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French To Ban Strong Crypto, Lawmakers Showing They Care
by grarpamp 13 Jan '16

13 Jan '16

"Digital Republic" bill criticizes the effects of strong encryption on state security forces. "France must take the initiative and force device manufacturers to take into consideration the imperative of access for law enforcement officers https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/40nmzg/matthew_green_i_used_to_wa…

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FOIPA: Federal Law Enforcement Covertly Surveilling Your Neighborhood
by grarpamp 13 Jan '16

13 Jan '16

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/jan/12/alcohol-tobacco-firearms… http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8605281&cid=51289269

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Re: [cryptome] Re: Former Spy Chief Reveals bullcrap
by Shelley 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

On January 12, 2016 12:55:15 PM Michael Best <themikebest(a)gmail.com> wrote: > FWIW, the description is from the book itself. Oh, I could definitely tell. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you'd written that trashy blurb it or agreed with it. My crankiness threshold is lower than normal today (I know, is that even possible!? :p ) and when the Faux News goons start posting mindless drivel, it annoys me. > There's definitely stuff to disagree with in his book, pretty much > everything that's supposition. What's interesting are the first hand > accounts of things and admissions. When he over generalizes, it's pretty > obvious. > […] I'd check the book out of the library, but I wouldn't > recommend most people buy it unless the price is slashed at a used book > store. Library? For this? Nah: torrents via VPN, skim, delete. Heh. You're doing a public service by posting excerpts so I don't even waste the time and bandwidth on it. -S

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Re: [cryptome] Re: Former Spy Chief Reveals bullcrap
by Shelley 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

On January 12, 2016 8:30:22 AM Lou Novacheck <luigibasco(a)gmail.com> wrote: >How much difference is there between an Obama nation and an abomination? Seriously? Did you cut and paste that directly from "Faux News Talking Points for Idiots"? > On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 6:45 AM, Michael Best <themikebest(a)gmail.com> wrote: >The highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the >West, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is at it again. Sounds like somebody lived longer than he anticipated and The Company's maintenance checks have run thin, so he's making shit up in the long tradition of saying anything to make a quick buck. >Why, during the last two generations, has so much of the Western > world turned against its founding faith, Christianity? Whoa, waitaminute. I wasn't aware that there was a "founding faith," especially since the establishment clause specifically prohibits it. In That One Document, what's it called... > [...] Pacepa and Rychlak also document how the U.S. "mainstream media's" > enduring sympathy for all things liberal-left That's definitely some Faux News-level bullshit right there. I'm not an apologist for the democraps, I think all politics in this town country sucks. But, c'mon! Wtf? -S

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Fwd: Classifed info [in FOIA]
by coderman 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "James S. Tyre" <jstyre(a)jstyre.com> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 10:48:05 -0800 Subject: Re: Classifed info To: FOI-L(a)listserv.syr.edu Fun (if only in hindsight) and true story. In the mid-eighties, the FBI and Naval Intelligence raided my law office, sans warrant, claiming that I was in possession of classified docs and that I could be prosecuted under the espionage act. I did indeed have certain classified docs, but .... At the time I obtained them, I got them through a valid FOIA request made a day after they were declassified. So it wasn't exactly a secret that I had them, and I had obtained them completely legally. But then the gov't went "whoops, we didn't really mean to declassify them." And then, while copies were in my possession, the docs were reclassified. Eventually, the gov't agreed that I could keep the docs, and that was pretty much that. But it was certainly interesting for a while. (Everything about this was political, but deliberately I'm not giving enough detail from which anyone can infer what the politics were.) -- James S. Tyre [...] jstyre(a)jstyre.com Special Counsel, Electronic Frontier Foundation

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some bold idiot sold El Chapo bunk kit
by coderman 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

''' Penn noted in his article his own concerns about being tracked in the plane but said that Chapo's son put him at ease by pointing out a "red scrambler switch below the cockpit controls" that he claimed blocked ground radar and that an inside man provided them with information about when the military's high-altitude surveillance plane has been deployed. "He has great confidence that there are no unwanted eyes on us," Penn wrote. Military technology and weaponry expert, Dr. Robert J. Bunker, was confused. "It doesn't make any sense," Dr. Bunker, Adjunct Faculty for the Division of Politics & Economics at Claremont Graduate University, told VICE News. "If this existed it would be on all our planes." Bunker said he knew of no invisible radar scrambling systems for small planes, and listed several hypothetical ways it could function before discounting them by saying they would be in "the realm of 'Dr. Evil' planning and technology that borders on simple fantasy." Bunker suggested that somebody may had "sold the narcos a 'high technology scrambling system'—but it really doesn't work." Another possibility could be that Penn was told a story to calm his fears. ''' --- https://news.vice.com/article/the-actress-who-linked-up-sean-penn-with-el-c… The Actress Who Linked Up Sean Penn with El Chapo Was Under Surveillance Since 2014 By Nathaniel Janowitz January 12, 2016 | 1:05 am Kate del Castillo — the actress who took Sean Penn to interview El Chapo — had already been under surveillance for her links to the drug lord for 14 months before the meeting took place in a mountain hideout. In the wake of the kingpin's recapture on Friday, Mexican authorities said that the monitoring of contacts with actors and producers aided the manhunt launched in the the wake of his tunnel escape from prison in July. An unnamed official told The Associated Press that the Penn interview in October directly led to an operation that almost caught up with him then. Related: Sean Penn Interviewed El Chapo – And It Helped Lead to the Drug Lord's Capture Now El Universal has published details of the surveillance of Del Castillo it claims was well-established before his escape from the Altiplano maximum-security prison and continued after he was a fugitive. It said their contact included letters exchanged while he was in jail, as well as several meetings between the actress and Guzmán's lawyers prior to their mountain encounter. The article is backed up by photos purported to be taken before and during the meetings, as well as snaps of her and Penn meeting Guzmán's associates upon arrival in Mexico on October 2 on their way to interview El Chapo. The paper said the surveillance of Del Castillo began in August 2014. El Chapo reportedly instructed one of his lawyers, Andrés Granados Flores, to contact her about making a biopic about his life. Through Guzmán's legal team the actress and drug lord wrote to each other regarding the project. Related: How Kate del Castillo Became the Rebel Celebrity Who Took Sean Penn to 'Chapo' The first face-to-face meeting between Del Castillo and Granados reportedly took place on June 16, 2015 — still nearly a month before Chapo's jailbreak — in an upscale restaurant named the San Ángel Inn, located in the south of Mexico City. The paper claimed it has seen photographs from the meeting showing the actress wearing a black blouse and a white skirt, while the lawyer wore a black suit. El Universal said that Del Castillo and Granados met again after Chapo was on the run, on September 25, in the Western City of Guadalajara. A published photograph purports to show her after arriving on the airline Aeroméxico, flight 783, from Los Angeles. Another from the following day claims to show her sitting in a restaurant with Granados and another member of Guzmán's legal team, Óscar Manuel Gómez Núñez. The report said she saw the lawyers twice on that occasion. First for dinner and the following morning when they gave her a phone with some sort of special features that would allow her to communicate directly with Joaquin Guzmán. The timing of this meeting appears to be reinforced by Sean Penn's Rolling Stone article in which he says that on September 28 he got confirmation from his contact with Del Castillo that he would be able to meet Chapo. Penn wrote that he and Del Castillo flew from Los Angeles to an unnamed "city in mid-Mexico" in a chartered plane four days later. According to the article in El Universal, the city was Guadalajara and the plane was a Hawker 900XP private jet. The paper published a photo it said was of the actors meeting the lawyer. From there they reportedly went to the Hotel Villa Ganza where they registered, dropped off their equipment, and left. >From Guadalajara the paper cited the surveillance tracking the two actors in two vans to Tepic, the capital of Nayarit state. Penn also said they travelled to another city that he did not name. Both accounts say the group boarded two private planes — El Universal says one was white and the other yellow — at a tourist resort with a private airstrip that took them into the Golden Triangle mountain region. According to Penn's article, they were accompanied by one of El Chapo's sons, Alfredo Guzmán. Penn noted in his article his own concerns about being tracked in the plane but said that Chapo's son put him at ease by pointing out a "red scrambler switch below the cockpit controls" that he claimed blocked ground radar and that an inside man provided them with information about when the military's high-altitude surveillance plane has been deployed. "He has great confidence that there are no unwanted eyes on us," Penn wrote. Military technology and weaponry expert, Dr. Robert J. Bunker, was confused. "It doesn't make any sense," Dr. Bunker, Adjunct Faculty for the Division of Politics & Economics at Claremont Graduate University, told VICE News. "If this existed it would be on all our planes." Bunker said he knew of no invisible radar scrambling systems for small planes, and listed several hypothetical ways it could function before discounting them by saying they would be in "the realm of 'Dr. Evil' planning and technology that borders on simple fantasy." Bunker suggested that somebody may had "sold the narcos a 'high technology scrambling system'—but it really doesn't work." Another possibility could be that Penn was told a story to calm his fears. After the flight, they arrived in the Golden Triangle. After a long road trip they met El Chapo for seven hours of chatting, tequila, and tacos, before agreeing to meet eight days later for a two-day long interview. This interview never took place because three days after Chapo, Penn and Del Castillo met, the kingpin narrowly slipped a navy operation to capture him. An unnamed source in Mexican federal law enforcement told The Associated Press that it was the Penn interview that triggered that operation. Some, however, are not so sure. Mexican columnist Raymundo Riva Palacio wrote on Monday on the website ejecentral that the authorities had already identified Chapo's precise location in the Sierra before the interview. While he says that surveillance of Del Castillo would have provided useful information in the manhunt for the fugitive after his escape, her presence in the area alongside a major movie star actually postponed the operation to try and capture him. "The US requested that the operation to capture him be postponed 72 hours," Riva Palacio told VICE News, insisting he had two reliable Mexican sources confirming this. "My theory is that they are putting the emphasis on the actors because they are protecting somebody, perhaps undercover people." In the end Chapo escaped that operation and was not tracked down until Friday, January 8, in the northern city of Los Mochis, Sinaloa. A gopro video was released on Monday showing the initial stage of the raid on a safe house where Guzmán was hiding. Gun shots and arrests take place for 15 minutes as they search for El Chapo in the video. The drug lord had slipped out of the house into the city's sewage system through a hole tunnel reportedly built in a closet. He was caught hours after resurfacing, stealing a vehicle, and attempting to flee the city. Penn's article created a major stir when it was published on Saturday night. The star said he had "nothin' to hide" in a brief email exchange with The Associated Press. Del Castillo has yet to make any comment at all, other than to tell a reporter from Univision, "Everything when and how it should be. Don't call me again."

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Re: US Pres. Cand. Marco Rubio Comes Out For Surveillance State, Bashes Snowden
by John Young 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

This is how everyone talks after being "read into" secretkeeping conditions, no matter what they said before then. After a few years of abiding these conditions, a few begin to send canary cheeps about needing less secrecy and more openness but do not go back across that one-way in, no way out border -- for life, as a primary condition to being read into. A much smaller number go across the red line of secretkeeping but become hounded -- for life -- as traitors, or worse. That is also a condition of being read into the black-hearted world (with corollary benefits). These conditions are described in secrecy agreements. At some point, all presidential candidates are read into secretkeeping or are advised to speak as though they have. What this diabolism has led to is a large enterprise worldwide of liars and dissimulators, leaks, fake leaks, spy stories, gov-com-org spying and secretkeeping revolving door industry, led by and enforced by the three branches and their like worldwide. This world is georaphically borderless but has a near impenetrable border at the edge of secretkeeping. There is, as customary of secretkeeping, gulags for violators populated with pseudo-violator implants to keep track of miscreants who must be held to a high standard of obedience. repentance and reeducation, indefinitely, to embrace and intenralize pantopticonic self-censorship, to speak and behave dissimulatively, ambivalently, duplicitously. Whistleblower organizations is one type of implanted gulag. Others are legal, financial and political support systems for whistleblowers and those wishing to whistleblow, leak, violate oaths, ignore NDAs. Entrapment of prospective whistleblowers is facilitated by the press which relishes its privivleges not available to the whistleblower. El Chapo got hoodwinked by "journalist" Sean Penn, as Snowden was, as Manning was, as was Sterling, Kiriakou, Brown, Hammond -- the list is getting longer thanks to the perfect entrapment and tracing device, digital technology. It will be interesting to see what the great human flood borderless immigrants will lead to, by that is meant the cellphone seduction operation, the vast array of cell antennas currently visible for easy attack, digitally and physically but hardly as easy pickings as cellphones themselves spying, informing, guiding the Rubios and Snowdens. At 03:12 AM 1/12/2016, you wrote: >http://www.dailydot.com/politics/marco-rubio-freedom-act-surveillance/ >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqM7IFUasE0 >http://politics.slashdot.org/story/16/01/11/1541256/marco-rubio-we-need-to-… > >"We are now at a moment in this country where we don't just need to >keep the authorities we already have, we need to add to these >programs," > >"I never believed Edward Snowden was a good public servant... that he >had done a public service for America," Rubio said. "Edward Snowden is >a traitor. He took our intelligence information and gave it to the >Chinese and gave it to the Russians. We cannot afford to have a >commander-in-chief who thinks people like Edward Snowden are doing a >good public service."

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US Pres. Cand. Marco Rubio Comes Out For Surveillance State, Bashes Snowden
by grarpamp 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/marco-rubio-freedom-act-surveillance/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqM7IFUasE0 http://politics.slashdot.org/story/16/01/11/1541256/marco-rubio-we-need-to-… "We are now at a moment in this country where we don't just need to keep the authorities we already have, we need to add to these programs," "I never believed Edward Snowden was a good public servant... that he had done a public service for America," Rubio said. "Edward Snowden is a traitor. He took our intelligence information and gave it to the Chinese and gave it to the Russians. We cannot afford to have a commander-in-chief who thinks people like Edward Snowden are doing a good public service."

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Re: FOIA adventures
by dan＠geer.org 12 Jan '16

12 Jan '16

Federation of American Scientists current news brief, in part: -----------------8<------------cut-here------------8<----------------- HOUSE POISED TO PASS FOIA AMENDMENTS The House of Representatives is expected to approve a new package of amendments to the Freedom of Information Act this week, in a bill known as the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act of 2015. The sponsors of the bill said it "would strengthen the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to increase transparency and accountability in government, and improve access to government records for citizens. It amends FOIA to provide for more disclosure of records, through both proactive disclosure and limitations on the use of exemptions. [It] also encourages enhanced agency compliance with statutory requirements and improves the FOIA process for both agencies and requesters." The bill would codify a presumption of openness, limit the application of the exemption for deliberative records, facilitate electronic submission of FOIA requests, strengthen the Office of Government Information Services (the FOIA ombudsman), mandate Inspector General reviews of FOIA processing, and several other steps. Detailed justification for the bill is provided in a January 7 report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2016/foia-rept.pdf The bill was subsequently modified by the House Intelligence Committee to affirm that its provisions would not require the disclosure of properly classified information or of information that "would adversely affect intelligence sources and methods" that are protected. The term "adversely affect" is not defined but is clearly intended to limit disclosure. http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2016/hr653.pdf Truth be told, the Freedom of Information Act is a strange law that seems engineered to create an unresolvable tension if not a complete stalemate. The FOIA empowers individual members of the public (including me and you) to impose a legally binding obligation on a government agency. But while there are no limits on the number or type of requests that a requester may submit at no cost, agencies are nominally supposed to accommodate the demand within a fixed period and with fixed resources. And though it only takes minutes to submit a request, the time required by an agency to fulfill even a simple request is much longer. A sophisticated systems analysis is not needed to anticipate the growth of the backlogs that have in fact developed. In a further conundrum, those agencies that are more responsive to the FOIA process thereby tend to generate more demand. There is little point in submitting a FOIA request to the Defense Intelligence Agency, to pick one example, because they won't produce a substantive response in this decade. But other agencies that do respond faithfully are rewarded-- with more requests. The best way to untangle and realign these conflicting imperatives is not clear. More proactive disclosure of information might help, or it might simply shift the burden to more specialized and challenging requests. But just encouraging and making it easier to file FOIA requests is probably not the solution.

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New Lies For Old / The Perestroika Deception
by Michael Best 11 Jan '16

11 Jan '16

If you've never read them or even heard of them, I highly recommend them. Whether you dismiss him or think there's something worth listening, the Nosenko / Golitsyn permanently affair changed U.S. intelligence (not to mention the JFK and Watergate connections). New Lies For Old: http://www.spiritoftruth.org/newlies4old.pdf The Perestroika Deception: http://www.spiritoftruth.org/The_Perestroika_Deception.pdf In his book Wedge - The Secret War between the FBI and CIA (Knopf, 1994), Mark Riebling stated that of 194 predictions made in New Lies For Old, 139 had been fulfilled by 1993, 9 seemed 'clearly wrong', and the other 46 were 'not soon falsifiable'. Golitsyn was a figure of significant controversy in the Western intelligence community. The military writer General Sir John Hackett, and the former CIA counter-intelligence director James Angleton identified Golitsyn as "the most valuable defector ever to reach the West". However, the official historian for MI5, Christopher Andrew, described him as an "unreliable conspiracy theorist". Andrew believes that although intelligence data provided by Golitsyn were reliable, some of his global political assessments of the Soviet and KGB strategy are questionable. New Lies for Old In 1984, Golitsyn published the book *New Lies For Old*, wherein he warned about a long-term deception <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception> strategy of seeming retreat from hard-line Communism designed to lull the West into a false sense of security, and finally economically cripple and diplomatically isolate the United States <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States>. Among other things, Golitsyn stated: "The "liberalization" would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the communist party's role: its monopoly would be apparently curtailed. An ostensible separation of powers between the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary might be introduced. The Supreme Soviet would be given greater apparent power, and the president of the Soviet Union and the first secretary of the party might well be separated. The KGB would be "reformed." Dissidents at home would be amnestied; those in exile abroad would be allowed to return, and some would take up positions of leadership in government.Sakharov might be included in some capacity in the government or allowed to teach abroad. The creative arts and cultural and scientific organizations, such as the writers' unions and Academy of Sciences, would become apparently more independent, as would the trade unions. Political clubs would be opened to nonmembers of the communist party. Leading dissidents might form one or more alternative political parties.There would be greater freedom for Soviet citizens to travel. Western and Unitized Nations observers would be invited to the Soviet Union to witness the reforms in action." Angleton and Golitsyn reportedly sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley,_Jr.> (who once worked for the CIA) in writing *New Lies for Old*. Buckley refused but later went on to write a novel about Angleton, *Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton*. The Perestroika Deception In 1995 he published a book containing purported memoranda attributed to Golitsyn entitled *The Perestroika <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika> Deception* which claimed: - "The [Soviet] strategists are concealing the secret coordination that exists and will continue between Moscow and the 'nationalist' leaders of [the] 'independent' republics." - "The power of the KGB remains as great as ever... Talk of cosmetic changes in the KGB and its supervision is deliberately publicized to support the myth of 'democratization' of the Soviet political system." - "Scratch these new, instant Soviet 'democrats,' 'anti-Communists,' and 'nationalists' who have sprouted out of nowhere, and underneath will be found secret Party members or KGB agents."

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