Finding God in a Dog

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

“The representative of Lavabit indicated that Lavabit had the technical capability to decrypt the information, but that Lavabit did not want to ‘defeat [its] own system,’” the government complained.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan immediately ordered Lavabit to comply, threatening Levison with criminal contempt — which could have potentially put him in jail.

By July 9, Lavabit still hadn’t defeated its security for the government, and prosecutors asked for a summons to be served for Lavabit, and founder Ladar Levison, to be held in contempt “for its disobedience and resistance to these lawful orders.”

A week later, prosecutors upped the ante and obtained the search warrant demanding “all information necessary to decrypt communications sent to or from the Lavabit e-mail account [redacted] including encryption keys and SSL keys.”

With the SSL keys, and a wiretap, the FBI could have decrypted all web sessions between Lavabit users and the site, though the documents indicate the bureau still trying only to capture metadata on one user.

• Syria has apparently agreed to Russia's deal and the United States is cautiously embracing it. Hopefully this means that we can avoid further American entanglement in the Syrian civil war.


• The NSA is, reportedly, going to release some of the secret FISA court opinions to the ACLU. I'm taking this with a grain of salt, since the NSA is apparently not obligated to disclose all the rulings, even in heavily redacted form. Meaning, the ACLU will probably end up with an incomplete and possibly misleading picture instead of no picture at all.


• The oil choke collar is asserting itself again.


• Why are the major news media so uninformative, and often seem so clueless? The depressing reason why is here.


• Shellie Zimmerman now claims that her husband George did not threaten her. Hence no charges will be filed. What remains unchanged is that he's still an idiot and the pro-gun side should still disavow him.


• The Spiri kickstarter has met its funding goal. I'm getting a robot! Yippie!

• The NSA collects just about everything a user does on the Internet. They also, by the way, claim to not listen in on our phone calls. Maybe no human listens to 99.99% of phone calls; but as I've pointed out before, phoneme analysis isn't that hard, drive space is cheap, and MapReduce is well-understood.


• A Wall Street banker was finally found liable for his part in the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, this is a civil case, so jail time isn't a possibility.


• SOS John Kerry promises to end drone strikes in Pakistan 'soon.' I'll believe it when I see it.


• Time Magazine points out that gay marriage in Minnesota probably wouldn't have happened if not for the Republican legislature substantially miscalculating how a proposed ban on gay marriage would play out.


• This woman may as well speak for me, at least with regards to deciding not to have kids.

• Snowden revealed to us that our emails aren't safe from Big Brother. But did you know that they're not safe from Big Oil, either?


• Speaking of which, the US House is set to vote on an Amendment to gut funding for the NSA's data mining program.


• As Detroit declares Chapter 9 bankruptcy, another US city grits its teeth and sells its memorabilia to avoid the same fate: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania


• The Works of Aleister Crowley is now available as a facsimile reprint. Nice as this is, it does press the point that the process of editing the Crowley material seems to have suffered from scope creep and other delays.


• If I was single and could marry software, I'd at least ask Homebrew out on a date. (Yes, I'm the kind of geek who uses the terminal on his Mac.)

"If they think that's relevant to their counterterrorism investigation, they give that to the FBI. Then upon the FBI has to go out and meet all the legal standards to even get whose phone number that is."

... programs run by the National Security Agency thwarted potential terrorist plots in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries — and that gathered data is destroyed every five years. Last year, fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against the database of millions of U.S. phone records ...

• Syrian rebels slaughter Shi'ites in Halta. Stuff like this is precisely why I think turning up the heat on this proxy war is a mistake.


• The White House has no plans to curtail their survailance program, despite outrage from Congress. Meanwhile, the White House is letting the media do the job of defaming Snowden and keeping their mouths shut, which is pretty much Obama's MO with any political opponent.


• Think the United States government wouldn't abuse all the data they're collecting? They did it before....


• navalny for Mayor? Yes!


• Portlandia has been renewed for two seasons. My mother will be happy because she loves the show. My friends will be happy because they have more acting opportunities. I'm happy because it means that one of SC's claims to fame - that her art was in the adult babysitter scene - is still relevant.

• Justin Raimondo calls out the Obama-can-do-no-wrong crowd on warrantless wiretapping. But, shouldn't we trust Obama because he's a good man at heart? No, we shouldn't. He might be a good man, but the office of the President doesn't need that kind of power, regardless of who's in the office.


• Why on Earth would the US Navy balk at naming a Littoral combat ship the USS Liberty? The depressing facts here.


• Via takwish comes news that the discovery of "wild" Monsanto wheat in Oregon may sink the wheat market for the Pacific Northwest as our export market in Asia shuts its doors. If true, that would be very bad news for PNW farmers. It's also bad news for Portland's economy, as all that wheat normally goes out through the Port of Portland.


• I feel awful for these parents, absolutely awful.
  
  

  "I found a receipt that said 'Shotgun $865,'" she said. ...
  
  Blaec, who had been committed seven times, "legally bought an assault weapon legally from the place [the Wal-Mart] he had walked into with a butcher knife," Bill added.
  
  The reason: Blaec was never involuntarily committed to a mental institution by the courts, so no mental health record turned up on the background check.
  
  A day after discovering the receipt, Tricia contacted police, who arrested Blaec. He allegedly confessed that he planned to open fire that weekend at Wal-Mart and also considered targeting the local movie theater.
  
  On turning in her own son to the police, Tricia said: "My first thought was, 'What have I done? I just destroyed my son's life.' And people would come up to me and say, 'No, you saved our lives.'"

  
  
  Indeed, they probably saved many lives. But the mental health system failed their son, and the NICS background check system almost failed the rest of us, which points to the need to reform both.


• Badass Theater Company lives up to its name with its inaugural production, Invasion! - I'll write a full review later, but trust me, if you live in Portland and you're reading this, get your tickets NOW. You'll thank me later.