Critical Observer

MAKE NO MISTAKE, US SPY SATELLITES SEE EVERYTHING

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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">There is something fishy going on in the way the US is talking about civilian plane crashes that are in some way linked, or said to be linked to Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the case of the latest tragic mid-air break-up of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed all 224 people aboard on a flight from Egypt back to Russia a few days ago, CNN is reporting US that intelligence sources say US spy satellite showed a “heat signature” that could indicate an explosion aboard the plane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here’s the CNN report:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A U.S. military satellite detected a midair heat flash from the Russian airliner before the plane crashed Saturday, a U.S. official told CNN.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Intelligence analysis has ruled out that the Russian commercial airplane was struck by a missile, but the new information suggests that there was a catastrophic in-flight event — including possibly a bomb, though experts are considering other explanations, according to U.S. officials.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Analysts say heat flashes could be tied to a range of possibilities, including a bomb blast, a malfunctioning engine exploding or a structural problem causing a fire on the plane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now note that this information about a spy satellite image comes just days after the crash.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, it’s been over a year and a half since the 2014 crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine — an incident that also saw a civilian airliner destroyed in midair. In this case, the US insists the crash was caused by a Russian-built BUK anti-aircraft missile provided to, and launched by pro-Russian separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The US has made this claim ad nauseum, but has never provided a shred of evidence to support its charge. Meanwhile, as a number of critics have pointed out, with Ukraine in a hot civil war in which one side — the post-coup Ukrainian government forces — were getting NATO backing, and the other, the two breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, were receiving Russian backing, it is a certainty that the US had moved not one but multiple spy satellites into position to monitor the region around the clock by the time of the Flight 17 shoot-down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So where are the satellite images to support a claim that a BUK missile fired from rebel-held territory and by rebel forces downed that plane, killing all 298 people aboard?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As critics like award-winning journalist Robert Parry and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern have pointed out, if the US had satellite imagery showing a BUK missile contrail — and this large, fast-moving rocket leaves a dramatic contrail all the way from its launch site to its high-altitude target (see below), making assessing of blame quite easy — it would long since have been released or leaked to a US corporate media that have been quick to rub with anti-Russian assertions and propaganda put out by the US government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This leaves us with two possibilities to ponder:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Either there simply are no satellite photos showing a BUK launched by ethnic Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine at Flight 17, or those photos that exist show something quite different, like a BUK being launched by Ukrainian government forces, or else, perhaps the current claim that satellite images show a heat signature around the Russian plane in Egypt are false (no image has been provided to back up the assertion of a heat signature).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Of course, there may eventually be evidence pointing to a bomb – the Russians are now looking for signs of explosive residue on the wreckage. But until such evidence is found, why, one might ask, would the US jump to make a false claim of a bomb being responsible for the Russian plane crash over the Sinai Desert, when it could as easily have been a fuel tank or engine explosion that wrecked the plane?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Well, consider that at the moment, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been trumping the US in a number of conflict regions, stymying US plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, blocking a US plan to establish a no-fly zone over Syria by openly sending fighter-bombers and cruise-missile-equipped ships to Syria to attack President Bashar al-Assad’s Islamic State and Al Nusra enemies at Assad’s invitation, and backing Iran in its support of both Assad and the embattled Iraqi government. All the while, Putin’s popularity at home has been soaring into the high 80-90percent range <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/russia-putin-poll/" style="color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">according to polls</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Perhaps the thinking at the White House is that by suggesting it was a bomb, and not a structural defect that brought down a Russian civilian aircraft, killing hundreds of Russian citizens, the Russian people might logically link that purported bombing to Putin’s actions in Syria and his antagonism of IS and Al Nusra, and might then turn against him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On one NPR program last week, the reporter was fishing for exactly that idea in an interview with a Washington analyst, saying, “Isn’t it likely that if it turns out to have been a bomb by ISIS that took down the plane Russians would get upset about Putin’s backing of Assad in Syria?” A listener couldn’t miss the unseemly enthusiasm the interviewer had for this gruesome notion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Whatever the investigation of Flight 9268’s flight recorders and wreckage concludes, one thing is clear: If the US has satellites monitoring the Sinai, where there is no war going on, it most certainly had satellites monitoring Ukraine at the time of the downing of Flight 17, and if it’s willing to announce that its satellite caught the moment of the explosion of Flight 9268 and is willing to talk about that, it should also be willing to show what its satellites saw when Flight 17 was downed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The American people, and the people of the world, should demand this of the US government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1e1e; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.872px;"><b>Article by: </b></span><span class="post_author" style="color: #1e1e1e; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 25.872px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; word-wrap: break-word;"><b>DAVE LINDORFF</b> of counterpunch.org</span></span></div>
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MAKE NO MISTAKE, US SPY SATELLITES SEE EVERYTHING

There is something fishy going on in the way the US is talking about civilian plane crashes that are in some way linked, or said to be ...

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US SURVEILLANCE BILL MAY KILL INTERNET PRIVACY

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The US Congress, faced with a possible government shutdown, is allegedly considering the re-introduction of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) this week.</h5>
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Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is reportedly believed to be considering resurrecting the controversial bill, claims The Politico, a DC area political newspaper.</div>
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Opinions are divided on the issue, as one source claimed that a “likeness” of the bill will return to the table while another doubted its reintroduction, saying it was “all very uncertain” and “technically possible, but nothing definitive.”</div>
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If lawmakers approve the CISA, which many Americans see as a double-edged sword, it will grant legal immunity to companies that wish to monitor their customers and share private information with the US government if they are believed to constitute a ‘cybersecurity threat’.</div>
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The law would empower the federal government to legally spy on US citizens, according to privacy activists, who are calling the proposed legislation a “surveillance bill in disguise.”</div>
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“I hope they remember how contentious this bill is. I hope they remember they’ve got 21 amendments in order. I hope they choose something else,” said Access senior legislative manager Nathan White, who said on Sunday that the likelihood of a renewed CISA push has gone from rumor to “likely.”</div>
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The debates have intensified as The Business Software Alliance (BSA) issued a letter to Congress this September asking for the implementation of five legislative efforts that they claim will boost the digital economy of the US.</div>
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The letter, signed by Apple, Microsoft, Siemens, Oracle, IBM and others, argues in favor of the information-sharing bill, claiming that it is one of the five measures the US federal government could take to “protect sensitive information by enabling private actors in possession of information about vulnerability and intrusions to more easily share that information voluntarily with others under threat.”</div>
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Meanwhile, the advocacy group Fight for the Future has excoriated the CISA; calling it “a surveillance bill in disguise.”</div>
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It has gone as far as creating a website, YouBetrayedUs.org, to condemn the large companies. The group accuses the organizations of hypocrisy, as they regularly claim to advocate customers’ rights but now intend to endanger “their users’ security and civil rights in exchange for government handouts and protection.”</div>
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There was only one company, SalesForce, which refused to support the CISA.</div>
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Facing significant number of accusations from privacy advocates, the BSA updated its information on cyber threats, stating on its site that it “does not support any of the three current bills pending before Congress,” which include the CISA.</div>
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“BSA has consistently advocated for strong privacy protections in all information sharing bills currently pending before the Congress,” the group’s website added.</div>
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The bill has been designed to address the cybersecurity threat, which the Obama administration is addressing alongside such complex issues as ISIL, al-Qaeda, climate change and North Korea.</div>
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In April, the US government acknowledged that a massive cyberattack on OPM networks compromised the personal information of more than 21 million former and current federal employees. Moreover, the fingerprint data of some 5.6 million people has also been stolen.</div>
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The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment last year prompted the US government to combine public and private sector action to achieve common goals and eliminate cyber-threats.</div>
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Supporters claim that the bill will allow authorities to prevent potential digital threats as they would be able to obtain easy access to potentially hazardous resources.</div>
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Pundits have challenged the previous opinion, saying that a government that lacks the ability to safeguard its own information can’t be trusted to manage the data of its people.</div>
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The CISA poses a risk to individuals who are concern about their internet privacy and the secrecy of the personal data they store, according to Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon.</div>
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“The government can’t keep its own data safe,” he said, referring to the OPM hack. “Giving more of your information to the government creates a huge new target for hackers,” Wyden stressed.</div>
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From Sputnik News</div>

US SURVEILLANCE BILL MAY KILL INTERNET PRIVACY

The US Congress, faced with a possible government shutdown, is allegedly considering the re-introduction of the Cybersecurity Information...

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INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES KEEP A FILE ON EVERYONE - SNOWDEN

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Former NSA employee Edward Snowden has claimed recently that the British Government Communications Headquarters had launched a secret Karma Police program in 2009 to collect and analyze data on the internet users.<br />
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According to him, the program analyzes people's network likings, including the websites and radio stations they get in, as well as their social network activity and search history. All the data is checked to make a so-called dossier and reveal further suspect activity of the user.<br />
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Snowden noted, that the program had been launched without any preliminary talks and the Parliament's approval. Such a mass data collections favours anyone but the society.<br />
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As he said, the government does not launch these programs without a reason. They collect data under the competitive nature of relationship between the states. The process is carried out secretly without any serious surveillance and open trials.<br />
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The programs, which were used jointly by the NSA and the CIA in such countries like Yemen, are currently applied by the US Marshals Service towards common criminals, who do not pose a real threat to public safety, that could justify violation of rights of millions US and other countries' citizens.<br />
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From Pravda.Ru

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES KEEP A FILE ON EVERYONE - SNOWDEN

Former NSA employee Edward Snowden has claimed recently that the British Government Communications Headquarters had launched a secret Kar...

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WIKIPEDIA FIGHTS NSA'S TAPPING OF INTERNET BACKBONE

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A lawsuit against the National Security Agency’s dragnet interception of Internet communications had its first day in federal court Friday, with a diverse coalition of organizations asking a judge to rule against the Obama administration’s request that their case be dismissed.<br />
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U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis didn’t rule from the bench or betray a clear leaning during arguments.<br />
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The case was filed in March by the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Amnesty International USA, PEN American Center, Human Rights Watch, The Nation magazine and other human rights and advocacy groups.<br />
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The groups are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and say the NSA’s "upstream" collection of Internet communications from the cables, routers and switches that make up the Internet’s backbone is unconstitutional.<br />
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The upstream collection is – along with the PRISM program that collects communications directly from companies like Google and Facebook – a major source of Internet records the government says it's authorized to acquire through Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.<br />
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Ellis, seeming to enjoy vacillating between sternness and folksy charm, told ACLU attorney Patrick Toomey, “This isn’t politics, you’re not on the stump!” He warned Justice Department attorney Rodney Patton that “when I start [talking] you need to stop.”<br />
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The hearing focused largely on distinguishing the case from Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, which was brought by some of the same plaintiffs. The Supreme Court ruled in February 2013 – about three months before whistleblower Edward Snowden’s first leaks – that those plaintiffs could not prove their records were taken and therefore had no right to sue.<br />
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Toomey said there are several significant differences between the cases, including that the contested surveillance is different and more expansive, that more is known now about the surveillance from official sources and that plaintiffs have greater footing with the addition of global Wikimedia and defense attorneys.<br />
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Patton, however, said the cases are quite similar. The government has not confirmed details about the scope or operational details of upstream collection, he said, and the lawsuit’s claims are speculative and based on assumptions. Details about the collection have not and cannot be disclosed, he said, because the information is classified.<br />
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“There are very few pieces of information” that are public about upstream collection, he said, describing a 2014 Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report on the collection – as well as a notice of records-collection issued under Section 702 to a defense attorney – as less descriptive than Toomey suggested.<br />
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Ellis inquired about whether the plaintiffs would be better able to make their case if Snowden supplied the ACLU legal team with more documents on the collection, and seemed to express skepticism about the rigor of constitutional review from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.<br />
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“The only thing missing from that equation is anyone arguing it’s unconstitutional,” he observed about the intelligence court, which critics contend is often a rubber stamp for expansive government requests they liken to general warrants.<br />
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Patton said the only way he could see someone having a right to challenge upstream collection would be if the government admitted they had been affected in the course of criminal proceedings.<br />
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Until now, most public attention on lawsuits against NSA mass surveillance have focused on the easier-to-understand dragnet collection of domestic call records. Congress voted earlier this year to end that program, though cases against it are still ongoing, with attorneys pushing to update Supreme Court precedent on privacy rights regarding information customers provide to businesses.<br />
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Another case against upstream collection – Jewel v. NSA, brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation – is on appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit after a decade of legal wrangling. Cases against the PRISM Internet program include a long-stalled lawsuit from activist attorney Larry Klayman that seeks enormous damages for alleged constitutional violations.

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NSA DATA COLLECTION AIDED BY AT&T, VERIZON AND SPRINT

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The EFF provided evidence in two of its cases that it was not just AT&T that helped the NSA collect phone records for millions of Americans, but also Verizon Wireless and Sprint. This information was not previously given by the government, which claimed that it was a state secret.<br />
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Despite all the revelations in the media from Snowden’s documents and other sources that the U.S. government is collecting citizens’ information, the administration is still claiming that either individuals or organizations such as the EFF have “no standing” to sue because they can’t prove that they were spied upon.<br />
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Of course, this kind of argument quickly turns into circular logic, because such evidence is often secret and can’t be easily given away via FOIA requests either (the released documents are often heavily redacted to the point of being useless). Therefore, you can’t prove you were spied upon because that information is typically classified.<br />
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Still, this time the EFF managed to get some evidence that AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint were involved in helping NSA with the mass collection of phone records, from filings made to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that were recently made public.<br />
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The EFF also got a letter sent from the DoJ to the FISC that was released in a FOIA lawsuit started by the New York Times, where the names “AT&T,” “Verizon,” “Verizon Wireless,” and “Sprint” are mentioned in regards to phone records collection. From a previously-released document by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the EFF learned that the letter is indeed about the mass collection of phone records.<br />
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The U.S. government’s tactics to either convince the judges to reject mass spying cases or at least delay them have worked rather well so far, but the EFF hopes this new evidence will put the focus back on the government’s violations of the First Amendment’s right of association and the Fourth Amendment’s protection against both unreasonable searches and seizures.<br />
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The EFF is now using this evidence in two of its cases: Smith vs. Obama, where both the EFF and ACLU are providing the legal aid to Anna Smith, who is suing the U.S. government over its bulk collection of telephone records, and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA where 22 organizations are suing the NSA for their First Amendment right of association.<br />
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by LUCIAN ARMASU | TOM'S HARDWARE

NSA DATA COLLECTION AIDED BY AT&T, VERIZON AND SPRINT

The EFF provided evidence in two of its cases that it was not just AT&T that helped the NSA collect phone records for millions of Ame...

Read Article »