imposed an economic embargo on Gaza after Hamas seized control in June from Fatah, now headed by the pro-Western President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas.
"Children are being treated as adults in Iraqi prisons and our investigations have shown that they are being abused and tortured," said Khalid Rabia'a, a spokesman for the Prisoners' Association for Justice (PAJ).
Greenspan Supports Gold Standard On Fox Business
Who's Behind the PKK?
In a word: Washington
By Justin Raimondo
The recent threat by the Turks to invade Iraq in hot pursuit of PKK terrorists has the administration scrambling to appease Ankara and stave off a major blow to the claim that the U.S. occupation has provided "stability" to the region. Kurdistan, after all, has been touted up until now as a model of peace, prosperity, and unalloyed happiness a foretaste of the country's golden future, provided "defeatists" in the U.S. don't pull the rug out from under our imminent victory. To see this veritable utopia smashed by Turkish force of arms would be a disaster for Washington but even worse would be the revelation of how we got ourselves into this wholly untenable position to begin with. Worse, that is, for whoever would be indicted and prosecuted for pulling off what may turn out to be one of the most ambitious, and dangerous, "rogue" operations since Iran-Contra.
Missing Nukes: Treason of the Highest Order
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
U.S. Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Requirements, Major-General Richard Y. Newton III commented on the incident, saying there was an “unprecedented” series of procedural errors, which revealed “an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards”
These statements are misleading. The lax security was not the result of procedural negligence within the U.S. Air Force, but rather the consequence of a deliberate tampering of these procedures.
In an astonishing attack, the monarch claimed his country had passed on information that could have stopped the atrocity but it was ignored.
From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity
On Sept. 6, 2006, President Bush announced that the CIA's overseas secret prisons had been temporarily emptied and 14 al-Qaeda leaders taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But since then, there has been no official accounting of what happened to about 30 other "ghost prisoners" who spent extended time in the custody of the CIA.
No evidence Iran is making nukes: ElBaradei
Chief UN atomic watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei said overnight he had no evidence Iran was building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.
Reprieve for Saddam's men
That deadline has passed, but the men are still alive and in US custody. The reason is questions raised by prominent Iraqi officials and a spirited behind-the-scenes deliberation between senior Iraqi and US officials over the death sentence of one of the men, Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Jabouri al-Tai, the former defence minister.
Intel Estimates to Be More Restricted
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top intelligence official said Friday.
Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest
Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of "ordering and authorizing" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.
Judgment Day for the CIA?
In a real-life version of 'Rendition,' a determined Italian prosecutor is hunting down those charged as the Bush administration's contract kidnappers.
