2015 I Con the Record Transparency™ Working Thread

2 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
ODNI has released the Transparency Report and DOJ has released the FISA Report for 2015. The former is the first that falls under USA Freedom Act expanded reporting requirements, so I'm going to do a very detailed report on it. Here are the…
Read more →
,

Monday Morning: Brittle

17 Comments
/
/
Rayne
The Emperor's Palace was the most splendid in the world, all made of priceless porcelain, but so brittle and delicate that you had to take great care how you touched it. ... -- excerpt, The Nightingale from The Yellow Fair Book by Andrew…
Read more →

The (Former) Riyadh Station Chief Defends His Saudi Friends from Charges of Terrorism

13 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
On Sunday, former CIA Riyadh Station Chief John Brennan had a remarkable appearance on Meet the Press. A big part of it -- the second to last thing he and Chuck Todd discussed -- was Brennan's argument against the release of the 28 pages ("so-called,"…
Read more →

Recent Discussions of Neoliberalism

24 Comments
/
/
Ed Walker
People seem to have trouble defining neoliberalism adequately, and especially when it comes to labeling Hillary Clinton as a neoliberal. In a recent article at Jacobin Corey Robins gives a short history of the neoliberal version of the Democratic…
Read more →

Notorious "FOIA Terrorist" Jason Leopold "Saves" FBI Over $300,000

8 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
Last week, Jim Comey suggested the FBI paid more for the vulnerability that helped it break into Syen Rizwan Farook's phone than he will be paid for the 7 years he'll remain at FBI. The WSJ then did this math. Speaking at the Aspen Security…
Read more →
, ,

Friday Morning [?!]: Chamber of Delights

10 Comments
/
/
Rayne
It's Friday. FINALLY. And it's jazz exploration day, too. Today we sample some chamber jazz, here with Meg Okura and the Pan Asian Chamber Ensemble. It. Me. That is to say, of all genres, this one feels most like a part of myself. Here's…
Read more →

Rosemary Collyer's Worst FISA Decision

4 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
In addition to adding former National Security Division head David Kris as an amicus (I'll have more to say on this) the FISA Court announced this week that Rosemary Collyer will become presiding judge -- to serve for four years -- on May 19. Collyer…
Read more →

The Shell Game the Government Played During Yahoo's Protect America Act Challenge

4 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
In his opinion finding Protect America Act constitutional, Judge Reggie Walton let his frustration with the way the government kept secretly changing the program at issue show. For another, the government filed a classified appendix with the…
Read more →
,

Thursday Morning: Mostly Cloudy with a Chance of Trouble

13 Comments
/
/
Rayne
This video came from a random browse for new artists. I don't know yet if I have an opinion; first minute is rocky, but improves. Think I need to sample some more by this artist. You can find Unknown Mortal Orchestra on SoundCloud.com if you…
Read more →

Bob Graham Says FBI Aggressively Deceived on Sarasota 9/11 Investigation

2 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
James Clapper has suggested that the 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry may be declassified by June. I'm skeptical the pages will be entirely declassified, but look forward to them. Meanwhile, former Senate Intelligence Chair has…
Read more →
, ,

Wednesday Morning: Lüg mich an, Lügner

32 Comments
/
/
Rayne
I admit freely my facility with the German language is poor. I hope this post's headline reads, "Lie to me, Liar." Which is about as close as I could get to "Lying Liars" because I can't conjugate the verb 'to lie.' ~shrug~ It's not like…
Read more →

Domestic Collection and Stellar Wind

2 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
I'm in the middle of comparing John Yoo's May 17, 2002 letter to Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (which is largely the November 2, 2001 justification he wrote for Stellar Wind) with Jack Goldsmith's May 6, 2004 memo on Stellar Wind, which reined in some…
Read more →
, ,

Tuesday Morning: Monitor

15 Comments
/
/
Rayne
Y me lamento por no estar alla Y hoy te miento para estar solos tu y yo Y la distancia le gano al amor Solo te veo en el monitor -- excerpt, Monitor by Volovan Sweet little tune, easy to enjoy even if you don't speak Spanish. Speaking…
Read more →

The Easy Section 702 Surveillance Number James Clapper Can Share

2 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
Last week, a bunch of House Judiciary Committee members set James Clapper a letter stating that before the Committee deals with Section 702 reauthorization next year, they'd like: The number of telephone communications in which one caller…
Read more →

The Theory of Business Enterprise Part 2: Neoclassical Economists and Veblen

7 Comments
/
/
Ed Walker
The material framework of modern civilization is the industrial system, and the directing force which animates this framework is business enterprise. To a greater extent than any other known phase of culture, modern Christendom takes its…
Read more →
,

Monday Morning: Tectonic Shift

6 Comments
/
/
Rayne
Last week after the artist Prince Rogers Nelson died, a segment of the population were mystified by the reaction to his passing. They'd missed impact this artist had had on music which happened concurrent with a paradigm shift in the entertainment…
Read more →

NSA Failed to Fully Inform FISC Even After It Started Fact-Checking Itself

4 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
On Friday, I described how, for four years after the FISA Court ruled that NSA couldn't keep otherwise unlawfully collected information from a single traditional FISA order, the NSA continued to do just that with data from 702 orders. Hogan…
Read more →

Turns Out Their Reassurances Were Too SWIFT

5 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
When I first wrote about the $81 million bank heist of Bangladesh, I noted that the hack appeared to target SWIFT, the international payment transfer system, even while SWIFT itself was giving us reassurances that they had not been breached. While…
Read more →

CyberCommand Turns Its "Cyberbombs" from Assad to ISIS

3 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
David Sanger has a long piece on how CyberCom is -- for the first time, he says! -- launching cyberattacks on ISIS. The United States has opened a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing the military’s six-year-old Cyber…
Read more →

The NSA Has Never Not Been Violating FISA Since It Moved Stellar Wind to FISA in 2004

5 Comments
/
/
emptywheel
Back in 2013, I noted that FISA Judge John Bates had written two opinions finding NSA had violated 50 U.S.C. §1809(a)(2), which prohibits the "disclos[ure] or use[ of] information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing…
Read more →
Share this entry