NSA Privacy Officer Rebecca Richards Explains What Connection Chaining Is!
Update: I checked with the FBI on whether they were going to do a similar privacy report. After checking around, a spokesperson said, "We are not aware of our folks preparing any such similar public report."
You'll recall that for the year…
Friday Morning: Damned Long Week Done
If another artist of note has died, don't tell me. After losing David Bowie and now Alan Rickman this week, I can't deal. We should have had another 20 years with these guys. I can think of some people I'd trade to have them back, can't you?
JetBlue…
The Intelligence Community Continues to Pretend Ignorance of Its Deliberate 702 Spying
As I noted in an update to this post, over the last several months, the Brennan Center has led an effort among privacy organizations to get the Intelligence Community to provide the transparency over its Section 702 surveillance that it dodged…
AT&T Says Its Voluntary Sharing of Customer Data Is Classified
Back in October, I wondered whether companies would be able to claim they had chosen not to participate in CISA's voluntary data sharing in their transparency reports. While CISA prohibits the involuntary disclosure of such participation, I…
Thursday Morning: Fast and Furious Edition
Insane amount of overseas news overnight. Clearly did not include me winning $1.5B Powerball lottery. Attacks in Jakarta and Turkey are no joke.
Let's move on.
Some U.S. utilities' still wide open to hacking
Dudes, how many times do you…
Wednesday Morning: Wonderful, Just Wonderful
I debated about posting Jonny Lang's Lie to Me. Nah, we're lied to every day, might as well ask for the truth for once, even if it's ugly. The truth is that nothing's okay though we wish like hell it were otherwise.
That said, let's forge…
The FBI Is Using NSLs to Target "Facilities" Now
The Freedom of the Press Foundation has been looking for more details about when the FBI can use NSLs to obtain records including the communication records of journalists, and they just obtained initial response to a FOIA on the subject. There…
Will James Clapper Be the First Known Victim of OmniCISA's Regulatory Immunity?
According to Medium, Crackas With Attitude just hacked James Clapper and his wife.
One of the group’s hackers, who’s known as “Cracka,” contacted me on Monday, claiming to have broken into a series of accounts connected to Clapper,…
The Chapo Secrets the Press Should Be Squealing About
Update: For those who haven't already read it, this post, Sean Penn, Intelligence Dangle, will help explain this one.
The frenzy among journalists about Sean Penn's Chapo Guzmán story has continued over two days now. As is typical of press…
Tuesday Morning: The Week's Peak Crey
I cannot with the unexpected engagement picture in my Twitter timeline of news oligarch Rupert Murdoch and model Jerry Hall, on the heels of losing David Bowie and in the wake of El Chapo-Penn. Tell me this is the craziest it will get this week.
D-Day…
As Recently as 2012, FBI Didn't Think Your Phone Number Was Your Identity
Last week, Charlie Savage liberated additional disclosures on three IG reports he liberated last year: the 2007 NSL report, the 2009 Stellar Wind report, and a 2012 DOJ IG Section 702 report. With the NSL report, DOJ disclosed numbers that I…
Ukraine's Power System Hacking: Coordinated in More than One Way?
Analysis by industrial control team SANS determined hacking of Ukrainian electrical power utilities reported on 23-DEC-2015 was a coordinated attack. It required multiple phases to achieve a sustained loss of electricity to roughly 80,000 customers.…
Monday Morning: So — We Meet Again
Monday: the bad penny we never escape, turning up once again beneath our cart's wheels just as we set in motion. Just give a hard shove, push on, and don't look back.
Volkswagen's bad news, good news as Detroit's auto show opens
Bad news…
Sean Penn, Intelligence Dangle
The press is outraged that Sean Penn gave Chapo Guzmán editorial veto over the Rolling Stone story he published about their interview.
Disclosure: Some names have had
to be changed, locations not named, and an understanding was brokered…
Wild Divisional Card Trash Talk
Four games on the schedule this weekend. No time for chit chat about balls that are round, whether large, as in the NBA, or small, like MLB. This is Playoff Football baybee!
In order, we have these games:
Chefs at Texans: This looks to…
NOT Trash Talk: Watch This Space
Most unsportsy member of the Emptywheel team here, throwing up a placeholder post to catch the sports stuff.
Commenter Lefty665 "seeds the kitty":
How about them Redskins? Gonna kick some Cheesehead butt. Rogers has all the history,…
In Response to Continued Resonance of Awlaki Videos, US Relaunched Social Media Propaganda Campaign
As far as we know, the perpetrators of the November attack on Paris were radicalized by each other, in specific neighborhoods in Europe.
According to the complaint filed against his Enrique Marquez, the friend who got him guns, Syed Rizwan…
Friday Morning: Looks Like We Made It!
Looks like we survived the first business week of the year, made it through floods and fire and other apocalyptic events. Can't imagine what next week will bring at this rate.
Saudi Arabia may sell shares in oil producer Aramco
Listing Aramco could…
What We Know about the Section 215 Phone Dragnet and Location Data
Last month's squabble between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz about USA Freedom Act led a number of USAF boosters to belatedly understand what I've been writing for years: that USAF expanded the universe of people whose records would be collected…
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude on The Commons
Previous posts in this series:
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 1: Introduction.
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 2: Antisemitism
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude on the Tea Party
The Origins of Totalitarianism…