USAHitman | Conspiracy News |  |
- Pirate Party members nominate Snowden, Manning for Nobel Peace Prize
- California company builds 5-foot android robocops to control crime-ridden areas
- NSA spied on Germany’s Schroeder over Iraq War opposition – report
- ‘Password’ is the password: Govt is a easy target for hackers
- Record number of Americans exonerated in 2013
- Feds make first step towards hemp legalization
- New law makes ‘offending’ Bahrain king punishable by up to 7 years in prison
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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 04:45 PM PST
 Sweden’s and Iceland’s Pirate Party representatives have jointly nominated whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning for 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. For Snowden, it is the fourth such nomination – his third this year.“We are nominating Manning and Snowden together because the courage of Manning inspired in Snowden and both of them have inspired thousands of people all over the world to speak truth to power and demand transparency and accountability in their own societies,” said a joint letter by representatives in the EU parliament from the Pirate Party of Sweden and MPs from the Pirate Party of Iceland published Monday. The ‘Pirates’ filed their joint nomination letter for the American whistleblowers just before the February 1 deadline. The emotional text says that the two “outstanding candidates… have achieved and exceeded all the qualifications required to be worthy laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize” of 900,000 euro. The prize is awarded annually on December 10 to those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies.” Addressing the Nomination Committee, the Pirate Party members say that the whistleblowers “have inspired change and encouraged public debate and policy changes that contributed to a more stable and peaceful world” by leaking a trove of classified documents. In the case of Manning, these documents pointed to “a long history of corruption, serious war crimes, and a lack of respect for the sovereignty of other democratic nations by the United States government in international dealings.” Snowden’s leaks in turn revealed “the horrific scope of the global espionage network of the Anglo-American spy agencies” whose activities “endanger a wide array of civil liberties… such as free speech and the right to privacy,” the letter says. Manning, 26, leaked hundreds of thousands of documents via the whistleblowing website, WikiLeaks, while serving as a US Army soldier in Iraq. The files included shocking “Collateral murder” video of US helicopter crew gunning down a group of Iraqi people, among them Reuter’s journalists. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for his leaks. According to the Pirate Party, not only did Manning’s revelations “foster public dialogue on the legitimacy, suitability, and relevancy of the military interventions carried out by US troops,” but also “fueled democratic uprisings around the world, including a democratic revolution in Tunisia” and “helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring movements.” Former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and CIA employee Snowden, 30, has been living in Moscow under temporary Russian asylum since summer 2013, after stepping into the limelight in Hong Kong and having his passport revoked by the US. Snowden disclosed top secret files to independent journalists across the world, prompting media outlets to start the unceasing flow of leaks on the global surveillance practices of the NSA and its counterparts, the so-called Five Eyes alliance. “Mass surveillance erodes the fundamentals of modern democracies, making local laws to protect privacy meaningless within its global scope. Snowden has shown us that journalists can no longer protect their sources, lawyers can’t protect their clients and doctors can’t protect their patients’ information,” Pirate Party members said. The “NSA leaks” sparked calls for “a global action… to reinstate constitutional rights of privacy for citizens which is completely essential to healthy democracies,” the letter maintains. The Pirate Party’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Snowden became the fourth such request, with the first formal nomination filed in July 2013 by a Swedish professor, and the two others following in January 2014. Several Norwegian MPs, including a former government minister, nominated Snowden on January 29, while the 58-member Green/European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament named the whistleblower their nominee on January 31. Source       |
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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 04:05 PM PST
 The local neighborhood watch may be beefing up its robotic arsenal if a new technology startup gets its way anytime soon.In a bid to make local communities safer and give local law enforcement agencies more tools to fight crime, California-based Knightscope recently unveiled a line of K5 robots that it believes will “predict and prevent crime with an innovative combination of hardware, software and social engagement.” The new K5 units have a look that resembles R2-D2 from “Star Wars,” but their casual design masks a highly advanced robot that its creators hope will drastically cut down on crime. Weighing in at 300 pounds, the five-foot K5 can patrol a neighborhood and uses a built-in laser to form a 3D map of the surrounding area in 270-degree sweeps. Four built-in cameras, meanwhile, are capable of scanning up to 1,500 license plates a minute. Data collected through these sensors is processed through our predictive analytics engine, combined with existing business, government and crowdsourced social data sets, and subsequently assigned an alert level that determines when the community and the authorities should be notified of a concern,” the company’s website states. According to Fox News, Knightscope already has multiple clients lined up to test beta versions of the K5 in 2014. Rather than sell the robots outright, the company will charge $1,000 a month for daily eight-hour shifts. Inspired to take action after 20 children were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Knightscope CEO William Li is convinced that innovation in law enforcement is necessary to effectively make use of officers’ time and manpower. “Our aim is to cut the crime rate by 50% in a geo-fenced area, which would increase housing values and safety while lowering insurance costs,” he told USA Today. “If we can do that, I think every mayor will be calling us.” Read More Here    |
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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 04:05 PM PST
 The US eavesdropped on former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over his staunch criticism of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, says a new report by German journalists.Schroeder was added to the NSA espionage targets list as number 388 by 2002, Munich daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and NDR revealed in their reports on Tuesday. Media quoted unnamed US government officials and “NSA insiders” who saw Snowden documents. Schroeder told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that he was not surprised by the report. The paper added that NSA spying involved not only the detection of connection data, but also written and spoken communications. In 2002, Schroeder and his Social Democratic party parted with America’s views, stating at the beginning of its election campaign that Germany would not provide troops or money for an invasion of Iraq. The party made a promise that it would stay out of the war, even if it was approved by the UN. “We are ready [to give] solidarity. But this country under my leadership is not available for adventure,” Schroeder said in August 2002. “We didn’t shy away from offering international solidarity in the fight against international terrorism. We did it because we were, and are, convinced that it is necessary; because we knew that the security of our partners is also our security. But we say this with equal self-confidence: we’re not available for adventures, and the time of checkbook diplomacy is over once and for all,” he added. Der Spiegel previously revealed that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone has been on an NSA target list since 2002 and is code-named “GE Chancellor Merkel.” In the NSA’s Special Collection Service (SCS) document cited by the magazine in October 2013, the agency said it has a “not legally registered spying branch” in the US embassy in Berlin. It also warned that its exposure would lead to “grave damage for the relations of the United States to another government.” Using the spying branch, NSA and CIA staff have tapped communications in Berlin’s government district with high-tech surveillance. According to a secret document from 2010, such branches exist in about 80 locations around the world, including Paris, Madrid, Rome, Prague, Geneva, and Frankfurt. Source    |
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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 04:04 PM PST
 Government agencies in the United States are often failing to implement even the most basic deterrents that would boost their cybersecurity efforts, a new Senate report found.According to the report – authored by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and staff members at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee – numerous federal agencies are leaving themselves open to cyberattacks simply by declining to fix simple, straightforward network problems. The new findings surfaced despite the fact that the United States has boosted spending on cybsersecurity. Roughly $65 billion has been spent on securing computers and networks since 2006, the survey stated, but agencies “continue to leave themselves vulnerable, often by failing to take the most basic steps towards securing their systems and information.” One disturbing example was the lack of strong passwords in the government networks; a common key code was simply the word “password.” Deficiencies in federal systems spanned multiple agencies, including those housing sensitive information such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service. Even the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for supervising the security of all unclassified federal networks, is apparently lacking in its preparation. The report found “hundreds of vulnerabilities” on its systems, including “failures to update basic software [anti-virus programs, Microsoft Office, etc.]…the sort of basic security measure just about any American with a computer has performed.” “None of the other agencies want to listen to Homeland Security when they aren’t taking care of their own systems,” Coburn, the ranking Republican on the committee that drafted the report, told The Washington Post. “They aren’t even doing the simple stuff.” Some security breaches have been chalked up to pranks, such as last year’s hack that used the Emergency Broadcast System to air messages warning of zombie attacks in Michigan, Montana, and North Dakota. Others have been more serious. A year ago, hackers stole a database of information regarding the United States’ 85,000 dams, including the “potential for fatalities if breached.” Meanwhile, the report found the Nuclear Regulatory Commission routinely stored security information for nuclear plants on a shared, unprotected drive. The SEC risked disaster as well, exposing sensitive information about the stock market’s systems and security. In addition to these cases, more than 48,000 other “incidents” involving federal systems were reported to the DHS in the 2012 fiscal year. To make matters even more worrying, federal tests found that civilian agencies don’t detect about 40 percent of intrusions into their networks. In the face of the Senate report, the White House acknowledged there’s still more work to be done in order for federal agencies to secure their networks. “Almost every agency faces a cybersecurity challenge,” Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president on cybersecurity policy, said to the Post. “Some are farther along than others in driving awareness of it. It often depends on whether they’ve been in the crosshairs of a major cyber incident.” Over the course of the past year, US officials have warned that cyberattacks now constitute the number one security threat to the country, and that China in particular has been responsible for a new digital offensive. In a particularly troubling case for the US, Chinese hackers were able to access sensitive information regarding some of the country’s most sophisticated weaponry. China, for its part, adamantly denies the accusations. It claims to have “mountains of data” detailing attacks from the United States, and regards the US itself as the leading digital hacker.    |
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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 04:03 PM PST
 A record number of Americans were set free in 2013 after being wrongfully convicted of a crime, according to new data from the National Registry of Exonerations.According to the report, 87 people were exonerated in the United States last year, and 40 of those freed were related to murder convictions. Almost 20 percent of all cases involved individuals who originally pleaded guilty to the charges they were accused of, primarily because they were offered a reduced sentence in exchange for their admission of guilt. As the Guardian noted, nearly a third of the people exonerated were involved in cases where it was later revealed that a crime was never committed in the first place. Some individuals, such as Nicole Harris – originally convicted of murdering her four-year-old son – spent years in prison before being released. According to the registry, Harris was “coerced” into confessing her guilt after officers detained her for a 27-hour period in which they threatened and pushed her, denied her food and water, and refused to let her use the restroom. It was later found that her son’s brother watched her son wrap an elastic band from a fitted bed sheet around his neck while playing, and likely caused his death by asphyxiation – a story the jury never heard since a judge ruled the boy incompetent to testify. While it may be logical to think the rise in exonerations is attributed to sophisticated DNA evidence, the report actually details a significant decline in cases overturned due to such evidence. University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, who helps edit the registry, linked the decline to the fact that police agencies and prosecutors are more likely to investigate themselves. More than 30 percent of exonerations were connected to the police reopening cases or sharing information with other agencies. “The sharp, cold shower that DNA gave to the criminal justice system has made us realize that we have to re-examine other cases as well,” he told National Public Radio. “That was a serious wake-up call, because that showed we made mistakes in a lot of cases where it never occurred to anybody that a mistake had been made.” “I think this reflects that prosecutors and judges have become more sensitive to the dangers of false accusations and are more willing to consider that a person is innocent even where this is no DNA to test or an alternative perpetrator coming forward,” he told the Guardian. Since 1985, more than 1,300 people have been exonerated of wrongful convictions, the registry noted. Still, not everyone agrees that 2013’s record year is due to a new willingness by law enforcement to police itself. Although cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have established “conviction integrity units” dedicated to reviewing past convictions, Scott Burns of the National District Attorneys Association said agencies are finally spending money to do what they’ve always done. “We always did that, we just didn’t call them something,” Burns said to NPR. “We always reviewed big cases, multiple murders or high-profile cases. What you’re seeing now is that it’s institutionalized — it’s given a name, probably a line item on a budget in a large office — and that’s good as well.” “Anything we can do to ensure the integrity of a conviction is a positive and good thing, and we’re for that.” Source    |
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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 04:01 PM PST
 The United States federal government may not be ready to sanction marijuana use, but a new agriculture bill is set to legalize preliminary stages of hemp production in states that allow the practice. A new farm bill, passed by Congress on Tuesday, would allow universities and state agriculture departments to establish industrial hemp growing programs. If these research programs go well, they could pave the way for commercial hemp farming to become a reality. Hemp is a plant in the same family as marijuana, though it lacks its cousin’s high levels of THC and is therefore much less potent. It’s used to create numerous products, including cooking oil, clothing, paper, and rope. According to the Associated Press, the US imported about $11.5 million in hemp products in 2011. “This is big,” Eric Steenstra, president of advocacy group Vote Hemp, told the AP. “We’ve been pushing for this a long time.” Although hemp used to be grown in the United States, its cultivation was outlawed under the 1970’s Controlled Substances Act. Supporters of the decision’s review believe, however, that allowing states to move forward with industrial hemp will help the country gain a slice of a market that’s currently controlled by China. “Oregonians have made it clear that they believe industrial hemp should be treated as an agricultural commodity, not a drug,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who helped author the amendment, told The Oregonian in a statement. “By including language easing restrictions on industrial hemp in states where it is legal, Congress sends an important message that we are ready to examine hemp in a more appropriate way.” As AP noted, 10 states have already passed laws enabling hemp cultivation, though federal law has kept those efforts from moving forward. These states are Colorado, Washington, California, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia – some of which are preempting the farm bill’s passage by beginning to draft rules and regulations to govern hemp production. According to The Wall Street Journal, some law enforcement groups are not pleased with the development. Because hemp looks so much like marijuana, they argue that legalizing its production could have an adverse effect on their effort to keep the illegal drug off the streets. Read More Here    |
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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 04:00 PM PST
 Offending King Hamad can now result in up to seven years in prison, Bahrain announced Tuesday. The news comes just days before the third anniversary of the Shiite-led, Arab Spring-inspired protests against the kingdom’s Sunni monarchy. Bahrain amended its 1976 penal code to carry a minimum one-year and maximum seven-year sentence, including a fine of up to US$26,000, for “publicly offending the king of Bahrain, its national flag or emblem,” state news agency BNA reported. The prison sentence could rise above seven years if the “offense was committed in the presence of the king,” BNA added. Prior to the law change, the same charges against the monarchy carried a minimum sentence of a few days. Bahrain convicted and jailed two activists for one and four months, respectively, in 2012 for Twitter comments that supposedly insulted King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa. Social media comments are included in the new edict. Rodney Shakespeare, chair of the Committee against Torture in Bahrain, told RT that the tightened restrictions on dissent show a kingdom in its final throes. “The only thing it will do is make the Khalifa regime even more ridiculous, even more pompous,” he said. “This is something in the last stages of their power, before they get overthrown; in particular, they get overthrown by members of their own side.” Also on Tuesday, a criminal court in the capital of Manama sentenced 23 Shiites to five years in jail for taking part in unlicensed protests and alleged attacks with petrol bombs, AFP reported. Another Shiite received three years in jail. In mid-February 2011, a popular Bahraini uprising was eventually quashed one month later by a brutal crackdown by the monarchy’s security forces. In addition, Saudi-led forces assisted in suppressing protests in an effort to support the Al-Khalifa kingdom. Protesters continue to fight with security forces in Shiite areas around Manama. At least 89 people have been killed since demonstrations began against the US-supported Al-Khalifa monarchy, according to the International Federation for Human Rights. Shakespeare told RT that the new offense laws will harden resistance rather than deter further dissidence. “[The monarchy’s] power comes as a result of poison gas, lead shot, imprisonment, torture, and bullets,” he said. “But there’s no loyalty given by anyone to the Al-Khalifa, not even from their own sycophants and placements. We are getting information that tells us that everybody now wants them out.” Source   |
