General Keith Alexander, the soon-to-be departed chief of the NSA, admitted Thursday in front of a congressional committee that the massive intelligence agency may be open to extracting less, or more targeted metadata from communication companies. Classified documents leaked last summer by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the intelligence agency currently compels at least three major telephone providers – Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T – to turn over call information on millions of Americans.
Author: mediahitman
Nearly 500 food items commonly sold in the United States contain a chemical compound also used in synthetic leathers and yoga mats, but a health research and advocacy organization is aiming to change that. Fast-food chain restaurant Subway made headlines earlier this month when it announced that it would no longer be including that compound — azodicarbonamide, or ADA — as a “dough conditioner” in the sandwich bread used in thousands of locations
Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal. GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases
Among the leaked Snowden National Security Agency (NSA) documents, the first to explicitly involve the UFO issue has just been released and is currently generating much media scrutiny. The 50 page document is a powerpoint presentation titled “The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations,” and was authored by the British equivalent of the NSA, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The document was the subject to an in-depth story released this week by Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first worked with Edward Snowden to release to the world official NSA surveillance of the general public,…
A heretofore inexplicable fatal, chronic kidney disease that has affected poor farming regions around the globe may be linked to the use of biochemical giant Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide in areas with hard water, a new study has found. The new study was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
US regulators are after Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank for helping Americans conceal as much as $10bn from US tax authorities. The bank’s CEO maintains only a few officials are responsible and gives testimony on Wednesday. Rampant tax evasion in America, often with the help of Swiss banks, has led US regulators to go after 14 banks, with Zurich-based Credit Suisse as a main target.
The FBI had a source come in direct contact with Osama Bin Laden who learned of his desire to conduct terrorist attacks in the United States, though it failed to disclose this information to the landmark 9/11 Commission. According to court documents reviewed by the Washington Times, the information secured by the Al-Qaeda mole helped the United States stop an attack on a Masonic Lodge in Los Angeles, California in the mid 1990s.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that police may search a home without obtaining a warrant despite the objection of one occupant if that occupant has been removed from the premises. With its 6 to 3 decision in Fernandez v. California on Tuesday, the Court sided with law enforcement’s ability to conduct warrantless searches after restricting police powers with its 2006 decision on a similar case.
By Ruairidh Villar Mt. Gox, once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, abruptly stopped trading on Tuesday and its chief executive said the business was at “a turning point,” sparking concerns about the future of the unregulated virtual currency. Several other digital currency exchanges and prominent early-stage investors in bitcoin responded with forceful statements in an attempt to reassure investors of both bitcoin’s viability and their own security protocols.
Was the National Security Agency exploiting two just-discovered security flaws to hack into the iPhones and Apple computers of certain targets? Some skeptics are saying there is cause to be concerned about recent coincidences regarding the NSA and Apple. Within hours of one another over the weekend, Apple acknowledged that it had discovered critical vulnerabilities in both its iOS and OSX operating systems that, if exploited correctly, would put thought-to-be-secure communications into the hands of skilled hackers.
The dismal trail of dead bankers continues. As The Journal Star reports, a successful Lincoln businessman and member of a prominent local family died last week. Former National Bank of Commerce CEO James Stuart Jr. was found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz., the morning of Feb. 19. A family spokesman did not say what caused the death. This brings the total of banker deaths in recent weeks to 9 as Stuart is sadly survived by three sons and four daughters.
After more than a decade of feeding the homeless in Columbia, South Carolina, one group’s tradition could be in danger of ending as the city begins enforcing rules to limit the gathering of large groups in public parks. As of February 15, Columbia began requiring any group of 25 people or more to pay for and obtain a permit 15 days in advance if they wished to use the city’s parks for an event.
About one week after a leak resulted in record levels of radiation near the United States’ first nuclear waste depository, more airborne radiation has been detected, according to the Associated Press. The latest readings were confirmed on Monday by the US Department of Energy, which stated that multiple air tracking stations around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico, are monitoring the situation.
The former cyber advisor under President George W. Bush had some harsh words for the United States National Security Agency during an address in California on Monday: “get out of the business of fucking with encryption standards.” That was the recommendation that famed cyberczar Richard Clarke made while speaking earlier this week at the at the Cloud Security Alliance summit in San Francisco.
A Cape Coral, Florida woman living “off the grid” was ordered last week by a magistrate to hook up to utilities to comply with city codes or risk eviction from her home. Special Magistrate Harold S. Eskin ruled Thursday that Robin Speronis violated city codes by refusing to connect to the Cape Coral’s water system.
Over-the-counter pain relievers made with acetaminophen are among the most widely-sold in the United States, but concerns raised by a new study could possibly change all of that. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles say that acetaminophen — the effective ingredient in popular retail drugs including Excedrin and Tylenol
About 30 percent of the 430 billion pounds of food produced in the United States is wasted, an incredible statistic, especially given the lack of landfill space, not to mention the global menace of world hunger. The shocking statistic gives a new meaning to the term ‘junk food,’ as Americans are sending 133 billion lbs (60 billion kg) of food to the garbage dump each year.
By Glenn Greenwald A page from a GCHQ top secret document prepared by its secretive JTRIG unit One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.