sosadmin’s blog - 09/18/2012

One of the most peculiar events in the ongoing TrapWire surveillance saga was an August 13, 2012 Cubic Corporation press release distancing the company from TrapWire Inc. and its parent, Abraxas Applications. The Cubic statement came amidst growing talk online among privacy researchers and journalists about the possibility that connections remained between the defense and transportation services giant and TrapWire, the Abraxas Corporation spin-off.

Researchers and journalists were worried about such a connection because Cubic oversees firms and services that manage and process extremely private information about millions of people — information a law enforcement and corporate surveillance system like TrapWire would no doubt appreciate direct access to. Unproven allegations started flying online, among them an RT article which stated without evidence that the companies were linked in a “global surveillance network.”

But there is information suggesting that Cubic’s August 13 denial of an Abraxas connection to TrapWire Inc., and its parent company Abraxas Applications, was false.

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- What’s going on with the New York City subway system?
- Search results for trapwire at Pastebin

July 11 presentation at the Niobrara County Library

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Steve Johnson - 09/17/2012

Long envisioned as an alternative to remembering scores of computer passwords or lugging around keys to cars, homes and businesses, technology that identifies people by their faces or other physical features finally is gaining traction in the Bay Area and elsewhere, to the dismay of privacy advocates.

Some consumer gadgets already are outfitted with scanners to verify the user’s face or fingerprint, and many office buildings control access via retina and voice-recognition systems. But that could be just the beginning. Corporations, government agencies and university researchers are exploring ways to identify people through everything from the shape of their ears, veins and DNA to their gait, heartbeat and body odor.

“There are multiple benefits to society in using this form of identification,” said Anil Jain, a Michigan State University computer science and engineering professor, adding the technologies could prove “transformative.”

But skeptics call many of these “biometric” concepts infeasible. And while the idea is to bolster security, civil libertarians believe the technology could have grave privacy implications. They fear it could plunge us toward a future where we’ve forfeited the right to remain anonymous and our most personal information is bandied about in massive databases by retailers, police or others — often without our knowledge.

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sosadmin’s blog - 08/23/2012

We don’t know much about what the NSA is doing. What we do know – and what we suspect -  is featured in today’s New York Times. 

Shane Harris, author of The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, reports that the legacy of John Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program “operates with little accountability or restraint” at the NSA, while filmmaker Laura Poitras invites William Binney, a 32-year NSA-veteran-turned-whistleblower, to talk about what that means for all of us. 

Binney contends that the program he created for foreign intelligence gathering has been “turned inward on this country” and that the NSA has the capacity to monitor what everyone is doing and show the “entire life” of an individual over time. 

Malte Spitz, a Green Party politician in Germany who gave a TED talk on telecom surveillance was able to map his own life using six months’ worth of data that telecoms had gathered on him. Just imagine what kind of dossier he could have put together on himself if he had access to the range of personal data and computer power possessed by the NSA.

As Shane Harris writes, the NSA’s “global surveillance system continues to grow. It now collects so much digital detritus – e-mails, calls, text messages, cellphone location data and a catalog of computer viruses – that the NSA is building a 1-million-square-foot facility in the Utah desert to store and process it. What’s missing, however, is a reliable way of keeping track of who sees what, and who watches whom.”

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summonthemagic - August 23, 2012

“Rerum cognoscere causas”

Information herein presented was gleaned from several texts published by Trine-Day about Yale’s Skull & Bones, as well as the ancient and short-lived but replicated and replicating Order of the Illuminati (see especially Melanson’s book Perfectibilists).

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TM: A data dump of sorts, with a plethora of choice excerpts from my book (links to Collins brothers material and more). I’m totally fine with it. If someone comes across it, at least they will get a sense of the scope of the book, especially considering that you can’t search inside at Google books or at Amazon, etc.

Haven’t watched TV in about a month. Forgot how much I hate that tool Morgan, and his smirky “government is always right” innane, contrived attitude.

Via optics.org:

SiOnyx is far from the only photonics company to have received strategic backing from the CIA, which also invests in communications technologies. Other photonics companies in its portfolio include:

• Advanced Photonix: developing terahertz imaging technologies

• Alfalight: a specialist in manufacturing high-power laser diode and systems

• Genia Photonics: ultrafast fiber lasers suitable for chemical detection

• InView Technology Corp: infrared and hyperspectral imaging

• LensVector: “solid-state optics” to replace moving parts in autofocus cameras

• OpGen: optical mapping for whole genome analysis

• Semprius: concentrated photovoltaics via micro-transfer printing

• SpectraFluidics: surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to trace airborne chemicals

• Walleye Technologies: microwave imaging to “see through walls”

Sebastian Anthony - August 17, 2012

With a chilling hint of the not-so-distant future, researchers at the Usenix Security conference have demonstrated a zero-day vulnerability in your brain. Using a commercial off-the-shelf brain-computer interface, the researchers have shown that it’s possible to hack your brain, forcing you to reveal information that you’d rather keep secret.

As we’ve covered in the past, a brain-computer interface is a two-part device: There’s the hardware — which is usually a headset (an EEG; an electroencephalograph) with sensors that rest on your scalp — and software, which processes your brain activity and tries to work out what you’re trying to do (turn left, double click, open box, etc.) BCIs are generally used in a medical setting with very expensive equipment, but in the last few years cheaper, commercial offerings have emerged. For $200-300, you can buy an Emotiv (pictured above) or Neurosky BCI, go through a short training process, and begin mind controlling your computer.

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A chilling documentary on U.S. policy in Central America, this three volume series, which took six years to make, was researched and filmed by Allan Francovich, best known for his award winning film about the CIA, On Company Business.

An astonishing range of characters tell their stories, from soon-to-be-assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero to Salvadoran right wing leader Robert D’Aubuisson; from three then-Presidents of the three republics to Guatemala’s impoverished indigenous peoples; from ousted American Ambassador Robert White, CIA operatives, and National Security officials to the founder of El Salvador’s secret police, who speaks directly of the rape and murder of four American missionary women there, from the top death squad officials to remorseful triggermen whose gruesome accounts of kidnapping, torture and killing lend compelling moral urgency to the case against right-wing dogma.

“The issue is really whether the U.S. government instigated, trained and has direct knowledge regarding a whole series of murders - including American citizens plus hundreds of thousands of local people - and has covered it up. What people know about the world is controlled. These issues are crucial to democracy: without information you can’t expect the population to make decisions knowingly.” - Allan Francovich

“An eye-opening documentary about the Central American wars … the film’s most frightening sequences are bloodless interviews with right-wing vigilantes - self-possessed men of power who suavely deny their responsibility for crimes attributed to them by human rights organizations … a formidable work of investigative cinema.” - San Francisco Examiner

“Not to be destined a favorite in the White House screening room.” - The Washington Post

Guatemala

El Salvador

Nicaragua

Documents sent to attendees, including Michael Noonan, outlining the culture of the high-powered and confidential meetings.

thejournal.ie - 14/08/12

IT IS ONE of the world’s most secretive and high-powered groups – bringing together figures from the political, financial, diplomatic, corporate and media worlds in a confidential four-day conference discussing all manner of sensitive topics.

Today, TheJournal.ie can shine a light on some of the inner workings of the Bilderberg conference – an annual meeting where the world’s most powerful and influential people meet to discuss the shape of the world and what can be done to improve it.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation reveal the full agenda of the 2012 meeting, which counted Ireland’s Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, among its attendees.

They also provide previously unconfirmed details about the protocol and nature of the invite-only event – the secrecy of which often prompts accusations that the group’s ultimate task is either the advance of capitalism worldwide, or the formation of a unified global government.

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Walter Hickey - Aug. 11, 2012

It’s no secret the Central Intelligence Agency has an investment firm that funds startups that could have a big impact for the Agency.

If there is a company out there doing intelligence research, it’s likely that In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s personal investor, either looked them up or made a check out to them.

It’s all to ensure that the Agency remains on the forefront of tech. Not long ago, In-Q-Tel invested heavily in a company called Keyhole. Never heard of them? Maybe you know their work, a little project eventually known as Google Earth.

So, want to know what’s next for technology? Keep an eye on these 25 companies.

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Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy provided new details about the Obama Administration’s alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. The details, including new information about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, are to be revealed at an event in Washington hosted by the Center for Security Policy. The allegations that had come to light against Ms. Abedin had been rejected by House Speaker John Boehner, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain and others. McCarthy was an attorney in New York’s southern district and led the court trial against the Brotherhood figure known as the Blind Sheik, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.

Antifascist Calling - Sept. 3, 2012

In a story which should have made front page headlines, Narco News investigative journalist Bill Conroy revealed that “A high-ranking Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization member’s claim that US officials have struck a deal with the leadership of the Mexican ‘cartel’ appears to be corroborated in large part by the statements of a Mexican diplomat in email correspondence made public recently by the nonprofit media group WikiLeaks.”

A series of some five million emails, The Global Intelligence Files, were obtained by the secret-spilling organization as a result of last year’s hack by Anonymous of the Texas-based “global intelligence” firm Stratfor.

Bad tradecraft aside, the Stratfor dump offer readers insight into a shadowy world where information is sold to the highest bidder through a “a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.”

One of those informants was a Mexican intelligence officer with the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, or CISEN, Mexico’s equivalent to the CIA. Dubbed “MX1″ by Stratfor, he operates under diplomatic cover at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix, Arizona after a similar posting at the consulate in El Paso, Texas.

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CovertHistory.com - 8/11/2012

Main Core (AKA MAINCORE) is a database very similar to what Wikipedia described, except we knew about Main Core in 1995, thanks to Chuck Hayes, who should be something of a folk hero to the hacking group Anonymous.

Before we go back to what we knew and ignored in 1995, let’s review what we know about Main Core.

The origins of Main Core lies with FEMA and Oliver North, the Nicaraguan Contras, the Cabazon Indians, and a program called PROMIS.

PROMIS, designed to interface with innumerable database and extract relevant data regardless of the language or system used with the database. Its earliest roots were developed by William Hamilton while working for the NSA, and when Hamilton went private with Inslaw, some in the NSA felt cheated. In fact, any version made before 1978 was in the public domain, as it had been developed with public fund, but Inslaw’s Enhanced version of PROMIS was made in 1981, and the government wanted it.

Edwin Meese, Earl Brian and Peter Videnieks conspired with others to steal PROMIS in a scheme that would become entangled with American tech firms, and the Iran-Contra Affair. Modifications were made to PROMIS, creating a backdoor in any system it was installed on. The modified software was sold to foreign and global banks as a way to give the NSA secret “backdoor” access to the electronic flow of money around the world, as well as being sold or traded to foreign governments and intelligence agencies through a series of cutouts. The full extent of PROMIS’s reach and the depth of the scandal is staggering, and beyond the scope of this article.

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