Free Republic

This is the first time that the United States has not supported Israel at the United Nations. It is surprising that in the Obama presidency, with all of Obama’s obvious hostility toward Israel, that it has taken this long. It is unlikely to be the last time that this happens. “The United States Lowers Israel’s Diplomatic Shield at the United Nations,” by Colum Lynch, Foreign Policy, July 28, 2014 (thanks to Jerk Chicken): Despite a history of rocky relations between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration could largely be counted on to watch...

Here are 11 sure signs you've been hacked and what to do in the event of compromise. Note that in all cases, the No. 1 recommendation is to completely restore your system to a known good state before proceeding. In the early days, this meant formatting the computer and restoring all programs and data. Today, depending on your operating system, it might simply mean clicking on a Restore button. Either way, a compromised computer can never be fully trusted again. The recovery steps listed in each category below are the recommendations to follow if you don't want to do a...

NYPD officials investigating how the two American flags on top of the Brooklyn Bridge were replaced with two white banners said Wednesday that the act was likely carried out by up to five intruders in two teams with knowledge of the bridge, The New York Post reported. The teams' plan to evade police in four patrol cars included aluminum lasagna pans they used to cover the floodlights aimed at the flags during the switch at 3:29 a.m. Tuesday. The 11-by-20-foot white flags were first spotted at the break of dawn by a police officer, The Post reported. "For someone to...

Earlier in July, German politicians said they were considering going back to old-fashioned manual typewriters for confidential documents, in order to protect national secrets from American NSA spooks. Patrick Sensburg, chair of the German parliament’s inquiry into alleged NSA spying, said committee members are considering new security measures and are seriously thinking about abandoning email and returning to old school typewriters.

It’s 9 AM late July and already the day is shot to hell. The temperature is over 80 and the humidity would wilt a Puritan’s collar. You’re supposed to be taking Migra, your Mexican Water Spaniel, on a 400–hundred-mile car trip. The dog’s 14–years–old if he’s a day, and who knows if he’ll live long enough to be reunited with the rest of your family. Plus, you can’t just motor out the driveway because that’s not a good idea where you live.

The Washington Free Beacon has put together a greatest hits compilation of the Democrats’ border security quotes. Why would the Democrats continuously insist that the border is secure? Perhaps because Republicans insist on having a secure border before discussing any type of immigration reform legislation. Democrats don’t think people will catch up to this at some point? The PR game that carried Obama – health care lies and all – to the White House is showing significant signs of incompetent wear and tear lately…

“Too often … we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought,” President Kennedy famously asserted before Yale’s class of 1962. Denouncing political debates that “bear little or no relation to the actual problems the United States faces,” Kennedy urged policymakers to Think Again before engaging in “false dialogues” that “distract our attention and divide our efforts.” He believed “the very future of freedom depends upon the sensible and clearheaded management of the domestic affairs of the United States” and a “vigorous economy” — quaint concerns 52 years hence. Because today’s political discourse is so dishonest and domestic...

Bill O’Reilly almost nightly calls for the militarization of our southern border, but he never has any guests to explain how this could be done. So, Bill, since I agree with you, here is a rudimentary plan worked out by someone with a working knowledge of both our military capabilities and the geographical area in question. Mind you, I have no information regarding military training budgets, but as we withdraw from large-scale overseas operations, our leadership should consider applying funds no longer needed for those to the mission of defending our currently defenseless southern border.

The Secret Service has started deploying specialized canine units to help protect the area around the White House grounds, where tourists flock day and night to catch a glimpse of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Although the Secret Service has used police dogs since 1976 to screen areas for presidential visits, this is the first time they’re being broadly deployed among the general public.(emphasis added)

Last week, German journalists revealed that the National Security Agency has a program to collect information about people who use privacy-protecting services, including popular anonymizing software called Tor. But it’s not clear how many users have been affected. So we did a little sleuthing, and found that the NSA’s targeting list corresponds with the list of directory servers used by Tor between December 2010 and February 2012 – including two servers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tor users connect to the directory servers when they first launch the Tor service.That means that if you downloaded Tor during 2011, the NSA may have scooped up your...

We the People plead with the Federal Courts to stop the ongoing criminal conduct of the Obama Administration. The Federal Courts have acted in the past, when Congress could not act, or would not act, to protect the civil rights and safety of Americans.

The organization responsible for securing America’s highly sensitive nuclear sites has been suffering from a “chaotic” and “dysfunctional” security policy that has endangered the country’s nuclear sites and left them vulnerable to attack, according to a new report by the government’s watchdog group.The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile and securing classified research sites, has “increased risks and reduced security” over the past several years in a bid to reduce overhead costs, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.Security vulnerabilities at these NNSA sites still persist two years after a...

Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who replaced Virginia representative Eric Cantor as House majority leader, believes there is an “opportunity” to negotiate for the legalization of illegal immigrants, but not until the border is secure.

(CNN) — Like the six other former captives who have been through the Army’s reintegration program at Brooke Army Medical Center before him, daily life for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is focused on routine. He rises, eats and sleeps on a “normal schedule” and lives in a “typical” room at the huge hospital facility on a floor he shares with other patients. What isn’t typical is the security presence outside his door. The reason, says Col. Hans Bush, command spokesman for U.S. Army South, is not to keep the returnee in, but “to make sure he doesn’t get overwhelmed in a...

The state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange is apologizing Monday and is quickly trying to make things right after a security breach. In this age of high tech security breaches, this one was decidedly low tech. A backpack was found at a deli in downtown Hartford containing hand-written notepads with names addresses and some social security numbers and letterhead from ‘Access Health CT.’ The person that found it did not call the police. They gave it to a Republican State Rep who turned it in to the Obamacare headquarters. “Access Health CT” says the notepads and backpack belong to a call-center...

Today my family and I had need of entering a federal building. In the process of doing so we encountered the following crazy federal hangups. 1) one family member had a pair of child's sissors they forgot about. these had to be removed and kept up front before we were allowed entrance to the building. now bear in mind thousands of kids take the very same kind of sissors to the gun free zones known as schools every day without a care. in fact, the schools often supply the "deadly" weapons. 2) another family member had left their driver's license...

OpenSSL today pushed out fixes for six security vulnerabilities – including a flaw that enables man-in-the-middle (MITM) eavesdropping on encrypted connections, and another that allows miscreants to drop malware on at-risk systems.A DTLS invalid fragment bug (CVE-2014-0195, affects versions 0.9.8, 1.0.0 and 1.0.1) can be used to inject malicious code into vulnerable software on apps or servers. DTLS is more or less classic TLS encryption over UDP rather than TCP, and is used to secure live streams of video, voice chat and so on.However an SSL/TLS MITM vulnerability (CVE-2014-0224, potentially affects all clients, and servers running 1.0.1 and 1.0.2-beta1) is...

US leader Barack Obama has promised to defend Poland and other NATO allies against potential Russian aggression. “I’ve come to Warsaw today—on behalf of the United States, on behalf of the NATO alliance—to reaffirm our unwavering commitment to Poland’s security. [The NATO treaty’s] Article 5 is clear—an attack on one is an attack on all,” he said in a speech in the Polish capital on Wednesday (4 June). “Poland will never stand alone. But not just Poland—Estonia will never stand alone. Latvia will never stand alone. Lithuania will never stand alone. Romania will never stand alone,” he added. “These are...

A Chinese court on Friday convicted a mining billionaire said to have links with former security tsar Zhou Yongkang of murder and sentenced him to death. Liu Han led private company Hanlong, which once launched a billion-dollar bid for an Australian firm. He and his brother Liu Wei were found guilty of "organising and leading a mafia-style group", murder and other crimes, the Xianning Intermediate People's Court said. They and three accomplices were sentenced to death.

Cisco CEO John Chambers has sent a letter to President Obama calling for rules ensuring that both needs of national security and product integrity are met, according to reports. The Financial Times and Re/code are reporting that Chambers sent a letter dated May 15 to Obama, warning that confidence in an open Internet is being "eroded by revelations of governments' surveillance" and asking him to create new standards of conduct about how the government collects data. "Absent a new approach where industry plays a role, but in which you, Mr. President, can lead, we are concerned that our country's global...