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Snowden Reveals U.S. Government Plans to Spy for Corporations, Despite Telling the Public Otherwise

By
hqanon
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3

Written by: Cadence

 

The NSA have once again proved hypocritical. Despite a spokesman writing to The Washington Post last August claiming “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber”, top secret plans have proposed otherwise.

American lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald has released a 2009 memo that clearly defined “technology acquisition by any means” to give American corporations an advantage in global markets. The report was provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowdon.

It has already been revealed that Brazilian oil giant Petrobas, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and international banking systems were all spied on, amongst many others. Even the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft and Intel was targeted.

In response to the Petrobas revelations, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted collecting “information about economic and financial matters”, but categorically denied more morally questionable purposes. He said: “What we do not do…is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of –or give intelligence we collect to- U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line”.

The report, however, shows exactly plans to do just that. It focused on the possibility if “the United States’ technological and innovative edge slips”, particularly “that the technological capacity of foreign multinational corporations could outstrip that of U.S. corporations”. Energy, medicine, information technology and nanotechnology were all listed as crucial areas where this could happen.

In this case, the report recommended “a multi-pronged, systematic effort to gather open source and proprietary information through overt means, clandestine penetration (through physical and cyber means), and counterintelligence”. Notably, the memo discussed “cyber operations” to penetrate “covert centers of innovation”.

While some may even believe the NSA should have the right to protect the U.S’s financial position globally, the hypocrisy of the situation cannot be ignored. In May, five Chinese government employees were indicted for spying on U.S. companies. Attorney General Eric Holder said this was done “for no reason other than to advantage state-owned companies and other interests in China”, and “this is a tactic that the U.S. government categorically denounces”.

The fascinating 2009 memo also contemplated scenarios the U.S. intelligence community felt they may face in 2025. These included a “China/Russia/India/Iran centred bloc (that) challenges U.S. supremacy”, and even a world where “identity-based groups supplant nation-states”.

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Sources

http://deepcor.com/news/1208/snowden-reveals-us-plans-to-spy-on-financial-targets

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/

 

 

Justice Department to Investigate Ferguson Police Force

By
hqanon
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3

Written by: Cadence

 

The U.S. government has officially launched an investigation into the police’s treatment of Ferguson protesters. The Department of Justice plans to work with the neighbouring St Louis County Force to reform the city’s police department.

U.S. attorney general Eric Holder has said a “deep mistrust…has taken hold between law enforcement officials and members of that community”. He has acknowledged racial discrimination as a key issue, saying “I think we as a society need to have the guts to say we are going to identify this as a problem…and we’re going to make it better”.

The civil rights division of the Department of Justice will be carrying out the initiatives, focusing on the “use of force, including deadly force” by cops in the area. It is also conducting a civil rights inquiry into Michael Brown’s death.

It’s been over a month the since unarmed 18-year-old was shot by officers on August 9. His death sparked a series of demonstrations and unrest in Ferguson, which resulted in a heavy-handed militarised response. Tactical units fired rubber bullets and used tear gas on protesters.

It has been reported 13% of Ferguson police officers have been alleged to use excessive force. The national average is thought to be around 0.5%. While two thirds of the city’s population is black, 94% of the Ferguson police force is white. These issues will need to be addressed, although there are currently no plans to look into force’s hiring practices.

The civil rights division was given power to investigate such matters in 1994, as a response to the police brutality suffered by Rodney King. His beating in 1991 triggered the Los Angeles riots.

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Sources

http://deepcor.com/news/1206/justice-department-to-begin-investigation-into-ferguson

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/04/ferguson-police-department-federal-inquiry

Soon, In China You Will Be Able To Pay With Your Face

By
hqanon
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2

Written by: Chaotic Indian

Remember all the sci-fi movies that showed the actors using facial scanners to identity themselves? Now, China has developed something very similar. Researchers at the Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology, China, have plans for a payment application that uses the user’s face to detect his/her bank account and conduct transactions online. The system has an accuracy of 99.8% and detects the face from over 91 angles. So far,there is a record of over 51 million faces on the database. The software, however,will have to wait until 2015 while it is being developed into an application by the Chinese Academy of Science, China,according to researcher Zhou Xi.

 

Xi further added that the system could work even with twins, if the person wears make-up or if he/she has put on or lost weight. The system is equipped with enhance learning abilities that it will automatically changes characteristics of the subject, therefore it functions stably and accurately in a dynamic environment as well. He said that there were also means to detect whether the face was that of a real,living person or just a photo.According to the developers, after installing the app on a mobile device, and linking it with a credit card or bank account, it takes one second for the system to accurately identify a payer. The new facial recognition system has so far been tested at border control situations.

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Source:

http://thehackernews.com/2014/09/china-develops-facial-recognition.html

NOAA Satellite System Vulnerable To Cyber Attacks

By
hqanon
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5

Written by: Brandon C.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (NOAA) are running their systems in a way that leaves them at high risk for cyber-attacks. The Department of Commerce’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the Joint Polar Satellite System’s (JPSS) ground system is highly vulnerable to a large number of cyber-attacks. JPSS is a system that collects the data from weather satellites and distributes the information to users worldwide. This system is planned to be used on more satellites in the near future.
“Our analysis of the JPSS program’s assessments of system vulnerabilities found that, since FY (fiscal year) 2012, the number of high-risk vulnerabilities in the system had increased by two-thirds despite recent efforts the program has taken to remediate these vulnerabilities,” This is according to a memorandum form Allen Crawley, assistant inspector general for systems acquisition and IT security, to Kathryn Sullivan, undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. JPSS is considered to be a “High Impact” IT system, which means that it could have a very catastrophic effect on organizational operations, and organizational assets. The Audit, were the ones who investigated NOAA’s IT security program and found some frightening numbers. The Audit, found that the number of High-Risk vulnerabilities rose from 14,486 in the first quarter FY of 2012 to 23,868 in the second quarter FY of 2014. “If exploited, these [high-risk] vulnerabilities may make it possible for attackers to significantly disrupt the JPSS mission of providing critical data used in weather forecasting and climate monitoring,” Crawley wrote in the memorandum.
Some but not all of the vulnerabilities found are hard to patch. Most can be easily fixed by just making simple minor modifications to the current system. More than 9,100 software issues are there due to out of date software, lacking security patches, insecurely configured software and unnecessary user privileges. In over 3,600 instances the password and audit settings are not properly configured. There were also a number of software applications that need to be removed or disabled. The Heartbleed vulnerability is included in this long list. Heartbleed is something that leaves cryptographic keys and private data such as usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers at risk. “In response to our draft memorandum, NOAA concurred with our recommendations, NOAA indicated that it had already implemented [a] recommendation [to use system update processes for quickly applying critical patches], explaining that it remediated the Heartbleed vulnerability during the third quarter of FY 2014.” wrote Crawley.

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Source:
http://thehackernews.com/2014/09/thousands-of-high-risk-vulnerabilities_9.html

Russian Woman Bringing Polluters To Justice

By
hqanon
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12

Written by: Anonymous

A Youtube video of an unknown and anonymous woman is going viral on the internet. Uploaded on 15th of September 2014 and reaching already 3 million views 2 days later.
The title of the video is written in russian and means “Untracetreable girl on motorbike against garbage”.
In the video, she tracks down guys who throw their garbage on the street and punishes them by either throwing their garbage back into their cars and into their faces or taping the garbage to their cars.
Her vehicle is a cool, if not aweseome looking motorbike, which she uses both to catch the ‘villains’ and to escape them.
The world definitely needs more guardians and heroes like her!

Watch the original full video here:

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