Free Republic

When the Germans found out from Edward Snowden that America's National Security Agency had spied on Germany, an outraged German artist projected onto a wall at the American embassy the words "United Stasi of America." Chancellor Angela Merkel was not so outraged. She said that American and German intelligence services had been working together in the service of the security of both countries. The comparison to the Stasi was absurd, particularly to Frau Merkel, who grew up in the East and who knew well the efficiency and extent of Stasi surveillance. When I was in Berlin earlier this month, the...

Sen. McCain says Rep. Gohmert has no intelligence, so therefore not capable of malice in his comment about McCain. #NBCNightlyNews

Their social lives are complex, and they can congregate in large groups. Their heart rates increase when they notice a family member suffering. They sound the alarm when they discover food or a potential threat. And experiments have shown they even anticipate future events. Biologist Justin Gregg is talking about chickens. … For more than 50 years, the dolphin has been viewed as an especially intelligent creature, grouped together with human beings and great apes. But now a dispute on the subject has erupted among scientists, and the smart aleck of the seas may end up being just an average...

Gerhard Schindler, told German lawmakeers last week, that they had intercepted many messages to the presidential palace in Damascus, asking for permission to use sarin gas, all of which Assad refused. This is a direct contradiction of the White House talking memos that claimed we had proof positive that Assad was behind the attacks. Gerhard Schindler is the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency. Schindler, expressly told lawmakers that Assad did not order, nor did he approve of using sarin gas.

<p>A recently revealed National Security Agency program that searches the contents of Americans’ international Internet communications for people who mention foreigners under surveillance violated the Constitution for several years, according to an October 2011 top secret court ruling made public on Wednesday.</p>

When Lord Acton noted famously in 1887 that, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he could hardly have imagined just how powerful the agencies of government would become a century later, and just how apt his warning would be about the dangers of absolute power. Washington Post writer Barton Gellman reported last week that the National Security Agency violates privacy restrictions on monitoring innocent U.S. citizens thousands of times each year. This data comes not from an outside organization with an axe to grind with the powerful eavesdropping agency headquartered just outside the nation’s capitol in Ft....

There are many things for which on principle we should stand. As long-time readers know, I’m keenly sensitive to oil price movements, believing that high oil prices, more than any other single factor, were responsible for the systemic failure of the financial industry worldwide in 2008. I have often argued, thanks to the work of the our contributors at Political Calculations, that high gas prices result in layoffs in the private workforce, something we can ill afford right now. In general, my strongest indictment of the Obama administration is the abandonment of the common sense and common policy that gives...

I’ve cobbling this entry together between uptime and downtime over the last couple of weeks so bear with me on this one. I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how counter-insurgency intelligence and exploitation systems work so I’m going to touch on them a bit in this entry.  It’s by no means comprehensive as that would take an entire volume to document.  So what I’m going to attempt to do here is give the reader some insight into how an insurgency is identified, exploited, and targeted using a fairly simple and brief scenario.Make no mistake that over the last...

(Washington, D.C., August 6, 2013) Last week, Freedom Watch, led by chairman and former prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice, Larry Klayman, unveiled in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the likely leaker of classified state secrets to Washington New York Times chief correspondent David Sanger. There are unprecedented revelations, printed in the Times, that reveal the nation's cyber-warfare sources and methods against Iran's nuclear reactors and Israeli war plans among other classified leaks of sensitive information that severely harmed U.S.-Israeli national security. These leaks were perpetrated in the lead-up to the 2012 elections,...

Intelligence regarding al Qaeda plans to attack U.S. embassies, officials, and interests last Sunday was known for months by U.S. intelligence agencies but was used only recently to trigger the closure of embassies and issuance of public warnings of impending attacks. Al Qaeda “chatter” about coming terrorist operations, mainly against 22 U.S. embassies and consulates, and threats to attack or bomb officials in the Middle East and elsewhere was widely reported in classified intelligence reports over several months. The report said an attack was planned for Sunday, although no attack was carried out. The intelligence was based on electronic surveillance...

Anala Beevers of New Orleans learned the alphabet at four months of age and learned numbers in Spanish by the time she was 18-months-old. Now, at 4-years-old, she is a MENSA‘s newest member, AOL reports. MENSA, the international organization for the super smart, took notice and extended the young genius an invitation to join their exclusive club. The organization normally invites adults to the club, but Anala is truly an exception. She has an IQ of more than 145. Most of MENSA’s members are in the top two percent; Anala is in the top one percent. Watch AOL news story...

Anala Beevers is 4 and smarter than you. Anala — who learned the alphabet when she was only 4 months old, her parents say — has an IQ over 145. The New Orleans toddler recently was invited to join Mensa, the high-IQ society for people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on the standardized intelligence test. Anala is in the 99th percentile. Anala loves geography, knows the location of every U.S. state and the names of their capitals. She even carries a map of America everywhere she goes.

Things that make you go.......................Huh?

The Obama administration is moving toward final implementation of new job protections for disgruntled intelligence employees who keep their complaints about wrongdoing within government channels. Some advocates for whistleblowers have hailed the move, which comes as Edward Snowden — who has claimed to be a U.S. national security whistleblower — accelerates his search for foreign asylum from a Moscow airport waiting room. By July 8, dozens of federal agencies are required to tell the White House in detail how they plan to implement an order the president signed last October that prohibits retaliation against those who flag “waste, fraud and...

Will anyone find the spine to finally hold a top Democrat accountable for his criminality? You can bet if it was a Republican who lied under oath, the indictment would be swift and merciless.

The director of National Intelligence apologized in June to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for lying during a hearing, according to a letter published on the DNI website on Tuesday. Director James Clapper appeared before the committee in March, where Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked him specifically if NSA spies on millions of Americans. Clapper answered, "No."

In the wake of hacking attacks on financial, intelligence and defense assets here in the U.S. that have been consistently reported for over 15 years in the United States, it’s time to label China what it really is: a terrorist nation. In fact it is the thought leader when it comes to methods of terror. Even before Osama Bin Laden and 19 of his followers rocked the western world by slamming three planes into prominent financial and military landmarks China published “Unrestricted Warfare” as an attempt to compensate militarily for the West’s unrivaled technological edge. More than just seeking to...

The Whistleblower Is Just A Tiny Part Of The Full Story Initial impressions This newsletter finds it easier to believe whistleblower Edward Snowden than to believe Obama. The fellow who has exposed some of NSA’s secrets seems genuinely concerned about the implications of the gargantuan data-mining efforts. His statements have an inherent plausibility and do not seem the views of a crackpot conspiracy theorist. He raises genuine ethical concerns that are relevant to any massive surveillance operation. Unlike Assange (the creepy freak) and Manning (who seems slightly stupid and gullible), this fellow makes a good impression.

Journalist Michael Hastings was killed early Tuesday morning in a bizarre car incident in Los Angeles. Hastings, 33, was best known for writing the Rolling Stone story that ended in Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Hastings’ final story, “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” was a searing take on the NSA snooping scandal, which Hastings described as “North Korea-esque.” Hastings pulled no punches as he linked the NSA scandal to the Department of Justice’s spying on reporters and the IRS abuse scandal. Hastings built a case that the same Democrats who turned Bush-era...

Honolulu (HawaiiNewsNow) - A military jury has found a Schofield Barracks officer guilty of illegally possessing and passing classified national defense information. Military prosecutors say Army Maj. Seivirak Inson, 43, attempted to hand over a number of military secrets to members connected to the Cambodian government between 2009 and 2012. Prosecutors say that Inson -- who is of Cambodian ancestry -- took classified U.S. intelligence reports about the Cambodian military and gave it to unauthorized personnel. The military jury on Friday evening sentenced Maj. Inson to 10 years in prison, forfeiture of pay and dismissal from the Army. The jury...