Monday, November 11, 2013
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Friday, November 8, 2013
.@ATT @ATTCustomerCare CIA pays AT&T to spy on phone data
"The report Thursday of a CIA-AT&T operation exposes a whole new layer of state-corporate spying on the people of the United States and the world.
Details of the operation, first published by the New York Times, make clear that AT&T, the largest US telecommunications provider, is allowing the CIA to sift through its vast call database, not in response to any subpoena or court order, but rather as part of a voluntary contract under which the company is being paid more than $10 million a year by the intelligence agency.
In addition to its millions of customers, the company also handles connections between long distance carriers and local telephone networks all over the world, with tens of billions of minutes of voice calls per year passing through its facilities around the globe.
The CIA-AT&T operation duplicates some of the massive data-mining and domestic spying operations carried out by the National Security Agency, details of which have been exposed in recent months through documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The Times report cited a "senior intelligence official" who argued that this overlap was justified because the CIA requires "a certain speed, agility and tactical responsiveness that differs from other agencies. The need to act without delay is often best met when the CIA has developed its own capabilities to lawfully acquire necessary foreign intelligence information."
Acting "without delay" in the CIA's case increasingly involves launching drone missile attacks to assassinate perceived enemies of Washington, while killing significant numbers of innocent civilians.
AT&T issued a statement Thursday acknowledging that it is paid by the government to provide information, while refusing to comment on the report that it had concluded such a deal with the CIA.
"In all cases, wherever any governmental entity anywhere seeks information from us, we ensure that the request and our response are lawful and proper," the company said.
This self-serving claim notwithstanding, there is every indication that the CIA-AT&T operation, like its counterparts being directed by the NSA, is being conducted in flagrant violation of international law and the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The CIA's access to metadata covering tens of millions of Americans who are customers of AT&T also suggests a violation of US statutes barring the agency from conducting domestic spying operations. In what amounts to less than a fig leaf to cover such violations, unnamed US officials said that when the company provides records of international calls that involve US phones "it does not disclose the identity of the Americans and 'masks' several digits of their phone numbers."
Citing these unnamed officials, the Times adds, however, that "the agency can refer such masked numbers to the FBI, which can issue an administrative subpoena requiring AT&T to provide the uncensored data. The bureau handles any domestic investigation, but sometimes shares with the CIA the information about the American participant in those calls."
The Washington Post cited other legal concerns raised by the program. It points out that by law, "Every telecom operator is governed by regulations on CPNI, or customer proprietary network information," which it is required to protect from third parties. The information AT&T handed over to the CIA falls under this regulation.
Given the absence of a court order or a subpoena, "This suggests that AT&T may have stepped out of bounds when it entered into its deal with the CIA and began providing details of US-based phone numbers."
The latest revelations, coming on top of the exposure of massive spying on European citizens as well as the tapping of the personal phones of leaders such as Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, will have reverberations across the Atlantic. European regulators and politicians have vowed to subject a bid by AT&T to acquire the European cell phone provider Vodafone to tight scrutiny.
AT&T, Verizon and other telecom companies have a long record of close collaboration in the US government's illegal domestic spying operations.
Under the Bush administration, a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) established through documents obtained by a former AT&T technician that the company allowed the NSA to set up secret offices inside its facilities, giving it direct access to the "switches" through which phone calls and Internet data are routed.
So egregious was the participation of the telecoms in the Bush administration's illegal domestic spying operations that the government was compelled to seek legislation (the FISA Amendments Act) granting them retroactive immunity against any legal actions—a measure which, along with expanded spying powers, then US senator and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama supported.
Some five years later, this collaboration involves not only the telecoms but Internet companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, YouTube and Apple as well as thousands of other technology, finance and manufacturing firms, which are rewarded with both government funds and access to classified information. Under its Corporate Partner Access Program, revealed in a document released by Snowden last August, the NSA, after obtaining orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, paid out $278 million last year to pay for access to "high volume circuit and packet-switched networks."
Far from defending the constitutional rights of their customers, these companies have proven willing accomplices in the establishment of a police-state surveillance system whose real purpose is not to combat terrorism, but to amass information on the general population with the aim of protecting the banks, corporations and super-rich.
On Tuesday, the US Senate Intelligence Committee, meeting in a closed session, voted 13-to-2 to approve a measure providing annual funding for the NSA and other US intelligence agencies. Thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, it is now known that this so-called "black budget" amounted to $52.6 billion in 2013, including $10.8 billion for the NSA alone.
In this year's annual funding measure, the Senate committee includes something extra. According to a press release issued by the panel, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 provides for "important measures to protect against insider threats by adding necessary funds to deploy information technology detection systems across the Intelligence Community." It empowers the Director of National Intelligence "to improve the government's process to investigate (and reinvestigate) individuals with security clearances to access classified information."
In other words, the response of the Democratic leadership in the US Senate to the public outrage generated by Edward Snowden's revelations of the police-state spying by the NSA is to promote a crackdown and witch-hunt within the US intelligence agencies, aimed at preventing anyone else from exposing criminal state conspiracies to the people of the US and the world."
rest at http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/08/nsat-n08.html
Report: IRS refunded $4B to identity thieves
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service issued $4 billion in fraudulent tax refunds last year to people using stolen identities, with some of the money going to addresses in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Ireland, according to an inspector general's report released Thursday.
The IRS sent a total of 655 tax refunds to a single address in Lithuania, and 343 refunds went to a lone address in Shanghai.
In the U.S., more fraudulent returns went to Miami than any other city. Other top destinations were Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta and Houston.
The IRS has stepped up efforts to fight identity theft, but thieves are getting more aggressive, said the report by J. Russell George, Treasury's inspector general for tax administration. Last year, the IRS stopped more than $12 billion in fraudulent refunds from going to identity thieves, compared with $8 billion the year before.
"Identity theft continues to be a serious problem with devastating consequences for taxpayers and an enormous impact on tax administration," George said in a statement. The fraud "erodes taxpayer confidence in the federal tax system."
Thieves often steal Social Security numbers from people who don't have to file tax returns, including the young, the old and people who have died, the report said. In other cases, thieves use stolen Social Security numbers to file fraudulent tax returns before the legitimate taxpayer files.
The IRS, which takes pride in issuing quick refunds, often sends them out before employers are required to file forms documenting wages, the report said.
"The constantly evolving tactics used by scammers to commit identity theft continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing the IRS, and we take this issue very seriously," the IRS said in a statement. "The IRS has a comprehensive and aggressive identity theft strategy that focuses on preventing refund fraud, investigating these crimes and assisting taxpayers victimized by it."
Despite budget cuts, the agency said, agents have resolved more than 565,000 cases of identity theft this year, three times the number of cases resolved at the same time last year.
A separate report by George said the number of identity theft victims is on the rise as thieves get more aggressive.
Through June, the IRS identified 1.6 million victims who had their identities stolen during this year's tax filing season, the report said. That compares with 1.2 million victims in 2012.
Many of these people didn't realize they were victims until they submitted their returns only to learn from the IRS that someone else had already used their Social Security number to file and claim a refund.
The IRS does a good job of eventually identifying the proper owner of Social Security numbers, but the process can be lengthy, the report said. For cases closed between August 2011 and July 2012, it took an average of 312 days to resolve the case and issue a proper refund, the report said.
The IRS said it has resolved most of this year's identity theft cases within 120 days.
Last year, the IRS issued 1.1 million refunds to people using stolen Social Security numbers, the inspector general's report said. Those refunds totaled $3.6 billion. By comparison, the IRS issued $5.2 billion in refunds to people who stole Social Security numbers in 2011, the report said.
Additionally, the IRS issued 141,000 refunds last year to people using stolen taxpayer identification numbers, which are typically used by foreign citizens who earn money in the U.S. Those refunds totaled $385 million, the report said.
Florida is a big target of identity theft in part because of the large number of older residents living there. Older and younger people can be targets for identity theft because many don't meet the income requirements to file a federal tax return.
.@Koch_Industries @DavidHKoch Kochs and Republicans launch bid to snuff out wind-energy tax incentives
"A key tax incentive credited with boosting wind-energy capacity in the U.S. is due to expire in eight weeks, and fossil fuel lobbyists are working hard to blow it to oblivion.
The Koch-backed conservative group Americans for Prosperity is launching an advertising campaign calling on lawmakers to allow the production tax credit (PTC) to expire on Dec. 31.
The wind industry says the tax credit was critical in helping it to attract as much as $25 billion in private investment last year, all the while helping the country reduce carbon emissions. A single multinational company credits it with adding hundreds of jobs at its American factories.
Extending the tax credit for five years could cost the federal government $18.5 billion, by one congressional estimate. That's just too much, says the fossil fuel sector, which just so happens to compete with wind energy.
Politico reports on AFP's $75,000 ad campaign:
"The people we're focusing on right now are not the low-hanging fruit and they're not the people that we're not going to get," Christine Harbin Hanson, AFP's federal affairs manager, told POLITICO. "We're reaching for the middle." In this case, that refers to "conservatives that purport to oppose government meddling in the marketplace" but "need a little nudging," she said. AFP will roll out two ads per week (none the week of Thanksgiving), with the first two targeting Republicans Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska and Lamar Smith of Texas.
So far, Hanson says 44 House Republicans and one Democrat, Nick Rahall of coal-loving West Virginia, have signed onto an anti-PTC letter being circulated by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.)."
The Obamacare Sign-Ups No One Is Talking About
"Obamacare's first month was a mess. After nearly 40 days, HealthCare.gov still doesn't work right, derailing health insurance sign-ups for those in the more than 30 states using the website.
But sign-up efforts in the states that aren't using Healthcare.gov tell a different story. These 14 states and the District of Columbia decided to create their own health insurance marketplaces, and some have seen tremendous success. Others, like Maryland and Oregon, are hampered by problems like those imperiling the federally run site.
Obamacare's fate in these states is just as uncertain as at the federal level, yet success there is crucial if the law is to take hold and thrive. Grass-roots, state-run success stories could inspire others to do more to help the law in the future, while failures could further undermine support for the entire endeavor.
Here's a look at sign-up efforts in the states that aren't using HealthCare.gov.
California
America's most populous state -- and home to 15 percent of the nation's uninsured -- set itself up to be Obamacare's bellwether. Covered California took in more than 47,000 applications for coverage during the first five weeks of enrollment.
Keith Colmar, 61, already is benefitting from the Affordable Care Act. The unemployed plumber dropped his insurance last month because he couldn't afford the $500 monthly premium. "It was either that or not make a mortgage payment," said Colmar, who lives in Tustin, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles.
Last week, he decided to see if Covered California could help. The result: he's getting no-cost coverage from Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program. California is among the about half of states expanding Medicaid to more low-income residents. "I called the 800-number and in 20 seconds I got ahold of a human being and discussed everything," Colmar said.
California has its share of problems, too. The state hasn't been certifying workers tasked with helping people enroll at the expected speed, leaving the 10-person team working for the Community Health Alliance of Pasadena unable to actually sit down and help people fill out applications until this week, said CEO Margaret Martinez."
Lara Logan Apologizes For Botched '60 Minutes' Benghazi Report, Says Show Will Issue Correction
"In a humiliating retreat from a piece she had staunchly defended, "60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan admitted on Friday morning that she and the news magazine had made a "mistake" in their reporting of a controversial story about the Benghazi attacks. She apologized to viewers and said "60 Minutes" will issue a correction about the reliability of one of her key sources, security contractor Dylan Davies, on its next program.
"We were wrong to put him on air," she said, adding, "We will apologize to our viewers and we will correct the record on our broadcast on Sunday night."
It emerged on Thursday that Davies, who gave Logan a hair-raising, detailed account of his actions during the 2012 attack, had previously told the FBI that he hadn't even gone to the site where it took place. This was the second occasion where Davies had been recorded as saying that he wasn't at the scene of the crime. He had already admitted to doing so once, but CBS and Logan had firmly backed him, saying that he had lied to his employer to protect himself.
Lying to the FBI, however, is a different matter, and "60 Minutes" pulled the report and said it was "reviewing" the new information to determine whether it had been misled.
That review led to Logan's apology on Friday morning.
"The most important thing to every person at '60 Minutes' is the truth, and today the truth is that we made a mistake," she said, calling it a very "disappointing" situation.
Logan said that the emergence of the FBI was "the moment for us when we realized that we no longer had confidence in our source." She said that the show had taken the vetting of Davies "very seriously," but that he had "misled" everyone.
"CBS This Morning" host Norah O'Donnell asked Logan, "Why would you stand by this report after Dylan Davies admitted lying to his own employer?" Logan said that Davies had always portrayed that lie as part of a patriotic, selfless desire to help his fellow security workers, even though he was not supposed to be at the compound."
