Full Spectrum Military Surveillance Of Americans Gets A Boost Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com October 23, 2013
According to former NSA boss Gen. Michael Hayden, the Pentagon’s “full spectrum military cyberspace operations” are now fully integrated with NSA’s superabundant surveillance. Hayden told the Washington Post that NSA and U.S. Cyber Command functions are “indistinguishable. That’s how badly they overlap.” “Now, would I keep Cyber Command at Fort Meade? Absolutely. Would I integrate the two to the best I can while respecting U.S. law? Absolutely,” said Hayden. This is not really news, of course, because the NSA already operates under the aegis of the Pentagon. The point here is that Gen. Hayden is emphasizing the fact that communications surveillance of the American public is increasingly a military affair and control and command is becoming more centralized. In 2010, Gen. Keith Alexander was appointed to head up the newly activated Cyber Command, a subordinate unified command under United States Strategic Command “designed to conduct virtual combat across the world’s computer networks.” “Alexander was repeatedly asked about privacy and civil liberties impact of his new role, and gave answers that were, well, full of platitudes but essentially uninformative,” noted Privacy Digest. At the time, we reported that the Air Force assigned approximately 30,000 “digital troops” to “the front lines of cyber warfare,” a number representing a third of the troops in Afghanistan. “The transformation is part of the service’s larger emphasis on cyberspace operations and merging most computer system operations and network warfare functions under Space Command’s 24th Air Force, based at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas,” reported the Air Force Times on May 19, 2010.
Histrionic warnings about scary cyber attacks have also provided cover for increasingly prevalent “public-private partnerships” – a neutral term for fascism – between the military and the so-called defense industry and other companies chomping at the bit to get a comfortable place at the government largess feeding trough. On Wednesday, ProPublica threw cold water on government propaganda claiming massive NSA surveillance on the American people has saved lives. “Fifty-four times this and the other program stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe — saving real lives,” Rep. Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said from the floor of the House in July in defense of post-9/11 snoop laws in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment and, by way of extension, in defense of the fascist private-public feeding frenzy in fullswing. “But there’s no evidence that the oft-cited figure is accurate,” write Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer for ProPublica. “The NSA itself has been inconsistent on how many plots it has helped prevent and what role the surveillance programs played. The agency has often made hedged statements that avoid any sweeping assertions about attacks thwarted.” The 54 figure is now a godsend for government propaganda as the Pentagon and intelligence community ramp up the effort to install a cutting edge tech surveillance panopticon. Gen. Alexander exploited the magic number during a speech in Las Vegas and it is used routinely in literature sent out to NSA employees. Verification is impossible because the information is classified.
The Cybersecurity Industry Is Hiring, But Young People Aren’t Interested Ben Richmond motherboard.vice.com October 23, 2013 Check it out, I’m working on a reboot of The Graduate, set in 2013. Simon and Garfunkel are out, Skrillex is in, and that scene at Dustin Hoffman’s graduation party where everyone’s giving him advice and is being all out of touch and stuff goes like this: “Come with me for a minute I want to talk to you. I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Cybersecurity. There’s a great future in cybersecurity.”
Cybersecurity, as an industry, is booming. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs as network systems and information security professionals are expected to grow by 53 percent through 2018. Yet, just like Hoffman doesn’t have any interest in plastics in 1963, young people today aren’t interested in getting jobs in cybersecurity. By all accounts it's a growing and potentially secure, lucrative job. But according to a new survey by the defense tech company Raytheon, only 24 percent of millennials have any interest in cybersecurity as a career. Forty percent of respondents would want to be a "TV or movie entertainer," while 26 percent had interest in being a lawyer. (Respondents could pick multiple careers.) Like many new tech fields, there was a conspicuous gender gap—just 14 percent of young women as compared to 35 percent of young men were interested in a jobs in cybersecurity. A survey among those already working in the field found more than 80 percent of people they interviewed were male. The pay is actually pretty good. A Semper Secure survey found that workers in cybersecurity were pulling down an average of $116,000 a year. Given that job prospects are otherwise exceedingly grim for young folks, why aren’t they all packing lecture halls on Cisco Systems? Part of that is that it probably just doesn’t occur to them that “cybersecurity person” is a job that you can have. The survey found 82 percent of millennials reporting that no high school teacher or guidance counselor ever mentioned careers in cybersecurity. But also the survey found that millennials are prioritizing “Interesting work” above things like “competitive pay” and “security clearance.” Not only does “cybersecurity” sound like an amorphous field to many young folks, it has a ring of tedium to it, of sitting in windowless rooms, listening to the fans on the servers whirr. Of course, some millennials do love computers, and that Semper survey states that people working in cybersecurity found it to be challenging and interesting work. Problem is, for whatever reason, the type of person who’s really into hacking, like apt to go to hacking conferences like DefCon, aren’t interested in being the digital era’s wall-builders. The cybersecurity industry’s focal point is in DC, and you can guess what that means. Recent recruiting efforts by the federal government to recruit young hackers straight out of high school and at hacker conferences like DefCon have done little to assuage suspicions that cybersecurity means hacking for “The Man.” The summer of Snowden has reinforced the idea that there’s something inherently pernicious in doing so; an informal Motherboard survey at DefCon found that when asked if attendees would work for the NSA, the overwhelming response was "Hell no!" In summation, the problem is that millennials either haven’t heard of careers in cybersecurity, or, if they have, it sounds like a boring and potentially unethical boy’s club. Not a great combination. So what do young folks wanna do? The survey found they want to be entertainers, and failing that, entrepeneurs, which opens the possibility that they’ll become cybersecurity personnel once life beats hope and aspirations out of them and they’re willing to say “Hello darkness, my old friend.” Until then, I’ve got plenty of people to audition for my reworking of The Graduate.
DoJ Censors Blogger For Documents They Released Adan Salazar Infowars.com Oct. 18, 2013 Jon Corbett, the engineer and activist challenging the constitutionality of the TSA’s body scanners and pat downs, has received a call from the Department of Justice stating he violated a court order sealing the documents that Infowars made public yesterday, even though the court had inexplicably published the documents on a public site. On October 7, Corbett filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit both a redacted and an un-redacted version of his appellate’s brief, in which he laid out his case for the ineffectiveness of the scanners and grope downs by citing information obtained through the TSA’s own Administrative Record – a document only available to Corbett and his attorney through the legal process of discovery. Although the un-redacted version of his brief was properly labeled a “sealed” document, meaning it was not meant to be public, someone inexplicably published the doc at PACER.gov. Infowars found and publicized the “sealed” version of the brief, which contained direct quotes from the TSA’s Administrative Record, and which also spoke to the TSA’s knowledge that there is no actual “threat-addressing” basis for the nude body scanners or invasive pat downs conducted at airports across America. We published both versions of the briefs yesterday in an article titled, “Internal TSA Documents: Body Scanners, Pat Downs Not For Terrorists.” Now an update on Corbett’s blog says he’s received a call from the U.S. Justice Department saying he violated the court’s orders sealing the document. He discussed the issue with DoJ attorney Sharon Swingle who confirmed the government’s position that he violated the court order, even though Infowars, a third party, in addition to whoever made the documents available on PACER.gov, had already made the documents public. Corbett’s blog, TSA Out of Our Pants, has the update: I tried explaining to Ms. Swingle that the document had been published by a third party and that I was simply discussing that now-public document. I tried explaining to Ms. Swingle how absurd it would be to say that any third party can talk about anything in that document they wanted, but that I was somehow barred. I tried explaining to Ms. Swingle the Streisand Effect, and that she will now be drawing more attention to the documents that the government wants hidden from the public. Ms. Swingle continued to insist that the government’s position was that I must take the comments down, and so I have. I will file a motion with the court to clarify whether I may comment on a public document, and if permission is granted, I will re-publish my statement. Until then, you’ll have to read through the documents at the article published by Infowars or any of the others who have picked the story up.
Yesterday, Corbett joined Infowars to discuss our publication of the “sealed” court documents and the information contained therein, including the TSA’s own admissions that they are aware explosives on airplanes “are extremely rare,” and the fact that the minimal level of threat from terrorists does not justify the amount of security currently prescribed at airports. Bombshell: TSA's Docs Reveal Airport Security is B.S. VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxXRxoTJ_Iw Updates to Jon’s case can be found on PACER.gov, case #12-15893. Below are both the redacted and sealed versions of the Appellant’s brief in the case of Jonathan Corbett v. Transportation Security Administration. REDACTED Appellant’s brief. SEALED Appellant’s brief. RELATED: Internal TSA Documents: Body Scanners, Pat Downs Not For Terrorists VIDEO BELOW
Fox Host: ‘All Hell Could Break Loose’ On November 1st http://www.infowars.com/fox-host-all-hell-could-break-loose-on-november-1st/
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