See article showing politics versus public interest
By TED BRIDIS (AP) – July 21, 2010
WASHINGTON — For at least a year, the Homeland Security Department detoured hundreds of requests for federal records to senior political advisers for highly unusual scrutiny, probing for information about the requesters and delaying disclosures deemed too politically sensitive, according to nearly 1,000 pages of internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.
The department abandoned the practice after AP investigated. Inspectors from the department's Office of Inspector General quietly conducted interviews last week to determine whether political advisers acted improperly.
The Freedom of Information Act, the main tool forcing the government to be more open, is designed to be insulated from political considerations. Anyone who seeks information through the law is supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose confidential decision-making in certain areas.
The U.S. Geological Survey is using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support a student who’s investigating social Internet technologies as a way to quickly gather information about recent earthquakes.
In this exploratory effort, the USGS is developing a system that gathers real-time, earthquake-related messages from the social networking site Twitter and applies place, time, and key word filtering to gather geo-located accounts of shaking. This approach provides rapid first-impression narratives and, potentially, photos from people at the hazard’s location. The potential for earthquake detection in populated but sparsely seismicly-instrumented regions is also being investigated.
Social Internet technologies are providing the general public with anecdotal earthquake hazard information before scientific information has been published from authoritative sources. People local to an event are able to publish information via these technologies within seconds of their occurrence. In contrast, depending on the location of the earthquake, scientific alerts can take between 2 to 20 minutes. By adopting and embracing these new technologies, the USGS potentially can augment its earthquake response products and the delivery of hazard information.
From the Onion, dated (2009) but achieving new momentum as Americans question their government more and more.
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From TED Global 2010, a candid discussion with the founder of WikiLeaks who was also scheduled as a keynote speaker at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) 2010 but was replaced by his colleague due to “possible conflict.”
About this talk
The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.
About Julian Assange
Internet activist Julian Assange serves as spokesperson for WikiLeaks, a controversial, volunteer-driven website that publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and… Full bio and more links
More information has emerged about Google’s relationship with the government and spook agencies (see PR Newswire below). The revelations should come as no surprise.
Consumer Watchdog, formerly the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer advocacy organization with offices in Washington, DC and Santa Monica, Ca. Consumer Watchdog’s website is www.consumerwatchdog.org. Visit our new Google Privacy and Accountability Project website: http://insidegoogle.com.
Phi Beta Iota: Goggle has accomplished a great deal, aided in part by CIA and NSA, but also in part by being able to get away with stealing Yahoo's search engine in the early days and hiring the Alta Vista people when HP foolishly killed off that offering. They have emulated Microsoft in achieving first-rate marketing with second-rate services, and continue to spend $10 million in fantasy cash for every dollar they actually earn. They are now the Goldman Sachs of the software industry, and that is not a compliment. It is not possible to understand Google without reading the three deep analytic books on Google by Stephen E. Arnold:
More than a trillion dollars has been appropriated since September 11, 2001 for U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This makes the “war on terrorism” the most costly of any military engagement in U.S. history in absolute terms or, if correcting for inflation, the second most expensive U.S. military action after World War II.
A newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service estimated the financial costs of major U.S. wars from the American Revolution ($2.4 billion in FY 2011 dollars) to World War I ($334 billion) to World War II ($4.1 trillion) to the second Iraq war ($784 billion) and the war in Afghanistan ($321 billion). CRS provided its estimates in current year dollars (i.e. the year they were spent) and in constant year dollars (adjusted for inflation), and as a percentage of gross domestic product. Many caveats apply to these figures, which are spelled out in the CRS report.
In constant dollars, World War II is still the most expensive of all U.S. wars, having consumed a massive 35.8% of GDP at its height and having cost $4.1 trillion in FY2011 dollars. See “Costs of Major U.S. Wars,” June 29, 2010.
MILITARY CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
The Department of Defense has more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than it has uniformed military personnel, another newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service reminds us.
“The Department of Defense increasingly relies upon contractors to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has resulted in a DOD workforce that has 19% more contractor personnel (207,600) than uniformed personnel (175,000),” said the CRS report — which forms a timely counterpoint to this week's Washington Post “Top Secret America” series on the tremendous expansion of the intelligence bureaucracy, including the increased and often unchecked reliance on contractors.
The explosive growth in reliance on contractors naturally entails new difficulties in management and oversight. “Some analysts believe that poor contract management has also played a role in abuses and crimes committed by certain contractors against local nationals, which may have undermined U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the CRS said. See “Department of Defense Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: Background and Analysis,” July 2, 2010.
The potential benefits and limitations of using unmanned aerial vehicles for homeland security applications were considered by the Congressional Research Service in yet another updated report. See “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,” July 8, 2010.
The “secret history” of unmanned aircraft was recounted in an informative new study published by the Air Force Association. See “Air Force UAVs: The Secret History” by Thomas P. Ehrhard, July 2010. _______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.
The attached very important report is by Jonathan Cook, a freelance resporter based in Nazareth in the occupied West Bank and one of the most intrepid reporters covering the Israel's occupation policies, is — or should be — a long overdue wakeup call to the US people, the US media, and the US government, but don't count on it.
NAZARETH // There is one video Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, must be praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles. To date, the 10-minute segment has been broadcast only in Hebrew on Israel’s Channel 10.
Its contents, however, threaten to gravely embarrass not only Mr Netanyahu but also the US administration of Barack Obama.
The film was shot, apparently without Mr Netanyahu’s knowledge, nine years ago, when the government of Ariel Sharon had started reinvading the main cities of the West Bank to crush Palestinian resistance in the early stages of the second intifada.
At the time Mr Netanyahu had taken a short break from politics but was soon to join Mr Sharon’s government as finance minister.
On a visit to a home in the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank to pay condolences to the family of a man killed in a Palestinian shooting attack, he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.
Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.
He dismisses the US as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd”.
The nation's spy world is anxiously — certainly not eagerly — anticipating a Washington Post series looking at CIA and Pentagon contractors, according to insider reports. And the intelligence community has been preparing for an expected offensive by plotting its defense.
The Atlantic has posted a memorandum, “Internal Memo: Intelligence Community Frets About Washington Post Series,” sent by Art House, the media manager for the Director of National Intelligence. He outlines what he thinks the series will say about the “IC” (intelligence community) and offers talking points for press aides.
Here are some of the highlights of the memo:
Themes
While we can't predict specific content, we anticipate the following themes:
*The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.
*The IC and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
*The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.
Management of Responses
We do not know which agencies will receive attention, and each agency will need to manage its own responses. …
It might be helpful as you prepare for publication to draw up a list of accomplishments and examples of success to offer in response to inquiries to balance the coverage and add points that deserve to be mentioned. In media discussions, we will seek to garner support for the Intelligence Community and its members by offering examples of agile, integrated activity that has enhanced performance. We will want to minimize damage caused by unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified information. …
House's conclusion: “This series has been a long time in preparation and looks designed to cast the IC and the DoD in an unfavorable light. We need to anticipate and prepare so that the good work of our respective organizations is effectively reflected in communications with employees, secondary coverage in the media and in response to questions.”
Keep your eyes peeled for this blockbuster.
Phi Beta Iota: Panetta had a chance to get it right and blew it. Clapper will finish the job of destroying whatever integrity is left in the US Intelligence Community. This is not news, but the Washington Post has finally caught up with the rest of us.
