Intelligence

Source: Forbes

As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

Here’s a video of the vans in action.



The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.

It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)

“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

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But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”

The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images. Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment. Reiss says AS&E has customers on “all continents except Antarctica.”

Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”

Inwardly compelled to bring justice to the world, seeking to make right wrongs that cry out for recognition, Assange is a man driven from an inward compulsion. His compass more than anything is moral, not so much philosophical in the sense of abstract thought, but purely and wholly in the reality of what is right and wrong. He has a clear sense that indiscriminate killing, deception by way of hazardous policy, and unspoken excess of military force are the key components of the machinery of death. Those who think that Assange is somehow trying to create the pretext for war, or to endanger one side to the other are clearly ignorant of the underlying reality at play. People expect grand things, in grand fashion, in a way that suits everyone simultaneously, and of course, it’s an impossible task.

Recently allegations have arisen claiming that Assange is in fact an intelligence asset of the CIA. The evidence given is that Assange himself asserted in a media interview that he was tipped off by Australian intelligence as to an impending attack upon his public person via a media-state-military co-ordinated effort. Now for some good reasons, there is a massive frenzy of intellectual excitement whenever the CIA and ‘intelligence’ becomes involved, it’s fascinating to observe; the aura of the CIA, both maligned and exalted for so long, survives as that of an agency of immense unseen power, dangerous and necessary, but which no one dare confront.

Intelligence as a Projection of Power

There is no doubt that intelligence is a form of power, since the degree of ones ‘knowing’ influences perception to a profound degree. However, intelligence and access to knowledge does not mean access to understanding, since knowledge born out of context only leads further into a self reinforcing state of confusion. There must be a compass through which one can navigate the fields of intelligence in order to bring about a context that reflects the movement towards greater human justice.

Rather than resisting the contextual truth of pure moral magnetism, and embracing the corporate fascist march to world destruction, Assange has aligned himself against the machine of death. That he has connections with ‘intelligence agencies’ only speaks to the nature of the man’s stature, the scope of his influence, and his ability to be heard. By default he has become a player of significance, one who has constructed a system of fall backs and redundancies such that his ‘physical termination’ may in fact lead to an actual escalation of the intelligence struggle currently taking place.

Harmonized?

The assumption is also generally made by alternative researchers that intelligence agencies are all aligned in harmonious synchrony, because they have given indication of unified databases running shared software applications. The reality is really one of ‘turf’, and a rule of power by power. There are many brokers and those hungry after power, who have the resources to do so, that will affect their own designs into the fabric of the world, seeking gain, favour and even a masterplan. The world of intelligence is compartmentalized and always at war, cross currents of competing and conflicted ideologies run headlong into increasingly resource based break away groups - those with the technology and money to ‘go it their own’.

It’s only in a simple minded world that the realm of state intelligence is an unconflicted whole, working in exactitude and total unity. This type of thinking is an exercise in futility, for since there are competing interests - some much stronger technologically, others economically - there is no unified agenda, but rather an interplay of competing interests that work together as they see fit, and as it suits their own agenda, but which are willing and indeed forced to fall into disagreement and even outright conflict.

Why Does Assange Get Heard At All?

Assange is an internet emergence, the entire alternative media is an internet emergence, and as more ‘paying consumers’ move to the internet for their media consumption, the financier owned media evolves a strategy of survival. With Assange, his rising notoriety happened over time, in what was a trickle of media coverage widely dispersed, and which culminated in Wikileaks hitting the mainstream, due in large part to Wikileaks strategic position, and the pressure it was beginning to exert upon the entire complex.

The Fall

The corporate media loves to ‘fall’ people, they love the drama of personal destruction, fabricated or not - stories of impropriety, double dealing, sexual relations, etc...Conspiratorially aware people often act as though receiving coverage in the corporate media is somehow an endorsement from the establishment, or that the coverage is the result of connections within the corporatocracy. But how many people suspect a set-up, a media embrace of death, and a push from above? The corporate media is a carnivorous animal, jealous, greedy and wrathful, and it will work at fever pitch to destroy that which opposes its masters.

I don’t think Assange’s position is easy, or sanctioned, or manufactured. He is Julian Assange, the moral crusader, whose cornerstone is the belief that human beings should co-exist under a rule of transparent justice, no more, and no less.

Source: news.com.au

AMATEUR astronomers are enjoying a cat-and-mouse game with the US military in keeping track of its secret space plane, the X-37B.

The X-37B was launched in April amid much publicity, but scant detail about its true use.

Built by Boeing's Phantom Works division, the X-37B program was originally headed by NASA.

It was later turned over to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then to a secretive Air Force unit.

Only a very select few in the US military know what it's for, but observers on Earth believe they're putting together the puzzle piece by piece.

Several sources claim quote arms control advocates who say it's clearly the beginning of the "weaponisation of space".

In May, avid skywatcher Ted Molczan studied the X-37B's orbit from his home in Toronto and said its behaviour suggested it was testing sensors for a range of new spy satellites.

Since then, the X-37B been arguably the least-secret secret project on the planet, as fellow backyard astronomers joined in the scrutiny, aided by how-to video guides and apps such as the Simple Satellite Tracker.

That is, they did until July 29, when the shuttle disappeared, causing all kinds of consternation and conspiracy theories about its fate.

It took amateur skywatcher Greg Roberts of Cape Town, South Africa, who noticed that it failed to appear as scheduled above his base on August 14, another five days to find it.

When he did, he noticed it was some 30km higher and on a different trajectory, according to calculations from other colleagues in Rome and Oklahoma.

The X-37B's new track means it takes six days to pass the same spot on Earth, as opposed to its original four-day track.

Mr Molczan believes this may be another small piece to the puzzle about what role the shuttle may play in US military operations.

"This small change of orbit may have been a test of OTV-1's manoeuvring system, or a requirement of whatever payload may be aboard, or both," he said in a release paper about Roberts' X-37B find.

The shuttle has been in orbit now for 124 days. It uses a solar array once in space for power, which theoretically will allow it to stay airborne for up to 270 days.

But the additional presence of large fuel tanks and a rocket motor allows it to change orbit, as evidenced by the latest sudden change of course.

According to the The Register, this is a key component of its surveillance-related capabilities, along with the fact it can land in a much more versatile fashion than other shuttles.

Using its "cross-range" wings, it can duck off elsewhere once its entered the Earth's atmosphere rather than follow its oribital track to a pre-specified landing pad.

This means the X-37B can get up and down from space in one orbit, as its wings allow it to compensate for the slight turn in the Earth and bend it back to its original launch pad.

The Register says that capability would make it difficult to track, as it would only pass over a region once.

Theoretically, it could drop a spy satellite on one run, then pick it up on the next without the satellite having ever been detected.

Other observers claim the X-37B can carry a payload roughly the size of a medium-sized truck bed, or enough to hold a spy satellite.

According to the Pentagon, a second X-37B is under construction, so expect the guessing game to continue for some time about what the US military is really up to in space.

Until now, all that remains known about the X-37B is that is it has at least one trick - the ability to hide from skywatchers for two weeks.

Source: International Business Times

The production of the RFID chips, an integral element of the new generation of German identity cards, has started after the government gave a 10 year contract to the chipmaker NXP in the Netherlands. Citizens will receive the mandatory new ID cards from the first of November.

Various German authorities will be able to identify persons fast and reliable by scanning the RFID citizen card. These will be the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities.

The new ID card will contain all personal data on the security chip that can be accessed over a wireless connection.

The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said. These authorities include the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities.

German companies like Infineon and the Dutch NXP, which operates a large scale development and manufacturing base in Hamburg, Germany are global leaders in making RFID security chips. The new electronic ID card, which will gradually replace the old mandatory German ID cards, is one of the largest scale roll-outs of RFID cards with extended official and identification functionality.

The card will also have extended functionality, including the ability to enable citizens to identify themselves in the internet by using the ID card with a reading device at home. After registering an online account bonded to the ID card, are able to do secure online shopping, downloading music and most importantly interact with government authorities online, for example.

Related Post - Wikileaks: A Publisher Of Last Resort

Source: New York Times

Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents.

Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and an heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune, left the country after a series of civil lawsuits, criminal charges and Congressional investigations singled out Blackwater or its former executives and other personnel. His company, now called Xe Services, has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States government since 2001.

Current and former colleagues said Mr. Prince hoped to focus on security work from governments in Africa and the Middle East. They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received.

“He needs a break from America,” said one colleague, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about Mr. Prince’s long-rumored move.

Mr. Prince does not face any criminal charges, but five former top company executives have been indicted on federal weapons, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Two guards who worked for a Blackwater-affiliated company face murder charges from a 2009 shooting in Afghanistan, and the Justice Department is trying to revive its prosecution of five former Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

Source: Wired

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.”

The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site as well.

WikiLeaks, on Sunday, posted several files containing the 77,000 Afghan war documents in a single “dump” file and in several other files containing versions of the documents in various searchable formats.

Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the file may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.

It’s not known what the file contains but it could include the balance of data that U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning claimed to have leaked to Assange before he was arrested in May.


In chats with former hacker Adrian Lamo, Manning disclosed that he had provided Assange with a different war log cache than the one that WikiLeaks already published. This one was said to contain 500,000 events from the Iraq War between 2004 and 2009. WikiLeaks has never commented on whether it received that cache.

Additionally, Manning said he sent Assange video showing a deadly 2009 U.S. firefight near Garani in Afghanistan that local authorities say killed 100 civilians, most of them children, as well as 260,000 U.S. State Department cables.

Source: Global Research

In a sign that illegal surveillance programs launched by the Bush administration are accelerating under President Obama, The Wall Street Journal revealed last week that a National Security Agency (NSA) program, PERFECT CITIZEN, is under development.

With a cover story that this is merely a "research" effort meant to "detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants," it is also clear that the next phase in pervasive government spying is underway.

With "cybersecurity" morphing into a new "public-private" iteration of the "War On Terror," WSJ reporter Siobhan Gorman disclosed that giant defense contractor Raytheon "recently won a classified contract for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million."

This wouldn't be the first time that Raytheon had positioned itself, and profited from, a media-driven panic. As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock documented for CorpWatch, "as the primary spying unit of defense industry giant Raytheon," the firm's Intelligence and Information Services division (Raytheon IIS) is the premier provider of command and control systems "capable of transforming data into actionable intelligence."

According to Shorrock, the unit's "most important clients ... are the NSA, NGA, and NRO, for which it provides signals and imaging processing, as well as information security software and tools;" in other words, agencies that are at the heart of America's electronic warfare complex.

The program, Gorman writes, "would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack." While Journal sources claim the program "wouldn't persistently monitor the whole system," a leaked Raytheon email paints a different picture, in line with other NSA intrusions into domestic affairs.

"The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government...feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security," the whistleblower writes. "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother."

These revelations have triggered concerns that projects like PERFECT CITIZEN, and others that remain classified, signal a new round of secret state surveillance and privacy-killing programs under the catch-all euphemism "cybersecurity."

The Journal reports that information captured by PERFECT CITIZEN "could also have applications beyond the critical infrastructure sector, officials said, serving as a data bank that would also help companies and agencies who call upon NSA for help with investigations of cyber attacks, as Google did when it sustained a major attack late last year."

In other words, the program will have major implications "beyond the critical infrastructure sector" and could adversely affect the privacy rights of all Americans. In fact, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to hypothesize that PERFECT CITIZEN may very well be related to other "intrusion detection programs" such as Einstein 3's deep-packet inspection capabilities that can read, and catalogue, the content of email messages flowing across private telecommunications networks.

One unnamed military source told the Journal, "you've got to instrument the network to know what's going on, so you have situational awareness to take action."

However, as the UK publication The Register noted, "many of the networks that the NSA would wish to place Perfect Citizen equipment on are privately owned, however, and some could also potentially carry information offering scope for 'mission creep' outside an infrastructure-security context."

The Register's Lewis Page, a former Royal Navy Commander and frequent critic of the surveillance state, writes that "full access to power company systems might allow the NSA to work out whether anyone was at home at a given address. Transport and telecoms information would also make for a potential bonanza for intrusive monitoring."

When queried whether the program would be yet another snooping tool deployed against the public, NSA spokesperson Judith Emmel told The Register Friday: "PERFECT CITIZEN is purely a vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract."

According to NSA, "This is a research and engineering effort. There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor. Specifically, it does not involve the monitoring of communications or the placement of sensors on utility company systems."

When specifically asked by Page if NSA is "seeking to spy on US citizens by means of examining their power or phone usage, tracking them through transport systems etc, the NSA replied that they would simply never think of such a thing." (LOL!)

"Any suggestions that there are illegal or invasive domestic activities associated with this contracted effort are simply not true. We strictly adhere to both the spirit and the letter of US laws and regulations," insisted Emmel.

Which raises an inevitable question: what would lead a Raytheon insider to compare the project to "Big Brother"? This is strong language from an employee of one of America's largest defense firms, a company in the No. 4 slot on Washington Technology's 2010 Top 100 list of prime federal contractors with some $6.7 billion in total revenue, 88% of which are derived from defense contracts.

At this point we don't know, and Siobhan Gorman hasn't told us since the Journal, as of this writing, hasn't seen fit to enlighten the public with the full text, if one exists, as to why someone obviously familiar with the program would put their job at risk if PERFECT CITIZEN were simply a "vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract" and not something far more sinister.

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As I reported last month (see: "Through the Wormhole: The Secret State's Mad Scheme to Control the Internet"), corporate greed and venality aren't the only motives behind hyped-up "cyber threats." Armed with multibillion dollar budgets, most of which are concealed from public view under a black cone of top secret classifications, agencies such as NSA are positioning themselves as gatekeepers over America's electronic communications infrastructure.

The Media's Role

With corporate media serving as "message force multipliers" for the flood of alarmist reports emanating from industry-sponsored think tanks such as the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), or lobby shops like the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), it is becoming clear that consensus has been reached amongst Washington power brokers, one that will have a deleterious effect on the free speech and privacy rights of all Americans.

Floated perhaps as a means to test the waters for restricting internet access, The New York Times reported July 4 that "the Internet affords anonymity to its users--a boon to privacy and freedom of speech. But that very anonymity is also behind the explosion of cybercrime that has swept across the Web."

Reporter John Markoff, a conduit for "cyberwar" scaremongering, informs us that "Howard Schmidt, the nation's cyberczar, offered the Obama administration's proposal to make the Web a safer place--a 'voluntary trusted identity' system that would be the high-tech equivalent of a physical key, a fingerprint and a photo ID card, all rolled into one."

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The Grim Road Ahead

A confidence game only works when "marks," in this case American citizens, allow themselves to be defrauded by a person or group who have gained their trust.

And when trust cannot be won through reason, fear tends to take over as a powerful motivator. This is amply on display when it comes to Washington's ginned-up "cybersecurity" panic.

According to this reading, fraudulent internet schemes, identity theft, even espionage by state- and non-state actors (say corporate spies who benefit from NSA's ECHELON program) have been transformed into a "war," one which Bush's former Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, currently an executive vice president with the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton firm, claims the U.S. is "losing."

But as security technology expert Bruce Schneier wrote last week, "There's a power struggle going on in the U.S. government right now.

"It's about who is in charge of cyber security, and how much control the government will exert over civilian networks. And by beating the drums of war, the military is coming out on top."

Schneier avers that "the entire national debate on cyberwar is plagued with exaggerations and hyperbole." Googling "cyberwar," as well as "'cyber Pearl Harbor,' 'cyber Katrina,' and even 'cyber Armageddon'--gives some idea how pervasive these memes are. Prefix 'cyber' to something scary, and you end up with something really scary."

Hackers, criminals and sociopaths have been around since the birth of the "information superhighway." Schneier writes, "we surely need to improve our cybersecurity. But words have meaning, and metaphors matter. There's a power struggle going on for control of our nation's cybersecurity strategy, and the NSA and DoD are winning. If we frame the debate in terms of war, if we accept the military's expansive cyberspace definition of 'war,' we feed our fears."

This is precisely the intent of our political masters. And if the purpose of "cyberwar" hype is to breed fear, mistrust and helplessness in the face of relentless attacks by shadowy actors only a mouse click away then, as Schneier sagely warns: "We reinforce the notion that we're helpless--what person or organization can defend itself in a war?--and others need to protect us. We invite the military to take over security, and to ignore the limits on power that often get jettisoned during wartime."

Destroy trust, increase fear: create the "Perfect Citizen."

Source: Bloomberg

A U.S. geologist was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Chinese court after being convicted of violating the state secrets law by selling a database on the country’s oil industry.

The U.S. said it was “dismayed” by the sentence given to Xue Feng and remains concerned about his rights to due process under Chinese law. Xue was also fined 200,000 yuan ($29,550) yesterday by a Beijing court at a hearing that was attended by U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, Richard Buangan, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy said. Calls to Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court and the Foreign Ministry weren’t answered yesterday.

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State Secrets

State secrets include information that may damage the nation in fields ranging from defense and diplomacy to “national, economic and development projects” and technology. The government also has the power to label anything else a state secret, according to the amendments passed in April.

Three Chinese nationals were sentenced with Xue yesterday. Li Yongbo, a manager at Beijing Licheng Zhongyou Oil Technology Development Co., was sentenced to eight years and fined 200,000 yuan, AP reported, citing Xue’s lawyer Tong Wei. Chen Mengjin and Li Dongxu, who worked at a research institute affiliated with PetroChina Co., were each given 2 1/2 year sentences and fined 50,000 yuan, according to AP.

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“These kinds of cases have been linked to international politics as a weapon of retaliation in the Chinese government’s arsenal,” Hank Wang, a Beijing-based lawyer at Garvey Schubert Barer and co-chairman of the legal committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in the People’s Republic of China, said in an e-mail. “As the U.S. and China have reopened talks on human rights issues, this should be included in the agenda.”

The database that Xue arranged to sell contained detailed information on the state of the Chinese oil industry, AP reported. China’s three biggest oil companies are all state- owned.

China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, has been dipping into $2.4 trillion of foreign currency reserves to buy stakes in oil and natural-gas fields and has spent at least $21 billion on overseas resources in the past year. China Petrochemical Corp. bought a stake in a Canadian oil sands project for $4.65 billion in April.