Free Republic

The U.S. government requested and received the metadata for accounts connected to, and in alignment with, President Donald J. Trump.That’s billions of billions of datapoints on millions of American citizens, their locations, their devices, their ip addresses and ultimately their real identities and connected activity as attributed to -and connected with- their connected social media accounts. Essentially, turning Donald J. Trump into the center of a surveillance virus.People then say – how could the Jack Smith special counsel possibly comb through all of those users and all of that connected metadata? The answer is Artificial Intelligence; but the serious concern...

Artists have been fighting back on a number of fronts against artificial intelligence companies that they say steal their works to train AI models — including launching class-action lawsuits and speaking out at government hearings. Now, visual artists are taking a more direct approach: They're starting to use tools that contaminate and confuse the AI systems themselves. One such tool, Nightshade, won't help artists combat existing AI models that have already been trained on their creative works. But Ben Zhao, who leads the research team at the University of Chicago that built the soon-to-be-launched digital tool, says it promises to...

Special counsel John Durham has issued trial subpoenas for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Fusion GPS, and Perkins Coie as he continues to prosecute his findings as special counsel, from which he charged cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who in 2016 represented the Clinton campaign, with lying to the FBI. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, the DNC, Washington-based private intelligence firm Fusion GPS, and law firm Perkins Coie, Sussmann’s former employer, meanwhile, are trying to fend off Durham’s efforts to compel them to hand over previously withheld documents. The campaign and Sussmann’s lawyers argue that attorney-client privilege should...

The "Tech Executive-1" in John Durham's indictment of a Democratic cybersecurity lawyer testified in a lawsuit that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when asked to testify by the special counsel. Rodney Joffe, former senior vice president at Neustar, coordinated in 2016 with Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was indicted last year for allegedly concealing his clients, including Hillary Clinton's campaign and Joffe, from the FBI in September 2016 when he pushed debunked claims of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank. Alfa Bank filed a "John Doe" lawsuit and deposed Joffe in...

The social network, under fire for spreading misinformation and other issues, said the change was part of its bet on a next digital frontier called the metaverse.

This article was posted on Free Republic years ago and considering the state of the Nation, I think it's worth posting again. It illustrates the mathematical techniques that would have been used by the British to identify the "conspirators" during the Revolutionary war, if cell phones existed. Don't think for a moment that this is not occurring today and possibly with us.London, 1772.I have been asked by my superiors to give a brief demonstration of the surprising effectiveness of even the simplest techniques of the new-fangled Social Networke Analysis in the pursuit of those who would seek to undermine the...

A federal appeals court has found that the US National Security Agency's controversial bulk collection of citizens' phone records was against the law. "We conclude that the government may have violated the Fourth Amendment and did violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") when it collected the telephony metadata of millions of Americans," the opinion by Judge Berzon, published Sept. 2, says.

A former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee has been indicted and arrested on charges of making false statements to the FBI during an investigation into the leak of classified information, the Justice Department announced Thursday. As part of the investigation, law enforcement officials seized years worth of phone and email records of a New York Times reporter, Ali Watkins, who had previously been in a romantic relationship with the staffer, the newspaper reported Thursday evening. The Senate staffer, James A. Wolfe, was indicted on three counts of making false statements while he served as the committee’s director of...

Former National Security Agency technical director and surveillance state whistleblower William Binney has long said 9/11 could have been prevented had the NSA not capitulated to big-money private contractors less than a month prior to the attacks. Mainstream media, perhaps capitulating to its own monied corporate owners, relegated Binney’s explosive claims to the backburner for years. However, on Thursday — two days after the Senate Judiciary Committee began debating whether or not to reauthorize massive and controversial NSA surveillance programs — Salon finally headlined Binney’s damning claim and its backstory. The attacks of September 11, 2001, could have been thwarted...

The Obama administration allowed the National Security Agency to gather Americans’ Internet information, including emails, until 2011 under a secret program launched by President George W. Bush, according to newly leaked documents. The data collection was first reported by the Guardian newspaper. An official confirmed its existence to the Associated Press. The NSA ended the program that collected email logs and timing, but not content, in 2011 because it did not do what was needed to stop terrorist attacks, according to the NSA's director. Gen. Keith Alexander, who also heads the U.S. Cyber Command, said all data was purged at...

For years Americans' right to privacy, as granted by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has come under threat as the country's surveillance systems have grown. After intelligence leaks by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, however, the NSA's domestic dragnet is finally getting the attention that many people feel it deserves.

1. Ahmad Abu Adass In 2005, the last year of his life, Ahmad Abu Adass was 22 and still living with his parents in Beirut, Lebanon. He was kind and liked people, his friends later told investigators, but none of them thought he was very sophisticated. The best way to describe him was simple, one said. He was generous and a little naïve. He was very weak, physically. A Sunni Muslim of Palestinian descent, Adass had become interested in religion and now spent many hours at the Arab University Mosque near his home. It was there, after a prayer session,...

FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday he plans to serve his entire 10-year term, even as controversy swirls over his attempt to rebut President Donald Trump’s claim that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the election. “You’re stuck with me for another 6½ years,” Comey said during a cybersecurity conference at Boston College. Comey was appointed 3½ years ago by then-President Barack Obama. Controversy erupted last weekend after Trump tweeted that Obama had tapped his phones at Trump Tower during the election. Trump offered no evidence of his claim. Comey asked the Justice Department to publicly reject the allegation...

They know how you browse the internet, your favorite TV shows and where you shop and travel. Data collected by internet and media companies is a powerful tool, and the big mergers planned by AT&T with Time Warner and Verizon with Yahoo offer those firms more data that can be used to target consumers with content and advertising. Privacy advocates say the prospect of firms using all that online and offline data without safeguards could be alarming. (emphasis mine ) "Twenty-first century media is all about the ability to gather information on a single individual regardless of where they are—whether...

Before the signing of the USA Freedom Act in June 2015, one of the NSA's most controversial programs was the mass collection of telephonic metadata from millions of Americans — the information about calls, including the telephone numbers involved, the time and the duration but not the calls' content — under a broad interpretation of the Patriot Act's Section 215. From this large "haystack," as officials have called it, NSA analysts could get approval to run queries on specific numbers purportedly linked to international terrorism investigations. The problem for the NSA was that the haystack was only about 30 percent...

"I tend to err on the side of security," said 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the Hugh Hewitt Show. 2016 Republican presidential candidate and billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump said that he supports reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act and bulk cell phone metadata collection by the National Security Agency in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show earlier this month. In the above-embedded clip, Hewitt asks Trump, “On metadata collection, Ted Cruz is glad the NSA got out of it. Marco Rubio wants it back. What’s Donald Trump think?” “Well, I tend to err on the side...

Facing accusations from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida that he's supported weakening surveillance powers, presidential rival and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas hit back against his rival on Thursday. The two Republican presidential candidates have been at each other over their differing views on reauthorization of provisions of the Patriot Act. The provisions in question involve the bulk collection of telephone metadata by the National Security Agency. Rubio is in a contingent led by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., that is blasting people who supported ending the bulk collection, claiming the practice is key to fighting terrorist threats. But Cruz, who...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz offered an extended defense Thursday of his support for ending bulk data collection even as the threat of terrorism surges. In a lengthy policy speech at a conservative think tank, Cruz tried to rebut Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's forceful argument that Cruz's votes to end aspects of the National Security Agency's data collection program should raise red flags for voters concerned about national security. Cruz has tried to stake out a compromise position between the muscular interventionism of Rubio and the surveillance-skeptical libertarianism of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both GOP presidential competitors. "There are some on...

Fox News continues to propagate the propaganda that the NSA needs to have our personal phone record metadata in order to prevent terrorism and that Americans against government intrusion of our privacy are hurting America. Phone record metadata includes the phone numbers involved, the time of the call, and the location of the phones at the time. This information is available from the phone carriers. We all have cell phone bills that show each and every phone call. For the San Bernadino muslim terrorist shooting, Fox News claims the FBI does not have access to metadata phone record information of...

At the Aspen Security Forum two weeks ago, James Comey (and others) explicitly talked about the "going dark" problem, describing the specific scenario they are concerned about. Maybe others have heard the scenario before, but it was a first for me. It centers around ISIL operatives abroad and ISIL-inspired terrorists here in the US. The FBI knows who the Americans are, can get a court order to carry out surveillance on their communications, but cannot eavesdrop on the conversations, because they are encrypted. They can get the metadata, so they know who is talking to who, but they can't find...