NATO Secretary General – 10th Anniversary Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, 11 DEC 2014 – Video


NATO Secretary General - 10th Anniversary Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, 11 DEC 2014
Keynote address by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the North Atlantic Council ICI seminar celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Doha, Qatar,...

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NATO Secretary General - 10th Anniversary Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, 11 DEC 2014 - Video

NATO Secretary General – 10th Anniversary Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Closing, 11 DEC 2014 – Video


NATO Secretary General - 10th Anniversary Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Closing, 11 DEC 2014
Closing remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the North Atlantic Council ICI seminar celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Istanbul Coope...

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NATO Secretary General - 10th Anniversary Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, Closing, 11 DEC 2014 - Video

Russia accuses NATO of aerial spying 'practically every day'

Russia's air force commander on Tuesday accused the United States and its NATO allies of provoking confrontation over the Baltic Sea by sending spy planes near the Russian border "practically every day."

In apparent response to accusations from NATO military officials that a Russian jet flying a stealth mission nearly caused a collision with an SAS commercial jet last week, Russian Air Force commander Col. Gen. Viktor Bondarev said at a news briefing in Moscow that the Western alliance has "massively" stepped up aerial surveillance of Russia's air defense capabilities.

"In 2014, the number of flights by reconnaissance aircraft of the United States and NATO countries over territories of the Baltic countries, the Baltic and Barents seas has increased considerably, Bondarev said, estimating that NATO typically conducts eight to 12 such flights a week.

"Strategic reconnaissance aircraft RC-135 of the U.S. Air Force perform flights practically every day," the Tass news agency quoted Bondarev as saying. He put the number of RC-135 flights in the vicinity of Russian borders at 140 so far this year, compared with 22 in 2013.

As relations between the former Cold War adversaries have plunged into a new phase of distrust over Kremlin aggression against Ukraine, Russian and NATO surveillance aircraft have taken to the skies in rival shows of force over the Baltic region, which was under Soviet domination for most of the previous century.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union at the advent of World War II, but have spun into the Western security orbit since breaking free of Moscow's control amid the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. All three former Soviet Baltic republics are now part of the 28-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as are Baltic Sea littoral states Poland and what was Communist East Germany during the Cold War era.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has loudly opposed the encroachment of NATO into Eastern Europe regions he considers to be Russia's traditional sphere of influence. His armed forces seized Ukraine's Crimea region in February after a pro-Europe rebellion in the former Soviet republic to Russia's southeast toppled Kremlin-allied President Viktor Yanukovich.

Putin is also accused by the new Ukrainian leadership and its Western allies of sending arms and fighters to bolster the separatist movement that has wrested key areas of eastern Ukraine from the Kiev government's control.

At his news briefing, Bondarev said NATO had also deployed AWACS -- airborne warning and control system -- aircraft on missions to survey areas in the Black Sea, Ukraine and western Russia. Those aircraft, as well as Swedish Gulfstream reconnaissance planes, German Orion P-3Cs, Danish Challengers and Portuguese Orions, have been collecting intelligence on Russian armed forces in the Kaliningrad exclave and in Baltic waters, the Russian Tass news agency said.

Bondarev's claims appeared to be in response to mounting accusations from NATO countries that Russian aerial operations are posing a threat to the safety of civilian aircraft.

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Russia accuses NATO of aerial spying 'practically every day'

NATO ends cooperation with Russia

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NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the Alliance suspends "all practical cooperation with Russia" in protest at its annexation of Crimea.

Brussels: NATO's foreign ministers ordered an end to civilian and military cooperation with Russia and told their generals and admirals to quickly figure out ways to better protect alliance members that feel threatened by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

The 28-member alliance, the keystone of US and European security since the end of World War II, was reacting to its most serious crisis in years: Russia's unilateral annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which the US and its allies have condemned as an illegal land grab.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen speaks with Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia (left) before a NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Photo: Reuters

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NATO ends cooperation with Russia

DC Pork Bill Passed, Torture Report Distraction, Congress Allows All NSA Spying – Video


DC Pork Bill Passed, Torture Report Distraction, Congress Allows All NSA Spying
It looks like the House voted not to shut down the government with the budget it just passed. Conservative Republicans hate that Obama Care and illegal immig...

By: Greg Hunter

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DC Pork Bill Passed, Torture Report Distraction, Congress Allows All NSA Spying - Video

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NSA reveals it used to have a Clown Club

Brittany Hillen

We've seen many NSA-related details surface, but none of them quite as unexpected as the latest revelation: the agency used to have a Clown Club. Less you think that is some cheery codename for a secret collective or program, it's not -- it was a literal Clown Club. It sounds almost too odd to be true, but the information was revealed by the NSA itself in an unclassified scan titled "Cryptologic Almanac 50th Anniversary Series" posted on its website. The club no longer exists, but its legacy apparently lives on.

The report starts off, "Once upon a time, a man named Ned Clark worked for the National Security Agency. And while he had an ordinary job at the Agency like everyone else, that's not how he left his mark here: he gained his NSA fame through clowning."

Clark, having served in the Marine Corps before joining the NSA in the 50s, worked as a typewriter repairman at the Agency. By the late 50s, Clark took up clowning under the moniker "Uncle Ned" as part of his work with children and charities. His life as a clown eventually spilled over to his job at the agency, where he "could always be counted on to entertain at the NSA Christmas Party or any other NSA family party."

In the 1970s, the agency had its own NSA Clown Club, of which Clark was the president. The Club contained the Clarkwheel Clowns, and was intended to "promote and develop among the membership interest, knowledge, and skill in being a clown." Clark is said to have given at least one lecture on clowning at the Friedman Auditorium during his time.

Clark passed away at the age of 67 in 1992, and at a time that isn't known the club was disbanded. However, as of 2002, one of the club's members going by the name "Snaggs" was still working for the NSA.

SOURCE: BuzzFeed

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NSA reveals it used to have a Clown Club

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NBC 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit Revived by Appeals Court

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Chris Hansen

On Wednesday, the 10thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge had too quickly dismissed an insurance broker's defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal, reporter Chris Hansen and others over a 2008 Dateline segment titled "Tricks of the Trade."

"This case is anything but normal," writes Circuit Judge Terrence O'Brien.

PHOTOS Hollywood's Most Fascinating Legal Sagas, From Casey Kasem to Michael Jackson

Among other things, the case addressed whether a journalists privilege, commonly understood to protect the identity of anonymous sources, extends further in Colorado. It also raises the issue of whether journalists, acting with government cooperation, can enter a private place under false pretenses without violating an individual's or company's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The lawsuit and appeal were brought by Tyrone Clark and his company, Brokers Choice of America (BCA), upset with the way Dateline had used snippets of Clark's two-day seminar for insurance brokers located on the company's property in Colorado. With assistance from Alabama officials, Dateline's crew surreptitiously filmed the seminar, and according to Clark's company, used its own tricks of the trade selective editing and commentary to present Clarks statements out of context.

The Dateline segment presented Clark as using or teaching scare tactics to get seniors to buy annuities, but BCA says that a complete viewing of Clark's seminar would show him taking a more nuanced approach to annuities that Clark said they were not for everyone and urged his students to probe their customers' situations for suitability and obey a code of conduct that included disclosures.

PHOTOS THR's 2014 Power Lawyers List: Portraits

NBC's primary defense against the lawsuit was that its presentation of statements in the Dateline program were "substantially true," and on a motion to dismiss, a trial judge bought that argument.

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NBC 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit Revived by Appeals Court

NBC Must Contend With 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit After Appellate Ruling

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Chris Hansen

On Wednesday, the 10thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge had too quickly dismissed an insurance broker's defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal, reporter Chris Hansen and others over a 2008 Dateline segment titled "Tricks of the Trade."

"This case is anything but normal," writes Circuit Judge Terrence O'Brien.

PHOTOS Hollywood's Most Fascinating Legal Sagas, From Casey Kasem to Michael Jackson

Among other things, the case addressed whether a journalists privilege, commonly understood to protect the identity of anonymous sources, extends further in Colorado. It also raises the issue of whether journalists, acting with government cooperation, can enter a private place under false pretenses without violating an individual's or company's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The lawsuit and appeal were brought by Tyrone Clark and his company, Brokers Choice of America (BCA), upset with the way Dateline had used snippets of Clark's two-day seminar for insurance brokers located on the company's property in Colorado. With assistance from Alabama officials, Dateline's crew surreptitiously filmed the seminar, and according to Clark's company, used its own tricks of the trade selective editing and commentary to present Clarks statements out of context.

The Dateline segment presented Clark as using or teaching scare tactics to get seniors to buy annuities, but BCA says that a complete viewing of Clark's seminar would show him taking a more nuanced approach to annuities that Clark said they were not for everyone and urged his students to probe their customers' situations for suitability and obey a code of conduct that included disclosures.

PHOTOS THR's 2014 Power Lawyers List: Portraits

NBC's primary defense against the lawsuit was that its presentation of statements in the Dateline program were "substantially true," and on a motion to dismiss, a trial judge bought that argument.

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NBC Must Contend With 'Dateline' Defamation Lawsuit After Appellate Ruling

Your Company E-mail: OK for Union Organizing, Not for Bake Sales

The First Amendment doesnt stop companies from cracking down on their employees speech. So your boss can ban you from using work e-mail to share funny cat gifs, or organize a bake sale, or mourn the passing of your favorite celebrity. But now your boss cant ban you from using work e-mail to organize a union.

In a party-line 3-2 decision (pdf), the National Labor Relations Board ruled Thursday that employees who use company e-mail to do their jobs can also use it to organize to improve them. That includes trying to form a union as well as other forms of collective action at work. Under the new ruling, companies can still impose some restrictions on the kind of e-mails they allow on their servers (such as no gigantic attachments), and they can still keep tabs on their employees e-mail activities, though they cant single out union activism for scrutiny. But outside of rare exceptions, companies cant prohibit e-mailing your co-workers to try to transform your workplace.

That new decision overturns a precedent from just seven years ago, when Republicans who then had a majority on the labor board wrote (pdf) that it would be kosher to allow e-mail solicitations for the Salvation Army but not for a labor union. The consequences of that error are too serious to permit it to stand, the three Democrats who now hold a majority on the NLRB wrote. Neither the fact that e-mail exists in a virtual (rather than physical) space, nor the fact that it allows conversations to multiply and spread more quickly than face-to-face communication, reduces its centrality to employees discussions, including their [National Labor Relations Act] Section 7-protected discussions about terms and conditions of employment, they argued. If anything, e-mails effectiveness as a mechanism for quickly sharing information and views increases its importance to employee communication.

In siding with employees yesterday, the NLRB rebuffed arguments that allowing pro-union e-mails would increase the risk of computer viruses; that employees dont need to organize over work e-mail because they have Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR); and that forcing companies to let their Internet servers be used to spread pro-union messages they disagree with would violate employers First Amendment rights. E-mail users typically understand that an e-mail message conveys the view of the sender, the majority wrote, not those of the e-mail account provider.

The NLRBs new approach to organizing over work e-mail accounts echoes a series of decisions in recent years that protect workers right to use Facebook and Twitter to talk about how to improve their jobs. For most other speech, companies have free rein to punish their employees for what they say online, even if they do it on their day off. Chatter about banding together and organizing is one of the only things companies are legally prevented from silencingeven if its something they would most like to choke off.

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Your Company E-mail: OK for Union Organizing, Not for Bake Sales

Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites

A little more than 16 months ago, word emerged that the FBI exploited a recently patched Firefox vulnerability to unmask Tor users visiting a notorious child pornography site. It turns out that the feds had waged an even broader uncloaking campaign a year earlier by using a long-abandoned part of the open source Metasploit exploit framework to identify Tor-using suspects.

The Decloaking Engine went live in 2006 and used five separate methods to break anonymization systems. One method was an Adobe Flash application that initiated a direct connection with the end user, bypassing Tor protections and giving up the user's IP address. Tor Project officials have long been aware of the vulnerability and strenuously advise against installing Flash. According to Wired:

The decloaking demonstration eventually was rendered obsolete by a nearly idiot-proof version of the Tor client called the Tor Browser Bundle, which made security blunders more difficult. By 2011, Moore says virtually everyone visiting the Metasploit decloaking site was passing the anonymity test, so he retired the service. But when the bureau obtained its Operation Torpedo warrants the following year, it chose Moores Flash code as its network investigative techniquethe FBIs lingo for a court-approved spyware deployment.

Torpedo unfolded when the FBI seized control of a trio of Dark Net child porn sites based in Nebraska. Armed with a special search warrant crafted by Justice Department lawyers in Washington DC, the FBI used the sites to deliver the Flash application to visitors browsers, tricking some of them into identifying their real IP address to an FBI server. The operation identified 25 users in the US and an unknown number abroad.

Gross learned from prosecutors that the FBI used the Decloaking Engine for the attack they even provided a link to the code on Archive.org. Compared to other FBI spyware deployments, the Decloaking Engine was pretty mild. In other cases, the FBI has, with court approval, used malware to covertly access a targets files, location, web history and webcam. But Operation Torpedo is notable in one way. Its the first timethat we know ofthat the FBI deployed such code broadly against every visitor to a website, instead of targeting a particular suspect.

The tactic is a direct response to the growing popularity of Tor and, in particular, an explosion in so-called hidden servicesspecial websites, with addresses ending in .onion, that can be reached only over the Tor network.

Hidden services are a mainstay of the nefarious activities carried out on the so-called Dark Net, the home of drug markets, child porn, and other criminal activity. But theyre also used by organizations that want to evade surveillance or censorship for legitimate reasons, like human rights groups, journalists, and, as of October, even Facebook.

A big problem with hidden service, from a law enforcement perspective, is that when the feds track down and seize the servers, they find that the web server logs are useless to them. With a conventional crime site, those logs typically provide a handy list of Internet IP addresses for everyone using the site quickly leveraging one bust into a cascade of dozens, or even hundreds. But over Tor, every incoming connection traces back only as far as the nearest Tor nodea dead end.

Taken together, Operation Torpedo and the campaign used last year to identify Tor-using child porn suspects demonstrate the determination feds show in bypassing Tor protections. They also underscore the feds' rapidly growing skill. Whereas Operation Torpedo abused a six-year-old weakness that ensnared only people who ignored strenuously repeated advice, the latter operation exploited a vulnerability that had only recently been patched in Firefox.

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Feds used Adobe Flash to identify Tor users visiting child porn sites