NATO Nations Send Weapons to Ukraine: Defense Minister Heletey says NATO weapons en route to Ukraine
Ukrainian Defense Minister Valery Heletey has said that NATO weapons are en route to Ukraine after agreements about their delivery were reached at the NATO summit in Wales earlier in the month.Offi...
By: UKRAINE TODAY
See the original post here:
After the Summit: General Philip M. Breedlove on NATO #39;S Path Forward
Please join the Atlantic Council #39;s Commanders Series on September 15th, 2014 at 11a.m. for a conversation with General Philip Breedlove, Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander, US European...
By: AtlanticCouncil
View post:
After the Summit: General Philip M. Breedlove on NATO'S Path Forward - Video
The NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international alliance that consists of 28 member states from North America and Europe. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949. Article Five of the treaty states that if an armed attack occurs against one of the member states, it should be considered an attack against all members, and other members shall assist the attacked member, with armed forces if necessary.[1]
Of the 28 member countries, two are located in North America (Canada and the United States) and 25 are European countries while Turkey is in Eurasia. All members have militaries, although Iceland does not have a typical army (it does, however, have a military coast guard and a small unit of soldiers for NATO operations). Three of NATO's members are nuclear weapons states: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NATO has 12 original founding member nation states and from 18 February 1952 to 1 April 2009 it added 16 more member nations.
NATO has added new members six times since its founding in 1949, and since 2009 NATO has had 28 members. Twelve countries were part of the founding of NATO: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1952, Greece and Turkey became members of the Alliance. In 1990, with the reunification of Germany, NATO grew to include the former country of East Germany. Between 1994 and 1997, wider forums for regional cooperation between NATO and its neighbors were set up, including the Partnership for Peace, the Mediterranean Dialogue initiative and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. In 1997, three former Warsaw Pact countries, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, were invited to join NATO. After this fourth enlargement in 1999, the Vilnius group of The Baltics and seven East European countries formed in May 2000 to cooperate and lobby for further NATO membership. Seven of these countries joined in the fifth enlargement in 2004. Albania and Croatia joined in the sixth enlargement in 2009.
Read more here:
Published September 15, 2014
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen speaks with the Associated Press during an interview at the Bibliotheque Solvay in Brussels on Monday, Sept. 15, 2014. In a farewell speech as NATO's top civilian official, Rasmussen said the alliance finds itself on the front lines of a geopolitical division between "tolerance and fanaticism," and "democracy and totalitarianism." Rasmussen's five-year term as NATO secretary general comes to a close at the end of the month. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)(The Associated Press)
BRUSSELS NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen says members of the U.S.-led alliance must stand shoulder to shoulder to confront "virulent, violent and anti-Western threats" from both Russia and the so-called Islamic State extremist organization.
In a farewell speech as NATO's top civilian official, Rasmussen said Monday the alliance finds itself on the front lines of a geopolitical division between "tolerance and fanaticism," and "democracy and totalitarianism."
"We must stand strong as a force for freedom," said Rasmussen. He said NATO and its member nations must face the fact that the new security challenges it faces could last for years.
Rasmussen's five-year term as NATO secretary general comes to a close at the end of the month. He spoke at a Brussels gathering of the Carnegie Europe think tank.
More here:
NATO secretary general: West facing threats from Russia, Islamic State extremists
PRISM and Snowden - NSA CIA USA
PRISM and Snowden- NSA CIA USA.
By: Human News / Nachrichten
Read the original post:
The Ballad of E. Snowden (NSA Wire-tap Version)
http://www.MichaelRayDeLosAngeles.org http://www.Soundcloud.com/Vampyrohtechnix http://www.reverbnation.com/michaelraydelosangelesmenjivar Lyrics: Do you think that they will have our heads When we make it back...
By: Vampyrohtechnix Media
Continue reading here:
Yahoo Releases Documents Proving NSA Forced Them To Violate User Privacy
"The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250000 a day if it refused to hand over user data to the National Security Agency, according to court documents unsealed on Thursday. In a blogpost,...
By: The Young Turks
View post:
Yahoo Releases Documents Proving NSA Forced Them To Violate User Privacy - Video
NSA Documents Prove ET Exists
NSA PDF http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/key_to_et_messages.pdf Irish astronomer says he has successfully tracked UFO #39;s http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Irish-astronomer-says-he-h...
By: VonHelton
Go here to see the original:
The logo of Deutsche Telekom is pictured on the TV tower in the German city of Cologne.(REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay)
The National Security Agency is facing more allegations of cyber-snooping after reportedly targeting German telecom networks Deutsche Telekom and Netcologne as part of a sophisticated program to map the Internet.
Citing top-secret documents provided by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, German newspaper Der Spiegel reports that the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, have targeted the firms as part of a program dubbed "Treasure Map." Described by Der Spiegel as the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world, Treasure Map aims to make every single device connected to the Internet visible to the agencies, including computers, smartphones and tablets.
The report notes that employees of the so-called FiveEyes intelligence agencies -- Americas NSA and its counterparts in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, can install the Treasure Map program for monitoring purposes. The program can also help with Computer Attack/Exploit Planning, according to the report.
Der Spiegel cites red markings on the documents denoting networks that agents claim to have accessed. Global telecom powerhouse Deutsche Telekom and German regional provider Netcologne are both reportedly marked in red.
With German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the center of a controversy over an alleged NSA phone tap, Der Spiegels report comes at a time of heightened sensitivity in Germany over the agencys operations.
Michela Menting, cybersecurity practice director at the tech analyst firm ABI Research, told FoxNews.com that targeting telecom firms could offer intelligence agencies an easier path to information than targeting individuals and groups. Deutsche Telekom is a Tier One operator, which means that both its scale and customer base is huge global, of course a goldmine for any national security agency, she said. Since Germany is clearly not part of the five eyes, they are a target, despite being allies.
Deutsche Telekom provides a range of network, TV and mobile services to more than 60 million customers in Germany. Globally, the company has nearly 130 million customers.
However, Deutsche Telekom told FoxNews.com that it could not find any evidence that its networks were manipulated, even after weeks of investigation with experts from Der Spiegel.
Right now, there is nothing more than a circle around a part of our network in a document provided by Edward Snowden, explained Deutsche Telekom spokesman Philipp Blank, in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. Nevertheless, we take every hint very seriously and we have informed German security authorities. Any access by foreign intelligence services to our networks would be totally unacceptable.
Read this article:
Fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden claims there is a US National Security Agency facility in Auckland and another north of the city.
The former NSA analyst made an appearance at Internet Party founder Kim Dotcom's "moment of truth" event at the Auckland Town Hall on Monday night via a video link from Russia.
The capacity crowd was on its feet and cheering as Mr Snowden's face was beamed onto a big screen.
Hours before the event, in an article posted on The Intercept website, Mr Snowden said that any statement that mass surveillance isn't carried out in New Zealand is "categorically false".
"If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched," he wrote.
In the course of his work at an NSA facility in Hawaii, Mr Snowden said he routinely came across New Zealanders' communications using a mass surveillance tool the NSA shares with the GCSB, called XKEYSCORE.
"It allows total, granular access to the database of communications collected in the course of mass surveillance. It is not limited to or even used largely for the purposes of cybersecurity, as has been claimed, but is instead used primarily for reading individuals' private email, text messages, and internet traffic."
Mr Snowden told the Auckland audience there are NSA facilities in New Zealand that "the GCSB is aware of and that means the prime minister is aware of".
One of those facilities is in Auckland and there is another north of Auckland.
While he was working at the NSA, Mr Snowden said using XKEYSCORE he could see records of conversations of people around the world.
Original post:
Published September 15, 2014
Sept. 15, 2014 - Former NSA systems analyst turned leaker Edward Snowden appears via video link from Russia to hundreds at the Auckland, New Zealand Town Hall. Snowden says the NSA is collecting mass surveillance data on New Zealanders through its XKeyscore program and has set up a facility to tap into vast amounts of data.(AP)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand Former National Security Agency systems analyst turned leaker Edward Snowden said Monday that the NSA is collecting mass surveillance data on New Zealanders through its XKeyscore program and has set up a facility in the South Pacific nation's largest city to tap into vast amounts of data.
Snowden talked via video link from Russia to hundreds of people at Auckland's Town Hall.
Shortly before he spoke, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key issued a statement saying New Zealand's spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, or GCSB, has never undertaken mass surveillance of its own people. Key said he declassified previously secret documents that proved his point.
"Regarding XKeyscore, we don't discuss the specific programs the GCSB may or may not use," Key said. "But the GCSB does not collect mass metadata on New Zealanders, therefore it is clearly not contributing such data to anything or anyone."
Snowden, however, said Key was carefully parsing his words, and that New Zealand agencies do collect information for the NSA and then get access to it.
"There are actually NSA facilities in New Zealand that the GCSB is aware of and that means the prime minister is aware of," Snowden said. "And one of them is in Auckland."
He said Key was avoiding the main issue by not talking about XKeyscore.
"To this day, he's said I won't talk about this. I won't talk about this because it's related to foreign intelligence," Snowden said. "But is it related to foreign intelligence if it's collecting the communications of every man, woman and child in the country of New Zealand?"
Read more:
By Fiona Rotherham
Sept. 15 (BusinessDesk) - Fugitive spying whistleblower Edward Snowden put in an appearance via the internet at tonight's Internet Party Moment of Truth event to back up his claims that mass surveillance of New Zealanders is already taking place despite government denials.
Snowden had earlier posted an article on The Intercept website entitled "New Zealand's Prime Minister isn't telling the truth about mass surveillance", where he said any statement that mass surveillance isn't performed in New Zealand, or that internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, is categorically false.
"If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched," he said. He also told the event there were two US National Security Agency facilities in New Zealand - one in Auckland and one further north.
Prime Minister John Key released declassified documents just before the Moment of Truth event, where 800 people had to be turned away from the packed Auckland Town Hall while more than 22,000 viewers watched on the YouTube livestream. Key again denied the claims by Snowden and American journalist Glen Greenwald concerning the operations of the Government Communications Security Bureau.
Greenwald also released a story today on The Intercept website which said New Zealand's spy agency, the GCSB, worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system as top government officials publicly insisted no such programme was being planned and would not be legally permitted.
Both he and Snowden didn't add any new revelations beyond what was in the articles they published just before the event, although they both questioned why Key could release previously classified documents simply to defend his own reputation rather than in the national interest, and whether the documents should have been classified in the first place.
Greenwald said documents provided by Snowden show that the New Zealand government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection programme that appeared to be designed to collect information about New Zealanders' communications.
Snowden accused Key of misleading the public about GCSB's role in mass surveillance.
"The prime minister's claim to the public, that 'there is not and there never has been any mass surveillance', is false," the former National Security Agency analyst wrote. "The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio and phone networks."
See the original post:
Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden today accused the New Zealand government of spying on its citizens, just days before the country goes to the polls in national elections.
If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Intercept, an online news site run by journalist Glenn Greenwald. In it, he said that he regularly saw data from New Zealand when he was working for the NSA.
His allegation threatens to upend what has so far been a predictable campaign a poll three days agoshowed Prime Minister John Key as the choice of 61.6 percent of voters, compared to 17.9 percent for his closest challenger, according to the New Zealand Herald.
Snowden's charges drew a quick rebuttal from Mr. Key, who vigorously denied that New Zealands Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) runs a mass surveillance program.
There is not, and never has been, mass surveillance of New Zealanders undertaken by the GCSB, he said in a statement.
In his op-ed, Snowden urged New Zealanders to vote, writing that come Sept. 20, New Zealanders have a checkbox of their own.
If you live in New Zealand, whatever party you choose to vote for, bear in mind the opportunity to send a message that this government wont need to spy on us to hear: The liberties of free people cannot be changed behind closed doors. Its time to stand up. Its time to restore our democracies. Its time to take back our rights. And it starts with you.
Snowden says Key's government, through the GCSB, funnels mass surveillance data into the NSA's XKeyscore program. He writes:
The GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB station at Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact. Importantly, they do not merelyuseXKEYSCORE, but also actively and directly develop mass surveillance algorithms for it. GCSBs involvement with XKEYSCORE is not a theory, and it is not a future plan. The claim that it never went ahead, and that New Zealand merely looked at but never participated in the Five Eyes system of mass surveillance is false, and the GCSBs past and continuing involvement with XKEYSCORE is irrefutable.
Key went on New Zealand television programs over the weekend to say that New Zealand intelligence agencies considered setting up a mass surveillance system, but ultimately decided against it.
More here:
As Eugene noted, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit recently held that a child pornography conviction had to be reversed because the evidence was gathered in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Steve Vladeck has a post discussing the important and potentially certworthy issue in the case, which is whether a violation of that statute can trigger the exclusionary rule at all.
I confess that my initial reaction was skepticism. Consider Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon:
We have applied the exclusionary rule primarily to deter constitutional violations. [In t]he few cases in which we have suppressed evidence for statutory violations the excluded evidence arose directly out of statutory violations that implicated important Fourth and Fifth Amendment interests.
Maybe the Posse Comitatus Act can be shown to implicate important Fourth and Fifth Amendment interests, but the Ninth Circuit didnt really show that, and it isnt obvious to me.
More generally, it seems to me that current exclusionary rule doctrine can be read in a couple of different ways:
One is the deterrence theory: Exclusion is appropriate when it seems like theres intentional and/or widespread and/or generally problematic illegality by the government. This refrain appears in a bunch of the cases, and its how the Ninth Circuit framed the analysis. Its not clear, however, that the analysis automatically applies in statutory cases (see above).
A second is the slow destruction theory: Under this theory, the exclusionary rule is unfounded and deleterious, and the rule and its works should be slowly destroyed. Some people read the Courts exclusionary rule precedents to be implicitly working toward this theory. It is not really put forward by the Court as a first-order justification, although quite a few of the opinions do frame their analysis by questioning the rules basis or justification.
Until recently, I would have ended this list there. But I have recently begun to give some credence to a third account of exclusionary rule doctrine put forward by my friend Richard Re in an article called The Due Process Exclusionary Rule.
Richard argues that today many searches and seizures should be seen as part of the criminal process and that the exclusionary rule is thus justified by the Due Process Clause, which forbids a conviction obtained through illegal process. While I am not yet sure that I agree with this view, I think it deserves serious consideration, and is the best alternative to the slow destruction theory that is on offer.
Here is what the article says about statutory violations (footnotes omitted):
See more here:
Volokh Conspiracy: What the posse comitatus case might mean for the future of the exclusionary rule
Like my co-blogger Will Baude, I was very interested in the Ninth Circuits recent case, United States v. Dreyer, suppressing evidence as a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. I think the case is interesting because it demonstrates a view of the exclusionary rule that I havent seen in a while.
First, some history. Back in the the middle of the 20th Century, the federal courts often found ways to impose an exclusionary rule for statutory violations in federal court. For example, in Nardone v. United States, 302 U. S. 379 (1937) (Nardone I) and Nardone v. United States, 308 U.S. 338 (1939) (Nardone II), the Supreme Court adopted an exclusionary rule for violations of the Communications Act. In McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332 (1943), the Court adopted an exclusionary rule for violations of Rule 5 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The Court had a rather free-form approach to the exclusionary rule at the time, in part because suppression was seen as the judiciarys domain. The federal courts had an inherent power to control evidence in their own cases, so the Court could be creative in fashioning what evidence could come in to deter bad conduct. If the government did something really bad, the federal courts had the power to keep the evidence out to deter violations and maintain the integrity of the courts.
By the 1980s, after Warren Court revolution, the Supreme Court had a different view of the exclusionary rule. The scope of the rule had expanded dramatically when it was incorporated and applied to the states. But as a kind of tradeoff for that expansion, the Court cut back on the free-form approach outside core constitutional violations. The Burger and Rehnquist Courts saw suppression as a doctrine that had to be rooted in deterrence of constitutional violations and not just something that courts didnt like or found offensive.
In his post, Will points out a passage from Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon to that effect. And I would add the earlier case of United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727 (1980), in which investigators had intentionally violated one persons Fourth Amendment rights to get evidence they were holding of the suspects crimes. The Sixth Circuit had suppressed the evidence on the basis of the federal courts supervisory power to punish the blatant abuse even though the suspect did not have Fourth Amendment standing to object to the violation. The Supreme Court reversed, blocking courts from using the supervisory power as an end-run around the limits of Fourth Amendment doctrine.
The new Ninth Circuit case, Dreyer, strikes me as a vestige of the mid-20th century free-form view of the exclusionary rule. The lower courts in the 1960s and 1970s had a few areas where they rejected suppression outside of constitutional law but recognized the hypothetical possibility that they might suppress evidence if the facts were particularly egregious. For example, a bunch of circuits held that the Fourth Amendment does not regulate evidence collection by foreign governments not acting in coordination with the U.S., but that they would suppress evidence if the foreign government conduct shocked the conscience. See, e.g., Birdsell v. United States, 346 F.2d 775, 782 n. 10 (5th Cir. 1965); United States v. Cotroni, 527 F.2d 708, 712 n. 10 (2d Cir. 1975). But see United States v. Mount, 757 F.2d 1315, 1320 (D.C. Cir. 1985) (Bork, J., concurring) (arguing based on Payner that lower courts lack supervisory powers to impose an exclusionary rule for searches by foreign governments). The caselaw was never reviewed in the Supreme Court, however, perhaps because those egregious circumstances were not found and the evidence wasnt actually suppressed.
Violations of the Posse Comitatus Act, the issue in the new decision, provides another example. The history seems to run like this. First, in the 1970s, a few courts applied the free-form approach to the exclusionary rule and left open the possibility that violations of the Posse Comitatus Act could lead to exclusion if it were necessary to deter violations. See, e.g.,United States v. Walden, 490 F.2d 372, 37677 (4th Cir. 1974); State v. Danko, 219 Kan. 490 (1976). When the Ninth Circuit reached the issue in 1986, the panel did not focus on the Supreme Courts then-new more skeptical approach to the exclusionary rule. Instead, the Ninth Circuit expanded on the 1970s lower-court cases, indicating that the exclusionary rule would be necessary for violations of the Act if a need to deter future violations is demonstrated. United States v. Roberts, 779 F.2d 565, 568 (9th Cir. 1986). Again, though, this was just a possibility, and the issue was never reviewed.
Dreyer picks up that 28-year-old invitation and concludes that the need has finally been demonstrated and that the exclusionary rule therefore must be applied. Dreyer cites Roberts, which in turn cited Walden. So on its face, the court is at least drawing on precedent.
But it seems to me that Dreyer is very vulnerable if DOJ thinks it is worth challenging in the Supreme Court. Dreyer appears to rely on a line of thinking about the exclusionary rule that the Supreme Court has long ago rejected. Of course, we can debate the normative question of how the Justices should approach the exclusionary rule, either in the context of constitutional violations or statutory violations. But just as a predictive matter, I suspect that todays Court would have a different view of the question than the circuit court cases from the 1970s on which the Ninth Circuits Dreyer decision ultimately relies.
Orin Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 2001. He teaches and writes in the area of criminal procedure and computer crime law.
Read the rest here:
Volokh Conspiracy: The posse comitatus case and changing views of the exclusionary rule
Jane Dueker Rants About Inability to Limit Second Amendment "after this G-d damn bill." (Audio)
Democrat Jane Dueker loses control of her vocabulary on live radio in St. Louis during a rant about her inability to limit Missourian #39;s Second Amendment righ...
By: Duane Lester
Read more from the original source:
FIRST AMENDMENT TEST: Sunlink Maintenance Facility (Long)
TUCSON, Ariz. (EMSN) -
By: EMSNews Arizona
Read the original post:
FIRST AMENDMENT TEST: Sunlink Maintenance Facility (Long) - Video
09 12 2014 Hartford Shooting and the First Amendment 1080p
J.C. is not the only one to get hassled by law enforcement. The issue is NOT the body on the sidewalk, it #39;s the violations committed by law enforcement.
By: NewsNowSanDiego
View post:
09 12 2014 Hartford Shooting and the First Amendment 1080p - Video
Journalism First Amendment Speech
By: madelineskiles
More: