Free Republic

One Nigerian official's wish for Boko Haram: "Find them, kill them." ....... "I love this about America," he said with a tone of, if not love, then certainly reverence. "Find them, kill them. Don't wait for judicial manipulation." As the parents of the kidnapped schoolgirls become more desperate, and their protests in Abuja grow larger, he may be repeating those four words to himself like a mantra.

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said that islands at the center of a territorial dispute between Japan and China fall within the scope of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said on Wednesday. Obama, who arrives in Japan later on Wednesday on the first step of a four-nation Asian visit, made the remarks in written replies to questions.

Global military spending dropped by nearly two percent in 2013, led by the United States which dropped it’s spending by 7.8 percent. By contrast, the military industrial complexes in Russia and China are bustling; seeing a 4.8 and 7.4 percent increase, respectively. "For the first time since 2003, Russia spent a larger percentage of it’s Gross Domestic Product on military expenses than the United States… " The U.S. dropped spending from roughly $690 Billion in 2012, to $640 Billion in 2013, shrinking to 3.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. The reduction is noted in real terms, which means the...

<p>"They know, Chuck, they know. They know we're coming." -- ATF undercover agent Robert Rodriguez to raid commander Chuck Sarabyn, 28 February 1993, one hour before the raid on the Branch Davidians.</p> <p>"It is of no concern. Soon the Rebellion will be crushed."</p>

Armed federal agents at the Cliven Bundy ranch in Nevada, April 2014. (Natural News)In 2008, Barack Obama announced his plan to build a massive “civilian national security force” here in America. It would be just as well funded as the US military.

Federal systems remained vulnerable to hackers even after researchers identified the bug. Google knew about a critical flaw in Internet security, but it didn't alert anyone in the government. Neel Mehta, a Google engineer, first discovered "Heartbleed"—a bug that undermines the widely used encryption technology OpenSSL—some time in March. A team at the Finnish security firm Codenomicon discovered the flaw around the same time. Google was able to patch most of its services—such as email, search, and YouTube—before the companies publicized the bug on April 7. The researchers also notified a handful of other companies about the bug before going...

A woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research. Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Conversely, the team found a man's libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship.

Researchers have uncovered an extremely critical vulnerability in recent versions of OpenSSL, a technology that allows millions of Web sites to encrypt communications with visitors. Complicating matters further is the release of a simple exploit that can be used to steal usernames and passwords from vulnerable sites, as well as private keys that sites use to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data.

A serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic library has been discovered that allows attackers to steal information unnoticed. Known as the Heartbleed bug, the vulnerability allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of systems that run vulnerable versions of OpenSSL, revealing the secret authentication and encryption keys to protect the traffic. User names, passwords and the actual content of the communications can also be read. ... OpenSSL recommends that uses immediately upgrade to version 1.0.1g. If that's not possible, users should recompile OpenSSL with the -DOPENSSL_NO_HEARTBEATS flag to remove the the heartbeat handshake. The 1.0.2 version of...

BlackBerry has earned a “full operational capability” designation from the U.S. Defense Department for its BlackBerry 10 smartphones and enterprise service, the smartphone company said Thursday. BlackBerry said the security certification will allow U.S. government employees to securely access email, data, apps and other department network resources using the company’s latest smartphones. On Wednesday, BlackBerry received certification for U.S. government employees to use its secure work space enterprise software on iPhones and devices that use the Android operating system. The technology is among products that became available through the rollout of the company’s BlackBerry 10 operating system. The software helps...

Only days before President Obama revealed that his worst fear was a nuclear terror attack on Manhattan, a nearly blind guard was caught sleeping on the job at the Freedom Tower — where he was the building’s first line of defense. In a shocking cellphone photo obtained exclusively by The Post, Abdul Basher, 65, is wearing shades and lying almost completely flat in a chair in the No. 1 terror target’s south lobby, where he was the only guard stationed, sources said.

Medea Benjamin, left sans vagina costume, leads group meeting Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson, photo by Code Pink.It’s an Obama world. As the United States faces a Cold War showdown over Russia annexing Crimea and an international passenger jet having seemingly disappeared, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson met with leaders of the terrorist support group Code Pink at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Medea Benjamin wipes her feet on ‘Homeland Security’, photo by Code Pink.It is another feather in the cap of a group that has a history of working with terrorists and state sponsors...

For those of you who don’t think Big Guy works hard enough: here’s concrete evidence to the contrary. He pulled an all-nighter working on this marketing schematic B4 he tweeted it out:Seriously, young-uns, Big Guy hates to be the one to deliver the bad news, butt you are NOT invincible; incredible? Yes:The Incrediblesbutt invincible? Nah. Not unless you’re a wise, bossy woman. Oh yes, I am wise But it's wisdom born of pain Yes, I've paid the price But look how much I gained If I have to, I can do anything I am strong (Strong) I am invincible (Invincible)...

This week Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), a long time supporter of the intelligence community, expressed outrage upon discovering that the CIA has been spying on members of Congress. “I have backed every budget request the CIA has put forward,” Feinstein declared. “I have defended them against their detractors from both sides of the ideological spectrum. Now we find out that they have been surreptitiously breaking into the emails of members of Congress—including mine. It is one thing to spy on ordinary people. It is quite another for them to spy on a separate branch of government.” CIA Director John Brennan...

Is identity theft a real enough problem to warrant $10/month monitoring service? I must decide whether or not to get the service but to initiate it I must trust the service with a lot of personal data.

A sophisticated piece of spyware has been quietly infecting hundreds of government computers across Europe and the United States in one of the most complex cyber espionage programs uncovered to date. Several security researchers and Western intelligence officers say they believe the malware, widely known as Turla, is the work of the Russian government and linked to the same software used to launch a massive breach on the U.S. military uncovered in 2008. Those assessments were based on analysis of tactics employed by hackers, along with technical indicators and the victims they targeted.

According to some reports you'd think the security sky was falling. Yes, GnuTLS, an open-source "secure" communications library that implements \Secure-Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), has serious flaws. The good news? Almost no one uses it. OpenSSL has long been everyone's favorite open-source security library of choice. Red Hat discovered the latest in a long-series of GnuTLS bugs .Latest? Yes, latest.You see, GnuTLS has long been regarded as being a poor SSL/TLS security library. A 2008 message on the OpenLDAP mailing list had "GnuTLS considered harmful" as its subject — which summed it up nicely. In it, Howard...

A major flaw in Apple Inc software for mobile devices could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted, the company said on Friday, and experts said Mac computers were even more exposed. If attackers have access to a mobile user's network, such as by sharing the same unsecured wireless service offered by a restaurant, they could see or alter exchanges between the user and protected sites such as Gmail and Facebook. Governments with access to telecom carrier data could do the same. ... "It's as bad as you could imagine, that's all I...

The Obama administration on Wednesday released a long-awaited framework for cybersecurity that is intended to nudge businesses toward strengthening their networks against attacks. The voluntary guidance, established by President Obama via executive order and developed by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, gives critical infrastructure companies a guidebook for ways to prevent and respond to the growing threat of cyberattacks. The framework includes a “core” that outlines standards that companies can implement to identify, detect, respond to and recover from cyber threats. “The goal is not to expand regulation,” one administration official said. “Our goal is to...

Seventy percent of Israeli Jews do not believe the US can be relied upon to maintain key Israeli interests and security requirements in the American-brokered agreement being drafted with the Palestinians, a Geocartography Institute poll taken this week found. When the pollsters asked respondents whether they trusted the US under President Barack Obama to maintain Israel’s interests in a deal, 23% said definitely no, 25% said no, 22% said not completely, 17% said yes, 8% said definitely yes and 5% had no opinion. …