Let's not make a big deal out of this. 640kg of reactor-grade plutonium is only enough for a bit over 100 fission bombs / fusion bomb first stages, merely enough to make the recipient roughly tied for being the world's sixth most armed nuclear power.

Nothing to see here.

Interesting article on the details of what he's charged with here, with screenshots of the operation he stands accused of running.

While the details of the arrest are still hazy, one thing is clear - they've had this guy in their sights since 2011. It's not surprising that they issued a sealed indictment for him, mind you, that's not particularly unusual for a case like this where the subject is unlikely to be extradited and would avoid your jurisdiction if the indictment was public (nor is the US in any way unique in this regard). And since I've seen others commenting about this: yes, the Secret Service is the correct body to have jurisdiction over this, as they (strangely) are in charge of enforcement against financial crimes. Back in the early days of commercially available inkjet printers, the nerdy high school/college program I went to (TAMS) once got a visit from the secret service when one of the students figured out that he could print good enough replica dollar bills on one to fool the scanner on the drink machine in the lounge. The total volume of the forgery had to be tiny, I'd be surprised if it was more than $100, but still, if you feel like getting involved in financial crime, expect the Secret Service to be looking out for you. ;)

The scandal here would be if this was an extrajudicial "kidnapping" in the Maldives, with the US swooping up in a van, grabbing the guy, and jetting him off to Guam to use as a bargaining chip, as has been alleged by the guy's MP father. I seriously doubt all that, but we'll see where the truth lies.

TFA says he was arrested in Guam (a US territory). The "kidnapped in the Maldives" thing seems to be coming from the Russian media, which isn't exactly the most trustworthy source on the planet (but at least it's a lot better than North Korea! ;) )

Russia (148th) might have been lower in the index had it not been for the stubbornness and resistance shown by its civil society. But the authorities keep on intensifying the crackdown begun when Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and are exporting their model throughout the former Soviet Union. From Ukraine (127th, unchanged) and Azerbaijan (160th, -3) to Central Asia, Russia’s repressive legislation and communications surveillance methods are happily copied. Moscow also uses UN bodies and regional alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its efforts to undermine international standards on freedom of information.

Criticism of the regime is common since the major demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 but media selfcensorship is far from disappearing. The federal TV stations continue to be controlled and, in response to the “return of politics in Russia,” the authorities have chose repression. Ever since Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in May 2012, more and more draconian laws have been adopted. Activists, news media and bloggers have all been targeted. Defamation has been criminalized again, websites are being blacklisted and the range of activities that can be construed as “high treason” is now much broader. “Traditional values” are used to justify new restrictions on freedom of information, including the criminalization of “homosexual propaganda” and “insulting the feelings of believers.”

Not like the US is a bed of roses - its #46 standing puts it below countries like Botswana and Papua New Guinea, only one place above Haiti. But compared to Russia....

There wouldn't be so many injuries if such a large chunk of the people setting them off weren't drunk ;)

If there's was any country with that special combination of whale-hunting and pyromania to do it, it'd be Iceland ;)

Forgot to mention this: https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

That's probably the funniest noir moment about this. The Washington Post, a newspaper, is being trusted with data so sensitive they don't even want to reveal some of it publicly.

A newspaper! I think I'd rather give my credit card information to Target than trust a newspaper company with knowing anything about the internet.

I would count the days until lax security leads to the raw data leaking onto the general internet, but it's probably already been read by Unit 61337.

It doesn't specify all of them, but it does specify some of them:

There are others, too, but this would imply that if one of the legitimate targets had a slashdot account, or some other message board, anyone posting or reading the same site might be scooped up into the list of "incidental" targets.

Anyone showing signs of being a "likely" American, according to the article, were then "minimized". ie, their names were scrubbed. Of course their criteria for determining likely American status is not very rigorous.

Out of curiosity, where did you hear this?

I think it's really interesting that of the "minimized" identities listed in the article, one of them is

Does this mean they were reading Obama's communications after he was elected to become President, and then scrubbed his name from it?

They're sucking up all kinds of communications metadata, but it's separate and unrelated to the programs discussed in the article.

Here's the relevant paragraph from the article:

They use this information from Snowden, the 160,000 intercepted messages, showing that nearly 10 people were targetted "incidentally" for every 1 legitimate target. With that 10 to 1 ratio, and a transparency report released in june showing that there were almost 90,000 legitimate targets, the math comes out to approximately 1 million Americans "incidentally" targetted.

Of course it's a crock to say these people's communications were spied upon "incidentally". They were explicitly targetted for incidental reasons such as being in the same IRC channel, using a foreign IP address, etc.

What I don't get, though, is that the list of "minimized" targets whose identities were scrubbed as being likely Americans includes "a sitting President". Does this mean they spied on President Obama's communications, and then scrubbed his identity from it? Were these legitimate targets sending threatening emails to thanksobama@whitehouse.gov or what? Did they scrub any reference to his name, even when it didn't involve communications originating from him?

How did he wind up as any of these "incidental" targets?

Every single country in the world treats its own citizens differently from how it treats foreign nations' citizens. Governments as we know them could not even function if this were not the case.

??? I don't see that all. The links are just google image searches on "reykjavík fireworks", "brenna gamlárskvöldið", and "jóðhátíð í eyjum". Oh, hmm.... I'm betting that because I'm searching from Iceland I get differently biased results. I know that my regular google searches at least bias towards Icelandic sites. Okay, well, basically picture this for an hour while several dozen of these are ongoing, or summer festivals like this.

We kinda like fire.

Hmm, interesting, they actually limit how many can be shot off?

Yes, your description of size, wind, etc are accurate. Also it's a rather moist climate, not much fire risk. And most buildings are concrete. And the city is half surrounded by ocean. And since the money goes to support the rescue services, the incentive is to encourage people to shoot off as many as possible, rather than the other way around.