Free Republic

The Army private who was tried and convicted as Bradley Edward Manning for leaking U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks is petitioning a Kansas court for a name change, to Chelsea Elizabeth Manning.

A cyber espionage operation by China seven years ago produced sensitive technology and aircraft secrets that were incorporated into the latest version of China’s new J-20 stealth fighter jet, according to U.S. officials and private defense analysts. The Chinese cyber spying against the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II took place in 2007 under what U.S. intelligence agencies codenamed Operation Byzantine Hades, a large-scale, multi-year cyber program that targeted governments and industry. Defense officials said the stolen data was obtained by a Chinese military unit called a Technical Reconnaissance Bureau in the Chengdu province. The data was then passed to the...

WASHINGTON — The CIA Inspector General’s Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned. The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency. The development marks an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the CIA and its congressional overseers amid an extraordinary closed-door battle...

Joint Subcommittee Hearing: Iran’s Support for Terrorism Worldwide Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa 2172 House Rayburn Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Mar 4, 2014 10:00am

ORANGE PARK, FLA. — The death of a Navy commander found in a room at the Astoria Hotel on Feb. 12 was ruled a homicide, the Orange Park Police Department announced Wednesday. The Jacksonville Medical Examiner's Office made the ruling on Feb. 13 in the death of Cmdr. Alphonso Doss, 44, of Pensacola, according to the release from the OPPD. Doss' manner of death is not being released at this time while the OPPD and the Clay County Sheriff's Office investigate. Doss reported to Naval Education and Training Command in Nov. 2011, according to the Navy. While in Jacksonville, he...

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in...

TECHNOLOGY 7887 kHz, Your Home for Classic Cuban Espionage Radio The shortwave radio signals that the alleged Russian spies were using are still surprisingly effective. By Brett Sokol Posted Tuesday, July 6, 2010, at 1:53 PM ET The FBI documents that accompanied last week's arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies are alternately creepy—who knew the Tribeca Barnes & Noble was a hotbed of espionage?—and comical—turns out even foreign spies wanted to cash in on suburban New Jersey's real estate boom. With a nod to Boris and Natasha, the accused are also said to have used short-wave radio, a 1920s-era technology...

MONTREAL -- Passport Canada secretly supplied a new identity and passport to a Mossad agent living in Canada after the Israeli spy participated in the 2010 plot to kill a leader of terrorist group Hamas in a Dubai hotel, a Montreal businessman has alleged. Mysterious Canadian-Iranian businessman Arian Azarbar made the startling allegations in an exclusive interview with QMI Agency. Azarbar says he learned about the top secret operation during a relationship he had with Trina Kennedy, a senior national security investigator at Passport Canada. "The Canadian government has said we had nothing to do with this, but it is...

We’ve got a new nation-state espionage malware. "The Mask" was discovered by Kaspersky Labs: The primary targets are government institutions, diplomatic offices and embassies, energy, oil and gas companies, research organizations and activists. Victims of this targeted attack have been found in 31 countries around the world -- from the Middle East and Europe to Africa and the Americas. The main objective of the attackers is to gather sensitive data from the infected systems. These include office documents, but also various encryption keys, VPN configurations, SSH keys (serving as a means of identifying a user to an SSH server) and...

Abdel Hamid el-Rajoub, a Palestinian, became an informant for Israel while serving time in an Israeli prison. Palestinian informants play a key role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though both sides can be reluctant to speak about it. Rajoub, who now lives in Israel, says he is no longer an informant. Abdel Hamid el-Rajoub, a Palestinian, became an informant for Israel while serving time in an Israeli prison. Palestinian informants play a key role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though both sides can be reluctant to speak about it. Rajoub, who now lives in Israel, says he is no longer an informant....

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.