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A new report states categorically that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was not hacked by Russiansor anyone elseas frequently alleged by the mainstream media, liberal intelligentsia and anti-Trump politicians.

The Nations Patrick Lawrence wrote a lengthy review of the findings made by various computer experts formerly with the NSA. Published this week, the left-wing magazines report notes two bases for their conclusion: (1) hard science shows that a remote hack of the DNC servers resulting in the breach that actually occurred would have been technologically impossible; (2) forensic review of the initial Guccifer 2.0 documents proves that they are poorly-disguised cut-and-paste jobsforgeriesintended to finger Russia.

Lawrence, by way of the experts findings, concludes that the so-called hack was actually an inside job by someone with internal access to the DNCs computer network. In other words, the DNC has (or had) a leak.

The report mostly relies on the work ofVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which was founded in 2003 in order to push back against the false claims of Iraqi WMD emanating from the second Bush White House. Despite mostly being ignored by the media so far, VIPS diligently set to work on unraveling the cocoon of misinformation surrounding Russiagate and the DNC hack narrative.

Four members of VIPS are currently concentrating on the task. They are: (1) William Binney, the NSAs former technical leader who also designed many of the programs now in use by the agency; (2) Kirk Wiebe, a former senior analyst with the NSAs SIGINT Automation Research Center; (3) Edward Loomis, the former technical director at the NSAs Office of Signal Processing; and (4) Ray McGovern, former chief of the CIAs Soviet Foreign Policy Branch.

First, VIPS noted, the NSA has the technical prowess to root out exactly what happened because their publicly known programs alone are capable of capturing any and all electronic transfers of data. As VIPS noted,If NSA cannot produce such evidenceand quicklythis would probably mean it does not have any.

Thats a drum VIPS has been beating for awhile, but, of course, thats not hard evidence. There simply wasnt much of anyuntil very recently. Those recent documents undergird the reports first contentionthe technological impossibility of the DNC breach having been a long-distance hack. Lawrence describes the impossibility like this:

The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNCs server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second. These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed.

What is the top possible speed? Somewhere around 16 megabytes per second. According to Skip Folden, a former IBM program manager and independent analyst, 22.7 megabytes per second is beyond unlikely under the circumstancesunless youre downloading the files directly using a storage device like a USB drive. He said:

A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer. Transfer rates of 23 MB/s are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance. Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB2 flash device (thumb drive).

As to the reports second contentionthat the Guccifer 2.0 documents were tainted to cast curious eyes toward RussiaFolden notes that a simple peeling away of the documents top layer of metadata shows the sloppy and intentional misattribution.

The report is lengthy and doesnt stop there. Lawrence notes multiple additional problems with the now-broken narrative: CrowdStrike is essentially an arm of the DNC itself; Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrikes co-founder and chief technology officer is consumed by Russophobia; the FBI has never once examined the DNCs servers by themselves; that famousIntelligence Community Assessment breathlessly reported as the cumulative work of 17 national security agencies was actually the work of three hand-picked analysts.

Lawrence even raises the possibility that Guccifer 2.0 was a whole-cloth creation of the DNC used to deflect away from the leaks contents and send everyone scrambling to find Russians underneath all the nations laptops and ashtrays.

That question, for now, will have to remain unanswered, but it looks like the official story is swiftly crumbling away.

[image via Shutterstock]

Follow Colin Kalmbacher on Twitter: @colinkalmbacher

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BOMBSHELL: NSA Experts Say DNC 'Hack' Was Actually a Leak and Inside Job - LawNewz

Digital rights advocates asked the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday to review the case of an American convicted with evidence gathered under FISA Section 702 warrantless National Security Agency surveillance authority meant to spy on foreign nationals.

Privacy and digital rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a petition Thursday with the nations highest court seeking review of the case ofMohammed Mohamud, an American citizen who was charged in 2012 with planning to car-bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. Information used to prosecute Mohamud was gathered using Section 702 of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act.

Section 702 authorizes NSA to tap the physical infrastructure of internet service providers, like fiber connections, to intercept foreign emails, instant messages, and other communications belonging to foreign nationals as they exit and enter the U.S. But according to NSA, the program also incidentally sweeps up the communications of Americans corresponding with, and until recently, merely even mentioning foreign targets.

NSA is legally barred from searching through Americans communications without a warrant, but that wasnt the case with Mohamud. His emails were intercepted specifically by a program dubbed PRISM, the existence of which was leaked to the press by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. PRISMgives NSA access to communications transmitted over internet edge services like Google, Yahoo, or Facebook.

Mohamud learned after his conviction that his emails were gathered under Section 702 and sought to suppress the evidence, arguing its gathering violated his Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure without a warrant. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit noted the governments conduct was quite aggressive at times but upheld the search, a move EFF, the Center for Democracy and Technology and New Americas Open Technology Institute call dangerous and unprecedented.

The ruling provides an end-run around the Fourth Amendment, converting sweeping warrantless surveillance directed at foreigners into a tool for spying on Americans, Mark Rumold, a staff attorney for EFF, said Thursday. Section 702 is unlike any surveillance law in our countrys history, it is unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court should take this case to put a stop to this surveillance.

The groups add weight to a Supreme Court petition filed by Mohamuds attorneys in July, and join a long list of battles from the courts to Congress over the legality of Section 702. Wikimedia and the ACLU are suing the government over the use of Section 702 in theFourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Congress has held several hearings this year to debate the laws renewal ahead of its expiration at the end of December.

Section 702 is at the heart of a dispute between Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, the nations top spy chief. Wyden has pressed Coats and his predecessor to provide an estimate of the number of Americans incidentally swept up in Section 702 that both claim is impossible to produce. The senator has further suggested the authority could be used to warrantlessly target Americans directly.

Congresss concerns over Section 702 have become a point of rare bipartisanship for some. Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul has fought alongside Wyden to peel back the curtain on Section 702. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham is grilling intelligence officials for information about what Section 702 gathers on lawmakers and other members of government, and if those intercepts can and are used to politically target government officials like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

In testimony to Congress intelligence chiefs including NSA Director Mike Rogers have admitted Section 702 programs have a history of compliance issues, some highlighted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves more than 99 percent of the governments secret surveillance requests.

The typically intel-friendly court chastised the government for an institutional lack of candor on a very serious Fourth Amendment issue. One such opinion said NSA has engaged in significant overcollection . . . including the content of communications of non-target U.S. persons and persons in the U.S.

As a result, NSA in April suspended a Section 702 practice known as about collection when NSA sweeps up American emails and text messages exchanged with overseas users that simply mention search terms like an email address belonging to a target but isnt to or from a target.

The agency recently told Congress its working on a technical solution to reengage about collection.

All of the pushback comes as intelligence leaders pressure Congress not just to renew Section 702 but implement it permanently. Top Republicans and Democrats have endorsed the idea, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas and Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein of California.

In a recent interview, Snowden said using Section 702 to surveil Americans requires the agency to engage in little more than word games. Privacy advocates suspect the loophole created by Section 702 likelyamounts to millions or even hundreds of millions of warrantless interceptionsbelonging to Americans.

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Supreme Court Asked to Look at Warrantless NSA Spying Powers - InsideSources

Weve reported for months on the frightening Obama Administration unmasking scandal and other Obama deep state efforts to sabotage the new Administration and undermine the Constitution and what we are doing about it.

The momentum is starting to shift.

Recent reports show that President Obamas National Security Advisor Susan Rice is being implicated in the unmasking scandal and leaking disgrace which is being exposed for what it is. We sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the National Security Agency (NSA). They ignored it, so we took them to federal court our second federal lawsuit against the NSA in the past few months.

Reports just this month reveal that Samantha Power President Obamas Representative to the United Nations is believed to have requested hundreds of so-called unmaskings of United States persons.

You read that right, President Obamas U.N. Representative is believed to have made hundreds of unmasking requests.

According to the Washington Free Beacon:

Former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power is believed to have made hundreds of unmasking requests to identify individuals named in classified intelligence community reports related to Trump and his presidential transition team, according to multiple sources who said the behavior is unprecedented for an official in her position. . . .

Efforts by the former Obama administration to obtain the names of Trump allies included in raw intelligence reports have fueled speculation that subsequent leaks to the press were orchestrated by the former administration and its allies in a bid to damage the current White House and smear Trumps most senior confidantes.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, in a recent letter to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, expressed the Committees findings, and alarm, that senior government officials offered remarkably few individualized justifications for access to this U.S. person information.

He went on:

For example, this Committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama Administration. Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate and articulated why that specific official required the U.S. person information for the performance of his or her official duties.

That person, the one whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, is believed to be Obama U.N. Representative, Samantha Power.

This is outrageous and despicable.

Interestingly, her attorney denied that she committed any of the leaks, but did not deny that she was the one implicated in the Washington Free Beacon report and Chairman Nunes letter.

Sometimes whats not said is more important than what is.

In the midst of misinformation and doublespeak, the ACLJ is pressing forward to get to the bottom of this latest shocking and embarrassing story, and to keep the pressure on to hold this lawless behavior accountable.

Today we took our next big step.

We sent what is now our third FOIA request to the NSA, seeking:

records pertaining to any and all requests former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power made to National Security Agency (NSA) officials or personnel regarding the unmasking of the names and/or any other personal identifying information of then candidate and/or President-elect Donald J. Trump, his family, staff, transition team members, and/or advisors who were incidentally caught up in U.S. electronic surveillance.

We laid out several specific requests to make sure we cover all possible angles. Heres one example:

All records, communications or briefings created, generated, forwarded, transmitted, sent, shared, saved, received, or reviewed by any NSA official or employee, where one communicant was former United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, including any communications, queries or requests made under an alias or pseudonym, and another communicant was the Director of the National Security Agency, the Chief of the Central Security Service, SIGINT production organization personnel, the Signals Intelligence Director, Deputy Signals Intelligence Director, or the Chief/Deputy/Senior Operations Officers of the National Security Operations Center, or any other NSA official or employee, referencing, connected to, or regarding in any way communication, request, query, submission, direction, instruction, or order, whereby Samantha Power sought access to or attempted to access SIGINT reports or other intelligence products or reports containing the name(s) or any personal identifying information related to [various individuals connected to President Trump] whether incidentally collected or otherwise . . . .

In the mean time, Attorney General Sessions recently announced that his Department of Justice is stepping up the investigations into illegal leaking. This is something weve been calling for and we applaud his announcement.

The momentum continues to build, and the ACLJ will stay at the forefront of the battle to protect the Constitution, defend our national security, fight government corruption, and demand accountability. We must preserve the integrity of our nations intelligence and national security apparatus. If we fail, the consequences would be devastating. Join us. Sign our Petition today.

Link:
You read that right, President Obama's UN Representative is believed to have made hundreds of unmasking requests. - American Center for Law and...

Story and images by Aaron and Melissa Dykes

Hi everyone. This piece is a bit more personal. While driving through the South, we happened upon an odd AT&T building in downtown Birmingham, Alabama when we stopped for lunch. After seeing a creepy and very serious security/surveillance man waiting at the parking garage, watching us with some sort of long telephoto lens, it struck us that this was no ordinary building.

Just like the TitanPointe "long-lines building" in New York - an AT&T front where the NSA monitors huge volumes of communications that was exposed by The Intercept and a team of bloggers they worked with - this building in Birmingham, and similar ones in major cities anywhere and everywhere across the country, was not just there to reach out and touch someone.

No, you can get goosebumps just from being near it

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Covert NSA Listening Stations in Every Major City? - Telepresence Options

Move over, Pixar theres a new CGI creature in town, and he comes from the most unlikely of places, the National Security Agency. Of the federal government agencies that youd expect to have an anthropomorphic mascot dedicated to reducing environmental waste, the NSA is probably near the bottom of the list.

The mascot, Dunk, became public knowledge in 2015, thanks to a menacing NSA tweet the agency sent to publicize its green efforts.

That effort included a school initiative teaching children how to conduct awaste audit, categorize trash, and figure out how effective they were at properly disposing of trash. Yes, the NSA wanted children to go snooping through trash, which seems almost too on the nose to be true. So youre asking me, hey Dunk, what is a waste audit? Well, youre going to dig through all of the trash in your school and then youre going to analyze it, the blue beastintonedin his nasal voice. Youll need to identify the types of trash making up the waste stream of your school and the amounts of each type of trash, by weight and volume.

Upon learning of Dunk, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for any communication and documents related to the development of Dunk. More than two years later, the NSA came through with a handful of unclassified documents.

On August 22, 2008, a graphic-design coordinator sent an email with the subject line, (U) Quick Idea. Attached was a file called recycle idea.pdf, which contained preliminary sketches for two waste-disposal bins with faces and arms. One is a round, green recycling bin, for soda cans and such; the other is an orange dumpster labeled WOOD ONLY thats disposing of a pallet. The slogan: Think Before You Throw.

The initiative was put on hold until the graphic-design coordinator returned from leave in early September. The next email exchange that the NSA included begins on October 1, when a waste-and-recycling manager inquires about the Dunk program. Just wanted to know if weve made any further progress Let me know

Two days later, the Dunk we all know and love appears in a file simply titled dunk.pdf, courtesy of the same graphic-design coordinator. Hes now a blue, rectangular recycling bin, who throws trash through a hole in the top of his head, rather than eating it via his mouth. Does the trash give him energy? What happened to his dumpster friend? Why is he called Dunk when hes clearly lobbing the trash?

The final page included in the NSAs response is the final Dunk, now with fancy purple shorts. The picture is not dated, but its presumably the type of office posting that is placed right over the trash bins. Years before Dunk was telling kids to dig through the trash, he was telling NSA workers to be mindful of their waste habits.

Think before you throw! the NSA warns. I mean, thatd be crazy, right? Imagine if your stuff ended up in the wrong place, and someone you didnt intend got ahold of it and used it improperly. Thatd be so embarrassing!

Commonly held best practices for password safety are going out the window.

Nothing (rose) gold can stay.

Including sweatproof, noise-canceling, and foldable versions several under $50.

How an actual person became a bot overnight.

Weve got your John Tucker Must Die sequel right here, folks.

Think before you throw.

We finally know who wrote the infamous document.

Because what the world needs right now is obviously another way to leave your friends on read.

The one about the media wanting him in a noose is really something.

A leaked internal document called the wage gap a myth and laid out all the reasons men are treated unfairly.

Weve heard this argument before.

How to eke a few more minutes out of your battery before everything goes dark.

Its called Stamp.

Including one for $250.

We might be getting a frowning poop emoji to go with the smiling one.

Robbie Tripp is getting owned on Twitter after posting a gushing Instagram about how much he loves his wifes curvy body.

The CMS wasnt cutting it.

It was only after a drivers dashboard went up in spontaneous flames that the company decided to do something.

Original post:
I FOIA'd the NSA's Recycling Mascot, and Now I Have More Questions Than Answers - New York Magazine