They call it the Quantum Apocalypse, the moment when a new breed of computers could bring an end to all our efforts to keep things hidden from the panopticon gaze of the machine.
[Q]uantum computers work completely differently from the computers developed over the past century. In theory, they could eventually become many, many times faster than today’s machines.
That means that faced with an incredibly complex and time-consuming problem – like trying to decrypt data – where there are multiple permutations running into the billions, a normal computer would take many years to break those encryptions, if ever.
But a future quantum computer, in theory, could do this in just seconds.
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Every day vast quantities of encrypted data – including yours and mine – are being harvested without our permission and stored in data banks, ready for the day when the data thieves’ quantum computers are powerful enough to decrypt it.
“Everything we do over the internet today,” says Harri Owen, chief strategy officer at the company PostQuantum, “from buying things online, banking transactions, social media interactions, everything we do is encrypted.
“But once a functioning quantum computer appears that will be able to break that encryption… it can almost instantly create the ability for whoever’s developed it to clear bank accounts, to completely shut down government defence systems – Bitcoin wallets will be drained.”
The government’s busily working to create countermeasures for the inevitable digital combat ahead, as the Houston Chronicle reported 28 January:
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has set out grand challenges for computer science with a hefty $2 million prize. DARPA’s goal is to keep U.S. cyber strength relevant amid the rapid decline in Moore’s Law and potential loss of global technological leadership. If quantum computers proliferate, they will threaten everything — not just bank records and medical documents, but everything. They represent a security leak so fundamental that it could be worse than the apocalypse. The quantum computer poses a possible threat to the infrastructure of the United States. Yet the American authorities do not have enough measures in place to stop this type of danger. One way that they can defend themselves is by inventing new safety standards that work with the current technologies.
Whenever quantum computing matures, however, it will present a vigorous challenge. Computer scientists will need to develop the protocols and protections necessary to ensure security for this emerging technology. If these precautions are not taken, quantum computing could lead to disastrous outcomes in cyber security. There needs to be a protocol developed to provide security for quantum computers. Hackers will be able to access and disrupt live systems, which calls for an urgent need of advancements in cyber security. These new systems can’t just implement existing protection protocols because they’re not fully developed yet. The cost of research and development is high and the profits once the product is finished are relatively low.
An adversary with quantum decryption capabilities, for instance, could theoretically access encrypted information with ease, putting most current communications infrastructure at risk of exploitation. For diplomats, this means that communications between them and their foreign counterparts would no longer be secure. For those in the intelligence community, quantum cryptanalysis could expose the U.S.’ deepest state secrets, creating a crisis exponentially worse than the Snowden data leaks. And, quantum cryptanalysis could enable adversaries to decode valuable battlefield communications, significantly undermining military strategy.
States will also likely compete for control over the quantum internet. The traditional internet was founded on a set of common standards, principles, and protocols. In the nascence of the quantum internet, however, allied states have been reluctant to collaborate on quantum research, and adversaries have not agreed on shared quantum age governance principles. In a time when governments increasingly seek to regulate the flow of information and localize data within their borders, quantum research siloes could speed up the shift toward the formation of several “mini-internets” that states control for their own interest.
Quantum mechanics violates our normal ways of seeing the world to such an extent that it bothered event Albert Einstein, who famously declared “The theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not play dice.”
Astrophysicist and science writer Ramin Skibba gives the general idea in the academic journal Nature:
Quantum phenomena were phenomenally baffling to many. First was wave–particle duality, in which light can act as particles and particles such as electrons interfere like light waves. According to [physicist Neils] Bohr, a system behaves as a wave or a particle depending on context, but you cannot predict which it will do.
Second, [Werner] Heisenberg showed that uncertainty, for instance about a particle’s position and momentum, is hard-wired into physics. Third, Bohr argued that we could have only probabilistic knowledge of a system: in [physicist Erwin] Schrödinger’s thought experiment, a cat in a box is both dead and alive until it is seen. Fourth, particles can become entangled. For example, two particles might have opposite spins, no matter how far apart they are: if you measure one to be spin up, you instantly know that the other is spin down.
As dissimilar as Barack Obama and Barack Obama may be, they share one trait in common, a deep-seated rage when the press does what’s supposed to be doing: Taking a deep look behind the curtains of business as usual in the nation’s Capitol.
A special Customs and Border Protection unit used sensitive government databases intended to track terrorists to investigate as many as 20 U.S.-based journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter, according to a federal watchdog.
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Earlier this year Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland formally prohibited prosecutors from seizing the records of journalists in leak investigations, with limited exceptions, reversing years of department policy. That action came after an outcry over revelations that the Trump Justice Department had obtained records belonging to journalists, as well as Democratic members of Congress and their aides and a former White House counsel, Don McGahn.
During the Obama administration, federal investigators secretly seized phone records for some reporters and editors at the AP. Those seizures involved office and home lines as well as cellphones.
The new revelations come on the heel’s of Friday’s ruling by Britain’s highest court holding that Wikileaks found Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States to face more than a dozen charges of espionage for publishing leaked secret American diplomatic cables and a military videos.
The implications are truly ominous, as Vanity Fair reports:
Chants of “Free Julian Assange” and “no extradition” were shouted by protesters who gathered outside the courthouse and held signs that read “journalism is not a crime.” Critics of the U.S. effort against Assange claim that the DOJ’s prosecution could severely cripple press freedoms around the world, given that the charges came after the WikiLeaks founder exposed alleged war crimes committed during the Iraq invasion. In one of the most notorious videos published by WikiLeaks in its 2010 document dump, U.S. Apache attack helicopters can be seen indiscriminately firing at a crowd in Baghdad and killing several civilians, including two Reuters news staff.
Though Assange isn’t a traditional publisher, like, say, The New York Times, charging him under the Espionage Act for publishing government secrets could be a slippery slope in which more mainstream outlets are similarly prosecuted. “The U.S. government itself is endangering the ability of the media to bring to light uncomfortable truths and expose official crimes and cover-ups,” read a Friday editorial in The Guardian, one of the first outlets to publish revelations from the WikiLeaks cache. “The decision is not only a blow for his family and friends, who fear he would not survive imprisonment in the U.S.,” added Guardian editors. “It is also a blow for all those who wish to protect the freedom of the press.”
“Doesn’t matter whether Assange is a journalist—this case will have far-reaching implications for press freedom,” tweeted Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “The Trump admin should never have filed the indictment, and the Biden admin should withdraw it.” Jaffer’s organization has been part of a coalition of civil liberties and human rights groups—including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom of the Press Foundation, and Human Rights Watch—that earlier this year urged the Biden administration not to extradite and prosecute Assange. On Friday, Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said “this indictment criminalizes investigative journalism.”
So while the Biden administration has opposed limits on spying on reporters, note that the Attorney General allows exceptions to the no-spying-on-reporters rule, restrictions that fly in the face of the First Amendment, which bans, without exception, any laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Mr. Fish delivers a scathing visual rejoinder for a Chris Hedges post at Scheerpost:
For all of his flaws, Julian Assange provided an invaluable service in publishing the diplomatic cables.
We count that their contents surprised any of the tgovernments or officials cited in the diplomatic postings, but their contents have proven invaluable to journalists and other citizens interested in the motivations of politicians and officials who make decisions affecting their lives and livelihoods.
In the words of Patrick Henry, “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”
From WUSA News, the CBS affiliate in the nation’s capital:
An alleged member of the Oath Keepers now indicted on conspiracy charges in the Capitol riot claims in a new legal filing that he holds a top secret clearance and was a former FBI section chief.
Thomas Edward Caldwell, 65, of Clarke County, Virginia, was indicted on January 27 on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property and entering a restricted building along with two alleged co-conspirators – Donovan Ray Crowl and Jessica Marie Watkins.
The government has asserted all three are members of the Oath Keepers militia group. Crowl and Watkins are accused of being part of the Ohio State Regular Militia Chapter. During a search of Watkins’ Ohio home, federal investigators have said they found homemade weapons and instructions for making plastic explosives.
Caldwell is accused of being a leader within the organization, and investigators say they’ve obtained communications between him and other alleged members of the Oath Keepers in which he appears to be coordinating travel to Washington, D.C., and activities on January 6. In those communications, investigators say, members of the Oath Keepers refer to Caldwell as “Commander.”
In other words, a man with deep connections to law enforcement and the spy world who knows how to command.
In an affidavit filed in opposition to Caldwell’s request to be released on prior to trial, by Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Michael R. Sherwin spells out the threat Caldwell represented:
The detailed and organized nature of Caldwell’s planning for the January 6 operation and Capitol assault was uniquely dangerous and continues to impact security in the District and beyond.Everything he did, he did in concert with an anti-government militia.Specifically, Caldwell helped organize a tactical unit of trained fighters that stormed and breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
And then there’s this:
Caldwell knew his coordination and planning efforts may lead to violence. After the November 2020 Million Maga rally, he confirmed to Crowl, “there will be real violence for all of us next time.” Doubling down, he messaged Watkins, “I believe we will have to get violent to stop this,”apparently referring to losing his country.And Caldwell left no doubt as to who he believed was taking his country, warranting violence: individuals he disagreed with. Whether it was an“enemy,” “socialists,” “savages,” “antifa-like bugs,” “maggots,” or “cockroaches,”Caldwell dehumanized those who held opposing worldviews and discussed killing them, shooting them, and mutilating their corpses to use them as shields. He admitted himself, that he has his own gear, and likes to “go where the enemy is, especially after dark.”
Quotes of the day
The affidavit chronicles decrypted text messages between Caldwell and officers from Oath Keepers groups and militia members, including this one, sent following a meeting at his home where he accepted leadership of the activists who would enter the Capitol as a unit. The message was sent three days after the 14 November Million MAGA March in which he and the others participated [emphasis add]:
I probably overstepped my bounds during our op. I know you could tell how committed I was to it and I tend to step up. Maybe one of my major flaws. However, who knew if we would have to do serious battle that day. I figure you have to plan for the worst. Thankfully, their fear of conflict with those who can dish out the violence kept their numbers down and made up for our shortfalls. I truly believe that like it ALWAYS happens, the success was due to the professionalism, dedication and adaptability of the men and women who have to execute the plan and adapt as they go. I saw it in all of you and it made me proud and even more grateful that you accepted me to play a part. Next time (and there WILL be a next time) we will have learned and we will be stronger. I think there will be real violence for all of us next time. I know its not my place but I’m sure you have seen enough to know I am already working on the next D.C. op. We either WILL have a country and we’ll be battling antifa-like bugs to keep it or we will have lost our country/freedom and we will be fighting to regain it. I know I csn [sic] count on you. Hope you feel the same….
The second text is dated 3 January, three days before the foiled insurrection, and details a plan for using heavy weapons:
Can’t believe I just thought of this: how many people either in the militia or not (who are still supportive of our efforts to save the Republic) have a boat on a trailer that could handle a Potomac crossing? If we had someone standing by at a dock ramp (one near the Pentagon for sure) we could have our Quick Response Team with the heavy weapons standing by, quickly load them and ferry them across the river to our waiting arms. I’m not talking about a bass boat. Anyone who would be interested in supporting the team this way? I will buy the fuel. More or less be hanging around sipping coffee and maybe scooting on the river a bit and pretending to fish, then if it all went to shit, our guy loads our weps AND Blue Ridge Militia weps and ferries them across. Dude! If we had 2 boats, we could ferry across and never drive into D.C. at all!!!! Then get picked up. Is there a way to PLEASE pass the word among folks you know and see if someone would jump in the middle of this to help. I am spreading the word, too. Genius if someone is willing and hasn’t put their boat away for the winter.
When President Donald Trump signed the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and government funding bill into law in December, so began the 180-day countdown for US intelligence agencies to tell Congress what they know about UFOs.
No, really. The director of National Intelligence and the secretary of defense have a little less than six months now to provide the congressional intelligence and armed services committees with an unclassified report about “unidentified aerial phenomena.
“It’s a stipulation that was tucked into the “committee comment” section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which was contained in the massive spending bill.
The legislation mandates that the report contain an unclassified analysis of all the UFO information collected by the Naval Intelligence, the FBI, and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, though a classified annex may also be submitted.
The legislation orders creation of an inter-agency review process to ensure timely reporting of information, headed by a designated official.
Congress also ordered a report on any the national security threats posed by the phenomena.
CIA UFO reports also go online
In a second development today, a website offering all manner of declassified secrets has made all thus-far released UFO reports from the Central Intelligence Agency
All of the CIA’s publicly available documents on unidentified flying objects is now available to be downloaded.
The website The Black Vault, ran by John Greenewald Jr., has published a downloadable archive of every instance of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the government classification for UFOs. All the files are available online at The Black Vault’s website.
Greenewald scanned thousands of pages by hand following approximately 10,000 Freedom Of Information Acts (FOIA) levied at multiple agencies, including the CIA, which have resulted in the 2.2 million pages uploaded to The Black Vault.
The documents had been released before, but in a very difficult format for the average reader. Black Vault offers the records in accessible PDF versions for easy downloading and perusal.
Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday urged Americans to avoid the city during President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week and to participate virtually following last week’s deadly domestic terror attack on the US Capitol.
Meanwhile, the National Guard has plans to have up to 15,000 National Guard troops to meet current and future requests for the inauguration, Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Monday. The dramatic increase in troops comes as law enforcement in the nation’s capital and around the country brace for further extremist violence amid the transition of power.
Speaking at a news conference Monday, Bowser, a Democrat, stressed that she was concerned about more violent actors potentially coming to the city in the run-up to the inauguration, saying, “if I’m scared of anything, it’s for our democracy, because we have very extreme factions in our country that are armed and dangerous.”
“Trumpism won’t die on January 20,” said Bowser, who has asked Trump and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to declare a pre-disaster declaration for DC.
More violence feared in all 50 states
Consider this poster circulating on Parler calling for protesters to “Come armed at your personal discretion,” as though there has been anything discrete about their actions thus far:
Law-enforcement authorities are bracing for more potential marches by some of President Trump’s supporters after being caught flat-footed by last week’s Capitol riot.
Pro-Trump online forums have been home to discussions about further demonstrations, with some organizers encouraging groups and other participants to bring firearms.
The Site Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist threats online, said in a report Saturday that a day of armed far-right protests is scheduled for Jan. 17 and has been in the works for weeks, with Trump supporters and antigovernment activists promoting marches in Washington and at state capitols around the nation. Fliers promoting the event are circulating online, including one encouraging people to “come armed at your personal discretion.”
A website associated with some adherents of the antigovernment boogaloo movement said the coming event would be peaceful. “We have no plans to do anything to the capitol buildings in the cities in which we plan the demonstration,” the site said in a post on Friday. Followers of the movement were charged last year in the killing of law-enforcement officers and possessing Molotov cocktails.
Others online are touting a Million Militia March in Washington on Jan. 20, the day of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to screenshots provided by Meili Criezis, a research associate tracking violent extremism at American University.
<snip>
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Chase Jennings said Mr. Biden’s inauguration has been designated a national security event, and given a threat rating that the Wednesday events didn’t receive. The Secret Service is leading federal law enforcement’s response, Mr. Jennings said.
Starting this week and running through at least Inauguration Day, armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols and at the U.S. Capitol, according to an internal FBI bulletin obtained by ABC News.
The FBI has also received information in recent days on a group calling for “storming” state, local and federal government courthouses and administrative buildings in the event President Donald Trump is removed from office prior to Inauguration Day. The group is also planning to “storm” government offices in every state the day President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated, regardless of whether the states certified electoral votes for Biden or Trump.
“The FBI received information about an identified armed group intending to travel to Washington, DC on 16 January,” the bulletin read. “They have warned that if Congress attempts to remove POTUS via the 25th Amendment, a huge uprising will occur.”
Federal law enforcement officials have advised police agencies to increase their security posture at statehouses around the country following the riot at the U.S. Capitol, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
One hate crime expert said his organization had issued a nationwide warning to law enforcement and politicians to immediately beef up security at public buildings, and to focus on their own personal security at their homes and as they travel to their offices.
“We are advising that public officials who do not have enhanced security reassess their security measures,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “We also are warning for governors and others like secretaries of state, attorneys general and high-ranking public health officials to supplement and reassess their security.
“This is a nationwide advisory.”
A major player in far Right violence implicated
It’s the Boogaloos, and their goal is nothing less than a second Civil War.
Another FBI memo obtained by Yahoo News states that some members of the Boogaloo movement planning Jan. 17 rallies “indicated willingness to commit violence in support of their ideology, created contingency plans in the event violence occurred at the events, and identified law enforcement security measures and possible countermeasures.”
The Dec. 29 report details threats of violence specifically at the Minnesota and Michigan state capitols—two states that President Trump instructed his supporters to “liberate” in April amid COVID-19 lockdowns on his since-deleted Twitter account.
According to that report, Boogaloo supporters in Minnesota “identified law enforcement sniper locations and considered breaking into federal buildings for use as firing locations, if fighting occurred.” Another follower considered attaching duct tape to his back to pose as law enforcement, the report read. “At least one follower expressed his willingness to die for the Boogaloo movement,” the memo reportedly states.
The Boogaloo is a far-right movement that’s called for a second civil war to overthrow the government. According to the Anti-Defamation League, their name comes from the 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.
In Michigan, Boogaloo members discussed “using a gasoline-based device with a tripwire” to “cause a distraction while other individuals ‘take’ the capitol” building, the report read.
More on the Boogaloos from a 16 July 2020 report in the Nation:
Widely known for their provocative memes and penchant for Hawaiian shirts paired with military fatigues, Boogaloos are a loosely affiliated coalition of far-right anti-government groups who aim to prepare for—or even instigate—a second American civil war. Their love of guns and zealous opposition to government allegedly resulted last month in the murder of two security guards and a police officer. This prompted Attorney General William Barr to announce the formation of a task force to investigate the group.
Last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a report obtained by The Nation, which begins by stating, “The Intelligence Community reports that Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) who support ‘Boogaloo’ could exploit the current political and social environments to conduct attacks in the United States, and pose a potential threat to law enforcement.”
The intelligence report, dated June 1, 2020, and marked “For Official Use Only,” was provided by a federal law enforcement official on condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal. The DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
The Boogaloo movement has been implicated in a string of horrific murders in the past several months, so it’s not surprising that federal agencies would be monitoring them. The report does not disclose which agencies produced the intelligence, but the Intelligence Community isn’t a typical organization—it includes within it top-tier intelligence bodies like the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI.
Particularly troubling in light of the planned armed actions across the country by Boogaloos and their allies in an 11 November 2020 report from Insider [emphasis added]:
The FBI last month arrested Timothy Watson, of West Virginia, on charges that he operated a website which illegally sold 3D- printed machine gun parts under the guise of mundane household items.
Watson’s website,”portablewallhanger.com,” has been a go-to shop for the Boogaloo Bois movement, a far-right extremist organization who’s members have been responsible for the killings of several law enforcement officials, according to the FBI.
<snip>
The FBI says that Watson, who was arrested on November 3, sold about 600 of the plastic devices in 46 states.
The devices look like wall hooks to be used to hang coats or towels, but when you remove a small piece, they function as “drop-in auto sears” that can transform an AR-15 to an illegal fully automatic machine gun, according to the complaint viewed by Insider.
Several of Watson’s customers were high-profile members of the Boogaloo movement who have been charged with murder and terrorism.
When a group with a murderous history and armed with machine-guns and burns with the desire for a nationwide conflagration plans to show up at the capitals of all 50 states, it’s time for real concern.
From an essay by Emma Ashford, senior fellow in the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, writing in Foreign Policy:
Wednesday’s insurrection worsens two concrete foreign-policy problems for the United States. First, it will increase the likelihood that other governments will be wary of any binding commitments or in-depth cooperation with the United States. Four years of Trump have already convinced countries in Europe and Asia that U.S. commitments may not be worth the paper they are written on, particularly in an increasingly partisan environment. The Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Paris climate accords were all victims of a shift to a more partisan, seesaw form of foreign policy. This week’s violence in Washington and the broader political turmoil since the November election have added to those concerns that future U.S. elections may not even be free and fair.
Second, it increases the likelihood that other countries will start to see the United States as a risk factor in the international system rather than a stabilizer. There is something to this fear: U.S. actions in the Middle East since 2001 helped to destabilize it, contributing to Europe’s refugee crises. U.S. sanctions policy has often been costly and unpopular with other countries. And the Trump administration’s brinkmanship over the last few years—with Iran, North Korea, and even with China—has been far more destabilizing than stabilizing. The risk of a U.S. leadership untethered from public scrutiny, or a nation that retains a massively powerful military while its domestic politics become ever more erratic and undemocratic, is one that other countries cannot take lightly.
We would note that for many countries, the U.S. has been anything but a stabilizer.
The first major action of the the newly formed Central Intelligence agency involved fixing an Italian election, setting a precedent for further remote-control coups in countless countries, most notably Iran, where it set off a chain of events still resonating today.
A controlled scenario test by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) shows promising results for facial recognition technologies to accurately identify individuals wearing protective face masks. The tests were conducted as part of S&T’s 2020 Biometric Technology Rally, held this fall at the Maryland Test Facility, and could reduce the need for people to remove masks at airports or ports of entry.
The third annual rally evaluated the ability of biometric acquisition systems and matching algorithms to reliably collect and match images of individuals wearing a diverse array of face masks. Previous rallies show biometric systems can excel at rapidly processing high volumes of travelers using face recognition. This year’s focused on using such systems to detect and recognize travelers without asking them to remove their masks, thereby protecting both the public and frontline workers during the COVID-19 era.
The in-person event included 10 days of human testing with 60 facial recognition configurations (using six face and/or iris acquisition systems and 10 matching algorithms) and 582 diverse test volunteers representing 60 countries. Acquisition systems were evaluated based on their ability to reliably take images of each volunteer with and without masks, volunteer processing time, and overall volunteer satisfaction.
● Without masks, median system performance demonstrated a ~93% identification rate, with the best-performing system correctly identifying individuals ~100% of the time.
● With masks, median system performance demonstrated a ~77% identification rate, with the best-performing system correctly identifying individuals ~96% of the time.
● Performance can vary greatly between systems.
Based on these results, organizations that need to perform photo ID checks could potentially allow individuals to keep their masks on, thereby reducing the risk of COVID-19 infection.
“This isn’t a perfect 100% solution,” said Arun Vemury, director of S&T’s Biometric and Identity Technology Center, “but it may reduce risks for many travelers, as well as the frontline staff working in airports, who no longer have to ask all travelers to remove masks.”
We suspect the official explanation is, at best, incomplete.
Judging from our past experience in dealing with intelligence outfits, we suspect the program was created to identify other people wearing masks, people like these folks, photographed in Berkeley three years ago:
Antifa protests in Berkeley, 27 October 2017, via Wikipedia.
The espionage operation, run through a Spanish contractor, even installed cameras in the women’s bathroom at Ecuador’s London embassy while the Wikileaks founder was living there as a political refugee.
New evidence suggests that the CIA’s shadow loomed over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for several months during his long stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, through the cooperation of a Spanish security firm that made audio and video recordings of the Australian activist’s conversations with his lawyers and allegedly relayed this material to US intelligence services. On Monday, a judge in London ruled against extraditing the cyber-activist to the US, where he is facing espionage charges over WikiLeaks’ release of classified military and diplomatic material in 2010.
An investigation started by Judge José de la Mata of Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, and to be continued by his replacement at this courthouse, is tracking the IP addresses – unique numbers that identify devices connected to the internet – that logged on to the servers of UC Global S.L, the Spanish company in charge of security at the embassy where Assange took refuge between June 2012 and April 2019. The company’s servers, where all its information is stored, are located in the southern Spanish city of Jerez de la Frontera.
According to evidence provided by a computer expert who used to work for this company, and who is now a protected witness, the internet service provider (ISP) of one of the IP addresses that accessed the Spanish security company’s servers matches that of the US-based The Shadowserver Foundation. According to its website, this organization works with national governments and law enforcement agencies, among others, to expose security vulnerabilities and malicious online activity. Other IPs that accessed the Spanish servers were from Texas, Arizona, Illinois and California.
The Spanish High Court’s investigation is currently stalled. Six months after Judge De la Mata requested judicial cooperation from US authorities, asking them for identifying information about the IPs that accessed UC Global’s servers, the US justice system has yet to respond. US prosecutors demanded to know the judge’s sources, and De la Mata sent additional information, but no reply has been forthcoming.
Emails exchanged between Morales and his employees in 2017 order the latter to place cameras with secret audio recording capability and microphones in the fire extinguishers of the embassy’s meeting room and inside the ladies’ bathroom. These emails are filled with passages suggesting cooperation with US intelligence services, such as “a plan to try and sell to the American friends,” or “we are playing in the big leagues,” “I have gone over to the dark side,” and “those in control are friends of the US.”
Julian Assange, held in a British jail at the behest of the U.S. government, got some good news today when a court in London ruled that he can’t be deported to the United States because of his mental health and the stark conditions of American federal prisons.
But the U.S. has already announced its intent to appeal the judicial ruling, and Assange’s fate remains in question.
But he’s got strong support from Australia’s most-read and oldest continuously published newspaper.
That and support from another guy.
Strong support from a journalist abetter
Assange is no stranger to the newspaper calling for his freedom.
They partnered up on publishing those secret diplomatic cables Washington’s so angry about.
When this masthead teamed up with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish the contents of the military and diplomatic cables at the heart of the current case, we said their revelations about the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and about Canberra’s relationship with Washington were overwhelmingly in the public interest. They came at a time when the US-instigated “war on terror”, which Australia joined as a US ally, had seen conduct including torture, extraordinary rendition and drone strikes in foreign countries conducted under a cloak of state secrecy.
In September 2012, WikiLeaks and Mr Assange – as its founder – were designated enemies of the US state, putting them in the same legal category as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This masthead opposed such a designation and said the experience of Australians Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks – long detained without charge at Guantanamo Bay – showed that successive Australian governments should be doing more to stand up for their citizens’ rights.
Eight years on, the Morrison government has adopted the same passive stance as the Gillard government in 2012 and the Howard government in the cases of Mr Habib and Mr Hicks. Whether this is to maintain our alliance with Washington or to protect Australia’s own regime of secrecy by discouraging current and future whistleblowers, this masthead believes such a stance is misguided and that the Prime Minister and his top diplomats should now urge either the outgoing Trump administration or the incoming Biden administration to abandon US pursuit of this case.
It is worth remembering that when Joe Biden was vice-president, charges against Mr Assange were contemplated but not pursued for fear of creating a precedent that might later be applied to journalists and that Chelsea Manning, the source of the leaks for which Mr Assange is now being prosecuted, had much of her unprecedented 35-year jail sentence commuted.
And it turns out someone was thinking along the same lines
Julian Assange is “free to return home” to Australia if a US extradition bid fails in the British courts, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday, as Australian legislators urged Washington to drop its espionage case against the WikiLeaks founder.
Morrison’s comments came a day after a British judge blocked the extradition request by the United States, where Assange is wanted on criminal charges including breaking espionage laws, saying his mental health problems meant he would be at risk of suicide.
Lawyers for the US government said they would appeal the decision.
This means the case could go all the way to the British Supreme Court, a process that could take up to three years, according to campaigners.
“Well, the justice system is making its way and we’re not a party to that,” Morrison told local radio station 2GB. “And like any Australian, they’re offered consular support and should, you know, the appeal fail, obviously he would be able to return to Australia like any other Australian.
“So, yes, it’s just a straightforward process of the legal system in the UK working its way through.”
A British judge has blocked the deportation of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, where the Justice Department wants him jailed for espionage and sentenced to up to 175 years in federal prison for 500,000 leaking State Department cables, some classified Top Secret, in 2010.
The ruling doesn’t block the U.S. from trying again, but it doesn’t give the Australian native the opportunity for a taste of freedom while Washington prepares its appeal.
The judge’s ruling was limited to a finding that because Assange has been diagnosed as both autistic and depressed, he is likely to commit suicide if convicted and sentenced to life in a federal supermax prison.
The prosecution have given notice that the decision will be appealed and have 14 days to lodge their grounds.
The case follows WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents in 2010 and 2011 relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables.
The judge said Assange’s extradition would be “oppressive” because of his mental health and the conditions he would face under “special administrative measures” in US detention, and at the ADX Florence prison.
She told the court that he would be in “conditions of near total isolation” and without the factors needed to moderate his suicide risk, meaning that the extradition can be barred under section 91 of the Extradition Action 2003.
The law states that when “the physical or mental condition of the person is such that it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite him, the judge must order the person’s discharge”.
The US Justice Department said it was “extremely disappointed” by the judge’s ruling, adding: “We will continue to seek Mr. Assange’s extradition to the United States.”
Mexico’s president, meanwhile, offered Assange political asylum. “Assange is a journalist and deserves a chance, I am in favor of pardoning him,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters. “We’ll give him protection.”
Assange’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said the legal team was “enormously gratified by the UK court’s decision denying extradition.”
“The effort by the United States to prosecute Julian Assange and seek his extradition was ill-advised from the start,” he said.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the man responsible for bringing to light a massive cache of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, will learn a week from today whether or not he will be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges for conspiring to commit espionage and breaching government computers.
The fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be decided on January 4, when the Old Bailey court will pronounce the judgement on whether he will be extradited to the United States from the United Kingdom.
The US has charged him with hacking government computers and espionage after he obtained and published hundreds of thousands of classified documents between 2010 and 2011, including the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs. The charges could lead to an unprecedented 175 years in jail for the Australian-born publisher.
In September, 160 former and current world leaders and diplomats signed a letter demanding the UK government prevent his extradition.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have called for his release. Increasingly, prominent media outlets, such as The Guardian, are also voicing their concern about the charges levelled against the jailed publisher.
Aljazeera list both supporters and detractors, including names both usual and unusual.The most surprising addition to the supporters column is former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who posted this video 19 December:
The Wikileaks cables didn’t harm national security, as far as we can tell, but they throw a lot of sunshine on the operations of a government that keeps too much secret from its own people.
But for fans of UFOs, there’ are extra reasons to celebrate.
I should note here that I’ve seen mysterious flying lights twice in myseven-and-a-half decades on earth. One, I later learned, was a bolide, but the second remains a mystery, a brilliant light that appeared high over the Rocky Mountain foothills near Fort Collins, Colorado, when I was 12. The light then plunged earthward several thousand feet [judging by visual reference points], then abruptly stopped, hovering for a few seconds before moving like a pendulum over an arc of about 20 degrees, stop[ed again, then tore off in a straight line in a southerly direction before fading out of sight. Six decades later, I still have no idea what I and my father saw that summer night.
But I’m a UFO agnostic in the sense that I have no idea what I saw, and many of the other “sightings” have turned out to have mundane causes.
Still, as a journalist, I’ve met plenty of reasonable people who’ve seen things they cant’t explain.
This year’s seen a bumper crop of UFO and the emergence of some believers, as well as the usual craziness.
The year of COVID-19 has also been a banner year for UFOs. Sightings worldwide grew by 42 per cent between January and September compared with last year. The picture in Canada is similar: The Mutual UFO Network, for instance, logged 276 Canadian reports between January and September – a 29-per-cent increase.
The Big Apple has seen a Big Spike, reports the New York Post:
UFO sightings across the city are up 31% from last year — 46, compared with 35 — and an eye-popping 283% from 2018’s measly dozen, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.
Brooklyn is tops in tin-foil hatters, with 12 close encounters. Not far behind are Manhattan with 11 and Queens with 10. Staten Islanders claim just eight — despite the borough’s rep for not social distancing. The Bronx is even more grounded, chalking up a mere five.
Two of the more memorable intergalactic incidents happened in the summertime, on Staten Island and in the Bronx.
Japan’s air force has never spotted a UFO, but the country’s top government spokesman said Tuesday he “definitely” believes they exist.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura was speaking to reporters in response to demands lodged by an opposition lawmaker for an inquiry into “frequent reports of UFO sightings.”
The government said in an official reply that it had “not confirmed sightings of unidentified flying objects believed to be from outer space.”
Still, “I definitely believe they exist,” Machimura said as reporters erupted in laughter.
And Israel’s former space defense boss agrees [says Trump does too]
A former Israeli space security chief has sent eyebrows shooting heavenward by saying that earthlings have been in contact with extraterrestrials from a “galactic federation.”
“The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet,” Haim Eshed, former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry’s space directorate, told Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper. The interview in Hebrew ran on Friday, and gained traction after parts were published in English by the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
A respected professor and retired general, Eshed said the aliens were equally curious about humanity and were seeking to understand “the fabric of the universe.”
According to Eshed, aliens from an organization called the Galactic Federation have been in touch with the governments of the U.S. and Israel. Understandably, the aliens wanted to keep a low profile.
“The UFOs have asked not to publish that they are here,” Eshed said, “humanity is not ready yet.”
“Trump was on the verge of revealing,” Eshed said, “but the aliens in the Galactic Federation are saying: ‘Wait, let people calm down first.’ They don’t want to start mass hysteria. They want to first make us sane and understanding.”
According to Eshed, aliens struck a deal with the U.S. government to do experiments on Earth. Eshed also claimed that aliens and American astronauts were working together at a secret underground base on Mars.
No one can say for certain what UFOs actually are, but a former director of the CIA said some of the recently unexplained phenomenon “might … constitute a different form of life.”
Speaking on a podcast with American economist Tyler Cowen, John Brennan said that while he did not know what the phenomenon was exactly, “It’s a bit presumptuous and arrogant for us to believe that there’s no other form of life anywhere in the entire universe.”
“… I think some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life,” Brennan said, according to a transcript of the podcast.
Nick Pope, a former employee and UFO investigator for Britain’s Ministry of Defense, said Brennan’s comments are “intriguing,” given his former position.
“When I first heard the interview I thought he was going to play it safe, and his mention of weather phenomena reinforced that view,” Pope told Fox News via email. “But for him then to start speculating about something people ‘might say constitutes a different form of life’ was extraordinary. While it may have been a slip of the tongue and an inadvertent muddling of tenses, I was also fascinated to hear him mention not just the previous U.S. Navy UFO sightings, but ‘some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing’, as if he was talking about future events.”
And the retired Senator who represented Area 51 is a true neliever
That would be former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who represented Nevada, home to Area 51.
Former senate majority leader Harry Reid has announced he believes in extraterrestrial life, maintaining the government should be doing more to research Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
“And I think that we as human beings have to be a little short-sighted if we think we’re the only species in the entire universe. In the entire universe there is for sure more than one [species].”
The former Senator developed two Pentagon programmes designed to look for and study UFOs, unidentified aerial phenomena, and advanced propulsion technologies.
Is coronavirus a visitor from beyond?
But arriving aboard a meteor, not from a spaceship, according to a new study from some very reputable authors and published in the scientific journal Advances in Genetics.
It’s almost a year into the Covid-19 pandemic and yet, the source of the virus is yet to be confirmed. Some say it was “developed” at China’s Wuhan lab, while some have argued that it’s a bat-borne virus. But here’s a strange theory that suggests the coronavirus, which has claimed millions of lives, in fact, dropped from space, landing on Earth on a meteorite.
A study published in July this year hypothesized that the virus came from space and had reached Earth on a space rock or a meteor. The researchers said, “…It [the outbreak] actually looks like a huge viral bomb explosion took place near or over Wuhan”.
Emphasising on the unique coronavirus-origin theory, the study explained an “alternate hypothesis” that Covid-19 arrived on a space rock — “via a meteorite, a presumed relatively fragile and loose carbonaceous meteorite” — which was struck North-East China on October 11, 2019.
The paper proposes that coronavirus isn’t the only alien suspect. The authors also note the mysterious appearance of a new a potentially lethal infectious yeast yeast infection as a second suspected alien invader.
Pentagon releases UFO videos
For serious UFO buffs, the big news came in April, when the Pentagon release pilot vidoes show of mysterious flying object.
The Department of Defense confirmed what seekers of extraterrestrial life have long hoped to be true: They’re real.
At least, these three videos are. What the videos show? The government isn’t so sure there.
<snip>
The videos, captured by naval aviators, show objects hurtling through the sky, one rotating against the wind, and pilots can be heard expressing confusion and awe.
<snip>
The Pentagon has never made any assertion about what exactly is going on in the videos, recorded in late 2004 and early 2015 over the Pacific and off the East Coast. “The Navy has confirmed that the three videos that are in wide circulation are indeed recordings made by naval aviators,” Susan Gough, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said last year. “The Navy has always considered the phenomena observed in those videos as unidentified.”
The agency stood by that characterization on Monday. It added that, “after a thorough review,” it had determined the videos did not reveal “any sensitive capabilities or systems,” and did not “impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Writing for Scientific American, astrophysicist Katie Mack threw a dash of cold water on ufologist euphoria:
I don’t think it’s completely impossible that hyperadvanced aliens could come to visit us on Earth—being careful for some reason to first evade every sky-monitoring system we have, and leaving no observable trace other than the confusion of a handful of Navy pilots.
I do think it’s incredibly unlikely, and I think when starting with only a few grainy hard-to-interpret videos, the jump to aliens is so extreme that it would take something much more compelling than what anyone has seen so far to get me to even begin to walk down that road. Even if I wanted to spend the time to dig up Navy aircraft camera manuals and work out the flight geometry, my reward would likely be a long and tedious debate with a dedicated audience spanning the spectrum from those who think UFOs are a fun idea to people dedicated to proving they’re real.
And, to conclude, the videos themselves, via CNBC:
Program notes:
The declassification of the videos late Monday was to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real,” the Pentagon said in a statement Monday.
The footage, which shows unidentified objects flying at high speeds in the Earth’s atmosphere along with audio of Navy pilots expressing shock and awe, was initially leaked in 2007 and 2017. The U.S. Navy formalized a reporting process last year for pilots to report incidents of UFO sightings.
The Department of Defense released three videos taken by U.S. Navy pilots revealing mysterious flying objects that to this day remain unidentified. The declassification of the videos late Monday, one of which was taken in 2004 and the subsequent two taken in 2015, was meant to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” the Pentagon said in a statement Monday. The footage, which shows unidentified objects flying at high speeds in the Earth’s atmosphere along with audio of Navy pilots expressing shock and awe, was initially leaked in 2007 and 2017. The videos were taken during training flights and the 2017 leaks were published by the New York Times.
“The U.S. Navy previously acknowledged that these videos circulating in the public domain were indeed Navy videos,” the Pentagon’s statement read. “After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.” “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’,” it said.
Microsoft has called on the incoming Biden administration to weigh in on a high-profile legal case involving WhatsApp and NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm that the US software company said was helping to proliferate cyber-weapons.
“[This industry] generates cyber-attack proliferation to other governments that have the money but not the people to create their own weapons. In short, it adds another significant element to the cybersecurity threat landscape,” Smith said.
The comments represented the first time that any major US company – apart from WhatsApp – has spoken out against the use of private hacking companies by nation-states, an issue that for years has been seen primarily as a cause for concern of journalists, human rights activists, and other campaigners.
Another haul of those wonderful old-timey headers from the London Daily Mail, starting with this:
Trump announces ‘wild’ protest in DC on January 6 – the day Congress will count Electoral College votes – and claims it is ‘impossible’ he lost the election
President Trump on Saturday promised a ‘wild’ protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, as he continues to deny that he lost the election
‘Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,’ he tweeted. ‘Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!’
Congress will meet to accept the presidential election results on January 6th
President-elect Joe Biden won the election, and presidential electors cast their votes last week in the Electoral College
Trump and his campaign have disputed the results and launched numerous legal challenges, although nearly all of them have failed
Millions of more Americans cast ballots for Biden than Trump, paving the way for the president’s Democratic challenger to succeed him on January 20
Fox News debunks election fraud claims made by three of its OWN hosts after an electronic voting company threatened legal action over ‘rigged’ claims
Fox aired news package that debunked election fraud claims made by its hosts
The package first aired Friday night on Fox News host Lou Dobbs’ show
It then aired on Saturday night on Jeanine Pirro’s program and for a third time on Sunday morning during Maria Bartiromo’s show
Package featured voting technology expert Eddie Perez, who said he had ‘not seen any evidence’ that Smartmatic software was used to ‘alter’ vote tabulation
Last week, Smartmatic sent letters to Fox News and Trump allies threatening legal action unless they retract claims that software altered outcome of election
‘The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself:’ Trump slams UK for cancelling Christmas with strict new lockdown restrictions
President Trump criticized the UK’s decision to impose strict lockdown restrictions in large parts of England on Saturday
Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced London and nearby areas will go into ‘Tier 4’ lockdown – the highest level of the UK’s alert system – at midnight
It comes after scientists said they had detected a fast-moving, more infectious strain of the virus in the country this week
Trump made clear the US would not be following suit, claiming the ‘cure cannot be worse than the problem itself’
Britain’s Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance said the new variant of the virus has triggered a surge in case in the last two weeks and could spread elsewhere
‘We think it may be in other countries as well. It may have started here, we don’t know for sure,’ he said
Romney warns Russian cyber attack could ‘cripple’ US electricity and water supplies as he condemns Trump for refusing to blame Putin and says response must be ‘of like magnitude or greater’
Mitt Romney said Sunday morning that the response to Russia’s attack be ‘of like magnitude or greater’ to their hack that has compromised several U.S. agencies
He also slammed President Donald Trump for blaming the cyber attack on China
‘I was disappointed with the president’s comment. But I think we’ve come to recognize that the president has a blind spot when it comes to Russia,’ he said
Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner said Sunday that Russia got away with a ‘big, big haul’ from their hack
Trump tweeted Saturday claiming that China could be behind the attack, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly blaming Russia the day before
‘Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is… petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China’
Another collection of London Daily Mail extravaganzas, starting with this:
Microsoft identifies AT LEAST 40 government agencies and companies targeted in ‘nine-month long Russian’ hack that breached US nuclear agencies and warns it will rise ‘substantially’ – as feds say attack poses ‘grave threat’
Microsoft has already identified at least 40 government agencies and companies targeted in the massive suspected Russian hack
The software titan said that 80 percent of the victims it has uncovered so far are in the United States and warns that number will rise ‘substantially’
Two US agencies responsible for maintaining America’s nuclear weapons stockpile have already said they were compromised in the attack
The attack also breached the Pentagon, FBI, Treasury and State Departments
The nation’s cybersecurity agency is warning the attack poses a ‘grave threat’ to government and private networks
Despite all fingers pointing to Russia as the source of the worst-ever hack of US government agencies, President Donald Trump has been silent
‘Inexcusable silence’: Romney savages Trump for failing to speak out on hacking scandal that the senator says is like ‘Russian bombers repeatedly flying undetected over our country’ – as president instead tweets about ‘Russia hoax’
Trump tweeted about the ‘Russia hoax’ Friday morning
He continues to seethe about the FBI’s crossfire hurricane investigation
White House under fire for failure to comment on huge Russia hack
Treasury, Pentagon, and Energy Dept’s nuke agency all compromised
Mitt Romney compared the breach to a long-range bomber
Joe Biden pledges not to ‘stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults’
BREAKING NEWS: Donald Trump’s Pentagon chief STOPS all co-operating with Joe Biden transition despite department being under attack from Russian hackers and in charge of vaccine delivery
Trump tweeted about the ‘Russia hoax’ Friday morning
He continues to seethe about the FBI’s crossfire hurricane investigation
White House under fire for failure to comment on huge Russia hack
Treasury, Pentagon, and Energy Dept’s nuke agency all compromised
Mitt Romney compared the breach to a long-range bomber
Joe Biden pledges not to ‘stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults’
Donald Trump tweets anti-mask claims minutes after Mike Pence gets the vaccine and pleads with American to socially distance and wear a mask
Trump retweeted a mask skeptic minutes after Pence got his shot at the White House, doubting the efficacy of mask mandates in Denmark
Pence told Americans to ‘wear a mask whenever it’s indicated’ after he, wife Karen and Surgeon-General Jerome Adams got the first dose of the two-part Pfizer vaccine
Trump retweeted Buck Sexton – real name James Sexton – a conservative radio show host and also retweeted his attack on lockdown orders claiming people should just be told to be cautious
Pence softened his mask message saying they were needed ‘where you cannot distance’ after receiving his vaccine
He claimed this week would mark ‘the beginning of the end’ of the pandemic but after he spoke Dr. Tony Fauci said it would be many months before there was a prospect of normal life
And, finally. this, to which we can only add, “Amen”:
Ilhan Omar blames Trump’s ‘criminal neglect’ for her father’s death from coronavirus and calls for administration officials to be prosecuted for handling of pandemic
Ilhan Omar’s father Nur Omar Mohamed died in June to Covid aged 67
On Friday, she blasted Trump and his administration for their pandemic handling
She said the President has shown no compassion and is responsible for deaths
Two agencies are victims of the latest attacks, reports Reuters:
Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury Department and an agency that decides internet and telecommunications policy, according to people familiar with the matter.
There is concern within the U.S. intelligence community that the hackers who targeted Treasury and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration used a similar tool to break into other government agencies, according to four people briefed on the matter. The people did not say which other agencies.
Three of the people familiar with the investigation said Russia is currently believed to be behind the attack.
Two of the people said that the breaches are connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye, a major U.S. cybersecurity company with government and commercial contracts.
The campaign is said to be quite broad, encompassing an array of targets, including government agencies in the United States and other countries. It has been running for months, one person said.
In 2015, the same group compromised the servers of the Democratic National Committee. But unlike a rival Russian spy agency, which also hacked the DNC, it did not leak stolen material. In 2016, the GRU military spy agency leaked hacked emails to the online anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks in an operation that disrupted the Democrats’ national convention in the midst of the presidential campaign.
The SVR, by contrast, hacks for traditional espionage purposes, stealing information that might help the Kremlin understand the plans and motives of politicians and policymakers. Its operators also have filched industrial secrets, hacked foreign ministries and gone after coronavirus vaccine data.
The Canadian military’s counterintelligence branch was alerted to the right-wing online activities of a B.C. reservist by a member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance and the criminal intelligence branch of an Ontario municipal police service, CBC News has learned.
Those warnings are becoming central to the army’s efforts — unsuccessful to date — to kick Erik Myggland out of the Canadian Rangers.
They also raise more troubling questions about why Myggland was allowed to remain in the Rangers after being identified as an open, fervent supporter of both the Soldiers of Odin — a white supremacist group with roots in Europe — and the Three Percenters, a survivalist militia that originated in the U.S.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the case say the tips led the military’s counterintelligence branch, with the support of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), to investigate Myggland and his ex-wife as possible security threats.
<snip>
A U.S. expert said, however, that the American intelligence community would have had specific concerns about Myggland because he was a reservist involved with two different extremist groups at a time when evidence was emerging that at least one U.S. far-right group — The Base — was taking its orders from a group in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Five Eyes alliance unites the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in an intelligence-sharinf pact that allows spooks in in one member state to spy on citizens of another country whose laws forbid spying on its own citizens.
So when the NSA was limited on gathering domestic intelligence on U.S. citizens, nothing stops Canada from doing the spying and handing the results back across the border.
That’s why we have been less than enthusiastic about the Snowden reforms, since the net impact is merely to ship the operations to an allied service.
And in July, Japan asked to to join in as a sixth Eye.
United States drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said on Wednesday that documents related to their development of a COVID-19 vaccine had been “unlawfully accessed” in a cyberattack on Europe’s medicines regulator.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), responsible for assessing and approving medicines and vaccines for the European Union (EU), said hours earlier that it had been targeted in a cyberattack. It gave no further details.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they did not believe any personal data of trial participants had been compromised and EMA “has assured us that the cyberattack will have no impact on the timeline for its review.”
It was not immediately clear when or how the attack took place, who was responsible or what other information may have been compromised.
Leading cybersecurity firm hacked
Well somebody’s public relations staff is going to be very busy.
The same Russian spies who penetrated the White House and State Department several years ago and have attempted to steal coronavirus vaccine research have carried off another brazen hack, this time breaking into the servers of one of the world’s premier cybersecurity firms, FireEye, according to people familiar with the matter.
The breach was disclosed by FireEye on Tuesday, though the firm did not attribute it to Russia’s foreign intelligence service. It was detected in recent weeks, said one of the people, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.
FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia said the hackers stole sensitive hacking tools that the company uses to detect weaknesses in customers’ computer networks and that could be turned back against the same customers or others.He said they primarily went after information related to certain government customers.
“We are witnessing an attack by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities,” Mandia said in a blog post. “The attackers tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye.”
According to The Hacker News, the intruder made off with some tools that could prove doubly embarrassing, noting that “malicious actors in possession of these tools could abuse them to subvert security barriers and take control of targeted systems”:
Red Team tools are often used by cybersecurity organizations to mimic those used in real-world attacks with the goal of assessing a company’s detection and response capabilities and evaluating the security posture of enterprise systems.
The company said the adversary also accessed some internal systems and primarily sought information about government clients but added there’s no evidence that the attacker exfiltrated customer information related to incident response or consulting engagements or the metadata collected by its security software.
In other words, the hacker took tools that will make his/her job easier and Redeye’s much harded.
Adware that infects your computer to display pop-ups is an annoyance. But when it infects as many as one in five networks in the world, and hides the capability to do far more serious damage to its victims, it’s an epidemic waiting to happen.
The security firm Check Point has warned of a massive new outbreak: They count 250 million PCs infected with malicious code they’ve called Fireball, designed to hijack browsers to change the default search engine, and track their web traffic on behalf of a Beijing-based digital marketing firm called Rafotech. But more disturbingly, Check Point says it found that the malware also has the ability to remotely run any code on the victim’s machine, or download new malicious files. It’s potentially serious malware, disguised as something more trivial.
“A quarter-billion computers could very easily become victims of real malware,” says Maya Horowitz, the head of Check Point research team. “It installs a backdoor into all these computers that can be very, very easily exploited in the hands of the Chinese people behind this campaign.”
Check Point found that at least some portion of an estimated hundreds of millions of computers infected with Fireball contracted the malware via free software that was “bundled” with Rafotech’s code. The researchers point to freeware like Soso Desktop and FVP Imageviewer, both of which have been packaged with the adware in some cases. But since none of those free applications is particularly popular or even recognizable to Americans, Check Point’s Horowitz admits that the researchers don’t know if other common techniques, like phishing or exploit kits, are also used to install the malware. Rafotech didn’t respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The Trump administration is blocking the Biden transition team for any access to the Pentagon’s spying operations, including the highly controversial National Security Agency, the outfit that taps the world’s communications.
The NSA is the spy shop whose intrusive and extra-legal monitoring operations we so devastatingly exposed by Edward Snowden.
The Trump administration has refused to allow members of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to meet with officials at U.S. intelligence agencies that are controlled by the Pentagon, undermining prospects for a smooth transfer of power, current and former U.S. officials said.
The officials said the Biden team has not been able to engage with leaders at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other military-run spy services with classified budgets and global espionage platforms.
The Defense Department rejected or did not approve requests from the Biden team this week, the officials said, despite a General Services Administration decision Nov. 23 clearing the way for federal agencies to meet with representatives of the incoming administration.
<snip>
Current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the delays have impaired the Biden team’s ability to get up to speed on espionage operations against Russia, China, Iran and other U.S. adversaries.
The inability to meet with the NSA was described as particularly worrisome. The agency is the largest U.S. intelligence service, and its eavesdropping capabilities have been a critical source of intelligence on threats as varied as weapons proliferation and foreign interference in U.S. elections
Is the Pentagon’s obstructionism merely an act of spite, or is there something they don’t want the incoming administration to know before they’ve had time to fire up their shredders?
Technology giant Microsoft has filed a patent for a system to monitor employees’ body language and facial expressions during work meetings and give the events a “quality score”.
A filing suggests it could be deployed in real-world meetings or online virtual get-togethers.
It envisions rooms being packed with sensors to monitor the participants, which could raise privacy concerns.
Microsoft is already under fire over a separate “productivity-score” tool.
While it’s being pitched as a tool to make meetings better, the patent application cites the software’s “meeting productivity metric, a participant emotional sentiment metric, and an environmental comfort metric.”
The system also evaluates body language, speech patterns, attentiveness, and boredom, according to the patent application.
Logically, those same “metrics” could be applied to a workplace and a police interrogation room, or to surveillance of a meeting of activists under scrutiny by the state or to over-stressed workers in an Amazon warehouse.
Likewise, program modules could be fitted, for example, to police surveillance devices like body cams and police car cameras.
If nothing else, we are being given a glimpse of what will be the surveillance standard of the future, and it’s rather chilling.
eats shoots 'n leaves 