Espionage/"Intelligence"

Douglas Valentine explained the purpose or at least the subject of his study of the Vietnam Phoenix Program as “terror and its role in political warfare”. He is generous, like most Americans—even critical ones—when he writes “It will show how, as successive American governments sink deeper and deeper into the vortex of covert operations—ostensibly to combat terrorism and Communist insurgencies—the American people gradually lose touch with the democratic ideals that once defined their national self-concept.

When is a troll not a troll?
The word “troll” originated in Scandinavian folklore as a synonym for a demon. Today the word is more commonly understood to mean someone who maliciously interferes with discussions in open internet communications – such as in discussion groups and forums – through being abusive to others in the group, or by knowingly contributing misleading or distracting information.

It is sometimes hard to know whether those in power adopt a policy of confusion purposely, or through grand design. When it comes to the flawed policy of data retention on a mass scale, a burden that is bound to fall on telecommunications companies, the problem is most acute of all. What is to be kept? What falls within that broad term metadata?

A few days ago Dan Geer, the chief information security officer at In-Q-Tel, gave a keynote address at Black Hat USA.1 According to the company’s web site In-Q-Tel is a non-profit, but it’s a special sort of non-profit. It offers venture capital funding on behalf of the “intelligence community” (read government spies). During his presentation Geer proposed, among other things, that the U.S. government bolster internet security by dominating the market for zero-day vulnerabilities.

Huron Historic Gaol was once a prison complex for the Huron County of Upper Canada. The prison was designed by Thomas Young and modeled after Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon, named after a hundred eyed giant watchman from Greek mythology called Panoptes, is an institutional structure where a watchman can observe all inhabitants anonymously.

Even as an international drive against the data merchants is gathering force and voice (see, for instance, those “nature walks” by Germans from Griesheim to the Dagger Complex, stacked with spooks), the Australian side of the Five Eyes spy arrangement is being shored up. If there is one place in the Western world that has shown conspicuously little administrative and policy reform on the subject of bulk surveillance and whistleblowing, Australia is it.

One evening over drinks in Ethiopia, during his tour as a CIA officer back in the 1960s, John Stockwell expressed reservations about covert operations to a senior fellow officer named Larry Devlin. Stockwell worried that the CIA was infiltrating governments and corrupting leaders to no useful end. Devlin, well-known in spy circles for his work in the Congo, berated Stockwell:1

World history is filled with empires, e.g. the Roman and Byzantine empires, the European colonial empires, various ancient Iranian empires, the Arab Caliphate and Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union to name a few. These historic empires have one thing in common: they no longer exist. As the lifecycle of empire wanes, rather than being a benefit to the home country, sustaining empire becomes more expensive than it is worth.

BERLIN – Following German media’s recent campaigning against massive USA/CIA/NSA spy activities in Berlin (and the Pentagon’s prosaic indifference) evokes what the Germans call ‘Fremdschämen’ –the feeling of shame for the embarrassment of others: What were the Germans thinking, anyway? That they were special? Equal? Bosom buddies, perhaps, on a par with the world’s sole superpower?
The Emperor Is Naked

Despite the conclusion by US intelligence that there is no evidence of Russian involvement in the destruction of the Malaysian airliner and all lives onboard, Washington is escalating the crisis and shepherding it toward war.
Twenty-two US senators have introduced into the 113th Congress, Second Session, a bill, S.2277, “To prevent further Russian aggression toward Ukraine and other sovereign states in Europe and Eurasia, and for other purposes.” The bill is before the Committee on Foreign Relations.