States elbow for piece of drone windfall

The drones of the future could bring a windfall for the U.S. economy, boosters hope — so states are elbowing to get a taste of the action.

Twenty-four states have submitted proposals to the Federal Aviation Administration to be test sites for unmanned aircraft, competing to be among six selected by the end of the year. But the test-site selection is just the beginning, officials said Tuesday at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in Washington.

The unmanned systems commercial market is set to explode, they say, and states such as Oklahoma, North Dakota, New Mexico, Utah, Ohio and Idaho are jostling to position themselves to reap the economic benefits.

“We were asked: Why does the lieutenant governor travel out here?” North Dakota’s Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley said. “I don’t look for opportunities to leave the state, but we’re here to try to impress upon people that, at the highest levels of our executive branch in our government in North Dakota, we are partnering with the stakeholders in this important initiative … Our state legislature produced $5 million just a couple months back for just the initial couple of years, to help secure the site, opening up our new test site. And if [we aren’t picked], we’re going to be very active in this arena nevertheless.”

At decked-out booths across the AUVSI convention floor, state flags and helpful ambassadors beckoned onlookers to talk about their states’ geographic advantages, practical applications of drone technology and their commitments to being on the forefront of the new market.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/states-elbow-for-piece-of-drone-windfall-95524.html

Well now you know why they want Snowden...they want him to bow and kiss the ring...

And grovel and plead some sort of mental illness that made him MISTAKENLY believe that mass surveillance is wrong and unconstitutional.

The NSA's New Spy Facilities are 7 Times Bigger Than the Pentagon

He works at one of the three-letter intelligence agencies and oversees construction of a $1.2 billion surveillance data center in Utah that is 15 times the size of MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets. Long Island native Harvey Davis, a top National Security Agency official, needs that commanding presence. His role is to supervise infrastructure construction worldwide for NSA, which is part of the Defense Department. That involves tending to logistics, military installations, as well as power, space and cooling for all NSA data centers.

In May, crews broke ground on a $792 million computing center at the agency’s headquarters near Baltimore that will complement the Utah site. Together the Utah center and Maryland’s 28-acre computer farm span 228 acres—more than seven times the size of the Pentagon.

During an interview with Government Executive in June, amid the uproar over leaked details of NSA’s domestic espionage activities, Davis describes the 200-acre Utah facility as very transparent: “Only brick and mortar.” A data center just provides energy and chills machines, he says.

About 6,500 contractors, along with more than 150 Army Corps of Engineers and NSA workers, including some with special needs, are assigned to the project. Davis perks up when he talks about the hundreds of individuals with disabilities he has steered into NSA.

But ask him why the facility is so big and what’s inside, and he is less forthcoming. “I think we’re crossing into content. It’s big because it’s required to be big,” says Davis, a 30-year veteran of the spy agency.

At NSA, secrecy is not exclusive to intelligence analysts. Every civil servant in the Installations and Logistics Directorate Davis leads has a security clearance. He earned his in the early 1980s, entering the agency with a master’s degree in business administration, experience managing inventory for a women’s apparel chain, and a yearning for a higher calling than retail.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2013/07/nsas-big-dig/67406/

Michael Hastings last piece before his death was on CIA Chief John Brennan

Per his wife on Piers Morgan's show.

http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/05/elise-jordan-on-her-late-husband-michael-hastings-he-always-had-at-least-five-hot-stories-going/

Scientists say sugar at levels considered safe is harmful

When mice were fed a diet that was 25% added sugars – an amount consumed by many humans – the females died at twice the normal rate and the males were less likely to reproduce and hold territory, scientists said in a study published Tuesday.

The study shows "that added sugar consumed at concentrations currently considered safe exerts dramatic impacts on mammalian health," the researchers said in the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. "Many researchers have already made calls for reevaluation of these safe levels of consumption."

The study’s senior author, University of Utah biology professor Wayne Potts, said earlier studies fed mice sugars at levels higher than people eat in sodas, cookies, candy and other items. The current study stuck to levels eaten by people.

The mice lived in "seminatural enclosures," and the experimental and control groups lived in direct competition with each other. After being fed the two diets for 26 weeks, the mice lived for 32 weeks in mouse barns -- enclosures of 377 square feet ringed by three-foot walls. There were some nesting areas that were more desirable than others.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sn-sugar-20130813,0,982020.story

Anthony Weiner to lead an assessment of dignity in public office. #clapperreview

@jamesrbuk: Anthony Weiner to lead an assessment of dignity in public office. #clapperreview

@emptywheel: Larry Summers to head oversight of banks. #ClapperReview

@jdotp: Cookie Monster appointed to Commission on Safety of Chocolate Chips #ClapperReview

@JC_Christian: #ObamaAppoints @realdonaldtrump to review toupee standards #ClapperReview

Hahahaha.

DHS spying on pipeline opponents and forwarding info to Transcanada.

The infiltration of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance action camp and pre-emption of the Cushing protest is part of a larger pattern of government surveillance of tar sands protesters. According to other documents obtained by Earth Island Journal under an Open Records Act request, Department of Homeland Security staff has been keeping close tabs on pipeline opponents — and routinely sharing that information with TransCanada, and vice versa.

In March TransCanada gave a briefing on corporate security to a Criminal Intelligence Analyst with the Oklahoma Information Fusion Center, the state level branch of Homeland Security. The conversation took place just as the action camp was getting underway. The following day, Diane Hogue, the Center’s Intelligence Analyst, asked TransCanada to review and comment on the agency’s classified situational awareness bulletin. Michael Nagina, Corporate Security Advisor for TransCanada, made two small suggestions and wrote, “With the above changes I am comfortable with the content.”

Then, in an email to TransCanada on March 19 (the second day of the action camp) Hogue seems to refer to the undercover investigation taking place. “Our folks in the area say there are between 120-150 participants,” Hogue wrote in an email to Nagina. (The Oklahoma Information Fusion Center declined to comment for this story.)

It is unclear if the information gathered at the training camp was shared directly with TransCanada. However, the company was given access to the Fusion Center’s situational awareness bulletin just a few days before the Cushing action was scheduled to take place.

In an emailed statement, TransCanada spokesperson Shawn Howard did not directly address the Tar Sands Resistance training camp. Howard described law enforcement as being interested in what the company has done to prepare for activities designed to “slow approval or construction” of the pipeline project. “When we are asked to share what we have learned or are prepared for, we are there to share our experience – not direct law enforcement,” he wrote.

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/undercover_agents_infiltrated_tar_sands_resistance_camp_to_break_up_planned/

DiFi refused to let Wyden explain his opposition to the FAA's section 702 loophole

There was no "legal" way to discuss mass surveillance. Wyden tried time and time again.

Wyden's former deputy chief of staff doubts Clapper decided to lie unilaterally.

Months later, the FISA Amendments Act, which the Administration contends authorizes its PRISM program, passed without the open debate that the President now contends he wanted all along. And, again, I'm only touching on a fraction of the efforts just Senator Wyden made to compel the administration to engage the American people in a democratic debate. I, obviously, haven't mentioned the Director of National Intelligence's decision to lie when Wyden "asked whether the NSA had collected 'any type of data at all on millions of Americans.'" (Btw: Given that Wyden shared his question with the ODNI the day before the hearing, I am highly skeptical that Clapper's decision to lie was made unilaterally.) Or the fact that the Obama Administration repeatedly fought lawsuits and FOIA requests for, again -- not sources and methods -- but the Section 215 legal interpretation that the Administration claims authorizes its surveillance authorities.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130810/09240524136/jennifer-hoelzers-insiders-view-administrations-response-to-nsa-surveillance-leaks.shtml

Link from this OP:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023444327