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Shannon Kent(Photo: Courtesy of the NSA)

A Dutchess County native who died in service to the country will be honored at a post office in Pine Plains.

U.S. Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon M. Kent was one of four Americans killed in Syria in a January suicide bombing.

The 35-year-old graduate of Stissing Mountain High School was in her fifth tour of duty.

A post office at 7722 South Main St. will be named in her honor after a bill introducing the measure was signed into law by President Donald Trump, according to a release from Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-Rhinebeck, who introduced the bill in April.

The bipartisan bill passed the Senate in November after being passed in the House of Representatives in October.

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"The courage and devotion to our nation shown by Senior Chief Petty Officer Kent should continue to serve as an inspiration to us all, and I am elated Dutchess County will be home to this permanent fixture honoring her life, service, and legacy," Delgado said in a statement.

Kent, who grew up in Pine Plains,enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 11, 2003 and then graduated from boot camp and Recruit Training Command in Illinois in February, 2004, according to the Navy.

Achief cryptologic technician in the Navy, Kent's name was added to the National Security Agency's National Cryptological Memorial,located inside the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Kent, a wife and mother of twochildren, was a recipient of several honors, including the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, twojoint service commendation medals, the Navy and Marine Corps commendation medal, the Army commendation medal and the Joint Service Achievement medal. She also survived thyroid cancer in 2016 and returned to active duty.

Geoffrey Wilson: gwilson@poughkeepsiejournal.com; 845-437-4882; Twitter:@GeoffWilson_

Read or Share this story: https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/local/2019/12/20/bill-name-pine-plains-post-office-after-shannon-kent-signed-into-law/2715215001/

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Pine Plains Post Office to be named after Shannon Kent - Poughkeepsie Journal

from the good-for-him dept

There are very few things in life that former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden and I agree on. For years, he was a leading government champion for trashing the 4th Amendment and conducting widespread surveillance on Americans. He supported the CIA's torture program and (ridiculously) complained that having the US government publicly reckon with that torture program would help terrorists.

But, there is one thing that he and I agree on: putting backdoors into encryption is a horrible, dreadful, terrible idea. He surprised many people by first saying this five years ago, and he's repeated it a bunch since then -- including in a recent Bloomberg piece, entitled: Encryption Backdoors Won't Stop Crime But Will Hurt U.S. Tech. In it, he makes two great points. First, backdooring encryption will make Americans much less safe:

We must also consider how foreign governments could master and exploit built-in encryption vulnerabilities. What would Chinese, Russian and Saudi authorities do with the encrypted-data access that U.S. authorities would compel technology companies to create? How might this affect activists and journalists in those countries? Would U.S. technology companies suffer the fate of some of their Australian counterparts, which saw foreign customers abandon them after Australia passed its own encryption-busting law?

Separately, he points out that backdooring encryption won't even help law enforcement do what it thinks it wants to do with backdoors:

Proposals that law-enforcement agencies be given backdoor access to encrypted data are unlikely to achieve their goals, because even if Congress compels tech firms to comply, it will have no impact on encryption technologies offered by foreign companies or the open-source community. Users will simply migrate to privacy offerings from providers who are not following U.S. mandates.

Indeed, this is the pattern we have seen in Hong Kong over the last six months, where pro-democracy protesters have moved from domestic services to encrypted messaging platforms such as Telegram and Bridgefy, beyond the reach of Chinese authorities. Unless Washington is willing to embrace authoritarian tactics, it is difficult to see how extraordinary-access policies will prevent motivated criminals (and security-minded citizens) from simply adopting uncompromised services from abroad.

None of this is new, but it's at least good to see the former head of various intelligence agencies highlighting these points. At this point, we've seen intelligence agencies highlight the value of encryption, Homeland Security highlight the importance of encryption, the Defense Department highlight the importance of encryption. The only ones still pushing for breaking encryption are a few law enforcement groups and their fans in Congress.

Filed Under: backdoors, encryption, michael hayden

Read more:
Michael Hayden Ran The NSA And CIA: Now Warns That Encryption Backdoors Will Harm American Security & Tech Leadership - Techdirt

Out of thousands of stocks that are currently traded on the market, itisdifficult to identify those that will really generate strong returns. Hedge funds and institutional investors spend millions of dollars on analysts with MBAs and PhDs,who areindustry experts and well connected to other industry and mediainsiders on top of that. Individual investors can piggyback the hedge funds employing these talents andcanbenefit from their vast resources and knowledge in that way. We analyze quarterly 13F filings of nearly 750 hedge funds and, by looking at the smart money sentiment that surrounds a stock, we can determine whether it has the potential to beat the market over the long-term. Therefore, lets take a closer look at what smart money thinks aboutNational Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA).

National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA) investors should pay attention to a decrease in hedge fund interest recently. NSA was in 15 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of September. There were 18 hedge funds in our database with NSA holdings at the end of the previous quarter. Our calculations also showed that NSA isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q3 rankings and see the video below for Q2 rankings). Video: Click the image to watch our video about the top 5 most popular hedge fund stocks.

5 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds

Hedge funds' reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn't keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research has shown that hedge funds' large-cap stock picks indeed failed to beat the market between 1999 and 2016. However, we were able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the Russell 2000 ETFs by 40 percentage points since May 2014 (see the details here). We were also able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that'll significantly underperform the market. We have been tracking and sharing the list of these stocks since February 2017 and they lost 27.8% through November 21, 2019. That's why we believe hedge fund sentiment is an extremely useful indicator that investors should pay attention to.

Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies

RENAISSANCE TECHNOLOGIES

We leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example Europe is set to become the world's largest cannabis market, so we check out this European marijuana stock pitch. One of the most bullish analysts in America just put his money where his mouth is. He says, "I'm investing more today than I did back in early 2009." So we check out his pitch. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. We also rely on the best performing hedge funds' buy/sell signals. Let's analyze the key hedge fund action surrounding National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA).

Story continues

At Q3's end, a total of 15 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of -17% from the second quarter of 2019. The graph below displays the number of hedge funds with bullish position in NSA over the last 17 quarters. With hedgies' sentiment swirling, there exists an "upper tier" of key hedge fund managers who were adding to their holdings considerably (or already accumulated large positions).

Is NSA A Good Stock To Buy?

The largest stake in National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $62 million worth of stock at the end of September. It was followed by Millennium Management with a $31.9 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Winton Capital Management, Citadel Investment Group, and D E Shaw. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Navellier & Associates allocated the biggest weight to National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA), around 0.2% of its 13F portfolio. Winton Capital Management is also relatively very bullish on the stock, dishing out 0.19 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to NSA.

Due to the fact that National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA) has faced a decline in interest from the entirety of the hedge funds we track, we can see that there is a sect of fund managers who sold off their positions entirely last quarter. At the top of the heap, Jonathan Barrett and Paul Segal's Luminus Management cut the biggest position of the 750 funds monitored by Insider Monkey, valued at close to $9.7 million in stock. Dmitry Balyasny's fund, Balyasny Asset Management, also dumped its stock, about $4.8 million worth. These moves are important to note, as total hedge fund interest fell by 3 funds last quarter.

Let's also examine hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA) but similarly valued. We will take a look at NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSEAMEX:NG), Euronav NV (NYSE:EURN), Cannae Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNNE), and Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE:FSS). This group of stocks' market values resemble NSA's market value.

[table] Ticker, No of HFs with positions, Total Value of HF Positions (x1000), Change in HF Position NG,16,211750,6 EURN,18,138289,2 CNNE,19,241748,0 FSS,19,77508,-1 Average,18,167324,1.75 [/table]

View table hereif you experience formatting issues.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 18 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $167 million. That figure was $138 million in NSA's case. Cannae Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNNE) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand NovaGold Resources Inc. (NYSEAMEX:NG) is the least popular one with only 16 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA) is even less popular than NG. Hedge funds dodged a bullet by taking a bearish stance towards NSA. Our calculations showed that the top 20 most popular hedge fund stocks returned 37.4% in 2019 through the end of November and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 9.9 percentage points. Unfortunately NSA wasn't nearly as popular as these 20 stocks (hedge fund sentiment was very bearish); NSA investors were disappointed as the stock returned 0.4% during the fourth quarter (through the end of November) and underperformed the market. If you are interested in investing in large cap stocks with huge upside potential, you should check out the top 20 most popular stocks among hedge funds as 70 percent of these stocks already outperformed the market so far in Q4.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.

Related Content

Originally posted here:
Here is What Hedge Funds Think About National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) - Yahoo Finance

Following the Conservative Partys largest victory in 30 years, NSA is calling on the newly re-elected leader of the party and prime minister to take immediate action to unify the nation and deliver on the promises made.

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker said: For the last three years we have been left in limbo waiting for one thing or another to happen, crippled by indecision and with a seriously divided society. But having reached the end of this general election period, with a returned prime minister holding the strongest mandate this country has seen in decades, we can be sure that at least the first layer of uncertainty has been removed. We cannot allow our future to be based on one side winning and one losing and if the new government wants to live up to its strapline of a one nation government it will need to demonstrate that we are all equal stakeholders in our future

During the course of the general election campaign, the prime minister repeatedly made promises and assurances about Brexit, and the NSA will do everything it can, working with others where beneficial, to hold the government to account and provide security for the British sheep industry.

Mr Stocker continued: As far as the sheep industry is concerned the best thing we can do is accept the nations decision and move forward. We have some strong assurances from the prime minister; that a no deal at the end of 2020 should not be feared because a free trade deal with the EU can be reached by the end of 2020; that no restrictions/hurdles/paperwork will be needed relating to movement of goods between our mainland and Northern Ireland; and that British farmers will be protected from lower standard and cheaper products entering the UK market.

"The country has put its trust in the prime minister and his government to deliver on these and other crucial promises and NSA will play its part in ensuring these promises are fulfilled. We expect the Agriculture Bill, the Environment Bill, and the Food Plan to quickly come back to the table in a co-ordinated way that offers a secure future for our farmers.

Read more: The Tory plan for the first 100 days of government

NSA is emphasising the importance of avoiding any future cliff edge scenario.

Mr Stocker explained: Our industry is resilient, as we have proved this year having thrived despite the uncertainty, but we cannot keep going on this way. A clear plan and agenda must now be set by Mr Johnson, with the fallback assurance of contingency support if the government fails to achieve its objectives.

In order to allow for this to happen NSA is appealing to the prime minister for continuity in our farming and related ministers and to act quickly in any reshuffle he may now wish to do.

Over the years we have built up good relationships with incumbent ministers and have been able to support their work in a way that helps farmers. Any reshuffle should be done quickly with a requirement that engagement and relationship building with industry be a priority, Mr Stocker added.

While NSA is insistent that key promises must be met there are still outstanding proposals that have not been adequately discussed and are completely lacking in practical sense. NSA will shortly be contacting the prime minister and Defra ministers to demand proper debate around our concerns.

Mr Stocker said: Shortly before the election there was talk of a policy that would limit farmers to only selling stock to their most local abattoir. Our letter to secretary of state Theresa Villiers received a completely inadequate response and this, along with announcements about a blanket ban on live exports is irrational and would lead to outcomes completely opposite to that intended. We have seen good examples where government and industry can work together for shared objectives but we need to see consistency in this approach across all decision making

More:
Time to unify the nation and deliver on promises says NSA - Somerset County Gazette

Throughout the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Fox News Laura Ingraham hasnt been shy about jumping through hoops to defend the president and she recently claimed that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, during the inquiry, abused his power by working with the National Security Agenda (NSA) to obtain Rep. Devin Nunes phone records. But according to former NSA attorney Susan Hennessey, Ingrahams comments have zero basis in reality.

Ingraham made her claims about Schiff when far-right podcast host Sara Carter was a guest on her show on December 6. Ingraham asserted, A knowledgeable source tells The Ingraham Angle tonight that not only did Schiff get dirt from the secret subpoenas that he sent to phone companies, he also got help from the NSA. All Americans should be shocked by this and more and demand a full and immediate investigation.

Hennessey, on Twitter, responded that Ingraham doesnt even understand how the NSA works. Now a legal analyst for CNN, Hennessey tweeted, Hi, former NSA lawyer here. This is not how it works. At all. Its not how the law works. Its not how NSA works. Its not how phone records work.

In a separate tweet, Hennessey posted, Its honestly astonishing. I dont think Ive ever heard a more uninformed conversation about NSA or intelligence collection in my life. And I once had a relative corner me (at) a wedding to say NSA was blackmailingJohn McCaininto supporting immigration reform. SO THE BAR IS REAL LOW.

Hi, former NSA lawyer here. This is not how it works. At all. Its not how the law works. Its not how NSA works. Its not how phone records work. Thats all. Have a good evening. https://t.co/qtFX1axUSN

Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) December 7, 2019

Its honestly astonishing. I dont think Ive ever heard a more uninformed conversation about NSA or intelligence collection in my life. And I once had a relative corner me a wedding to say NSA was blackmailing John McCain into supporting immigration reform SO THE BAR IS REAL LOW

Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) December 7, 2019

Because on the face of it, it really does look like she went on television to repeat an outright unfounded lie. And even worse for a national security/war correspondent it would seem that she doesnt understand even extremely basic principles of the subjects she covers.

Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) December 7, 2019

Jerry Lambe, in a December 7 article for Law & Crime, notes that Hennessey isnt the only one to call out the Ingraham/Carter segment as nonsense. Bradley P. Moss, an NSA attorney, tweeted, This is pathetic. Delusional.

Lambe also points out that Patrick Boland (spokesman for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee) told the Daily Beast that impeachment investigators did not subpoena call records for any member of Congress or their staff.

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Former NSA lawyer debunks Laura Ingrahams bogus claim that Adam Schiff used the agency to obtain Devin Nunes phone records: Not how the law works -...