Free Republic

SAO PAULO | Sun Sep 8, 2013 12:06pm EDT (Reuters) - The U.S. government allegedly spied on Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, known as Petrobras, according to the web site of Globo, Brazil's biggest television network. The network, which a week ago aired a report alleging that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted communications by the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, said its information again came from Glenn Greenwald, an American activist who has worked with fugitive former NSA analyst Edward Snowden to expose the extent of U.S. spying at home and abroad. Promotional teasers from the network...

FORT MEADE, Maryland-A U.S. military judge on Tuesday started considering the sentence of soldier Bradley Manning for the largest leak of classified information in the country's history - and she said it will be announced Wednesday morning.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Under increasing pressure to justify electronic surveillance programs that at times capture communications of American citizens, the U.S. National Security Agency went to unusual lengths on Friday to insist its activities are lawful and any mistakes largely unintentional. **SNIP** The NSA's presentation was an attempt to calm the latest firestorm over documents disclosed by Snowden. The Washington Post late Thursday reported that the NSA had broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since 2008, citing an internal agency audit and other top secret documents. "These are not willful violations, they are...

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden began downloading documents describing the U.S. government's electronic spying programs while he was working for Dell Inc in April 2012, almost a year earlier than previously reported, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter.

According to Soviet intelligence reports, we now know that one of FDR’s top officials, the Treasury Department’s Harry Dexter White, was a Soviet agent, who, among many other deceptions, subverted relations between the US and Japan by inserting “ultimatum” language into the cable flow that actually spurred the Japanese attack. This was language written in Moscow, passed to White by a Soviet handler in Washington, D.C., and dropped into a State Department communiqué sent to Japan. This brilliantly executed influence operation doesn’t live in infamy – at least not yet. ... “A continuous stream of fighter and pursuit planes is...

With his slow, steady stream of leaked NSA documents, Edward Snowden is offering a glimpse into what President Obama's pledge of transparent government might have looked like -- had he chosen to deliver on it. When he arrived in office, Obama declared that his administration would be "the most open and transparent in history" and rolled out a series of historic declassifications, including the Bush administration's legal justifications for so-called enhanced interrogation tactics and the size of American nuclear stockpiles. Each of these decisions broke with long-established precedent and seemed to signal a new era of government openness. Now, by...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Motorola lifted the wraps Thursday on a new, customizable smartphone called the Moto X that’s set to roll out to consumers in the U.S. later this month. Bloomberg Dennis Woodside, CEO of Motorola Mobility, introduces the Moto X smartphone in New York on Thursday. This is the first significant smartphone to be designed by Motorola since its acquisition by Google Inc /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG +0.05% , which was completed last year. Google shares closed up 1.9% at $904.22 on Thursday following an event in New York City at which the company showed off the device.

He works at one of the three-letter intelligence agencies and oversees construction of a $1.2 billion surveillance data center in Utah that is 15 times the size of MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets. Long Island native Harvey Davis, a top National Security Agency official, needs that commanding presence. His role is to supervise infrastructure construction worldwide for NSA, which is part of the Defense Department. That involves tending to logistics, military installations, as well as power, space and cooling for all NSA data centers. In May, crews broke ground on a $792 million computing center...

In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents. The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges. Obama mandated the program in an October 2011 executive order...

The chief judge of America’s most powerful secret court is a 64-year-old man who has said his path toward the law began in part when he was stopped by police in the early 1960s simply for being black, and who once said he became a lawyer to “make an impact on the quality of life for people of color in this country.” Reggie Walton is the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose 11 members are appointed directly by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Revelations of broad spying by the National Security Agency have drawn unusual...

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, who has been holed up in a Moscow airport for more than two weeks, has agreed to an offer of political asylum from Venezuela, a top pro-Kremlin lawmaker said on Tuesday.

India today rejected a request for asylum by US whistleblower Edward Snowden made through its Mission in Moscow three days ago. "I can confirm that earlier today our Embassy in Moscow did receive a communication dated 30 June from Mr Edward Snowden. That communication did contain a request for asylum. We have carefully examined the request. Following that examination we have concluded that we see no reason to accede to the request," spokesperson in the External Affairs Ministry said here. Snowden, a US former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked...

Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful. On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet...

Snowden applies for asylum in Russia: immigration source MOSCOW | Mon Jul 1, 2013 12:36pm EDT (Reuters) - Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia, a Russian immigration source close to the matter said on Monday. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a Wikileaks activist who is traveling with Snowden handed his application to a Russian consulate.............

The Supreme Court today refused to entertain a PIL seeking direction to the government to initiate action against Internet companies involved in sharing Internet data from India with US' National Security Agency. The apex court said it cannot entertain the petition as Indian agency is not involved in it and allowed the petitioner, former dean of Law Faculty of Delhi University S N Singh, to move any other forum for seeking remedy against Internet companies and the US agency for snooping data resulting in violation of right to privacy. "The petitioner may have right to privacy against foreign companies but...

NSA leaker Edward Snowden admitted to taking a job at Booz Hamilton in order to gather evidence on US spying. Snowden was fired from Booz Allen on June 11. Active content removed Active content removed The South China Morning Post reported: Edward Snowden secured a job with a US government contractor for one reason alone – to obtain evidence of Washington’s cyberspying networks, the South China Morning Post can reveal. For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programmes ahead...

The PIL, filed by a former Dean of Law Faculty of Delhi University Professor S N Singh, alleged such largescale spying by the USA authorities is detrimental to national security and urged the apex court to intervene in the matter. The issue of the US National Security Agency monitoring internet data of India today reached the Supreme Court with a PIL filed seeking its direction to the Centre to initiate action against internet companies for sharing information with foreign authority in "breach" of contract and violation of right to privacy. The PIL, filed by a former Dean of Law Faculty...

Students at George Mason University (GMU) signed a petition early this month asking President Obama to listen in on the "private conversations" of all Fox News employees and their families. -video at link- The petition, which was circulated on GMU's flagship campus in Fairfax, Va, near Washington D.C., by Media Research Center video reporter Dan Joseph, described the right-leaning news channel as “a threat to media integrity and an informed populace.” “We want the to be able to legally read their private e-mails and listen in on phone conversations between Fox News employees and their associates and their families," Joseph...

Although he implemented a flat tax in Russia, I don’t think of Vladimir Putin as a supporter of free markets. Heck, he was head of the KGB during the communist era, and he presides over a country that is more known for cronyism rather than competitive markets. So if he criticizes European nations for having excessive welfare states, it’s like being called ugly by a frog. Here are some of the amusing details from Euractiv.com. He’s no Milton Friedman, but he’s right about the welfare state Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking ahead of the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland on...