29898277
submission
daveschroeder writes
"Max Fisher writes in The Atlantic: "The corporate research firm has branded itself as a CIA-like "global intelligence" firm, but only Julian Assange and some over-paying clients are fooled. [...] The group's reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. [...] So why do Wikileaks and their hacker source Anonymous seem to consider Stratfor, which appears to do little more than combine banal corporate research with media-style freelance researcher arrangements, to be a cross between CIA and Illuminati? The answer is probably a combination of naivete and desperation."Link to Original Source
28091818
submission
daveschroeder writes
"In the wake of previous coverage alleging that Apple, Nokia, RIM, and others have provided Indian government with backdoors into their mobile handsets — which itself spawned a US investigation and questions about handset security — it turns out the memo which ignited the controversy is probably a fake designed to draw attention to the "Lords of Dharmaraja." According to Reuters, "Military and cyber-security experts in India say the hackers may have created the purported military intelligence memo simply to draw attention to their work, or to taint relations between close allies India and the United States." Apple has already denied providing access to the Indian government."Link to Original Source
18699772
submission
daveschroeder writes
"Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been fighting background check requirements mandated under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) since 2007. HSPD-12 is designed to implement a "common identification standard for federal employees and contractors." A standard federal background check is a part of this process. This process is standardized by the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), even for employees who have no access to classified information. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals provisionally agreed with the employees, and the case worked its way to the US Supreme Court. Now the justices have unanimously ruled that JPL scientists must submit to background checks if they want to keep their jobs. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his concurrence that, "The contention that a right deeply rooted in our history and tradition bars the government from ensuring that the Hubble telescope is not used by recovering drug addicts farcical," and continued that "that there is no constitutional right to 'informational privacy'.""Link to Original Source
18299252
submission
daveschroeder writes
"The recent release of classified State Department cables has often been compared to the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, has said he supports WikiLeaks, and sees the issues as similar. Floyd Abrams is the prominent First Amendment attorney and Constitutional law expert who represented the New York Times in the landmark New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713 (1971)) Supreme Court case, which allowed the media to publish the Pentagon Papers without fear of government censure. Today, Abrams explains why WikiLeaks is unlike the Pentagon Papers, and how WikiLeaks is negatively impacting journalism protections: "Mr. Ellsberg himself has recently denounced the 'myth' of the 'good' Pentagon Papers as opposed to the 'bad' WikiLeaks. But the real myth is that the two disclosures are the same.""Link to Original Source
