August 7, 2013

Most 2013 job growth is in part-time work, survey suggests

“Over the last six months, of the net job creation, 97 percent of that is part-time work,” said Keith Hall, a senior researcher at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “That is really remarkable.”

Hall is no ordinary academic. He ran the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that puts out the monthly jobs report, from 2008 to 2012. Over the past six months, he said, the Household Survey shows 963,000 more people reporting that they were employed, and 936,000 of them reported they’re in part-time jobs.

“That is a really high number for a six-month period,” Hall said. “I’m not sure that has ever happened over six months before.”

The Establishment Data Survey provides the headline-grabbing hiring number that’s most cited in news media, but it doesn’t distinguish between part-time and full-time work. Similarly, the Household Survey doesn’t say whether the part-time workers have found new jobs or represent workers whose employers have shifted them from full time to part time.

Both surveys provide estimated snapshots of hiring, since it’s impossible to track every hire and job loss in real time.

“There is something going on if such a large share of the hiring is part time,” Hall said.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/02/198432/most-2013-job-growth-is-in-part.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_term=news#.UgHcn8u9KSO#storylink=cpy

August 7, 2013

Al Qaida groups lead Syrian rebels’ seizure of air base in sign they continue to dominate anti-Assad

Forces

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels spearheaded by al Qaida in Iraq and its local allies took control Tuesday of a crucial military airport in northern Syria, opening a vital supply line between the rebel-held north and Turkey.

The end of the siege that had clamped down the airport since last October began Monday, when two non-Syrian nationals drove an armored personnel carrier, loaded with explosives, into a position manned by defenders of the regime of President Bashar Assad. The explosion devastated the Assad troops and allowed rebels to overrun the Mannagh Air Base in Idlib province.

Those rebels included multiple units affiliated with the Syrian Military Council, an umbrella group with U.S. backing. That poses an uncomfortable pairing of a group supported by U.S. resources with Islamist organizations Washington has labeled as terrorist.

The Syrian Opposition Coalition, the political component of the SMC, announced that the airbase had been “liberated’ by a mixture of nine rebel groups. They included the al Qaida-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS, and its Syrian sister organization, the Nusra Front.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/06/198675/al-qaida-groups-lead-syrian-rebels.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_term=news#.UgHafMu9KSM#storylink=cpy

August 7, 2013

Why McClatchy reported Qaeda communication NYT withheld:"We will not make deals with those in power"

http://t.co/4JL2YQ9KJY

On Sunday, McClatchy reported that the decision to close U.S. embassies and issue a travel warning last week was prompted by an intercepted communication between Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the Yemen-based head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The McClatchy report helped clarify why the U.S. government was taking such extreme caution overseas and included information about the much-discussed terror threat that at least two news organizations, CNN and the New York Times, held back at the government's request.

CNN's Barbara Starr acknowledged on air that the network withheld the names attached to the intercept, while the New York Times -- which noted holding back information in a Friday night report -- explained the decision in an article Monday.

In an article posted on the Web on Friday and published on Saturday, The New York Times agreed to withhold the identities of the Qaeda leaders whose conversations were intercepted after senior American intelligence officials said the information could jeopardize their operations. The names were disclosed Sunday by McClatchy Newspapers, and after the government became aware of the article on Monday, it dropped its objections to The Times's publishing the same information

The Washington bureau at McClatchy, the third-largest newspaper chain in the country, is known to break from the pack and skeptically questioned the Bush administration's rationale for war in Iraq when many other media outlets bolstered the government's flimsy case. McClatchy has continued its aggressive coverage of national security under the Obama administration, including looking critically at officials' public statements on drone strikes against what is detailed in classified documents.

August 7, 2013

Broad U.S. terror alert mystifies experts; ‘It’s crazy pants,’ one says

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials insisted Tuesday that extraordinary security measures for nearly two dozen diplomatic post were to thwart an “immediate, specific threat,” a claim questioned by counterterrorism experts, who note that the alert covers an incongruous set of nations from the Middle East to an island off the southern coast of Africa.

Analysts don’t dispute the Obama administration’s narrative that it’s gleaned intelligence on a plot involving al Qaida’s most active affiliate, the Yemen-based Arabian Peninsula branch. That would explain why most U.S. posts in the Persian Gulf are on lockdown, including the U.S. embassy in Yemen, which on Tuesday airlifted most of its personnel to Germany in an “ordered departure,” the government’s euphemism for an evacuation.

But how, then, does it make sense for the State Department to close embassies as far afield as Mauritius or Madagascar, where there’s been no visible jihadist activity? And why is it that countries that weathered numerous terrorist attacks – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, for example – were excluded or allowed to reopen quickly?

At Tuesday’s State Department briefing, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said there were plans to keep 19 posts closed to the public through Saturday. But she had no answers when a reporter asked: “How did the countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean get into this?”

“We make decisions post by post,” Psaki said. “That’s something that is constantly evaluated at a high level through the interagency process.”

If ordinary Americans are confused, they’re in good company. Analysts who’ve devoted their careers to studying al Qaida and U.S. counterterrorism strategy can’t really make sense of it, either. There’s general agreement that the diffuse list of potential targets has to do with either specific connections authorities are tracking, or places that might lack the defenses to ward off an attack. Beyond that, however, even the experts are stumped.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/06/198681/broad-us-terror-alert-mystifies.html?storylink=addthis#.UgHNTsu9KSP#storylink=cpy

August 6, 2013

Democracy now: A Domestic Surveillance Scandal at the DEA (interview of Reuters reporter)

AMY GOODMAN: The Justice Department has begun reviewing a controversial unit inside the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that uses secret domestic surveillance tactics, including intelligence gathered by the National Security Agency, to target Americans for drug offenses. According to a series of articles published by the Reuters news agency, agents are instructed to recreate the investigative trail in order to conceal the origins of the evidence—not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. DEA training documents instruct agents to even make up alternative versions of how such investigations truly begin, a process known as "parallel construction."

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked about the Reuters investigation.

PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: It’s my understanding, our understanding, that the Department of Justice is looking at some of the issues raised in the story. But for more, I would refer you to the Department of Justice.

AMY GOODMAN: The unit of the DEA that distributes the secret intelligence to agents is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. The unit was first created two decades ago, but it’s coming under increased scrutiny following the recent revelations about the NSA maintaining a database of all phone calls made in the United States. One former federal judge, Nancy Gertner, said the DEA program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the NSA has been collecting domestic phone records. She said, quote, "It is one thing to create special rules for national security. Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."

For more, we’re joined by the reporter who broke this story, John Shiffman, correspondent for Reuters, which published his exclusive story Monday, "U.S. Tells Agents to Cover Up Use of Wiretap Program."

Welcome to Democracy Now!, John. Why don’t you start off by just laying it out and what exactly this cover-up is.

JOHN SHIFFMAN: Thanks very much for having me.

Well, my colleague Kristina Cooke and I spoke with about a dozen or two dozen agents and obtained some internal documents that showed that what federal agents, not just DEA agents but other agents who work with the DEA and do drug investigations—what they’re doing is, is they are starting—they are claiming that their investigations start, say, at step two. They are withholding step one from the investigations. And, I should say, it’s not just NSA intercepts. It’s informant information, information obtained from court-ordered wiretaps in one case, and using those for information in a second case. They also have a large database of phone records. Whenever the DEA subpoenas or does a search warrant and gets phone records for someone suspected of involvement in drugs or gang involvement, they put all those numbers into one giant database they call DICE, and they use that information to compare different cases. All of the collection is—seems perfectly legitimate, in terms of being court-ordered. What troubles some critics is the fact that they are hiding that information from drug defendants who face trial. The problem with that is that—is that these defendants won’t know about some potentially exculpatory information that may affect their case and their right to a fair trial.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/6/a_domestic_surveillance_scandal_at_the

August 6, 2013

Users of hidden net advised to ditch Windows

Legitimate users of the Tor anonymous browsing service are being advised to stop using Windows if they want to keep their identity hidden.

The advisory comes after an attack on Tor that targeted Windows users sought to gather data that could be used to identify people.

In addition, Tor warned, people should turn off a widely used web technology that was exploited in the attack.

It is still not clear who was behind the sophisticated attack.

The code to exploit the bug was fed into the Tor network via servers owned by Freedom Hosting that ran sites accessible only via Tor. In 2011, Freedom Hosting sites on Tor came under attack by the Anonymous hacktivist collective, which claimed they hosted large amounts of images of child sexual abuse.


Tor has been funded by, among others, the Electronic Frontier Foundation digital rights group, Google, Human Rights Watch and the US National Science Foundation.


Tor advised people to stop using Windows as it feared that the action against Freedom Hosting might compromise the identity of other people who put the anonymous browsing service to legitimate uses.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23587620

August 6, 2013

The government is hacking Tor

News broke yesterday that a web hosting company called Freedom Hosting fell victim to a malware originating from Reston, Virginia.

"It’s pretty clear that it’s FBI or it’s some other law enforcement agency that’s U.S.-based," said reverse-engineer Vlad Tsyrklevich.

The founder of Freedom Hosting, Eric Eoin Marques, was even arrested in Ireland for alleged ties to child pornography and will face extradition to the USA. (Pedophiles use the dark web to host their porn collections so ownership cannot be traced.)

As if you needed it confirmed, here it is: The government is hacking Tor. (As an interesting aside, Tor was initially built as ... a government project!)

By injecting a little bit of malicious Javascript code into Freedom Hosting's servers, someone's aiming to undo Tor's privacy-enabling features. As users visited infected sites (an estimated 50% of all of the deep web), a small piece of Javascript gave your browser a unique "fingerprint." Where you go, Big Brother can now follow.

This is supposedly a federal effort to fight the Internet's pedophiles and child porn distributors. But the next item of concern is drugs, and this is leaving the customers of Silk Road (think eBay for drugs) terrified.

To put this in practical terms, if you've visited a site on Freedom Hosting's servers recently you need to change account passwords for every site you've ever used on Tor. Secondly, you'll want to use the "Use a New Identity" feature, which jumbles up your proxies all over again to give you a new "identity." Expect Bitcoin value to drop – it's the anonymous currency used in Silk Road's anonymous marketplace. Make sure you disable JavaScript in Tor's preference pane. And finally, be sure to update your browser to the most current version – the vulnerability has been fixed.


For all the drugs and sex, there are still some "good" uses of Tor's powerful anonymity. It serves to let journalists safely research touchy topics, to protect children's' identities online, and to let whistleblowers safely transmit sensitive documents. This is a super-secure backroad of the Internet that even has Edward Snowden's endorsement.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/dea-tor-malware-attack-2013-8#ixzz2bB5zl0UX

August 6, 2013

Peggy Noonan (!!?) says Christie is wrong for pooh poohing mass surveillance concerns

To call growing concerns about the size, depth, history, ways and operations of our now-huge national-security operation “esoteric” or merely abstract is, simply, absurd. Our federal government is involved in massive data collection that apparently includes a database of almost every phone call made in the U.S. The adequacy of oversight for this system is at best unclear. The courts involved are shadowed in secrecy and controversy. Is it really wrong or foolhardy or unacceptably thoughtful to wonder if the surveillance apparatus is excessive, or will be abused, or will erode, or perhaps in time end, any expectation of communications privacy held by honest citizens?

It is not. These are right and appropriate concerns, very American ones.

Consider just two stories from the past few days. The Wall Street Journal’s Jennifer Valentino-Devries and Danny Yadron had a stunning piece Friday that touches on the technological aspect of what our government can now do. The FBI is able to remotely activate microphone on phones running Android software. They can now record conversations in this way. They can do the same with microphones in laptops. They can get to you in a lot of ways! Does this make you nervous? If not, why not?

Reuters has a piece just today reporting that data gathered by the National Security Agency has been shared with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The agency that is supposed to be in charge of counterterrorism is sharing data with an agency working in the area of domestic criminal investigations.

Luckily Lois Lerner is on leave, so the IRS isn’t involved yet.

The concerns of normal Americans about the new world we’re entering—the world where Big Brother seems inexorably to be coming to life and we are all, at least potentially Winston Smith—is not only legitimate, it is wise and historically grounded.

http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/08/05/why-christie-is-wrong/

August 6, 2013

The defense that NSA activity only impacts non-US citizens and terrorists is now utterly specious

The Snowden effect continued to roll today, with fresh revelations detailing how the pervasive surveillance of the National Security Agency (NSA) is in fact linked to domestic criminal prosecution. The idea, and the defense, that NSA activity only impacts non-United States citizens and terrorists, is now utterly specious.

The NSA is one of the member agencies of a DEA unit called the Special Operations Division (SOD). The SOD, according to Reuters who broke the story, is at work “funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help” start, and win criminal investigations of United States citizens.

Therefore, there is a direct connection between the NSA and its surveillance efforts and regular criminal prosecution in the country.


What’s most surprising about today’s revelations is the process by which the DEA covers the tracks of its information. Using “parallel construction,” where information came from is hidden. Reuters tells a story in which a judge was told that a tip kicked off the investigation at hand. However, after pressing, it was admitted that the data had in fact been first captured by the NSA, and distributed by the SOD.

By creating new pasts for received data, the DEA can avoid potentially awkward questions about the legality of its evidence.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/05/dea-repotedly-hiding-nsa-data-used-to-prosecute-us-citizens/

August 6, 2013

DEA doesn't worry about showing SOD's involvement because drug traffickers don't ask to see evidence

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805


Wow that is so wrong. They know their methods are suspect but assume no one will examine them. If someone does ask then they drop the case.