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“Big data” could play a huge role in the 2016 US election, even if Donald Trump doesn’t think so. Trump, who sailed through the Republican primaries using unconventional campaign rallies and Twitter messages, has indicated that he sees little use for popular data analytics tools to help target specific voters. But analysts say he may be at a disadvantage in the general election if he stays on that course. “In the primaries, he was only looking for Republican voters, and in the general he needs all voters,” said Alan Rosenblatt, a digital political strategist...

By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did. He leaked top-secret documents revealing that the National Security Agency was spying on hundreds of millions of people across the world, collecting the phone calls and emails of virtually everyone on Earth who used a mobile phone or the internet. When this newspaper began publishing the NSA documents in June 2013, it ignited a fierce political debate that continues to this day – about government surveillance, but also about the morality, legality and civic value of whistleblowing. Sign up to the long read email Read more But if you want to...

Susan Rice: Too Many Whites On National Security Team Putting America At Risk Published May 22, 2016 Truth Revolt National Security Advisor Susan Rice told graduates at Florida International University that the presence of too many "white, male, and Yale" staffers is posing a threat to the security of America. read more at truthrevolt.org→

Former National Security Agency contractor, Central Intelligence Agency employee and hide-and-seek champion Edward Snowden has been holed up in Russia for nearly three years, engaged in perhaps the longest-ever game of show-and-tell. Meanwhile, The Intercept -- an online publication that has served as a clearinghouse for data Snowden pilfered from the NSA -- has just dropped another stash of once highly classified material onto the Internet. This time, the leak consists of content from an internal NSA newsletter, SID Today. ("SID" is the abbreviation for "Signals Intelligence Directorate.") What can we learn from these newly released documents? Apparently, NSA culture...

WASHINGTON: The US President's schedule on any given morning includes a confidential Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) at 9 am before he embarks on the day's (mostly) public engagements. Presented usually by the Director of National Intelligence, the PDB fuses intelligence from various spy agencies (CIA, DIA, NSA etc), much of it obtained through "sigint" (signal intelligence) and "'technical" means (euphemism for bugging, electronic surveillance etc), to give the President a head's up on vital national security issues - from nuclear advances in countries such as Pakistan, North Korea and Iran to negotiating positions of China, India, and other majors at...

White House National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice said Wednesday there are too many white people in key government posts, creating the danger of “groupthink” that could put U.S. security at risk. Speaking at Florida International University’s commencement, Ms. Rice said a diversified government workforce is more likely to yield “better outcomes” than a predominantly white one. Referring to criticism that the U.S. national security workforce is “white, male, and Yale,” Ms. Rice told the graduates, “In the halls of power, in the faces of our national security leaders, America is still not fully reflected.” “By now, we should all...

Surprised? Not really. I know what you’re thinking. “There are people who get their daily news from social postings on Facebook?” Sadly, the answer to that is yes. At any given moment there are over 150 million users roaming Mark Zuckerberg’s monstrosity, and you can bet that some percentage of them rarely read anything outside the online utopia. So, while we may not like to admit it, the “trending” section at the upper right of the page has become frighteningly important. Facebook swears that it determines what’s “trending” by analyzing reader preference. If it’s popular on the site - meaning...

The government’s cyber spying outfit has an ‘unbelievable’ child porn problem. But the NSA can’t—or won’t—say how often it finds such criminal images on its workers’ computers. Two senior U.S. intelligence officials said recently that defense and intelligence employees have an “unbelievable” amount of child pornography on their work computers and devices, and that child porn has been found on the systems of the National Security Agency, the country’s biggest intelligence organization. But the NSA, which is responsible for keeping tabs on its own computers as well as military and intelligence agency networks, cannot say just how many times employees...

Hillary Clinton insisted Friday that there's no way Republicans will get their wish, which is to see her in handcuffs and charged with violating the law by allowing top secret and classified information to end up on her private email server. "I know that they live in that world of fantasy and hope because they've got a mess on their hands on the Republican side. That is not going to happen," Clinton said on NBC's "Today" show. "There is not even the remotest chance that is going to happen." "But look, they've been after me, as I say, for 25...

Former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president Wednesday, saying he has the best experience and leadership skills to run the country.Hayden, who helmed both the NSA and the CIA through former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama’s years in office, cited Kasich’s 18 years of experience on the House Armed Services Committee in a statement announcing his endorsement. He also praised Kasich’s proposals to increase defense spending and defeat Islamic State.“Governor Kasich has serious proposals to strengthen our military, defeat ISIS and stand up for freedom around the world—proposals that rise far above bumper-stickers...

Foxnews announced FBI has broken into San Bernadino terrorist phone without aid from apple.

Tim Macy, Chairman of Gun Owners of America, wrote an open letter to Second Amendment supporters exposing Republican presidential candidate John Kasich’s real anti-gun agenda.Labeling Kasich the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” still in the presidential race, Macy points to Kasich’s close relationship with Leftist, Communist, billionaire George Soros. In fact, the Soros Fund Management is one of John Kasich’s top financial contributors.“This can hardly be a surprise,” Macy writes. His full letter can be read here. An abbreviated version is below.Kasich and Soros share two important traits: (1) their desire to mess up the Republican selection process for devious motives,...

The FBI has been investigating Clinton for months--but an even more secretive Federal agency has its own important beef with her. For a year now, Hillary Clinton's misuse of email during her tenure as Secretary of State has hung like a dark cloud over her presidential campaign. As I told you months ago, EmailGate isn't going away, despite the best efforts of Team Clinton to make it disappear. Instead, the scandal has gotten worse, with never-ending revelations of apparent misconduct by Ms. Clinton and her staff. At this point, EmailGate may be the only thing standing between Hillary and the...

<p>What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes. And we don’t have to guess who’s going to suffer this unconstitutional indignity the most brutally. It’ll be Black, Brown, poor, immigrant, Muslim, and dissident Americans: the same people who are always targeted by law enforcement for extra “special” attention.</p>

As if Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) didn’t already know way too much about you, their new Reactions buttons will give them even more insight into your inner thoughts, and you’ve already given them permission to do whatever they want with this information. ... The new emotions – “love”, “sad” “wow”, “haha”, and “angry” – are being widely embraced by a user base that is desperate to tell the world exactly how it feels about everything under the sun, from the latest political issues to vacation photos. However, the new buttons do a lot more than give you another way to tell...

Former CIA Chief Says Military Could Defy Donald Trump’s Orders By Damian Paletta Feb 27, 2016 4:53 pm ET WASHINGTON – Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who recently led the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, said the U.S. military would likely refuse to follow certain orders from Donald Trump if he is elected to the White House in November and follows through on campaign promises. "I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that Candidate Trump expressed during the campaign," Gen. Hayden said during an interview will...

Up to 46,000 Internet-accessible digital video recorders (DVRs) that are used to monitor and record video streams from surveillance cameras in homes and businesses can easily be taken over by hackers. According to security researchers from vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security (RBS), all the devices share the same basic vulnerability: They accept a hard-coded, unchangeable password for the highest-privileged user in their software -- the root account. Using hard-coded passwords and hidden support accounts was a common practice a decade ago, when security did not play a large role in product design and development. That mentality has changed in...

We see tremendous push from government for Apple to facilitate back door access to encryption on phones. This apparently to crack the terrorist's iPhone to find out who are their contacts, etc. This appears to be excuse to bypass privacy of phone users under the guise of security. Feds were ignorant to traffic around the terrorist's house. Now the phone is the key to find out who are their contacts? What does the phone reveal that records at the service provider, log of phone calls, doesn't? Where is the NSA and their records and alerts of possible terrorist activity? I...

GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump blames Bush for failing to stop 9/11 attacks As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hammers away at former President George W. Bush for not stopping the September 11 attacks, another factor could be added to the debate: Mr. Bush inherited from Bill Clinton an intelligence community in terrible shape. This fact comes not from a Republican partisan but from George Tenet, President Clinton's CIA director, a post that at the time made him the country's top intelligence officer. Mr. Tenet wrote in his memoirs, "At the Center of the Storm," that Mr. Clinton left Mr....

Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort https://iapp.org/news/a/obama-establishes-federal-privacy-council-as-part-of-massive-cyber-effort/ Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort Sam Pfeifle The Privacy Advisor | Feb 9, 2016 Obama establishes Federal Privacy Council as part of massive cyber effort As part of his 2017 budget proposal for the United States, President Barack Obama is including $19 billion for cybersecurity efforts, a 35-percent increase over fiscal year 2016. The funds will go toward a Cybersecurity National Action Plan, which includes the hiring of a chief information security officer, a $3.1 billion fund for IT modernization at the...