SENDAI, Japan, Dec. 30 (Reuters) – Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men.
WASHINGTON — The personal e-mail account of a State Department whistleblower was hacked, and four years worth of messages — some detailing alleged wrongdoing at the agency — were deleted, The Post has learned.
A Texas district judge was arrested on Saturday for allegedly dragging his girlfriend by her hair, choking her, leaning her over a balcony, and threatening to kill her.
The attorney for State District Judge Carlos Raul Cortez says he’s not guilty.
In the supersecret world of the nation’s spy agencies, an unassuming librarian like Kirsten Clark at the University of Minnesota might seem like an unlikely mark.
But recent revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance of phone and Internet traffic have raised concerns among librarians and put them in the front ranks of efforts to curb government bulk data collection operations. Continue reading “Minnesota librarians push to curb NSA snooping”
North Carolina – Rental cops hired by the Lake Toxaway Community Association (homeowners association) can conduct traffic stops that would be unconstitutional if performed by an actual police officer, according to a ruling handed down last week by the North Carolina Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel took up the case of Frederick Lloyd Weaver Jr, who was stopped on April 20, 2012 by an armed security guard employed by Metro Special Police and Security Services. The HOA for the Carleton Place townhomes near the University of North Carolina at Wilmington contracted with Metro for security services. Continue reading “Security guards can arrest citizens for DUI”
A Senate committee report goes to great lengths to determine all of the things that data brokers, the companies that trade in consumer data, don’t want to talk about. The 35-page report describes some of the companies’ strategies for collecting and organizing data, but significant portions of the report discuss what the companies are unwilling to talk about: namely, where they get a lot of their data and where that data is going.
Companies covered in the report include well-known firms, like Datalogix and Acxiom, as well as credit reporting companies that also trade in consumer data, like Experian and TransUnion. In the report, the committee sets out to answer four questions: what data is collected, how specific it is, how it’s collected, and how it’s used. While the first two questions turned out to be reasonably easy to answer, the companies all but stonewalled the committee on substantial answers to the latter two. Continue reading “Data brokers & private companies are spying on citizens who’re “frequent ‘text posters’””
LONDON (AP) — A German magazine lifted the lid on the operations of the National Security Agency’s hacking unit Sunday, reporting that American spies intercept computer deliveries, exploit hardware vulnerabilities, and even hijack Microsoft’s internal reporting system to spy on their targets.
Der Spiegel’s revelations relate to a division of the NSA known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, which is painted as an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets. Continue reading “Report: NSA intercepts computer deliveries”
Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to the Middle East in the first week of the new year amid a flurry of reports in the Israeli press that he has said he would consider freeing convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
PHOENIX (AP) — A suspect killed by Phoenix police in a bank robbery attempt is believed to be the same man accused in the shooting death of a Mississippi police officer and the wounding of another, the FBI said Sunday.
Fifteen months after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the narrative of the attack continues to be shaped, and reshaped, by politicians and the press.
But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks. Continue reading “‘Completely false’: Sources on ground in Benghazi challenge NYT report”
A German magazine, citing internal documents, claims the NSA’s hacking unit uses James Bond-style spy gear to obtain data, including intercepting computer deliveries and outfitting them with espionage software.
Marvine Rosales-Martinez, 27, who came upon a winning lottery ticket while blowing leaves at his landscaping job last fall, was finally allowed to collect his $1million prize this week.
ALBANY, N.Y. — Nearly a year after passage of the state’s new gun law, dealer sales of popular AR-15 semi-automatic rifles have ended in New York and arrest data show more than 1,000 gun possession charges in New York City were boosted from misdemeanors to felonies because of the changes.
Meanwhile, 59 people have been charged statewide with misdemeanors for possessing large-capacity magazines or having more than seven bullets loaded in a magazine, both outlawed by the law passed last January in the aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. Continue reading “Tougher NY gun law results in 1,146 felony charges”
Senator Ted Cruz has said that he is taking steps to renounce his mysterious Canadian citizenship – in a move he insists does not in any way indicate a run for the White House in 2016.
For the second time in as many days, an explosion rocked the Russian city of Volgograd Monday morning. Russian officials say a suicide bomber blew himself up on a trolleybus, killing at least 14 people and wounding nearly 30 others. The latest attack came one day after at least 17 people died in a suicide bombing at the city’s central rail station.
The explosion ripped away much of the bus’s exterior and broke windows in nearby buildings. The BBC reported that the explosion took place near a market in the city’s Dzerzhinsky district. It virtually paralyzed public transport in the city, forcing many residents to walk long distances to get to work. Continue reading “Russian city hit by suicide bombing for second straight day”