The mysterious gas is Fentanyle, in gaseus form, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... .Fentanyle is 100 times more potent than morphine

This particular Fentanyle has been manufactured and supplied by one pharmaceutical manufacturer in Kaunas, Lithuania, albeit prior to 1991. There were investigative journalists who have covered this topic exhaustively, in details several years ago.

Fentanyle has been used in Nord Ost operation and it was not a success. Hundreds of hostages died from overdose and Russians do not like to bring this instance of heavy handed handling of situation.

They can do this until they get another legal spank once again. Who is Google anyway to decide the "public interest"? Since when the public interest trumps the private interest and how and why Google self-appointed to be the judge and the jury to decide what is relevant or what is not?

This is a classic way technical intelligence specialists operate. Lets analyze practical example: the target is a database. The potential attack vectors are following (but obviously not limited to): a)compromised hardware which allows to download data from the server b) compromised software which allows to download data from the server c) compromised specialist (s) which download the data d) intercepted communications,

Rule #1: any gathered data is verified by comparing it to independent source. Rule #2: the sources cannot know about each other. Only if these two rules are met the data can be considered as data which has passed basic verification. "Physical subversion", "blackmail", "infiltration" are day to day activities, the bread and butter, for all those agencies.

Amazon is a middleman. But you have a choice. For example, if you do not like Amazon, you can go to Ebay, or Alibaba, or you can use internet to reach out the manufacturer of whatever is that you looking for.

Amtrak is just a one source, of many. Intelligence agencies not only get the information, but also get this information via different channels to have redundancy and to verify those copies against each other. Sources do not know about each other. That is basic rule in operations against the enemy. To begin with, most likely Amtrak serves have been hacked by NSA long time ago and they have the information directly. In addition to that they have insiders, on the payroll, to get the same data as well as interpretations on the data. Call it "customer" support. There is the last avenue, "constitutional", is to go and get subpoenas or other boring methods. Such redundancy was needed to give impression that the public has "privacy". Spying was performed first and, later, when the case was built, "different" sources were shown. All for the appearance of "privacy". Greyhound buses, Urban transit, Amazon, Ebay, iTunes, Fedex, USPS, EZ pass,: everyone has a "file" recorded in relationship databases available for query.

Imagine Chinese have the ability not only to track location of every phone, but also to activate at will. In the past intelligence operations took year to find important targets, establish contacts, recruiting and learning about inner working of organizations of interests. In order to spy now all you need is a telephone # or email. That being said, would you be comfortable if you knew that Chinese have a capacity to listen not only the phone calls but also to record conversations near the phone at any time. Perhaps there are many professions where it does not matter what the telephone holder is talking about, but there are plenty of professions that can have a profound impact to security: military, intelligence, scientific areas for example. The truth is people are conditioned to assume that it is ok if someone listens, but it is also truth that every government have state secrets and China is no exception.

I think that Germany is sending the wrong man home. If US has any specialists worth their salt, then their station chief will be the driver, security guard. A cook perhaps, or public relations officer. If you remember from recent Snowden's revelations, officers are given made up identities. That being said, what is wrong with these Germans? The last time we have checked, Germany is an occupied nation since WW2 , it has occupiers' army and some must have forgotten who is the boss.

Some politicians would benefit from returning from the moon to earth, and not thinking about traveling from earth to the space. There are many issues that are many times cheaper to resolve, and would improve the world, the real world, in a meaningful way. I am all for the space exploration and new technologies. All of such endeavors need to be financed with private voluntary contributions.

I wanted to guess when anal and vaginal searches will become new normal, standard procedure. Sorry for direct and not necessarily tasteful reference here. I am sure that bearded men, sitting in the caves, will spread the new gossip about devices in bod cavities and will watch in disbelief what people in US allow for TSA personnel to do on themselves.

Hopefully more countries will follow to encourage data keeping in the origination country. Next step will be ensuring that data is not forwarded to other countries without permission.