The Black Budget

Covert action. Surveillance. Counterintelligence. The U.S. “black budget” spans over a dozen agencies that make up the National Intelligence Program.

The Washington Post

50 years later, hotline to Moscow still relevant

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) - The Washington-Moscow Hot Line, used by U.S. and Russian leaders for frank discussions about crises including the 1967 Six-Day War and the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, marks its 50th birthday Thursday with the nations still grappling with competing interests in regional conflicts.
The next crisis could be just around the corner, said Roald Sagdeev, a former director of the Soviet space exploration program who was among the scheduled speakers at Fort Detrick in Frederick, where the Army maintains a satellite link for the hotline.
"It's very important to make sure we can keep this, especially at the time of what's happening in Syria," Sagdeev, now a University of Maryland physics professor, said Wednesday. "We should stay with at least keeping what we have for the rainy day."
Despite popular myth and movie lore, the president doesn't use a red phone to talk with his Russian counterpart. In fact, the connection established in 1963 was for written communications only. A voice component was added two decades later as the system evolved from an undersea telegraph cable to today's exchange of data by both satellite and fiber-optics.

WREX13

Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew

WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.
The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say. The programs, code-named Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew, among others, filter and gather information at major telecommunications companies. Blarney, for instance, was established with AT&T Inc., T -0.72% former officials say. AT&T declined to comment.

WSJ

Email service Lavabit abruptly shut down citing government interference

Founder of service reportedly used by Edward Snowden said he would not be complicit in 'crimes against the American people'

If you weren't scared already...

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

The Guardian

What We Need to Know About PRISM

A lot remains uncertain about the number of users affected by the NSA PRISM surveillance program that is taking place, the extent to which companies are involved, and how the NSA handles this sensitive data. Does the NSA regularly collect and examine a huge swath of the cloud communications of American and foreign Internet users? Does the agency present evidence and seek careful judicial review to obtain limited amounts of user data related to individual investigations? Or is the answer somewhere in the middle, with queries being constructed such that algorithms scan most or all of the accounts, identifying a smaller set of "interesting" accounts whose contents are sent to the NSA?

EFF

U.S. gov't destroyed my chance for fair trial

"If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it," he said. "All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants."

 CBS News

Space Oddity- Commander Chris Hadfield

It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class

"It is time for not just economists but roboticists, like me, to ask, “How will robotic advances transform society in potentially dystopian ways?” My concern is that without serious discourse and explicit policy changes, the current path will lead to an ever more polarized economic world, with robotic technologies replacing the middle class and further distancing our society from authentic opportunity and economic justice."

MIT Technology Review

Throw-Away Society

"Actual sea-battles were rare, and even then were fought close to shore. Ships were roped together in lines to face an enemy fleet and showers of arrows and missiles would have been exchanged. Each side then resorted to hand-to-hand fighting as they attempted to board their opponents' ships. The warriors in the prow were specially selected for this task. The aim was not to destroy enemy craft, but to capture them if possible, as they represented a considerable investment in time, resources and labour."
BBC

This description of the Vikings not destroying enemy ships due to their value made me recall Toffler's theories on Transience and the Throw-Away Society:

"Anti-materialists tend to deride the importance of "things." Yet things are highly significant, not merely because of their functional utility, but also because of their psychological impact. We develop relationships with things. Things affect our sense of continuity or discontinuity. They play a role in the structure of situations and the foreshortening of our relationships with things accelerates the pace of life."
Future Shock, Chapter 4

The Future Will Be Silent-OMD