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Cryptocurrency: Paypal (the Central GovCorp Shitcoin) Censors Cute Tardigrades
by grarpamp 14 Sep '20

14 Sep '20

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-error You're next. Earlier this week, Archie McPhee, a Seattle-based gift seller (and home of the Rubber Chicken Museum) launched a glittery, green tardigrade ornament. It was a fitting addition to their squishy micro-animal themed products: tardigrade mints, glow-in-the-dark fingers, stress balls. But when customers tried to buy the ornament using PayPal, some received an error message: "This transaction cannot be completed because it violates the PayPal User Agreement." It was happening to enough tardigrade merchandise fans and sellers that several spoke out on Twitter this week. Archie McPhee tweeted on Friday that PayPal is blocking transactions containing the word "tardigrade." Others are experiencing the same—frustrations and stalled purchases on their water bear merch. Other businesses have also reported tardigrade-related PayPal issues. Two Photon Art, a small business that sells STEM-themed art, tweeted in July that it had to rename its tardigrade enamel pin to "water bear," because PayPal was holding its payments. "We've contacted them and they told us we should just stop using the word tardigrade," Archie McPhee tweeted. But if they have to change all of their tardigrade merch descriptions, URLs, and names on their tardigrade stuff to "water bear," that could limit how people looking for niche, nerdy water bear decorations find them. This isn't only an algorithmic fluke or extreme prejudice against indestructible moss-piglets

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Re: [tor-relays] non-encrypted connections from Tor exit relays
by grarpamp 14 Sep '20

14 Sep '20

>> do some exit relay operators have a policy to prevent connections >> leaving their exit node via non-encrypted ports (e.g. port 25)? >> >> not even wanting to be in a >> position to observe users' data passing through the exit node in clear >> text. >> hoping that encrypted connections >> provide some level (even very weak) of plausible deniability in the >> event that a connection attracts the attention of law enforcement. The other side... Do not fool yourselves that exit relays not advertising any "encrypted" ports are in any way "secure" for users and IoT, or that the operator is "not in a position", or has default "deniability". MITM tools and attacks happen over such exits ALL THE TIME. And since approximately zero users validate oob and pin down TLS/SSH etc fingerprints, and most just click through warnings, they get jacked all the time. There's plenty of Sybil and TA running out there too. -- This message moderated and censored by torproject for your "protection".

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Exploits: BlindSide SpecEx Attacks
by grarpamp 14 Sep '20

14 Sep '20

https://www.vusec.net/projects/blindside/ https://download.vusec.net/papers/blindside_ccs20.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-FUIZiRN5o BlindSide allows attackers to “hack blind” in the Spectre era. That is, given a simple buffer overflow in the kernel and no additional info leak vulnerability, BlindSide can mount BROP-style attacks in the speculative execution domain to repeatedly probe and derandomize the kernel address space, craft arbitrary memory read gadgets, and enable reliable exploitation. This works even in face of strong randomization schemes, e.g., the recent FGKASLR or fine-grained schemes based on execute-only memory, and state-of-the-art mitigations against Spectre and other transient execution attacks.

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[gilmay97@gmail.com: A Story]
by Zenaan Harkness 13 Sep '20

13 Sep '20

----- Forwarded message from Gil May <gilmay97(a)gmail.com> ----- From: Gil May <gilmay97(a)gmail.com> Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2020 17:02:03 +1000 Subject: A Story *Form Your Own Opinion About This Story.* *Told as it happened, identities respectfully protected.* *Clients were in need of assistance and it was provided.* A chap I met years ago often said to me that strange things happen to him, but did not want to talk about them, just acknowledging ‘that strange things happen to him’ relieved a lot of stress. We became good friends and one day he asked if I knew anything about UFO’s, so I told him a couple of stories. He then proceeded to tell me his story, his father was a very senior air force chief, not sure of how ranking goes but possibly Chief Air Vice-Marshall US. He said he had been abducted many times and they hurt him a lot during medical examinations, his testicles were always swollen and very sore for weeks afterwards and there were small marks where a needle had been inserted, also other marks on various parts of his torso. He showed me photos his wife had taken of the marks. I met his father and we got on well, he enjoyed my devious wit and verbal sparring; on one occasion he had two retired senior US Generals at his home and introduced them to me, he introduced me to a big man called ‘Hank’ he had 38 major decorations from 5 countries. These two generals were the blokes who helped win the last war and had retired to Australia as they said it is the safest and oldest country on earth. They went onto discuss some interesting stories, Hank said, ‘Maybe we should not be talking about this in front of the ‘boy’ (me), he was told it is OK, he knows a lot and needs to know what we are talking about so our words are not lost in the future. Some very interesting words ensured reaffirming what I had already searched, and others had alluded to as factual. Back to my friend, he had become erratic with stress and terror of being abducted again, and did some serious self-harm, later his marriage fell apart and he lived on his own but kept contact with me, he was very artistic at turning the base of palm fronds into amazing art works. Over time, I convinced him not to be fearful or upset, but to be honoured that he was chosen because of his high IQ and excellent body type for ‘them’ to take sperm and tissues samples. Now I had to program him to stay calm when abducted and to do a heap of mental exercises/ I taught him to overcome the sedated state he was put into — thus stay very still and mentally calm while clearing his mind and to see everything around him and lock the images into his memory. We play acted several routines and he was OK with it. Months later I got a very excited call at 3 am, he had been abducted again and did everything I taught him to do — “I have to talk to you NOW”. I told him to hang on a bit, it’s 3 am and my wife is asleep, and I cannot just wander out as she would be worried. Told him I had to be on the GC at 9 am so would get my file together and meet him at 6 am at his place. He was very calm and talked about the aliens, there were two types, both greys, one of taller and thicker build and others smaller by scale. He described the room and instruments used, and said he looked for any signs on the walls or equipment and had copied them down. He showed me the 6 mm red marks on his back in various places, two 4 mm ones as a pair on the back of his neck, this was as he said the one that put him to sleep. He again had red marks on his scrotum where instruments had been inserted and his testicles were swollen and very sore. He then gave me a piece of paper he had drawn of the symbols he had seen on the wall; this is it hereunder. [image: image.png] Several Years later, as a marriage celebrant I had conducted two marriages for different professional people working at the same ‘institution’ on the GC, one being two fellow workers marrying and the other another and an associate marrying, all good friends. One of the ladies rang me and told of a fellow professional her very best friend who often showed high stress levels that resulted in her having time off work, as they were friends of many years and she was always a very calm in-control-person, she knew something traumatic had occurred in her life, but she would not talk about it — but one day she said to her “UFO’s are real”, and she believed her friend had had something happen to her. We talked a while on diversion effects and joining her in common understandings, whereby she eventually told her she had been abducted. She had told her friend of the guy who married her that was easy to talk to on any subject and she should go and talk to him in private as he is nice guy (?) and very understanding and gave her my phone number. Eventually I received a phone call from a lady asking if she could drop in one day for a chat and to see my beautiful gardens (the diversion) her friend had told her about, as she was also a gardener who collected rare plants. On her first visit we talked over general topics and got on fine, she was very relaxed and enjoyed my company as I hers. She said she had time off next week and could she come and talk to me again, sure It would be great. She was indeed a really great lady. Next visit we sat in my office having a cuppa and a few laughs, she then asked if I knew anything about UFO’s, so I told her a few interesting stories, mine and that of others including my friends story. She now had become highly stressed and had to put her cup down as she was shaking, I calmed her stress levels and got a smile and a few laughs; we again went back to the subject matter a little more slowly and gently, I diverted her several times to stop her rushing into the subject and returned bit at a time making her relaxed with the subject and confident of talking to me. All was going well, so I suggest we leave the office and go for a stroll along my long driveway to show her a rare tree in flower, as we wandered along I returned the discussion back to UFO’s and pointed out the magnificent view we had of the milky way and that in mid-October we could see into the central cluster of the milky way. By this time, she was laughing and enjoying her day in the county, so we returned for another cuppa and interesting words in my office. I asked if she would try an interesting relaxation method that allows total control even is stressful situations. As she was now very relaxed and the time right to show her my friends drawing. As soon as she saw it she jumped up cried out, and ran out of the office and up the driveway to where we had been a few moments before — into the same place where she stood perfectly relaxed before, we unconsciously do this, returning to a relaxed place, I left her there for a few moments to catch her thoughts before joining her. We walked slowly back to my office, I put my arm around her, and we walked long quietly, she stopped and said she now understood that like him, she was someone special and not to be afraid. Back in the office she showed me marks on her body, telling me she had, once had all the symptoms of morning sickness, but put it down to something she ate — she was single. Later she had stomach swelling and knew she was pregnant, the test confirmed it. To hide it she always wore loose fitting clothing, that was when her friend noticed her extreme stress: At a little over six months gestation she woke in the middle of the night having had a dream of being in paradise — a place of quiet and beauty, and had seen her son being born. When she awoke, she went to get out of bed and found she was in pain — and her belly was flat, her baby had gone. She had to take time off work to get over it and her colleagues were starting to talk about her having serious stress levels and suggesting she should go on to a different medical work schedule. Eventually she got back to normality and all went well, except her dreams and fear of what had happened to her and she did not want to ever have it again. I asked if she would like to see his drawing again, she said yes. Looking at it carefully she said what she saw on the wall was similar but a bit different, not sure exactly how, but it was a bit different; she asked if she could have a copy. When we finished our discussion, she thanked me several times, saying she now understood and that maybe her son would be a very important person. She held my hand as we walked slowly to her car talking, as we stood at her car, she turned laughing and said ‘Gil, you’re a very interesting man, thank you, you have solved my stress and made me aware of many things’, she put her arms around me and gave me a big hug of friendship. There is little more to this nice story, but it won’t be told, it is private but beautiful. She is now a senior well known person happily married with two sons. ----- End forwarded message -----

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Gilad Atzmon: "[David Duke] understands things that I [an Israeli] am not even allowed to think about" - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 12 Sep '20

12 Sep '20

Gilad Atzmon: “Quote David Duke knows more about Judaism than I do” August 30, 2020 https://davidduke.com/gilad-atzmon-quote-david-duke-knows-more-about-judais… ... [Atzmon]: In March 2014 I gave an interview to larmurerie.fr/ I can’t trace the original French article but a Google translation of the French original exists on my site. I was asked by the French Journalist the following question: Many French people share your opinion. For example, there is a French thinker, Hervé Ryssen, who uses the same metaphor as you when you talk about the mirror, saying that when a Jew accuses you of being an anti-semite, you just have to read the mirror image of the argument to reveal his racism towards goyim.” My answer was as follows. “I actually use the word projection, but the mirror image is no doubt similar. And projection, by the way, is something that Freud taught us about. You know, we have to admit that some of the most interesting humanists in the history of the West are Jews: Christ, Spinoza, Marx were Jews. Why is that?…Now there is something very interesting and it’s again the first time I’m saying it. The left is devastated by David Duke for instance. He was in the KKK when he was young. But here is something quite amazing: I read him and I was shocked to find out that this guy knows more about Jewish identity than I do! How could a supposedly ‘racist’ Gentile who probably never entered a synagogue knows more than I do about Judaism? The reason is in fact very simple: he is a proud white man. He’s interested in nationalism, in the culture of his own people, so he understands things that I am not even allowed to think about. Believe it or not, even as a Jew, I wasn’t allowed to think of myself as a racist. I was a racist, maybe I am still one, but I was not allowed to acknowledge it. Once he acknowledges that he’s talking about white people’s rights, in a way he thinks like Avigdor Lieberman! But in fact, he is way better than Lieberman. David Duke is a humanist because he says, «I want to celebrate my right and you should celebrate your rights» whether you are Muslim or black or whatever. He believes that all people should celebrate their rights, this is his current philosophy. Avidgor Liberman is not a humanist, because he wants to celebrate his rights at the expense of other people.” ...

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State sanctioned secrecy: NSA's criminality shield
by coderman 12 Sep '20

12 Sep '20

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/516064-state-sanctioned-se… State sanctioned secrecy: NSA's criminality shield Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit [ruled that the National Security Agency (NSA)](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/nsa-ruling.pdf) telephone metadata program first [exposed](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-ve… in June 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden "...may have violated the Fourth Amendment and did violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") when it collected the telephony metadata of millions of Americans..." The program was repeatedly reauthorized by Congress before finally (allegedly) being shelved in 2019, despite a Trump administration effort to [revive legal authority for it](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190816/16083742800/as-nsa-declares-…. Snowden recognized the program's inherent criminality and unconstitutional character, which is precisely why he exposed it - and why all pending federal charges against him should be dismissed with prejudice. Unfortunately, NSA still has a critical legal tool to hide other criminal or unconstitutional acts: the six-decade old National Security Agency (NSA) Act of 1959 ([P. L. 86-36](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/laws/national-security-agency-ac…) Enacted at the height of the Cold War, the NSA Act gives the agency radically sweeping powers to withhold any information from public disclosure. Specifically, Section 6 of the Act states "...nothing in this Act or any other law...shall be construed to require the disclosure of the organization or any function of the National Security Agency, or any information with respect to the activities thereof, or of the names, titles, salaries, or number of the persons employed by such agency." NSA has used that blanket authority to try to keep secret details about its lethal 9/11 intelligence failure. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit I brought on behalf of the Cato Institute against the Defense Department (NSA's parent organization) in January 2017 has, after over three-and-a-half years in federal court, partially punctured NSA's veil of secrecy over the cancelled TRAILBLAZER and THINTHREAD digital network exploitation (DNE) programs. In brief, during the five-year period leading up to the 9/11 attacks, a bureaucratic war raged inside of NSA over the best way to handle the exploding volume of digital communications the agency was trying to keep up with. On one side was a group of veteran NSA cryptographers, mathematicians and computer scientists who developed a cheap, extremely effective, and Constitutionally compliant in-house DNE system codenamed THINTHREAD. On the other side was then-NSA Director Michael Hayden, who favored an unproven, external, contractor developed DNE system called TRAILBLAZER. When then-GOP House Intelligence Committee staffer [Diane Roark](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politi… got the THINTHREAD team development money and language in the FY 2002 Intelligence Authorization bill directing wider deployment of the cheaper, off-the-shelf THINTHREAD system, Hayden refused to deploy it as directed - even though THINTHREAD, still in prototype development, was already producing intelligence NSA couldn't get from any of its other existing systems. Three weeks before the 9/11 attacks, Hayden killed further THINTHREAD development, despite the fact that TRAILBLAZER was still little more than an idea on PowerPoint slides. The former THINTHREAD team members believe to this day that had their system been deployed even a few weeks before the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden's hijackers would never have made it onto a single plane. I agree. Ultimately, Hayden would squander at least $696 million on TRAILBLAZER between October 2001 and September 2005; the money produced exactly one failed prototype DNE system. The total is likely far higher, as the full amount of money wasted on TRAILBLAZER remains classified. The only reason we know these facts is because of the Cato Institute FOIA lawsuit (managed by [Josh Burday](https://loevy.com/attorneys/josh-burday/) of [Loevy & Loevy](https://loevy.com/)) which focused on NSA's attempts to prevent multiple Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG) reports on the TRAILBLAZER and THINTHREAD systems from ever seeing the light of day (you can read the still heavily redacted but revealing 2004 DoD IG report [here](https://www.scribd.com/document/354295394/2004-DoD-IG-TT-TB-Report-07… and the 2006 report [here](https://www.scribd.com/document/474828823/DoD-IG-Sep-2006-TRAILBLAZER…) Those reports only came about because the original THINTHREAD team members filed a DoD IG hotline complaint about TRAILBLAZER in September 2002. I learned about and actually read the classified versions of those reports while working for then-Rep. [Rush Holt](https://thehill.com/people/rush-holt) (D-N.J.) in 2013. After Holt's retirement from Congress in 2014, I continued to pursue my investigation into the scandal after joining the Cato Institute, filing the FOIA lawsuit in January 2017. Throughout the lawsuit, NSA and DoD lawyers repeatedly invoked Section 6 of the NSA Act to try to keep as much of the TRAILBLAZER/THINTHREAD scandal secret as possible. However, the threat of an actual public FOIA trial - ordered by DC Circuit Judge Trevor McFadden - finally forced NSA to disclose the amount cited above. Unfortunately, the [2016 FOIA Improvements Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/337) passed by Congress does not provide FOIA requestors the necessary legal tools to overcome the government accountability and transparency barrier represented by the NSA Act. NSA dug in its heels and refused to release any further information. No legal mechanism exists to allow myself and the former THINTHREAD team members to have our security clearances restored so we could fight out the classification and disclosure battle in camera before the judge. And despite our request, Judge McFadden declined to use an existing [precedent](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/766/1… to appoint a cleared Special Master (court appointed legal or technical experts who advise judges in cases) to review 800 pages of still-classified material in the case to determine whether, in fact, NSA was improperly invoking the NSA Act to conceal still other illegal acts - like Hayden's refusal to follow the law and more widely deploy THINTHREAD as ordered by Congress, which we had finally pressured NSA into revealing. The existing [executive order](https://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/cnsi-eo.html) on classification and declassification expressly forbids such acts, but there is nothing in statute requiring such a review in FOIA cases, and at present there is no legal penalty for the kind of misuse of the NSA Act that NSA employed in this episode. Faced with these barriers, we were forced to settle the case this month. The problem is that the NSA Act is what is known as a "(b)(3)" FOIA exemption statute - meaning that it is an existing law that can be used to withhold information from the public in spite of FOIA. The 2016 FOIA Improvements Act failed to address that problem, which also applies to laws allowing the CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and other federal department and agencies to withhold - often in blanket form - information that might reveal waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement or even criminal conduct. If NSA or any other department or agency that currently enjoys the use of a "(b)(3)" exemption statute is allowed to keep it, you can take it to the bank they will use it to conceal bad management, wasteful spending, and even criminal conduct. If Congress were to strike Section 6 of the NSA Act, it would go a long way towards improving public oversight and government transparency as it pertains to NSA, but much more is needed. In the TRAILBLAZER/THINTHREAD episode, the agency that was the subject of investigation - NSA - used Section 6 of the NSA Act to try to prevent highly critical audit and investigation reports by another DoD element - the DoD IG - from ever being revealed. When the entity being audited can prevent the auditor from reporting findings of wrongdoing to taxpayers, the system is by definition corrupt. Congress should statutorily bar any agency or department subjected to an IG or Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit from blocking release of that report to the public. Additionally, Congress should mandate judicial in camera reviews in FOIA cases involving classified information or in which a "(b)(3)" exemption statute (if still on the books) is invoked to determine whether it is being misused by an executive branch department or agency to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement or criminal conduct. An outright statutory bar on using any law to conceal the aforementioned misconduct should likewise be enacted. Americans should not have to rely on whistleblowers like Snowden to reveal our government is targeting us for unconstitutional surveillance behind a shield of secrecy. Nor should executive branch bureaucrats be able to conceal their misconduct behind false claims that exposing their ineptitude or criminality would involve "compromising sources and methods." The author, a former CIA analyst and ex-Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), is a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute. You can follow him on Twitter via @PGEddington.

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TechRadar: Hacking satellite internet connections is a lot easier than you'd think
by jim bell 12 Sep '20

12 Sep '20

TechRadar: Hacking satellite internet connections is a lot easier than you'd think. https://www.techradar.com/news/hacking-satellite-internet-connections-is-a-…

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Cryptocurrency: Coin Privacy and Scaling (re: DHS Tracks Monero)
by grarpamp 11 Sep '20

11 Sep '20

On 9/10/20, jamesd(a)echeque.com <jamesd(a)echeque.com> wrote: > On 2020-09-10 12:37, grarpamp wrote: >> So why should the underlying ZKP / Homomorphic tech >> behind Zcash not be promoted? > > Maybe it should be. But I would first have to understand it better. > > But what is killing bitcoin is its success - it is running headlong into > the scaling law problems that I predicted in the beginning. True. Tx bloat of physical blockchain was easy to predict back then from simple math alone. Bitcoin-BTC has since moved from "retail level tx" to "store of value" due solely to its limiting physics, not the propaganda from its dev and pump dragon maxi circle, which was a beg for continued relavance up against competition, and a ploy by GovCorp to take over with CBDC's. A future optimized coin will temporarily take over both roles by scaling 10x-1000x the txrate BTC can handle. At which point it too encounters its own physical limits forcing you out to different coins for different things, until your computer and network can't handle your routine needs for the bunch. Legacy coinspace is nowhere near that optimized yet, it hasn't even optimized BTC for txrate yet (though BCH etc are working on optimization within the legacy Satoshi model coins). Suffice it that BTC can't even handle 50M-1B users in "store of value" mode... it chokes and dies around rougly 18M users when usage is say restricted to even just the single use case of sending a monthly paycheck from those users employers out to the users. > There can only be one. There is more than one Fiat. There will be more than one Coin. Maybe around 2-5 for monetary purposes, another 3-10 for application purposes. None of todays popular coins are likely to be among the above future sets. > One currency will rule the world. For it to be a privacy protecting > cryptocurrency, it has to scale, and Zcash does not scale. Neither does > bitcoin, but it scales a lot better than Zcash. Neither Bitcoin-BTC nor Zcash-ZEC nor Monero-XMR "scale". Nor can any cryptocurrency that has not yet evolved past, and has no roadmap to evolve past, the legacy concept of storing its entire blockchain forever because its retarded legacy database model requires it. The notion that you just keep filling out central datacentres, layers of privacy risk SPV, and central Lightning, etc is ridiculous and are base model approaches taken way too soon before having done enough new research into developing new non-chain models. Fully distributed decentralized uncensorable mineable privacy coins *can* be built without needing to store a blockchain forever. And if it's not distributed uncensorable permissionless unblockable mineable and privacy etc, there's zero point in doing it because in the end it will be no better than Fiat / CBDC. > Any crypto currency must start with a plan for world conquest. Scaling bloat from O(tx) *must* evolve down to O(utxo) before that can happen. ZKP, Homomorphic, etc probably hold some potential application there for operating privately, upon consensus over, and to synchronize deltas to, that much smaller database. Nor are you going to ever create anything interesting and competitive herein by using the legacy teams, groupthink, self interest, and corruption around todays popular coins. They must all be discarded. A new set and family of anarcho cypherpunks must arise to do the task.

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Censorship: Whistleblower Casey Peterson - Outs Sandia Labs Crit Race Theory Workplace Re-Education Camp, Cancel Culture
by grarpamp 11 Sep '20

11 Sep '20

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandia-labs-goes-nuclear-employee-who-s… https://mobile.twitter.com/realchrisrufo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyNW9nlFDBk Casey Peterson - Pushing Back on the Narrative of Modern Systemic Racism and White Privilege Sandia Labs - America's premiere government-funded nuclear weapons design lab, has taken aggressive action against an employee, Casey Peterson, who produced a viral video "pushing back on the narrative of modern systemic racism and white privilege." A dissident electrical engineer named Casey Peterson emailed all 16,000 employees denouncing critical race theory in the lab. On Tuesday, Peterson made a YouTube video criticizing the training. I am filing a public records request to expose the content, trainings, and materials in the FBI's "intersectionality" programs. If you are forced into re-education camps, on any subjects that are wrong or that you disagree with or don't want to be a part of, whether at work or in school or elsewhere... stand, sue, or quit them.

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Surveillance: NSA Chief Alexander Joins Amazon Board
by grarpamp 10 Sep '20

10 Sep '20

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/9/21429635/amazon-keith-alexander-board-of-… https://sec.report/Document/0001018724-20-000026/ https://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/27/2025200/nsa-chief-keith-alexander-t… https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/03/10/2212236/federal-judge-admits-existe… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Alexa#Privacy_concerns Don't forget to say hi to "Alex"a... she's always on, always listening and recording you, always connected to the internet, always closed source... Gen. Keith Alexander is joining Amazon's board of directors, the company revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. The Verge reports: A former director of the National Security Agency and the first commander of the US Cyber Command, Alexander served as the public face of US data collection during the Edward Snowden leaks, but he retired from public service in 2013. Alexander is a controversial figure for many in the tech community because of his involvement in the widespread surveillance systems revealed by the Snowden leaks. Those systems included PRISM, a broad data collection program that compromised systems at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook -- but not Amazon. Alexander was broadly critical of reporting on the Snowden leaks, even suggesting that reporters should be legally restrained from covering the documents. [...] Alexander's board spot will also give Amazon new expertise in defense contracting, an area of particular focus for the company in recent years.

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