During a simple discussion of the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices, a US radio program experienced a unique “technological meltdown” on Thursday, prompting many to question whether the NSA was censoring the show.
While American drones patrol the skies in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, the United States is also looking to establish a similar presence in the world’s oceans – by using underwater drones.
The new ocean-faring drones, called “Slocum Gliders,” won’t need fuel to function like their aerial counterparts do. Instead, they’ll power themselves with the ocean current itself, stealthily scanning the surrounding area and feeding information back to other military vessels. Continue reading “Navy’s ocean-powered drones to wage underwater war”
An Arabic language student was told he cannot sue two FBI agents and three TSA agents for a 2009 incident in which he was held at Philadelphia International Airport for carrying flashcards and a book which were critical of US policy in the Middle East.
In defending the NSA’s surveillance policies, many have cited the agency’s claim that it merely collects phone numbers dialed, lengths of calls, and other metadata. Yet researchers now say the NSA can identify individuals in that vast collection of data.
Scholars at Stanford University in California set out to determine how, if at all, the NSA’s metadata collection impacts the individual Americans whose information is swept up. The indiscriminate collection of phone records is one of the NSA’s primary surveillance programs, and one of the first revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. US President Obama sat down with Charlie Rose of PBS in June to defend the government’s position. Continue reading “NSA can easily find individuals hidden in metadata – study”
TOKYO (AP) — Threatening lawsuits and protests, opponents are gearing up to fight a decision by Okinawa’s governor that could pave the way for a new U.S. military base on the southern Japanese island.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel welcomed Friday’s decision, calling it “the most significant milestone” so far in a long-running battle to realign U.S. forces in Okinawa. The new base is designed to reduce the impact of the heavy U.S. military presence in Okinawa by replacing another base in a more congested area, but opponents want the operations moved off Okinawa completely. Continue reading “Opponents to fight new US military base on Okinawa”
A United States federal judge said Friday that the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk phone data collection program doesn’t violate the law.
Millions of patients in England are expected to be forced to wait at least a week to get an appointment with their family doctor next year, a medical body has warned.
Some of the nation’s biggest banks and mortgage companies have defrauded veterans and taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars by disguising illegal fees in veterans’ home refinancing loans, according to a whistleblower suit unsealed in federal court in Atlanta.
As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.
Critics are calling the practice the new “debtors’ prison” — referring to the jails that flourished in the U.S. and Western Europe over 150 years ago. Before the time of bankruptcy laws and social safety nets, poor folks and ruined business owners were locked up until their debts were paid off. Continue reading “Local courts reviving ‘debtors’ prison’ for overdue fines, fees”
Every day hundreds of thousands of travelers are subjected to long lines and intrusive screenings by the Transportation Security Administration. Under the pretext of protecting Americans from terrorists the TSA, an agency which has never actually captured a terrorist in its ten year history, has spent billions of dollars on what they claim is a necessity in today’s dangerous world.
President Barack Obama on Thursday signed a compromise budget that reduces the risk of another government shutdown and a defense bill that cracks down on sexual assault in the military and smooths the path for transferring detainees from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It is time to crank up the Looney Tunes theme song because Wall Street has officially entered crazytown territory. Stocks just keep going higher and higher, and at this point what is happening in the stock market does not bear any resemblance to what is going on in the overall economy whatsoever. So how long can this irrational state of affairs possibly continue? Stocks seem to go up no matter what happens. If there is good news, stocks go up. If there is bad news, stocks go up. If there is no news, stocks go up. On Thursday, the day after Christmas, the Dow was up another 122 points to another new all-time record high. In fact, the Dow has had an astonishing 50 record high closes this year. Continue reading “The Stock Market Has Officially Entered Crazytown Territory”
Providing additional evidence that the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is protecting “banks too big to fail,” Pulitzer Prize winning financial reporter David Cay Johnston has revealed that the DOJ has refused to force JPMorgan Chase to comply with an ongoing investigation into the bank’s possible knowledge of Bernard Madoff’s fraud scheme of a few years ago.
Over a week ago, I warned readers of the Natural News email newsletter not to use UPS for shipments this Christmas. That warning turned out to be entirely too optimistic: UPS is now in a crisis situation with countless thousands of packages not delivered on time. The company is playing the public relations spin game to try to assuage shippers and customers, but something is very, very wrong at UPS that you’re not being told. Continue reading “Something is REALLY wrong with UPS, and it’s far worse than the media is reporting”