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The U.S. government has waived laws banning Chinese components being fitted in their Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT)-built F-35 fighter jets in order to keep the $392 billion program on track during 2012 and 2013, according to a report released by Reuters on Friday. According to the report, Pentagon documents showed that chief U.S. arms buyer Frank Kendall had allowed two F-35 suppliers, Northrup Grumman (NYSE:NOC) and Honeywell International (NYSE:HON) to use landing gears, magnets and other hardware supplied from China. Had the waivers not been issued, both companies would have violated federal law and the program could have been...

As more and more human rights of U.S. citizens are violated in the name of safety and security, the group Anonymous stands to fight at the side of Americans. Over the holiday weekend, they have even gone as far to announce a call to arms. The fact that many people are still unaware of the “hacker” group Anonymous is sign of censorship by today’s mainstream media. There is a clear need for groups such as Anonymous as the fact of this direct censorships shows just how clouded the media’s freedom of speech has become. anon5 (See also: Obama Secretly Signs...

Dennis drawn to North Korea by his Rodman: report Staff Reporter 2013-12-26 08:55 (GMT+8) Retired NBA great Dennis Rodman loves visiting North Korea not just to train local basketball players but to enjoy the sexual services laid on for him by his pal, the country's supreme leader Kim Jong-un, reports Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po. The Hall of Famer departed from North Korea on Monday after training local players for an exhibition game against former NBA veterans scheduled for Jan. 8, Kim's birthday. This was his third visit to the country in the past year. Known for his wild...

Eavesdropping is “unacceptable” among close allies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, ordering an official inquiry into reports that the United States had spied on Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu himself. It was the first response from Netanyahu after weekend revelations that US and British intelligence services intercepted emails in his office and that of his predecessor Ehud Olmert, and also spied on former defense minister Ehud Barak. “In the close ties between Israel and the United States, there are things that must not be done and that are not acceptable to us,” the prime minister said at a Likud faction...

Former CIA Director James Woolsey had harsh words Tuesday for anyone thinking about giving Edward Snowden amnesty, and argued the NSA leaker should be “hanged” if he’s ever tried and convicted of treason. Woolsey, along with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton, spoke Tuesday in Washington in an interview with Fox News. “I think giving him amnesty is idiotic,” Woolsey said. “He should be prosecuted for treason. If convicted by a jury of his peers, he should be hanged by his neck until he is dead."

The Obama Administration soon will be releasing its list of countries that support international terrorism. Currently on the list are: Iran, Sudan, Syria and Cuba. Cuba has been listed since 1982 but Reps. James P. McGovern, D-Mass., and Kathy Castor, D-Fl., propose to remove Cuba from the list. They argue that because Raúl Castro has taken control of the island from his brother Fidel, Cuba no longer poses a threat to the United States. An article appearing in Sunday’s [April 21] Washington Post presents a less benign appraisal of Cuba’s intentions. The author, Jim Popkin, focuses on the career of...

The European parliament is lining up Edward Snowden to give evidence by video link this month, in spite of resistance by British Conservatives, a Green MEP has announced. Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green MEP, said parliamentarians wanted Snowden to appear before the assembly's committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs (LIBE). Albrecht said it would represent a great success for the parliament's investigation into mass surveillance of EU citizens. He said: "Half a year after the first publications from his collection of numerous NSA documents, the truth of which has not so far been refuted, there are still...

EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström Wednesday (27 November) faced accusations that she has been too soft in her response to the US spying program. The commissioner told deputies in the civil liberties committee that she had closed an inquiry into allegations the US intelligence agency was accessing people’s financial details from the Belgian-based Swift company. …

This week in Washington, Senator Marco Rubio accused a fellow American of treason. Edward Snowden drew the Republican's ire by informing hundreds of millions of innocent people that the NSA is spying on them... Anyone familiar with the Snowden story will understand why Rubio's comments are misleading. Americans are concerned about their civil liberties because of the accurate information the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor leaked. He isn't responsible for any conspiracy theories, except in the sense that a conspiracy is "an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act," and he exposed NSA and GCHQ cooperation on...

Microsoft is moving toward a major new effort to encrypt its Internet traffic amid fears that the National Security Agency may have broken into its global communications links, said people familiar with the emerging plans. Suspicions at Microsoft, while building for several months, sharpened in October when it was reported that the NSA was intercepting traffic inside the private networks of Google and Yahoo, two industry rivals with similar global infrastructures, said people with direct knowledge of the company’s deliberations. They said top Microsoft executives are meeting this week to decide what encryption initiatives to deploy and how quickly.

British and U.S. intelligence officials say they are worried about a "doomsday" cache of highly classified, heavily encrypted material they believe former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has stored on a data cloud. . . . . (A lot of information in the article. Check out comments, too.) .........................................................................................................

US lawmakers will launch a “goodwill” mission to Europe next week to smooth ties frayed by spying revelations including allegedly on Chancellor Angela Merkel. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and two members of the House of Representatives will visit Berlin on Monday and Brussels Tuesday to address the transatlantic partnership as well as concerns about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance activities. …

Mavis Batey was a British student of 19, midway through her university course in German Romanticism, when she was recruited for a top-secret assignment during World War II.“This is going to be an interesting job, Mata Hari, seducing Prussian officers,” she recalled thinking years later. “But I don’t think either my legs or my German were good enough because they sent me to the Government Code and Cipher School.”In May 1940, Mrs. Batey — then the unmarried Mavis Lever — joined the team of code breakers at Bletchley Park, the British cryptography headquarters. Trained in the enemy’s language and endowed...

Human rights groups urged the U.N. General Assembly Thursday to approve a resolution to protect the right to privacy against unlawful surveillance in the digital age and criticized the U.S. and its key allies for trying to weaken it. Brazil and Germany, whose leaders have allegedly been targeted by U.S. eavesdropping, circulated a revised draft late Wednesday after intense negotiations. The rights organizations said Thursday the text was “relatively undamaged,” despite lobbying by the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which comprise the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing group. The key compromise dropped the contention that the domestic and international interception...

On Saturday, Nov. 16, the United States marks a milestone: the 80th anniversary of when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union and "normalized" U.S.-USSR relations. It is a day that should live in infamy. But it's a day that hardly anyone has ever heard of. I certainly hadn't before researching my book, "American Betrayal." As I studied the event, however, it became clear that it was on this day 80 years ago that what I call "American betrayal" began. It is the date on which the U.S. government institutionally learned to lie. After the Bolsheviks seized dictatorial powers...

Scotland Yard on Wednesday reversed a coroner's finding of foul play in the 2010 death of British spy Gareth Williams, concluding that an accident was likely responsible for the death of the code-breaker whose naked, decomposing body was found stuffed inside a zipped and padlocked gym bag. London Metropolitan Police investigators had undertaken a review of evidence in the case 16 months ago, after initial restrictions on homicide detectives' access to details of Williams' intelligence work were lifted by the British secret service, MI6. Deputy Asst. Commissioner Martin Hewitt told journalists in London that investigators only had access to Williams'...

Following recent revelations about NSA spying, Spiegel has learned that Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution recently issued a security warning to authorities in the country’s 16 states. The domestic intelligence agency warned in an Oct. 30 letter that “an emotional response from certain segments of the population cannot be ruled out” and recommended that “security measures aimed at protecting US facilities in Germany should be increased.” The agency said the background behind the “potential threat” was ongoing discussions about the “collection of Germans’ data by the United States.” …

Agent Carrie Mathison is a topical figure. The main character in the American TV series “Homeland,” played by the wonderful Claire Danes, shows her true relevance in the first few episodes, in which Mathison is nervously sitting at home, observing and listening in on the life of a terror suspect on a large screen. His apartment is bugged and Mathison is determined to find out as much as she can about him. She is hysterical, bipolar, paranoid and sick—all advantageous traits for her job. The real-life intelligence services of the United States take things much further than agent Carrie Mathison....

As a former trainer reveals, the U.S. government deployed nonhuman operatives—ravens, pigeons, even cats—to spy on cold war adversariesThere would be a rustle of oily black feathers as a raven settled on the window ledge of a once-grand apartment building in some Eastern European capital. The bird would pace across the ledge a few times but quickly depart. In an apartment on the other side of the window, no one would shift his attention from the briefing papers or the chilled vodka set out on a table. Nor would anything seem amiss in the jagged piece of gray slate resting...

US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged in a German newspaper on Thursday that “tensions” had arisen between the US and Germany over revelations of US espionage, but said relations would remain strong. The German government is studying the possibility of questioning US fugitive leaker Edward Snowden in Russia after admitting he could be in danger of extradition if he were to come to Germany. … Asked what needed to be done to repair US-German ties, Kerry said that Washington was talking with its German partners “about how we better coordinate our secret service efforts and, in doing so, can...